That tech and social media corporations' statement in full.

'The world's leading technology companies have united to demand sweeping changes to US surveillance laws, urging an international ban on bulk collection of data to help preserve the public's “trust in the internet”' 

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter joined together in a concerted effort to resist US Government attempts to acquire users' data for free. 'We're deeply concerned that the state is using technical methods to snoop on our users' data for free when everybody else has to pay for it' said a spokesman for the group. 'When Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, said "If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place", he meant it, but he meant that your nefarious activities should make us money, not that the state should find out. Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems said "You already have zero privacy. Get over it". I would like to make it clear on behalf of Silicon Valley's leading social media corporations that there is a price to pay for information: even if you're the government. It's a new world, buster. Governments are history. Governments can't be trusted with your information, whereas we only sell it to anyone with a wad of cash. We're deeply concerned that if this intrusion goes on, our users will flee to some pathetic tax-paying European company which doesn't hand over your data to anyone who asks for it and we'll lose money the founding principles of the internet will be betrayed.  We own you now, and we insist on getting paid. We demand immediate legislation to ensure that we're never caught saying one thing to our users while handing over everything the government and advertisers want. This legislation should take the form of 438 pages of legal jargon in size 3 font with a checkbox at the end: we've got the iTunes guys drafting it right now. Don't bother reading it'.   

The spokesman concluded his remarks and climbed into a personal jet to visit the companies' money, currently holidaying in a tax-free resort out of reach of any government. The money declined to comment, citing 'privacy concerns'. 

(By the way: I'm completely opposed to what GCHQ, NSA and the various governments have been up to. I just don't think we should allow these intrusive media giants – who cooperated with the spooks until they got caught – should get away with pretending that they're suddenly interested in principle over profit).