"Goering Hadn't got CNN to Contend With"
Hah, I laughed when I read that. When was the last time you've watched CNN? They're not as bad as Fox News (who basically said Snowden was a war criminal and that the NSA is just doing their job and shold be left alone). But CNN still spent more time covering Snowden himself than the numerous legal abuses of the NSA; they accepted the lie hook, line, and sinker, of redefining "collecting" information as being when it's actually looked at (so they could claim they don't "collect" much information). They did very little to nothing that would cause despots to have to contend with them.
What would give the likes of Goering problems now is online coverage; stories that would ever get mainstream media coverage now get coverage online. And occasionally some story that the mainstream media initially missed will be picked up later. (The so-called network news here in the US is about 1/4 sports coverage, 1/4 tabloid crap like actor X marrying actress Y despite having tabloid shows for this to go on, 1/4 advertisements, leaving about 7 minutes out of a half hour show for news and weather, so important news is frequently either bumped outright, or dumbed down to a sentence or two so the viewer doesn't REALLY know what's what.)
Before you could get online coverage, previously the choice was "nothing" or (if you're near a university) "self-published local newspaper" (which may have had info of dubious accuracy -- and unlike online you couldn't do a further search to verify if the info is likely true or not.)
As for the original article -- several of Google's engineers are pretty mad about the NSA tapping their fiber links, they may go for a proper encryption setup where Google doesn't even have the keys. In the US there's no law compelling me to give up my crypto keys, and furthermore the 5th ammendment prohibits requiring anyone from giving up self-incriminating information. The devil (whether this crypto is actually useful or for show) is in the details really