You’re talking about something rather different there. This isn’t about extracting information from Google and Apple, it’s about having people insert exploit code in such a way that it is undetectable to other people looking at the code – or at least that everybody who might look at the code is also within the circle of secrecy. In the case of Google you’re also talking about open source code, so the circle of people looking at the code is somewhat out of the control of the security services.
I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I have a distinct dubious feeling about this – helped on by not being able to find anybody in the open source community discussing it (OK, I did a google search, which big brother probably fixed).
Nor would I want to dismiss the general issues Snowden is raising – it always strikes me that a lot of these measures are far more likely to be used against relatively normal people. Unless I’m attributing too much intelligence to the baddies – if I was wanting to do international terrorism and avoid having my comms intercepted it wouldn’t be terribly difficult to avoid a lot of this stuff.
(I’ve probably said too much – if I’m not on here again you’ll know what’s happened)