If all these powerful companies agree,I wonder, empirically, to what degree this whole problem shows that these companies are even powerful. I think some observers have concluded, after the revelations about internal NSA documents claiming to be able to monitor internal server-to-server communications in the big tech companies, that the companies are weak. It also appears to be beyond dispute that some NSA practices were known in the industry for a long time but the companies didn't lobby about those directly to Congress.
in an unprecedented show of unanimity
I think these tech companies, in various combinations, have lobbied in concert before. How long those combinations last depends in part on how unified their interests really are when the details of regulations are drafted. The current call to action is "we hereby call on governments to endorse the following principles and enact reforms that would put these principles into action." Not all of the HN readers are unanimous even on the broad outlines of the principles, as the comments kindly submitted below your comment show, and anyone familiar with national government legislative and regulatory processes knows that the devil is in the details, as one webpage of bullet point policy goals gets changed into dozens of pages of national laws, international treaties, and administrative regulations.
All that said, I fully agree that it is very significant that the companies in the industry are speaking up, and I think that will do a lot to move legislative and regulatory reform of NSA surveillance programs. I agree with other commenters to your comment that it will be a good idea to help consumers have reliable products and services to ensure their own privacy on an individual basis and to regulate how private business corporations gather data on Internet users as well.