Thank you very much for your assessment of this delicate topic. There’s a lot of truth in it, but I want to add some additional comments as I feel that some aspects are not getting the attention I would give them.
Using software is all about trust and confidence. The software has access to all my sensible data such as the last bank statement and less dressed images of my wife (just to give examples, ymmv). Some people do trust big companies such as microsoft and apple. I personally trust the libre software community more for reasons that have already been discussed. I might be wrong, and the others might be wrong as well. The point is, it’s about trust.
So for me, there is some difference in what data I transmit to a website via my browser, which should properly prevent my other data from being exposed to the internet, and an arbitrary binary I am natively running which can access all data.
I do decide which browser I trust, and I do decide which data I give to web sites. This is under my control, at least to a degree that gives me confidence. Risky? Yes. More risky than trusting microsoft or apple in general? Probably not.
When a software company actively adds to their privacy notice, that they are collecting data, which they are going to use for whatever purpose, and in particular that they may give it to authorities for prosecution, rings all bells in my head. I mean, for the latter, there are laws. There is no need to add this to the privacy notice if there are laws.
I mean yes, this is for sure mainly a PR fail, and not a technical. However, it shows some attitude and therefore directly interferes with the trust and confidence topic. It’s not a big company, and if they are pro-actively telling what data they might use for purposes that are not quite required for development, they might not fight for the user data in case of a request from official side or if somebody waves a big check.
Removing from the privacy notice a hint that they are not interested in selling personal data also reveals an attitude.
Is there some consequence for me personally? Probably not, for the reasons you gave. Do I like the attitude? No.
Is all of this really a fail? Follows it a “also bad publicity is good publicity” thing? I can hardly believe that the triple fail is really a fail. I mean, how naive can one be? Weird.