You are probably right, but Mozilla should go down putting up a fight. And this is a fight worth losing.

So Mozilla should throw away their funding, lay off the majority of their employees and then fight the good fight?

How much of Mozilla would be left to do that again?

Mozilla would probably die, and that would be a very bad thing. So you are right, this is not the wisest path (it is the bravest, but the graveyard is full of brave people).

The other option is to contribute to educate the public by being honest. Giving the false hopes that they provide in their statement, they are doing a disservice to the public by downplaying the risk posed by the government.

I would have hoped from more honesty from Mozilla; they should just call it what it is: the US is a police state, so you'd better protect yourself.

What a load of FUD.

If they want to be able to store a bit of customer information that they don't have to pass over to the US government then they just have to move the company and their servers out of the US.

Why would a company that has nothing to do with the US have to warn employees that they could get arrested if they visit the US?

Why would a company whose only connection to the US is a few US citizen and/or permanent resident employees have to worry about whether or not certain transactions involve those employees?

You might not know why, but they do. The US is unusually (perhaps uniquely) aggressive in how far it tries to push the reach of its law. It's worth thinking through the implications of that.