"Owning you up" is harder (not impossible, but harder) when they can't simply send a letter and bring the force of the law to bear. NSLs are a very good reason to avoid any system that requires you to use a provider that has a presence in the US (and there are analogous concerns about e.g. AU, and obviously any country where legal and practical protections are weak enough that a strongman can just send a team of thugs round is a nonstarter). But really any specific country is beside the point; it should be table stakes for a serious cryptosystem that one can avoid depending on any single point (and make choices based on one's own trust base vs available resources) whether that's for relay servers, app maintenance, or anything else.
> Pick a service that doesn't have information to share about you in the first place as your high order bit.
True enough; obviously trusting your security to a system that requires you to use a phone number identity is laughable in the first place.