It is the lack of planning to prevent it that is years later branded as a feature to sell when company leadership looking to boost numbers or build political capitol start talking to law enforcement. Often after an acquisition or two.

I personally know a release engineer that was required to quietly send all new code changes to an NSA ftp server, presumably to make sure none of the bugs they rely on were fixed.

If something is in popular use and -can- collect data covertly, it will be co-opted to do so by someone for power or money without fail.

"Oh it wasn't our fault the software was wrote poorly. Not like we wrote laws around it or paid companies to share data with us."

What else do you believe that comes from the govt's mouth? Would you simply never believe they'd take advantage of us unless caught in some precise way, in some precise situation?

Government can start showing us it's loyal to us, or face attack of its own networks.