Technically, yes, but one party (e.g. USGOV) has many more strands that it can weave together into a larger coherent picture than the other (e.g. Meta).
Also one party has guns and an almost blanket immunity to using them on people it deems it does not like via its privacy violations.
That probably tips the scales for some people.
But at this point, the government is getting the data from private companies. So if the private companies were not gathering the data, the government would not have such easy access. So I'm much more concerned about private companies for that reason. Yes, the government can do more things to you physically, but they are too dependent on what private companies provide
‘Invasion’ is doing a lot of work in your comment, and I don’t think there is a clear and widely agreed upon definition of what constitutes an ‘invasion of privacy’. If you have such a definition, please do share it.
How do you think this came to be?
My question is mostly rhetorical: it is obvious that government & safety institutions are themselves fanning the flames of this ridiculous movement away from privacy and towards a surveillance state of over-protectionism. The world has not significantly changed in 50 years in terms of terrorist threats, (except for, ironically, threats to your identity online), yet suddenly now that we can track people online, we must to combat this non-changing threat factor? It's all security theater.
All intelligence agencies benefit from more data, and will happily use lack of data as a scapegoat for their own incompetence. They instill fear to justify their existence, unlawful behavior, and lack of results.
