Comment by duskdozer

>BUT things moved quickly in the phone battles. Some people say that the legal system has never caught up to the data brokering, and in fact the surveillance state grew by leaps and bounds.

Partially by discrepancy in how responsive you can be or comprehensive you must be to win the next round of cat-and-mouse, and partially because a private/corporate surveillance apparatus is useful to a government that might otherwise be hampered by constitutional bounds.