Comment by simoncion

If the government is being too obvious about the fact that the entity in question is nothing more than its puppet, then something can be done about that. Entities that are government entities in everything but name can be considered to be government entities and become subject to all the relevant restrictions. There's some fancy-ass phrase for this, but I can't remember it at the moment.

Also, the third-party doctrine hasn't been good enough for certainly the last thirty and maybe the last hundred years. But, authoritarians aren't easily separated from their tools of oppression, so I expect to not see that cluster of regulations updated to be actually protective within my lifetime.