Comparing intelligence operations of the past - with or without the help of business - to the current situation is a false equivalence. To quote Cybersecurity

Comparing intelligence operations of the past - with or without the help of business - to the current situation is a false equivalence. To quote Cybersecurity as Realpolitik[1] yet again: The central dynamic internal to government is, and always has been, that the only way for either the Executive or the Legislature to control the many sub-units of government is by way of how much money they can hand out. [...] Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter, that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes. Does that lessen the power of the Legislature more, or the power of the Executive more? I think that ever-cheaper surveillance substantially changes the balance of power in favor of the Executive and away from the Legislature. In the past, there were always fundamental limitations of money or manpower or capability. It's expensive to run a stakeout, and it just wasn't technologically possible to build a database about everybody; even the relatively simple census took years of work before the invention of Hollerith's Tabulator[2]. Compare that to today, where XKEYSCORE can search most world communications in (approximately?) realtime. Compare the handful of bytes worth of personal information the Census Bureau was able to tabulate about everybody to the still-growing mountain of data (and metadata) that is gathered routinely that we call "analytics". Compare the difficulty of searching for some particular piece of data - even with a fancy electromechanical tabulator - to the powerful and widely available analysis tools we have today. It is simply dishonest to say the surveillance capabilities of even a generation or two ago is even remotely comparable to the surveillance currently being done by both governments and private businesses.[3] [1] http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI [2] https://www.census.gov/history/www/innovations/technology/the_hollerith_tabulator.html https://www.census.gov/history/www/innovations/technology/th... [3] "It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same fucking sport."