As always in these articles governments are the threat and private entities are just a footnote. In reality things happened a bit differently. Private entities

As always in these articles governments are the threat and private entities are just a footnote. In reality things happened a bit differently. Private entities figured out the potential in exploiting user data and they started collecting it. When they refined the process well enough that it became valuable, governments saw the value in that data and requested access to it. Do not underestimate the economic incentive of private entities to collect user data.