You really don't have to be a government to do this sort of stuff. I know people who work for these kinds of companies (which does NOT make me happy, fwiw; one

You really don't have to be a government to do this sort of stuff. I know people who work for these kinds of companies (which does NOT make me happy, fwiw; one of them really really needs a job and is constantly applying elsewhere, but feels stuck), and many of them exist in western societies. Hacking Team got a lot of press a while back because a ton of their e-mails were stolen and leaked to Wikileaks, showing the extent of their client base, and they are run out of Italy (though they got bought a few years ago, apparently; the article referenced about it on Wikipedia is in Italian, so maybe the new company is also Italian, but I'd be shocked if it were not also in western society, so it really doesn't matter that much exactly where). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacking_Team