You're the only who had a negative take but actually responded. That's encouraging that you aren't a bot. I'll just focus on this one though.
This isn’t true. The fact that they need to pay companies for information they can’t legally get elsewhere is proof of this.
You might want to read what Snowden revealed. You're trying to argue none of those things are true but like I said, they're undeniably true. You're just uninformed as to the truth of it. If you'd like to know more then you should admit this one is undeniably true and I'd be happy to source the others. There were many things revealed but you can start with "Prism."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data
It was already shown the US government is decrypting all internet traffic, storing all internet traffic in their data center in Utah, that they monitor all video, audio, and text communications. That they wire tap all phone communications and store it. All of this is done without a warrant and in violation of the constitution. They claim it is legal because they don't look at the data until they have a legal justification. So, they say they're not spying because even though they're spying on you, they only look at wire tap data if they have some way to legally justify it. They say it's legal because if you communicate in any way that a foreign person might receive it then they're actually spying on the foreign person's communication even though your data is the one being stored as well. They say it's legal because they only search records "related to a target." So if they find one bad guy they can find anyone with a link to them out to a factor of 100. Have you heard of 7 degrees of Kevin Bacon? Imagine 100 degrees and that you have a relationship if you post something on Lemmy for example with EVERYONE who views it. So if some bad guy overseas views your Lemmy post you're now connected to them and can be spied on using only the justification that they need to spy on that bad guy and anyone they "communicate with."
Your answer might refer to specific branches of the government. Obviously someone working in government grant reviews for agriculture isn't spying on everyone. But yes, the government as a whole is spying on everything you do. What's the point of sourcing anything else if no one can even accept this simple one that even the main stream media covered extensively over the last decade? I mean, they even just reauthorized the program a few weeks ago.
Of course, the average person pays no attention but it doesn't make it untrue. It's sad when people are so uninformed and propagandized that they can't even accept the truths the government has admitted to, defended in court, and continues to authorize even as recently as a few weeks ago. Section 702. Another thread you can look into. There were a lot of threads and it goes far beyond what most people are even able to admit to themselves is technically possible such as the TLS (https, you know the lock on your browser) being easily back doored by the government. After all the entire basis of web encryption relies on "trust" of the certificate authorities who only need to be given a National Security Letter (another thread you can look into) such as when the Reddit canary was removed (another thread you can look into) in order for the government to abuse their position of "trust."
You would need to review all of these programs, understand the technology being discussed, and then you might be able to accept that, yes, the government is spying on you without a warrant and basically any electronic record you create is stored in an NSA database at a minimum. Then you'd also have to get people to begin to understand just how many records exist about their activity. That's a whole other discussion.
This is just one item. Notice all the responses are "thats crazy, you're a crazy person" but no one wants to actually engage in a discussion or refute the points. You're the only one who made an effort. Look at how much I had to type up and source for just that one point and you might still try to argue and say it's not true. I don't have time to type a book in response to things people can look up themselves if they care to know the truth because if they don't care to look it up they won't care to read or understand me anyway.
Trump is going to win, AfD is going to win, it's going to be hilarious, and the minorities are coming with us. You should enjoy the ride.