[Joof]

Making it not scalable is the point. It places a monetary restriction so that they have to pick and choose what devices they think are worth hacking and which ones are not. This is the balance between citizen's rights and government power.

Otherwise we just collect everyone's data on everything all the time and have access to everything.

[djrogers]

Why would you expect them to be responsible with money that isn't theirs?

Your argument would work for an individual, and to a lesser extent a corporation (where money spent comes out of profit and would be balanced against benefit), but the government plays with your money - not their own.

If they want to get into a hundred phones, they'll just ask congress for an appropriation for $100m. And since the government is one of its own largest lobbyists, it'll happen.

[Joof]

They don't have unlimited money. If they can bring it down to $1000 per phone to crack, they still can't crack millions of phones without wondering why their budget is allocated this way.