[thfuran]

And, at least in the US, the government can and does freely purchase from third parties information that they aren't able to compell disclosure of, so companies accumulating tons of information about everyone is very much a part of the government surveillance apparatus. Without that (and with some better protection of data that actually does need to be collected), national intelligence agencies would probably still coerce access to information they're not meant to have, but at least local police departments wouldn't be able to just buy it from data brokers.