[ck2]

is it just double-dipping the spending (this might be your point)

or it is actually doing an end-run around laws against governments doing the surveillance themselves, instead they get private companies to do it and then it's perfectly legal to buy the data

just like government buys cellphone tracking data and mortgage data from private brokers when there are laws blocking them doing it directly

[Henchman21]

There’s a word for government & business collaboration of this type.

[inigyou]

it's called "government contracting", but you were thinking of "fascism", weren't you?

Fascism does mix state and corporate power, but that's not a definitive part of it. Fascism mixes all powers because the nature of fascism is to only tolerate one power, which is itself. This doesn't mean that every time the government and corporations work together, it's fascism.