Also important to point out how much of this goes back to Max Schrems activism over the years and noyb (https://noyb.eu/en). This is a huge win achieved with relatively few resources. Staying engaged is worth it.
Almost all major countries have surveillance programs. They are perhaps necessary to preserve national security. The hope of democratic countries is to have enough checks and balances on those powers to keep them limited to national security interests and to prevent abuse.
The EU's treaties explicitly reserve national security for the member states themselves (except for where there is unanimity or opt-in in specific areas).
As such, in most cases, the Commission and Parliament can't legislate to bring MS' own intelligence services under control.
To change the situation the treaties would have to be changed (which is a can of worms in itself) and all 27 members would have to agree to the changes (one or two would require a referendum).
This isn’t ‘let’s decide to let X country know Y’. If it is on the eyes network (and tons of things are) everyone gets it per the multi country agreement.
I hope to see more disincentives put forth against these practices in markets our businesses haven't completely supplanted government oversight. Hopefully, that will result in shifts of practices in the US markets as well, though it's certainly not guaranteed.
Our big Tech FAANG loves gobbling up everything they can get their hands upon in the name of training AIs that shove more personalized creepy ads.
This is not the case - almost all major countries have surveillance agencies. It’s not the fact that China has surveilance that is looked down upon, it’s the lack of checks and balances. Most democratic countries have surveillance to ensure national security interests and they have strict checks and balances to minimize abuse and ensure that intel is used only for national security reasons.
China’s surveillance has no such checks and balances and does little to prevent abuse and that is worth criticizing. Perhaps this may change someday but the current party does not seem to be heading in that direction.