This is exactly how you get around those pesky laws that prevent you from doing it yourself as a governing body. You just let/encourage/look-the-other-way as private companies do it for you then you just buy access from them. All perfectly legal since those private companies are busy selling your private data to anyone and everyone else.

The advent of smartphones, social media, search engines, pervasive online shopping are all absolute boons for surveillance entities.

And the best part is that the users/public just gives all of this info up willingly and for free.