This is just a consequence of powerful people happening to have a lot of money to invest and thus becoming board members for companies in domains in which they have expertise (policy).
I think America has gone too far with its "political correctness". This is why these days media people can't even say that politicians are lying anymore. They have to say words such as "misinterpreting the truth" or "made an error", and why people like Clapper or other law enforcement agents get away with committing "errors", as opposed to calling them what they really are - crimes.
Hehe, as though these things just happen to go hand-in-hand.
It should be like taxes - companies should hate the burden, and try to avoid it, but in the end do what it takes because society has said that it's necessary. companies should certainly not receive transfer payments from the public in exchange for spying on them. I mean think about it, this means you are LITERALLY paying taxes, to be transferred over to a company and returned to shareholders of a company, where that company has received the transfer... so that it can operate a special level of secrecy... in order not to tell you... that they are spying on you. Which you paid for. I mean I get that you're covering the cost of the equipment, but this is about EXTRA payment.
I mean that is a level of absurdity that is beyond the pale. It is like handing a waitress a tip and saying, "this is for not telling me that you were spying on me." I mean, regardless of whether this creates a puzzled or a guilty look on her face, it is a pretty absurd transfer payment!! "Wait, what...you're paying me extra...NOT to tell you...that I'm spying on you?" - "Yep!! In my book, that's how you earn the big profit." Pretty absurd. You don't give companies profit for these programs. It's some burden they do out of civil responsibility and legal obligation, if at all.
It's also why a for-profit police force is a pretty bad idea. Some things are best left to a minimal government mandate, and not these artificial market forces.
Plus, to complete the analogy with our subject (which I mention explicitly) the police would have to be for-profit, which would be a terrible idea. But to answer your question, yes, it would absurd for criminals to vote in for-profit police that they choose to finance, and have shoot at them for profit.
The difference is that the public aren't criminals, and are protected by minimum sane levels of black-box surveillance for their protection, which they pay for via taxes. It's not supposed to be some profit-making activity. it's not "against" the public. the public aren't criminals.
The issue is that the FBI and DEA (with help from NSA) do treat the public as criminals. We've all done something wrong, or are going to very shortly, and they're gathering lots of information on all of us to ensure they can find that wrongdoing.
I think that's the issue. We, the public, are treated as criminals in all of these snooping programs. We didn't get to vote on it, the FBI and NSA went rogue, creating "secret" laws via secret courts that justify all the assumptions of criminality. We didn't get to choose.
A clearer example than the server / tip is jury duty. It's not profitable for almost anyone with a job but for the most part we are forced to participate.
So in the analogy, the companies that are spying for the NSA are like the people participating in jury duty - and (if we agree that there is a social good toward having the black box of intelligence available under extraordinary circumstances) should be "forced" to (or compensated extremely minimally for it), like jury duty.
Being paid a windfall profit to do so would be as though people went out of their way to participate in jury duty, for personal profit. Obviously that would be a horrendous set of incentives for society. (i.e. creating legal cases just so people can participate in jury duty.)
having it be a chore and "forced" on people (by the social contract) and to a minimal extent, is much better.
(this is just assuming there is some social good to having this stuff be available at all, under extraordinary circumstances.)
The defense sector is mostly about providing welfare to the already rich and privileged.
Also, I'm not convinced that individual welfare accomplishes what you think it does. I don't think that just supporting the "more vulnerable ... elements of our society" is good at all. If we want to improve anything, they need to advance in society instead of merely being supported in it.
As to "advance in society", it's pretty easy for (most of) us to take a two-day course in some flavor of the week and have a piece of paper that helps to do so. For someone working a subsistence job it's not so trivial. Many people may waste it but it only has to help create a few productive taxpayers to be a net win to all of us.
And, the people who do fall through the cracks of a rough transition can be taken care of by the humanitarian personal welfare service.
Corporations are much more to become total crooks - spending the last bailout money to hire lobbyists to bribe you to give them more. Imagine the outcry if welfare recipients were encouraged to tip...
It seems that the most powerful tool most people have in their debate toolbox is "you have a financial interest in X, so your opinion on X must be invalid". But this is a logical fallacy.
It's incorrect dismiss a study on the Widget industry just because it was performed by scientists from Widgets-R-Us. Who else is going to do the study? Who has more understanding of widgets than those very scientists? And in particular, why should we believe that the study done by Widgets-R-Evil is somehow more pure and worthy of consideration?
Widgets-R-Us has a strong financial incentive to make their Widgets study as advantageous to them as possible. Widgets-R-Evil has a strong incentive to blast Widgets-R-Us's study as invalid and make their own study as negative as possible, since their reason for existence (assumedly) is convincing people that Widgets are evil.
The truth is A) usually without a direct incentive of its own and B) usually somewhere in the middle.
We don't live in a perfect boolean world, and "you have a financial interest on X" is a completely valid reason to dismiss everything you have to say about X.
And what's even more valid is the rationale implied at this article, that since only people with financial interest on X are defending it, it follows that X is bad and you should be against it.