But that is what happened, and most people are oblivious to this fact.
The idea that the government can use your mobile phone to spy on you is so widely understood that even the dumbest popcorn movies make sure to show fugitives ditching their phones and criminals collecting/discarding them before they discuss business without explaining why. Everybody understands the purpose of a "burner" phone.
The point is that we voluntarily paid/pay to build and maintain the tracking infrastructure. That's what most people don't realize.
But they do, that's what's baffling. The number of people I have heard parrot the "Bill Gates put a tracking chip in the vaccine" has me both baffled and worried. These are people who appear to be otherwise completely sane and mostly rational. When I've pointed out that's literally what their phone does, so why would Bill Gates waste any money putting something in a vaccine (ignoring that's not even physically possible) - I get a "well that's different".
They are concerned, but as a non-technical person for some reason they just can't quite wrap their heads around what is happening.
I think it's more that there's no other option.
They need their phone, and they don't like all the tracking just like you or I don't like the tracking, but that's their only option if they want to use a phone.
It's hard to disentangle the two effects, but there is a burgeoning symbol of status in people literally displaying their vaccine cards. It hasn't completely undone the damage, but it does seem to ameliorate it.
In the past addictive properties were enough to get people to do absurd things like roll up leaves, light them on fire, and deliberately huff the smoke. That's arguably more harmful than what mobile devices do to us.
> I think you mean Enemy of the State?
Given the topic of mass surveillance, this doesn't sound like much of a distinction...