Great point - a good threat model usually targets all companies first, such as FAANG, since they are the worst aggressors, and are well known to be leaky (data dumps of personal info are leaked almost daily now), whereas the government tends to be seemingly less leaky and have more narrow data interests, i.e. less interested in the wide array of data that companies extract from people. It's strange how often the government is the main entity discussed in privacy concerns while completely ignoring the much larger problem of corporations in that area.

1. What advertising companies have been abusing power too. Two wrongs do not make a right.

2.

Plenty of examples of 3 letter agencies abusing their powers if you search.

EFF, reason.com, and the register usually make a point of reporting on it.

eg: https://www.eff.org/wp/patterns-misconduct-fbi-intelligence-...

https://reason.com/2023/05/17/the-durham-report-is-right-abo...

For example spying on (ex) girlfriends, seeing people in various state of undress (cameras in devices) etc.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/government-releases-do...

Much of the big events of lately are more related to mass surveillance, censorship, and election interference. Check out the Twitter Files, Russiagate, and final Durham report on Racket.news. Congress has been holding a special investigation on the weaponization of the federal government related to this but more broadly. Recently FBI admitted to having many operatives in the capitol on January 6. Then you had the recent revelation that the FBI violated rules ~280,000 times by accessing private information without a warrant. There is so much more, but whatever large centralized internet services or data brokers can gather is potentially available to government agencies.

Heard of PRISM?