The authorities seem to have decided that they can record anything they want, any time they want. The legal boundary is only crossed when somebody listens to the recording. So it is fine for them to slurp up every bit of data they can tap into and then retrospectively figure out which bits they were authorized to listen to (with almost no oversight, as indicated by this article).
But most normal people don't interpret privacy that way. They consider the act of recording without consent the violation of privacy. The listening afterwards compounds it, but the power of the third party comes from having the conversation recorded, not the listening.
This misinterpretation of privacy is a subtle but deliberate and totally corrupt act by the authorities.