State-sponsored false-flag terrorism works. Kill a few of your own, raise a flag, shed a tear, and observe the hordes sign up to decimate the one you say is responsible.
I disagree. There has been so much anti-facebook hype over the last few years, yet many of the people I know, smart people, have it on/open/in-the-background 24/7, and instagram, and a hundred other services shipping their personal data. These people don't read about online privacy or ruminate on the consequences of their actions, because everyone around them does the same. For younger people, it's worse. Their entire lives are uploaded. They have been programmed to accept this as reality, and it would probably seem like social suicide to disconnect. Outside of places like HN, conversations about privacy and censorship, in my experience, are only ever instigated by me.
And now the world seems to be in a mad rush to bug their houses. Obviously there are plenty of people who are repulsed by this, but we're all swept up in the surveillance state anyway. If people start to get the idea that these surveillance devices are bad, they'll be reminded to trust their govt with a brand new terror event.
Governments and corporations are filled with deceitful, self-serving, corrupt people. If there is a monetary interest, the transaction will take place. If that has to happen under the radar, it will. The agencies will excuse their actions by citing "defense". It is in the interest of National Security, therefore, that the data is handed/sold to the government, and the mechanism of this transfer is classified owing to National Security interests. Or maybe it's easier than that. Maybe Google is just a government agency. An Alphabet agency.
We can rise up together and physically dismantle the infrastructure they have erected. We can move to encrypted communications and/or ditch our phones altogether. But that requires a concerted effort by large swaths of people, and as far as I can see, there is no collective mentality toward this end. Most people are hooked to their phones, and therefore are hooked to the surveillance state, and they would hardly dream of getting rid of the device that embodies their choicest addiction.
The cleverest part is repeatedly staging false flag terror events against one's own people, blaming it on a patsy or simply an idea ("terror"), pounding fear-based jingoism into the public psyche, and using this to justify any authoritarian constitution-crushing measures out of government's putative concern for citizens' safety. It's clever because nobody could be that evil. Or at least, not our boys.