I mean back in the cold war we started losing privacy to foreign governments. A parade of overhead satellites is capturing everything you do all the time.
As much as we expound about the rule of law, might makes right if the population isn't vigilant. Simply put technology gives capability. In 1900 we didn't have the capability to monitor everything that everybody did all the time and keep those records their entire life. Now we have technology that can do just that.
This has nothing to do with the law. Zip, zilch, nada. Switzerland is one dark day away from having all their behaviors recorded by businesses/governments.
At the end of the day legality is a theoretical construct, and technological capability is reality.