@Catweazle
It is not the Government but the democracy that is basically flawed. Not since yesterday, since the ancient times of Athens, Greece. In short, democracy is as good as the people that expresses it because the elected representatives in general have the same moral values as the average joe. There is an old saying in latin, "do ut des", I give something to you, you give something to me. People vote in exchange of some promise, the guy who get elected makes promises to the voters and to the lobbies that payed for his campaign or financed his own party. In order to operate, Google has to give something to the people who will give something in return.
Speaking of existing laws. That is another interesting and huge topic.
Lets say you are a judge. Your duty is to prosecute all crimes you are aware of. Now, how comes that some crime is prosecuted and some other gets ignored or the prosecution starts then it slows down and is forgotten in some drawer? Simple, the judge does not prosecute all crimes, he picks the ones he want to go against and leaves the other to rest.
Plus, besides what I wrote above, you can have a law that prohibits to go on the beach without wearing long pants. If people don't think/feel you must wear long pants on the beach, the law is ignored by anybody, both the population and the authorities. In my own language it is called "dead letters", meaning the law is written but it is long gone like an ancient and forgotten language nobody understands any more.
Our current case is both things. The authorities do not apply the law, they pick only the cases they like. Meantime, the population has lost the perception of the "crime" so the law is dead. Mind you, I have an old Nokia phone but people happily buys chinese smartphones with Android and push their lives inside the gadget, inside the "social networks", etc. Who cares of what we are saying here, like "tracking"? My own brother mocks me because I am a freak who fear to be spied by the CIA.
