Well first of all, the world is ruled by money. Information is collected in databases. Every company has at least one database. Most websites these days have at least one database. This site has a database.
So a few things to day here...
1. These databases are all disconnected and even if you commit a crime if there's evidence suspected on a database the government doesn't own it has to be subpoenaed and a judge has to determine in each case, whether that company needs to hand over that data. Companies do not simply automatically provide access to the government. Their data is private property that they own. And they know users are concerned about their security so this puts pressure on them to provide more security and deny access to government agencies whenever possible.
2. In the background, a lot of what you do online is now encrypted. This is to protect against hackers stealing your "real identity". But the same encryption that's going to protect you against hackers will also work against governments. However, public data, like voter information, is up for grabs. But this is information you're already volunteering to the government and they have to check your real identity before your vote can be counted.
3. SIZE. So data takes up space. Text data is small. But when you talk about video, there's a reason why its not so easy to send video over text messenging, over 4G. If we're talking about 2MP video, that's a smaller size. The lower the resolution, the smaller the size but the more detail you lose from the image. Cameras that run constantly will almost NEVER keep all the video they record. Tapes get erased or recorded on top of and save only as long as necessary. In the future, an AI will likely analyze video to see how much of it can be deleted as irrelevant. You also have video compression but that only goes so far. Not only can GB be quickly filled up with video but the congestion of traffic this would cause would bring the internet to its knees.
4. Governments can spy on you; especially the NSA. I cringe every time someone calls me and says certain words because it's like begging for the conversation to be flagged. radio signals can be snatched out of the air. But imagine if you were able to hear everyone's thoughts around you? Without the ability to focus on a single person you'd hear a lot of noise. So if the government or hacker has no target then such listening isn't very useful. But if your conversation is flagged then you're giving them a target to isolate. And all those calls are likely recorded so they can also be retrieved. Hackers can also take over the cameras and microphones on your devices. This is absolutely true. However, again, spying abilities in general are not very effective unless you have a specific target.
5. There's a commercial value to gathering information about you. That's mainly so companies can advertise products that you're more likely to buy. Advertising is huge business. It is the majority of Google and Facebook's business. Amazon also makes a ton of money on advertising. So this is really the primary application of gathering intelligence on everyone and this info may say what you like, what you're interested in, your political leanings, porn choices, etc. But it's going to be limited somewhat. You can, and many people do, avoid a lot of this gathering by using certain web browsers and proxy servers so that most of their taffic is anonymous. It doesn't matter if a site says person X looked at Z if that cannot be traced back to an actual real person.
So realistically, no, not until the introduction of AI in all these things, will there be much of a threat outside of those who are determined to break the law. That's not me so I'm an open book. The more people try to hide, eventually, the more it will look like there's something to hide. I'm sure eventually, all my posts will be read by an AI to see what kind of person I am, to judge me, and see if I'm a threat to it or other humans. And I feel comfortable that it will be fair. Only AI could handle the processing of so many people and all the connections that might tell their story. But if you have a target... that's different. Or if you can target a small group of people... an organization, for example, that's different. So I'm not worried about the masses being spied on. There's not enough people to do the spying. And that's just communications. As for databases, there will need to be some crime or at least potential crime being investigated. Otherwise the internet will respond with more security and privacy measures.
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