That is fairly accurate. They are entertaining, cheap and extremely useful. I have no illusions that they can not be intrusive as well. Knowing what I do about how they work and what their capabilities are... I would take additional precautions if organizations or individuals had any reason to "spy on me". Intelligent criminals take additional precautions which is why their usefulness for keeping track of truly bad guys is questionable.
These days anyone can obtain a new or used "smart phone" through completely legal or illegal sources using anonymous transactions. You can now also sign up for inexpensive data and airtime with no contract and provide information that would be difficult to trace as well. This is how criminals and terrorists currently do it. How does the government keep track of someone who swaps them out with a different anonymous device every few days, or even every hour if they want. The devices are very inexpensive and there are a plethora of prepaid or no contract plans that can be paid for with anonymous funds.
Anyone with any smarts has known for years that cellular devices are not secure. This is not a revelation. However anyone who has ever watched any type of "spy movie" has known for years that all one has to do to get around this is to use a device that would be difficult to trace back to you, and then swap them frequently. This is now easier than ever.
Our government's answer to this is countless acres and billions of dollars worth of computer storage and processing devices that record and process virtually every bit of data coming from originating from the electronic devices of every law abiding person in the world hoping that they can sift through all of it quick enough to keep track of the thousands of bad guys which they are allowing to enter our country every day.
We are being spied on by our own government at an unprecedented level, but it seems a lot like bombing the Hồ Chí Minh trail... much of the traffic was by bicycle or carts pulled by people and animals and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bombs and more explosives than were dropped on all of Germany during WWII did little to stop the flow of arms and supplies. We have a government that chooses not to secure our borders and allows hundreds of thousands of radical Muslims and others who hate our society to migrate here both legally and illegally. It is a dangerous political shell game. The level of stupidity is awesome but not surprising coming from a government bureaucracy.
