All true. Damn it.
Thing is, we live in a very dangerous world, and as a result, we are caught on the horns of a dilemma:
One horn is our personal safety as citizens which these acts of dubious legality may enhance with good-intentioned efforts.
The other horn is the desire of people to use this data for personal gain or party gain.
In the end, we may try to choose as with all “horned dilemmas” to go between the horns, but may still get impaled on one or the other.
There's part of the problem.
Government seeks to criminalize our preparation for ensuring our personal safety. In the most dangerous parts of America, carrying a deadly weapon for self defense is either extremely restricted or outright prohibited.
Government inhibits our ability to protect our own personal safety, then employs the tools of tyranny in a pretense of ensuring our personal safety for us.
It's not about "crime control", it's about "citizen control".