They collect a lot more than that though. 👮👁📱

In term of success, I believe it's eventually an after the facts success Once the attack has already happened, and you gather all datas you have on a bunch of individuals And that's it, that's the best you can have, in no way it protects from anything, it can help to go after people, it also can be lame for that too ... Now you can spy live and focus/rely on keywords and "meta data" analysis via algos, put people in baskets/folders accordingly... Yeah, maybe it works and maybe you end up with truckloads of grey folders in the end, as in "not sure folder" or this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_positives_and_false_negatives idk I'm not an expert but I believe it's safe to assume that garbages in garbages out also apply, as usual, so you already have that ... But just like the debate "does torture work?" for terrorism, what's for sure, is that maybe the primary goal isn't achieved (get intels, the right ones) but it sure does work for population control, people are scared shitless nobody bats an eye. If THAT is the goal of using torture in the name of whatever reason, then yeah it works, it's called fucking terror that's what dictatorships and police states often rely on Same here If the goal is to shut people into self censorship, it works, it does have a shilling effect If anything that's what mass surveillance achieved, for sure