@Independent You received accurate information. As early as 2006, I met a dude who was former military who was employed by a creepy "security outfit" based in Philadelphia, PA. Even then, with flip phones, he would turn them off and remove the battery before ANY private conversation. He insisted that massive spying was going on then---18 years ago. I met a "network" manager" in 2008, who told me about how "Myspace" was keylogging and storing the data of all users. Since at least 2003, yahoo was recording the ip addresses of all users. Point is---the digital spying did not begin a couple of years ago---it has been going on for a long time.