The commercial surveillance complex is just a special case of the military industrial complex. No conspiracy is necessary to explain the greed in traditional defense contracting; surveillance tech is just the latest variation.

Also, the current obsession with machine learning is amplifying the problem. It's easy to misuse data analysis (e.g. overfitting the model until it says what you want it to say). Data is seen as valuable on it's own even if it isn't useful "now". This produces an effect similar to tulip-mania where everybody wants as much data as possible even if it isn't currently useful.

Finally, add in bad incentives where failure is rewarded with more contracts. As Mudge (Peiter Zatko) gave a very good description[1] of this problem which he called "game theory is a bitch". The solution is to make retaining data toxic with liability.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9wXq6oRBnI#t=1173

This. But I think there is an aspect of misguided "we're doing the right thing" doublethink layered on top of it.

This can't be overstated. "Terrorism" is HUGE business.