In the context of the history of the CIA and NSA it's standard procedure. And that's just the stuff we know about. Certainly Snowden taught us anything is possible, that they have no restraint.
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On the other hand, politely asking an outfit like Equifax for (just about) ALL their data with no real reason would be out of character. Why bother? Why go on record?
It's pretty simple. Why would they get via hack? Answer: Because they can.
Snowden, a man who worked from home in Hawaii as an NSA contractor making over $200k a year with his smoking hot girlfriend, who suddenly decided he had a moral compass, was able to download tons of classified files over VPN to his laptops and run off to meet Greenwald et. al. to divulge all this information, then flee to Russia where he sends out anti-Russian tweets.
Meanwhile, nothing has happened. The NSA is still spying. PRISM seems to be something everyone has forgotten about (did it even exist? Most companies denied it). His evidence were all rededicated power point slides.
Question the narratives that are given to you.
If so, poor security contractors (and their apparently less appealing girlfriends) with our cynical assumptions.
This is ridiculous. It makes no sense why the NSA or any other members of the US Intelligence Community would cause this sort of reputational damage and nationwide outrage to a company when they could simply walk up to them with one of those fancy national security letters with a built in gag order and take the information with much less of a fuss.
Other than that, I agree. Google should buy me a god damn drink if they really want to get to know me. :)