It works in Star Trek, because as 'api says, their society is sane. United Federation of Planets is an utopia, where people don't try to abuse and profit off each other.

For a proper Star Trek comparison, imagine how comfortable Federation citizens would be with using ambient computing technology created and sold by the Ferengi, who are also known to be performing surveillance for Romulans in exchange for money.

(For non-Trekkies here, Ferengi is a species of extremely greedy and exploitative capitalists; Romulans are what you'd get if you reified the Five Eyes into a species, and put them into state of cold war with the Federation.)