> Governments have the same ability to leverage things like trackers

It's not clear to me whether the methods trackers use to de-anonymize you are considered "content" or "metadata", and whether the U.S. government would need a warrant to access tracker information.

Do you have thoughts?

You can buy the data on the market without a warrant.

VPNs seems like a really obvious bypass of controls and surveillance capability. I’m sure the folks at NSA, et al thought of it too.

They can think of it, sure. But when you read their testimonies, and read the summaries of leaked documents, you can see they are attempting to be law abiding even if they _really_ stretch to interpret the law.

Just because they know its a way to thwart their system doesn't mean they have another "legal" way to collect the same data.