Several years ago, I read into the Snowden reports and some of the corporate surveillance stuff too. My takeaway is that for sure all our conversations online and over the phone are being monitored but not by individual people. It's not like there's some fed on the other end listening to what you say. It's electronic surveillance, sometimes that picks up on key words and sometimes just data. There are also really good algorithms that can use data they collect about you (like your shopping habits and what websites you visit and what places you go to in real life) to make pretty accurate predictions about your interests and your health, your politics, your future consumption habits, etc.