Absolutely not. The assumption for telephone networks is this: every call is automatically transcribed and recorded. Further autonomous analysis is done on that transcription and if flagged a human would start listening to the recordings or ask for a live feed. Your telephone is a hot mic.

Americans would point to legal protections, but the intelligence agencies don’t care. If it can be done it is done. Outside of America you’re open game. The NSA has always put forward that autonomous collection by computers is not ‘surveillance’ and therefore not illegal anyway. Other jurisdictions will be using similar arguments.

(If you’re an American and you still want to believe your laws protect you then consider America’s five eyes program and other such intelligence sharing programs. The Australians can surveil the Americans and the Americans can surveil the Australians and it’s all within a legal framework. Then they can share intelligence with one another.)

Public prosecution is often a news item and sometimes the evidence can be enlightening. E.g. the evidence is a recording of a telephone call years before prosecution even began. It’s a rather mundane prosecution too. Nothing remarkable that would warrant elevation towards state actors and their capabilities.

I want to press a point: the apparatus of mass-surveillance is owned by the state, but the products that are generated via that apparatus trickle down to smaller state actors like your local police and the private market. To frame things statically is wrong: my threat model doesn’t involve state actors so I can ignore this. Well, the private market now sells services that previously only state-actors could do.