The US gov has trampled on essentially every right we were taught about in 4th grade schoolhouse rock. They infiltrated and spied on Muslims in Minnesota [1] and before that had an entire program of spying on any activist at all. Before that they put entire races (Germans and Japanese) in internment camps and SCOTUS said it was fine. Hell, they even bombed people in Philadelphia.
My point is, exploiting the 3rd party doctrine to spy on Americans might be out of step with your conception of America and what you think it should be, but it’s not out of step with the historical reality of America.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/magazine/fbi-terrorism-te...
I think this goes in both directions. That some believe that America's exceptionalism is in non-spying (as you suggest) as well as the exceptionalism is that America does unprecedented spying on its citizens. I think that we let one of these two sides dominate the general conversations obfuscate the reality. People pro America will point to China, Russia, or any common "bad guys." Anti-America will point to abuses by America. The problem is that both evidences are valid, but that we binarize the situation. There's different levels of intrusiveness and abuse.
I say this because it all this makes your comment difficult to interpret. Our comments aren't books and often aren't monolithic. So it is difficult to tell if you are just pointing out issues that America has, which is in line with the article, or if you are specifically giving others a pass because "everyone else does it." Different readers have different priors and with a comment like this I think we'll see many different (and reasonable) interpretations.
Fwiw, I don't think many on the left or right (excluding the tails) would be happy about the government spying on its own citizens. I'm afraid we pick cases that fit our narrative for abuse and let others slide because they fit our narrative for justification. Not that this is particularly unique, but does make resolving the issues more convoluted than we give them credit for.
As for American exceptionalism, I'd say that at least one thing is clear: America's problems are more well known than that of other countries. The great American past time is criticizing America. The size economic dominance, and military dominance also makes these issues globally known[0]. Size is often a good reason to take focus, as big players often set the stage and standards. Other countries may be more transparent about their transgressions, but they may not easily permeate through their borders. So I think it is exceptional that America's transgressions are more apparent.
--- To the main point ---
I think that in a spectrum, that surveillance capitalism is better than explicit state surveillance programs, but I think both are unacceptable. I'd argue that surveillance capitalism even has bad consequences for your own country, as it means that adversaries can buy the same data that your own government can. That this can create more chaos as the information has utility to both sides. It is unclear if this chaos is better than a single actor with a clear and significant power/information imbalance, but I think it might be.
[0] As an example, since you brought up Japanese internment camps (by America) but I don't think many realize that similar internment camps existed in the UK, Australia, Canada and many other countries. Many with even higher percentages of Japanese interned than in America, though not in raw numbers. Similarly many Axis powers had internment camps and Ally powers had camps for Germans and Italians, who were generally interned at a lower rate (but in some countries these had a higher rate of longer established residency. So it's complicated). This is clearly not an excuse of the internment camps (I'm explicitly calling these transgressions) but rather an example that the American transgressions are more well known. I think nearly every American is aware of the atrocities of our Japanese internment camps as well as many non-Americans, but I do not think either group is well aware of the other camps. But it is also perfectly reasonable that this is the case.
We haven’t reached the pinnacle of surveillance capitalism yet either. Very soon every customer will be profiled instantly as they enter the store based on facial recognition systems. Treating people differently based on protected characteristics is illegal, but remembering that they were kicked out of a club in LA to deny them services or jobs in NYC a decade later is not. These blacklist systems can be used to deny basic services even if you’re not in prison, have no transparency, and no accountability. And unlike government there is little recourse. You can’t vote on the decisions of Mastercard or Chase.
1. Nature of Trust: I think depending on how much you trust your government that views on state surveillance are going to change and similarly how you trust corporations. We should definitely acknowledge this because it plays a major factor. I believe your stance is from that of trust for government but distrust of corporations. Personally I distrust both (American). The two slight advantages I see to surveillance capitalism are that the collected data is distributed and that it is easier to poison the well. In the competitive corporate setting they _tend_ to not sell the data but rather access to the tools to process the data. (To be clear, both forms exist) If the data could be bought then it gives their competition advantages. So there's a weird incentive to keep that data locked tight (think Google & Facebook as opposed to Equifax). The hope is that no single entity can collect enough information. As for poisoning the well, I'd assume that this would almost always be illegal for a state surveillance program but difficult to sue in a corporate setting. I believe that it is also easier to fine or punish a single actor in the state case -- especially since they need to set examples -- while a corporate case they will likely not pursue as this is expensive unless you create and distribute tools. But maybe that's a bad assumption.
2. Abuse potential: This is the argument that I think privacy maximizers focus on and do not budge or even recognize the usefulness of surveillance (you got to understand if you want to prevent it). Personally I see democracies as perpetual balancing acts and naturally unstable. But that the benefits outweigh the costs. The issue, often called 'Turnkey Tyranny", is that a single bad actor can be democratically elected and then abuse that power (we've heard this, I'll move on in a sec). We don't have to point to Hitler, but we can even point to the abuse that the parent discussed with respect to the Patriot Act which we saw used and arguably abused under the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. Surveillance creep seems more pervasive within a government system, to me, as what I've seen is that once something is in place it is hard to remove. On the other hand, in a corporate setting you can move a lot faster. For example, Apple and WhatsApp/Facebook are both on privacy kicks, promoting their encryption. We all know that there's still collection, but the positioning themselves as privacy preserving has kicked off a competition in the other direction while we haven't seen such a movement in the US government (personally I wouldn't say GDPR is strong and that the EU articles are easily circumvented). That's a clear double edged sword but does feel like it can respond to user sentiment faster (one of the big differences in capitalism vs communism is market response and I see corollaries here). On the other hand I've continuously seen my government try to remove encryption and even attempt to hid it under the guise of universally hated things (child porn and terrorism). Essentially I see laws/regulations as more sticky than corporate decisions. Combine that with the above hope for distribution, I think there is less potential for abuse. The final factor we need to include is that a state can do more harm to a citizen than a corporate entity can.
For your specific cases about a bike being stolen or the common one about the feeling of safety walking down the street, especially at night, I think there are other correlating factors that we can't ignore. While we see examples of bikes being returned and bad guys quickly caught I'm not convinced these are statistically higher or primarily dependent on the surveillance itself. Perception obviously plays a role: perception of risk to commit crime as well as perception of likelihood of victimization. One of the most interesting statistics I see (I probably spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about these numbers lol) is that Americans perceive crime as increasing year over year while there is a dramatic trend downwards[0,1,2,3]. Though I'll be honest in that [0] notes that less than half of crimes are reporter of solved, but the lowest rates are with sexual violence and we have been seeing a steady increase in reporting (likely related to MeToo and other such movements). But I also am having trouble finding estimates of under-reporting for other countries so this might be related to my original comment about America's failures being more in the open or possibly bad googling. I can at least state that from personal experience I have little fear in leaving my door unlocked and often friends comment at how crazy and careless I am but despite having lived in areas with perceived high crime rates (I look them up) I have yet to have had anything taken from my household. I will say that bike theft is common in my area, but the homeless rate is high and that's an easy to pawn item and probably a better indicator of a different problem (a confounding variable) than actual safety (which I'm mostly thinking is violent crime).
Sorry for the wall. I hope I didn't repeat too much that is argued to oblivion.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/11/20/facts-abo...
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/1603/crime.aspx
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2022/10/31/violent-c...
[3] https://news.gallup.com/poll/404048/record-high-perceive-loc...