Using one only because it’s super well known? Sure. It can be well known and scummy. But it can also be well known, trusted, vetted, etc.

And you also probably don’t want to use one that is barely known as there’s the lack of trust, getting, who runs it’s, etc.

Most people haven’t, till they have.

For security, Vanadium (only available on GrapheneOS. For privacy, Tor. Most everything else falls between on the scale.

When was that, apparently I missed that.

A quick search says November 2019.

Stremio + Torrentio is the way to go.

Torrentio has started blocking VPNs.

The sheer volume of communication data is far too large to monitor everything.

By people, sure. Run it through a magical analytical algorithm that flags stuff for people to look? Or if that’s still too much everywhere, they could focus it on a certain area’s towers and process that data. Will it catch everything or not generate false positives? No, it’s not perfect, but I could see it helping them and being done.

I doubt an agency like this would just hoard the info and not proactively use.

Even a lot of offices have moved to VoIP.

Depending on where you go to school, 70% is passing while 50% is not. While “not far off,” one is a C, the other a F.

they overspend by millions

Because everyone needs their cut.

either way a military tank is better than a civilian grade sedan.

Because they’re two different vehicles, not two different classes of product. If you compare military grade phones to civilian phones, the civilian would be better, and probably cheaper due to not having the buzzwords attached. And I bet a tank made by a private firm for non-government entities would in fact be better and cheaper than a military tank.

These things will very likely not work on non-proprietary devices.

Depends on your bank. Most work on alternate OS (like GrapheneOS), and of course some don’t. https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/

If an app (especially bank) doesn’t work, I forward them this and try to ELI5 that their current method is flawed and less secure: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-guide