I spent a long time in the hosting industry, most of which was in early 00s. When the feds couldn't get a court to order to hand over data we simply sold the data to them. They paid, quite handsomely at times.
This is pretty telling of the present state of U.S. law... there's no law against this (even today).
The existing laws that protect privacy and what can be done with information companies collect have never been updated post computer revolution... the same generation that was in power before then is still in power, and they've never had any interest in changing that.
The US government started failing a long time ago, and everyone in that generation is either part of the problem or unwilling to admit it IS a problem.
