Prior to that they were able to function just fine by using non-classified data brokers which have access to every bit of data that can be extracted from every smart phone that has a single app that's compromised by their spyware.

Having access to even greater surveillance data (like the data that is gathered at TITANPOINTE and other oversea cable collection locations) just lets whoever is in charge more accurately target their political opponents.

Like Snowden said in citizenfour, the collection capabilities of the NSA create a situation which would allow 'turnkey totalitarianism'. Well, they've turned the key.

Yeah pretty much, they're basically, at their core, private contractors, whose nearly sole customer is governments.

Governments outsourced the management and operations of the Torment Nexus, not because they were forced to or didn't want or didn't have the resources...

... They were just too incompotent to do it themselves.

So... yeah, now they're now functionally part of the government, of multiple governments actually.

This is how we ... get to? Or have arrived at? ... just actual cyberpunk dystopia, where the Corps just are, in every meaningful way, on top.