> I think there’s this idea of American exceptionalism

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.