They probably aren’t as smart as fed spooks (unless they are one); but they make up for it in determination, brazen willingness to violate applicable laws, and usually lots of semi-private personal information.
That said, there is an unfortunate overlap between technologies of use to stalkers and technologies of use to spooks (and technologies of use to advertisers) which creates a structural pressure against even those safeguards that might be possible.
The most obvious example is probably the long and inglorious history of Really Dumb Mistakes by various ‘social’ companies/products that end up outing some gays, giving assorted psycho exes a handy update on their targets, and so on.
It’s not that the objective is to empower the dangerous and creepy; but a company that revolves around gathering advertising data, with a sense of caution honed by a leadership team of mostly wealthy white men who have little to fear, is going to have certain blind spots. And they do.
