Yes, there actually is a huge difference between government and corporate surveillance

[Commentary] When it comes to your online privacy -- or what little is left of it -- businesses and governments act in some pretty similar ways.

They track your credit card purchases. They mine your e-mail for information about you. They may even monitor your movements in the real world. Corporate and government surveillance also diverge in important ways. Companies are looking to make money off of you, while the government aims to prevent attacks that would halt that commercial activity (along with some other things). But the biggest difference between the two has almost no relation to who's doing the surveillance and everything to do with your options in response. Readers were asked whether they had changed their online behavior as a result of the extended national conversation about privacy -- and if so, which form of snooping annoyed you more. Looking through the responses so far, this one caught my eye: “The government because I can't *choose* not to be spied on by them. The government also has the power to kill or imprison me which no private company has.” Putting aside the government's power to capture or kill, your inability to refuse the government is what distinguishes the National Security Agency from even the nosiest companies on Earth.

In a functioning marketplace, boycotting a company that you dislike -- for whatever reason -- is fairly easy. Diners who object to eating fake meat can stop frequenting Taco Bell. Internet users that don't like Google collecting their search terms can try duckduckgo, an anonymous search engine.