Well, yes. I'm not arguing against your general idea. Just the notion that laws would protect you.
But strictly speaking, the internet isn't a requirement for automated mass surveillance. Powerful enough computers to analyze and process our phone calls would have sufficed. The internet just happened to predate those.
And yes, it's always also a matter of ressources. But if you rely on that, your privacy depends on the assumption, that you're just not interesting enough to be surveilled. Since you had no way to verify that, relying on that notion is somewhat similar to the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument today and yields the protection of your privacy to the decisions of the surveillant.