I believe the question being raised is the opposite: that this violation is bad, and we cannot neglect the other violations already being done remotely by these other agencies.

yes, this exactly. thank you. im not some paranoid "tinfoil hat" person as accused below.

I mean, we see the articles posted here on hackernews daily about insecure information security, corporate malfeasance, and stories like this where law enforcement steps over legal boundaries.

I dont think its an incredible position to hold that intelligence agencies exploit all 3 of those situations, including any number of undisclosed zero-days, in order to surveil broad swaths of the population.

No, I'm not saying the seizure of the phone is less egregious. Rather, I'm asserting that intelligence agencies almost certainly operate outside the law regularly. That doesn't make the first thing less bad, but it does show our whole situation to be far worse.