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One of the places where the Internet truly succeeds is by giving everyone a voice, thereby creating a watchdog effect that mass media has failed at themselves. Granted, not many use their "voice" for a worthy purpose, but those that do may never have been heard if it weren't for this medium.
They should have kept better track of their usage. They could have upgraded to a plan with more included wiretaps, or even considered one of the "Shared Family Wiretap" plans.
Now that we have at least temporarily stopped commercial netting of the sea lion primary preferred food source (smelt), perhaps they will go back to eating those.
That last free-flowing stretch of the Columbia River that the OP mentions is also the last stretch of Columbia River that maintains spawning habitat. It also accounts for a very large portion of the salmon that return through the Columbia River estuary every year. If removing this dam would open up more spawning habitat, this would not be a bad thing.
They are being polite. You have to voluntarily join a public and un-trusted network to allow them to snoop. At that point, you are practically leaving your doors and windows wide open for someone to break into your home, so to speak.