And people who engage in unauthorized wiretapping for governments are not privateers.

I have never heard the word dime used that way, nor do I see anything in the first few google results about it being used that way.

There was a 60s slang term "drop a dime" which meant to call someone, and nowadays that phrase means to call the cops or to snitch.

It's used in the miniseries "Power".

Which doesn’t make the above statement false.

I've been using the 2010's dime slang and didn't know about this one.