Samsung was one of the companies caught using their apps to scrape data out of the filesystem (config files and logs from other apps, location from camera roll, etc) and using it to bypass permissions you didn't want to give them.
They are completely terrible on privacy, lol, the answer here is "if you care about privacy don't use a samsung". Or more generally "don't use android".
I'm not really sure what you are getting at. Regardless of what Samsung is doing, I'm confused by the argument that encryption is useless because Samsung might take steps to work around it when not using a Samsung device is a viable option.
Samsung has below-root-level access on their phones, their apps are fundamentally aggressive towards your privacy (as repeatedly demonstrated in practice) and impossible to dig out without a complete image replacement. Maybe not even then.
If you care about privacy, you don't buy Samsung phones (or other products like TVs). They are the tip of the spear on data collection.
