Two things in the same phrase: Criminalize Everything.
Don’t assume so, because that has little purpose.
Instead, look to the old East Germany as an example of what happens when this is taken to a logical extreme. They had truly vast archives of dossiers about all their citizens, and had compelled almost half their citizens to inform on the other half. But what did this achieve?
East Germany was an utter mess, because the police state was so caught up in minutiae that it neglected the “important stuff”, the very purposes of government. The infrastructure was decrepit; though they were also hyper-militarized, their military was worthless; the level of pollution was such that it will still take centuries to clean up much of it; “luxury items” like shaving razors and toilet paper were rare indeed; and the alcoholism and drug abuse rates were terrible.
100% official employment, but nobody really worked. It finally all collapsed when it was realized that just a small handful of corrupt, old men still wanted things that way. And when it did collapse, nobody did much of anything while waiting for the West Germans to pick up the pieces.
In any event, this is the direction our national intelligence and police agencies want to take us. Their ambition knows no restraint; but in the final analysis, they don’t do anything productive. They just waste resources, until either there are no resources left to waste, or the public gets tired of their antics.
They surveillance and spy and dossier and monitor themselves out of a job. Then they curl up and cry themselves to sleep because there is always more that they can’t peep on. Secrets that they cannot divine. Minds they cannot control. People using quantities of toilet paper that they cannot track by the sheet.
Perhaps America needs to learn its lesson the hard way, like East Germany, that just because you can be that way, you don’t have to be that way. Just because technology can be Big Brother, it doesn’t have to, because no good comes from that.