That may be the case, but from what I have seen working in a large corporation for the first time, I really think that the government pursues something like TIA because it expands government jobs (which equals power) and also keeps the government from having to examine its core dysfunctionalities. Even if TIA was able to generate a workable terrorist suspect list for the agency running it (which I personally doubt), that agency still probably wouldn't propagate that information in a timely basis to other agencies because of turf battles - in other words, the problem that existed prior to TIA that prevented the government from acting on information it had about the 9/11 plot would be the exact same problem that would keep TIA from being useful.
The database on every citizen idea is completely foreign to the understanding of the relationship between citizen and state that I have always thought was proper. And these new surveylance systems are just drachonian.
Some of them actually could be useful and not a significant constraint on civil liberties - but they need to be highly targeted, have a specific purpose and not cast so large a net that the haul cannot be handled. For example, go ahead and create a massive, robust database on anyone entering this country from countries with prior links to terror, and cross-reference any possible source of data for those people - and screw those who might howl about racial profiling.