However, there are still limits on how that power may be executed. Those barriers have not yet been torn down. And remember BJ used Echelon against his political enemies. The current administration has an equal number, if not more, of enemies and I have yet to see ANYTHING suggesting any of this information has been used in that matter.
It appears we're sliding back up that slippery slope.
Yes, and when they started passing seat belt laws, they said no one would ever be pulled over just for a seat belt infraction.
Now, it's gotten so bad that the Maryland State Police have night-vision googles to see if people going by at night don't have their seat belt on.
Since I know what I could do with this data (I work with marketing databases for a living), maybe I am more concerned than the average bear as to the government having it. Especially when they ain't all that great at data mining in the first place - what if a glitch makes them think that YOU are linked to al Qaeda?
And that is assuming that they are using the data in a limited and controlled manner.