U.S. privacy board says NSA phone program illegal; should end

[DirkGently]

11. The Intelligence community assumes all data is "useful."

That's the business they're in. If NSA, FBI, and CIA could achieve the ability pull up every piece of information on anyone, anywhere, anytime, they would do so, because that's the culture of what they do. "Total informational awareness" was never scrapped. Put people in a job where we ask them to gather information in secret, and they will try to get all of it.

But we know we need limits. We know secrecy and spying aren't just things that can be abused, but that they are abused, badly and frequently.

As you say, it's clear supposed "foreign surveillance" is being backdoored for domestic criminal cases already. It's no big leap from there to leaning on, threatening, or destroying people for political or business purposes.

Add to that the fact we've already let in private corporations, and the clear and recent examples of business looking for ways to use spying to crush critiques or competitors (HBGary, anyone?) and we've got a new era of global digital surveillance that needs new rules and new controls.

Handing it all over to private business would be gas on the fire.