Al Franken Defends NSA Surveillance: It’s Not Spying, They’re Protecting Us

[Thor_MN]

109. Programs COULD be set up such that data is collected but not used unless there is a warrant.

However, from the time that the first employee was hired, employee theft has been an issue. If it's a small company that makes anvils, it's easy to see an employee who is attempt to sneak one out of the building. If it's a huge corporation that makes thousands of products, it becomes difficult to catch a thief. If the product is digitized information, it becomes almost impossible to detect theft by the company, much less the employee.

If you give a private firm the ability to collect data on everyone (just for protecting the people), that data will be used at some point to generate money. The initial sales might not even harm anyone (targeted advertising, resource/bandwidth allocation, etc.) But sooner or later, use of that data is going to start harming people while enriching the assholes who stole it.