You seem to be under the persuasion that these programs are intended to catch criminal behavior. They are not. The NSA engage in what's known as "strategic li

You seem to be under the persuasion that these programs are intended to catch criminal behavior. They are not. The NSA engage in what's known as "strategic listening". This is the 'measuring half' to strategic communication - which means propaganda. Propaganda messaging gets tracked to see how well it penetrates target societies and knowledge from surveillance about personal associations, trust networks, how information generally flows through society allow propaganda programming to be adaptively retargetted and remessaged. Similarly, these surveillance programmes are used to give American businesses a leg up in competition (the international oil auctions from a few years ago are a well known example of this). Surveillance capabilities were installed by the CIA in their fake Twitter application "ZunZuneo" because having dossiers on potential future political activists gives US intelligence leverage over potential future public servicepeople. Surveillance is and has been about power and control - it's a misunderstanding to think that the line stops with some kind of criminal behavior or other. Therein, I think the framing of the question - as much as I like the approach - will inevitably fall short of really addressing the issue.