When you're in business or divorce negotiations and your adversary "knows a guy" who can track your movement and communications, you won't fare very well. Some

When you're in business or divorce negotiations and your adversary "knows a guy" who can track your movement and communications, you won't fare very well. Someone who secretly has access to Warren Buffett's movements and communications could get a jump on the market, stealing a little bit from all the honest players. If you're protesting the government's eminent domain seizure of your home, but you only have enough money to pay the lawyers for another couple of months, the government can just wait you out. They'll be able to figure it out just by looking at the outside of the bill collection notices sent to your home, and the fact that you sent email to several lawyers who are known to work pro bono. The problem is that the mere existence of this kind of information will draw the corrupt among us like flies to a corpse. I'm not all that concerned about the personal motivations of the people who currently have access to that information, although power does corrupt. I'm more concerned about people who will start working for those agencies because they're intrigued by the possibilities. If the information must be gathered, then it is essential that it be a really big deal for any analyst to get access to someone's communication metadata and movements. High visibility, court oversight, logging and review, the works. Side note: I went to the Austin Restore the Fourth rally today; couple hundred people I'd guess, mostly middle-class-looking. Pleasant energy. It's hard to tell whether that's enough of an indicator to make politicians start wondering about their campaign pocketbooks; I'm not optimistic.