> But there is no legal principle that says that police investigatory powers that were previously legal become illegal as soon as they can automate the process

> But there is no legal principle that says that police investigatory powers that were previously legal become illegal as soon as they can automate the process This is, IMO, the key. You're right: things like that were never (rarely?) categorized implicitly as illegal, because they were things that people didn't consider POSSIBLE. Unfortunately, most of our legal framework is based on the idea of precedent. Our options are: - pass laws to explicitly prohibit this behavior - argue successfully in front of the courts that this behavior is counter to the constitution's provisions. Since most people seem to figure that the first is nearly impossible, especially since the gov't uses secret courts and documents to argue that this doesn't apply to what they're doing (e.g., waterboarding is not torture, "reasonable" means "collect all the things", and so on), we are seeing publicity on the second front.