To play devil's advocate, if everyone in the U.S. gave $1 to a fund to help the world's poor, that'd be $314 million in aid. Nothing to scoff at, even though it

To play devil's advocate, if everyone in the U.S. gave $1 to a fund to help the world's poor, that'd be $314 million in aid. Nothing to scoff at, even though it wouldn't end global poverty. But in any case, I'm not sure if your example is analogous, because $1 from a person is incrementally helpful, whereas having that person's phone data is almost certainly not. This brings me back to the grandparent poster's anecdote -- I don't think that the NSA would have been able to stop 9/11 just by sorting through everyone's texting and phone calls. It just seems infeasible to really deal with all of that information unless the attackers were very obvious through their conversations -- correct me if I'm wrong.