For decades companies have been culling through your every purchase via credit card records. Companies track you every search and move on the Internet. Companies already track every phone call you make. These companies have been using this information to target sales pitches, direct mail, telemarketing, etc. Now the government wants to cull through a subset of this info to find patterns that could indicate terrorist activity and people scream bloody murder. I don't get it. Are people that ignorant that they believe that they have privacy or is it just that it is OK for businesses to do this, but not for government to use it to keep us alive?

Mike, thanks for speaking your mind. It is an important point.

How do we get this out in the open, talk about it sensibly and deal with it without the hype? I haven't followed the Washington debate very closely, but I want to get up to speed.

Hmmm I think that everybody is aware (more or less) that private companies use user data for increasing their business.

Why nobody is complaining about that? Because money from that data is not taken directly from the pocket of the user.

Now on the other hand we have the government spying on people. That would be fine too if everybody would trust the governement and its judgement. Well it seems they don't and they have plenty of reasons for that.