Well said. I think a real debate needs to take place about gathering all forms of intelligence by "macro-polling." A traffic cop polls each car with a radar gun looking for speeders. A cop walking the beat polls pedestrians for suspicious behavior. Are my civil rights being violated simply b/c a cop looks at me in the street? Should cops simply stay at the station and wait to be called?

I think a lot of this meta-data network analysis is analogous to the traffic and beat cops. I'd be interested to whether or not people think that's true...