Who's afraid of big data?

Recently, there has been a great deal of news in the international media pertaining to various disclosures that governments-the US government, in particular-are collecting vast amounts of information from diverse sources in the interest of counterterrorism. Telephone information is being recorded in unprecedented volumes, and surface mail is being scanned. Furthermore, the movement of vehicles can be tracked by toll transponders, GPS, black boxes, and imaging devices. What's even more disturbing is that much of this information is probably being kept for later analysis. Using Google technology, this information can be indexed and mined for all kinds of transgressions, beyond scanning for terrorist-threat indicators or conducting forensic analysis of terrorist acts.