The scenario that a bigger adversary gaining access to the data is definitely troublesome. We also need to consider other scenarios.<p>How about the ramifications of the pipes created for NSA, getting leveraged by other actors?<p>What happens when a rogue employee <i>hacks</i> the infrastructure created for providing the pipe to NSA?<p>What if a group of such rogue employees across multiple companies act in concert, may be creating a cartel?<p>Such things have the potential to remain unnoticed for a pretty long time, ruining lives of innocent people.<p>Now, let's replace the word <i>rogue</i> with <i>innocent and intelligent but cleverly manipulated by sophisticated player</i> and the scenario reads bleaker.<p>To believe that such things haven't happened before or aren't happening now, in some part of the world, will be pointless.<p>Consider a scenario in developing countries: let's say you wrote some piece of code (unrelated to telecom) for a businessman. Let's also say that the businessman runs many companies, one of which provides BPO services to telecom companies. Let's say that the businessman wants to exploit you. He can very well track your location using the network of the telecom company without <i>that</i> company knowing it, let alone the law enforcement officials. He can remain under the radar because the request can be clubbed with other legitimate ones.<p>This is not just a US problem, it's a global problem.<p>It is precisely for such reasons, that we need a manifesto about data collection policies, like "Do No Evil" or "The Patent Pledge."