So what we should be restricting – with legislation and open oversight by courts, Congress, the press, and ultimately the people – is the NSA’s ability to seek and use information against anyone (citizen or foreigner) without documented suspicion of a crime, due process, and a legal warrant. But don’t we already have that: isn’t that what the Fourth Amendment prescribes? Well, of course, this is how we end up arguing whether collection of every bit of information my phone provides – whom I talk with and where I go and what I do when – is just collecting data or is the equivalent of searching me or surveilling my every move. Government should not be able to ask for that information unless it has due and just cause to. That surveillance of the innocent is government’s overreach of its authority.

But next we end up asking whether that data should be stored anywhere – whether government can decree that phone or internet or credit card companies should hold onto data so government could ask for it. That, I believe, should be governed by a separate set of principles, consumer principles that consider the benefits and risks to me for allowing such data to be held and that give me transparency into what is being done and reasonable control over it. That does not and cannot mean that I can exercise full control over any data to which I’m a party, for data is produced by interactions among parties, each of whom has interests and rights.