Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Thursday signed new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center, which was created in 2004 to foster intelligence sharing and serve as a terrorism threat clearinghouse.
The guidelines will lengthen to five years — from 180 days — the amount of time the center can retain private information about Americans when there is no suspicion that they are tied to terrorism, intelligence officials said.
Total Information Awareness by any other name. You have not committed crime but the government will be storing information on you. Information that you were compelled to give up to sign up for credit cards, online purchases, cell phones, automobile purchases, bank account opening.
As the US (and much of the world) becomes cashless, all of your economic transactions become traceable. Any habit that you'd rather not have public, will be stored in these databases and at some point in your life, should you become a "problem" such information will be used to blackmail you or ruin your career.
Of course, under far worse scenarios, false information about you could be planted into these databases, which you have no control over, which could result in you being declared a "terrorist" and indefinitely detained.
Too far out? Consider how the "traffic cams" that are all over the nation are being looked at as a means of "law enforcement" even though when they were first proposed it was always just for "information about congestion" or the like. Then the ticket comes in the mail and you understand.