The worst part is that they collect everything to make a case against you, but you still have to wait one hour in line at Boston airport to cross the border. They don't do anything to streamline your interactions with the governement or to defend you when you're accused.
That actually caused a bit of an uproar in some circles when the NSA thing came out, because it meant that the government was sitting on a huge pile of exculpatory evidence and not disclosing it to the people they were prosecuting. It's probably too early to know if that goes anywhere, but you can imagine the result if it means that a large fraction of people put in prison since they started collecting the data have grounds for a new trial.
