Watchdogs of the world.
The practice and behavior of industry and domestic governence to trace and track individual is a missleading story.
On the surface consumers are told thier privacy is "protected" by laws and practices, but if you look carefully the processes called protections are carefully crafted and designed around a structure which provides room for sharing of all sorts. There are practices which allow individuals to be traced using mutiple technologies. It is especially practical to use multiple technologies for tracking and tracing.
Recently some long time snooping practices were revealed. The best presentaion of this was in a segment of Nightline where Mark Klein a former At&T Technician did the heroic deed of describing the NSA collecting process within telco switching offices.
Here are some links http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/ http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/att/news.php
I think it's probably good that our government keep a watch on things. What I think is wrong is the fact that the governemnt lie about what it does. I always believe lying is not a good thing.