This is why you shouldn’t trust the government to build databases about their citizens. At the link, Charlie Stross talks about the growing scandal in the UK concerning the NHS medical records of every citizen in the United Kingdom.
Read Charlie’s post and see if you’d be comfortable with your government having this sort of information on you. Oh, wait. If you’re a UK citizen (and soon, a US citizen) they already do. The same, I’m sure, is true of most other developed nations. Remember, the scandal isn’t that there aren’t laws and regulations forbidding this sort of thing; there are. The scandal is they didn’t do a thing to stop it.
The NSA assures us that the private information they collect about us (wherever “us” happens to live) is closely guarded and safe. Except when it isn’t. What does it take to get people angry about this?