In the hands of a government, I would have to say that is a “yes”.
Wired reports on yet another example of the lawless Obama Administration:
In a secret government agreement granted without approval or debate from lawmakers, the U.S. attorney general recently gave the National Counterterrorism Center sweeping new powers to store dossiers on U.S. citizens, even if they are not suspected of a crime, according to a news report.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder granted the center the ability to copy entire government databases holding information on flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and other data, and to store it for up to five years, even without suspicion that someone in the database has committed a crime, according to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story.
Whereas previously the law prohibited the center from storing data compilations on U.S. citizens unless they were suspected of terrorist activity or were relevant to an ongoing terrorism investigation, the new powers give the center the ability to not only collect and store vast databases of information but also to trawl through and analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior in order to uncover activity that could launch an investigation.
The changes granted by Holder would also allow databases containing information about U.S. citizens to be shared with foreign governments for their own analysis.
A former senior White House official told the Journal that the new changes were “breathtaking in scope.”
Where are the hand-wringers that think Bush is the greatest enemy of civil liberties now?
Oh, right. They actually believe this:
But counterterrorism officials tried to downplay the move by telling the Journal that the changes come with strict guidelines about how the data can be used.
We already have “strict guidelines”. It is called the Constitution of the United States.
The Rio Norte Line 
Certainly the ACLU will file suit shortly (looks at watch…) Well, they will when they find out about all those atheists the govt.’s keeping records on.
In a word: YES!
This is my subject so allow me to give some advice.
1. Surf the Net “incognito”. Meaning private browsing. Its not a complete privacy method but it is a useful method nonetheless.
Steps to further secure your privacy: With IE open hit your ‘Alt’ key > Under ‘Tools’ click “InPrivate browsing” (or with IE open hit Ctrl+Shift+P).
Further steps:
– In Internet Explorer go to: Internet Options > General tab > check the box for “Delete browsing history on exit”
– In Internet Explorer go to: Internet Options > Privacy > Check the box for “Never allow websites to request your physical location
2. Get OFF of free e-mail (Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL etc.). Use free e-mail for subscriptions to news letters ONLY. The Ronald Reagan e-mail system (http://www.reagan.com/t2/ReaganMail) which is ‘guaranteed’ private is great but it will cost but its a cost I believe is worth your personal liberty. Other methods are; buy your own domain name from a company like Host Gator or http://www.baileypc.com and setup your own personal e-mail on a private server. Again it will cost but again, you will be safe from big brother prying into you “right winger AstroTurf’ers”.
Both are simple and “a” deterrent but NOT “the” deterrent. You want absolute ‘incognito’ you will need to be somewhat computer savvy, understand what “proxy servers are” (as a user only, how to set one in your browser but not how they actually work) and know a tiny-bit about the Linux operating system user-interface. Its a graphical interface like Windows but slightly different. There is a small learning curve.. Have a 16 GIG thumb drive to install a light Linux OS. Then go to https://www.torproject.org/ and start reading. There are two fairly simple methods on this site; 1) is the ‘Tails’ USB distribution and 2) is the Tor Browser which is far more complex but if you are will to read and learn this is the better option. Both though are FAR MORE secure than the InPrivate method described above built into all browser as described above.
Now before people start calling names, raising red flags, etc. about paranoia or this is the stuff only Anonymous hackers use – you would be right on both! But I would only tell you to re-read this post. Read the Patriot Act if you dare. And last I remind you that guns don’t kill people – people kill people. Anonymity hides the innocent as much as it hides the nefarious!