I'm wondering if anyone has thought of the other side of all this... if the government can gain information on you by gleaning your reading habbits, purchase habbits, browsing records, etc, what they are trying to do is build a case about who you are, probably for the purposes of proving motive to enact some crime.

I've never really worried about this much as I figure most of what I do is pretty benign from a social perspective, even boring.

But what if someone wanted to point the police in my direction? They corrupt the data to show that I'm reading questionable material and viewing nasty websites. I purchase certain products over the last few months that when combined could produce just the stuff they suspect I used in a crime... sounds sophisticated, but it could be just enough to put law enforcement on the wrong track and redirect the suspicion from the real criminals who have wiped their own tracks successfully.

Brings a whole new meaning to identity theft, and it might just be easier to do than actually get that valuable high risk information everybody guards so carefully.