AFAIK, with the Patriot act, it is designed to be used to catch surveilliance up with the modern era.  This is basically to bug a person, not a location or individual phone or line of data.  In this modern age of mobile communication and multiple data access, you can't just watch one line or one cell, you have to monitor a person.

That being said, you need to have a reason to suspect someone warrants such attention.  And reasoning for this MUST be because they suspect criminal activity or that you are a threat to the security and wellbeing of the nation.  To just randomly do this for spurious, idle curiosity, commercial marketing or political reasons is illegal, or at least should be if it isn't.

The bad news is that the 4th amendment needs to be applied to private corporations and organizations that are NOT governmental.  You can't phish for data on how to market to someone without their permission should be applied to businesses as well as government.  This is where the real violation is going to come from.  The US government then has to just say, "We suspect XYZ of some of your customers, hand over your market spying records that you've been collecting."  This does a whole end run around the 4th amendment.

Ultimately, I've been thinking about how often science fiction universes don't take into context the instant communication and data integration in our lives.  Most technological advances are not cross-pollenated with other logical technologies for possible benefits.  Now how does this relate here?  We as a global society have to start taking a new look at privacy, the rights of government to collect and use data against us all for benign or malignant purposes.

The current activities against YouTube are going to be catastrophic to that site if upheld because, for example, a nice clean upright citizen does not want the world to know that when nobody's looking he's viewing hardcore BDSM or transgender fetish porn inbetween shopping on Ebay for collector plates and ordering books on gardening from Amazon.

That's the real fear.  Government getting the power of God to know everything you do in data at any second of your life, remembering all your actions, good, bad or kinky better than you do yourself... and then using it against you.

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, as well as the courage to do something about it when you encounter the need to repair what someone has damaged, stolen or eroded of your rights as a human being let alone an American.

Again I blather on.  Can you tell I participate often in political blogs about constitutional issues and other stuff?  LOL