Well, you know... It's a kind of a "When your only tool is hammer..." type of situation They can spy on everybody, harvest tons of data, make lists, data mine, put that in databases, so what do they do? Well that's what they do It's a dumb machine, a bureaucratic machine, moved by a dumb will "but why do we do that?" said no mid or low level .gov employee, ever They just move forward with whatever order lands on their desk, they assume the thinking of the higher ups is good, they "trust their judgment", thinking they probably know better... Reality is also that they haven't any other alternative and they aren't paid to do the thinking. A government is like an aircraft carrier. It's both very powerful and at the same time, very limited. You don't go down a river with an aircraft carrier, at least you shouldn't, for obvious reasons, that's common sense. Well that common sense is often lost on .gov, there's always an idiot to try to go down the river with it, and then it's beached, and life continues...