So yeah, Lem was probably right.
There's also another chilling effect which we are seeing happening but I don't think the correlation has quite been drawn - trust in law enforcement. I recently had my house vandalised - but opted not to contact the police, as I don't want anything that looks like a law enforcement datapoint, as in the future it could be used against me - suppose I want to run for political office - all you'll see in the papers is "IN 2016 HE HAD POLICE AT HIS HOME FOR UNKNOWN REASONS. PROBABLY DRUGS AND MURDER!". Hell, Roscoe Arbuckle. It's nothing new, but the new tools are sure as hell making it worse.
To a certain extent, we have to live our lives and damn the consequences.
Usually grey-manning involves trying to do things just well enough to be signed-off, but not quickly enough to be commended and noted.
I guess the lesson is to just be yourself and try not to piss anyone off.
Chillingly, 'Grey-man'ing would require a fresh identity - if that is even possible.
Whatever bad a government can do, others can do the same or worse. Simply collecting such information means that 'bad' actors will gain access at various times and in various ways, so while the collection itself can be painted as innocent, in reality it's highly dangerous.
well, if you read Stanislav Lem, you'd immediately see that not using "wrong" words and not visiting "wrong" sites may also be a trigger - like "this guy is deliberately trying to stay under radar, why? what he is hiding/planning?" If you try to behave following average pattern for your demographics, you may trigger another one - "he is trying to blend in" :) You can't win that game for the simple reason that the game rules are decided upon strictly after your moves had already been made.
You see, the issue isn't extra collection of data by government - this is already lost cause due to technological progress, the main issue is the ability of government to oppress using that data, ie. absence of due process.