Increased surveillance powers serve the purpose of doing nothing. Force private entities to do the work of slurping everything thing up. Hire contractors to write the analysis software. Then tie your performance metric to the number of alerts received (not resolved). So, more data in + expanding the scope of "suspicious" activity leads to "more work done". And also lets you go back to Congress and say, "look how dangerous the world is, give us more 'resources' to make it safer." Rinse, repeat.