&gt;You do realize that they are serving a cause much greater than you or I, and certainly Twitter, for that matter?<p>Terrorism is not a serious or legitimate threat to the vast majority of Americans. Instead, the threat of our government abusing its power under the guise of fighting some imaginary adversary is far worse and has more impact on our lives.<p>As a comparison, the war on drugs (which a Nixon aid recently revealed was intentionally designed to target his adversaries -- progressives and minorities) has been used as a justification for increased government and police power for years. Now the DEA, FBI, and local police are using parallel construction and keeping their search methodologies out of the purview of the courts.<p>Even if there is some &#x27;greater good&#x27; that our government ideally aims for, the reality of its motivations and actual actuals is far different. Thus, we need not enable further surveillance. If the government wants this data, it is already publicly available and they can build that capacity themselves.<p>That being said, I agree with most people here that this is mostly for show as they will purchase access through some other means.<p>The grey area between corporation data collection and government surveillance is interesting though. It puts groups like the ACLU in odd positions -- take drone policy for instance. They believe that &quot;a drone should be deployed by law enforcement only with a warrant, in an emergency, or when there are specific and articulable grounds to believe that the drone will collect evidence relating to a specific criminal act.&quot;<p>But they do not want regulations limiting individual&#x2F;private use of drones.<p>It does seem strange to allow a private surveillance fleet but be against a government one. Why does google (or my neighbor, for that matter) have the right to fly drones with surveillance equipment but the government does not?