Bills to require court orders to access people's email and phone call records have strong support.

However, these bills do not go far enough. They restrict government access to company-held personal dossiers, but don't prevent companies from accumulating these dossiers over long periods of time. These dossiers might consist of records of years of phone calls, or backups of old emails. The state could collect this retroactive information so as to fish for something to accuse you of, as it did with John Kiriakou.

We need to limit the dossiers that can be kept, not just limit access to them.

The crucial criterion for any proposed change in these laws is, would it have protected John Kiriakou from the intense investigation that strained to come up with a crime to charge him with?