The FBI loves their databases:

WASHINGTON - The FBI is gathering and sorting information about Americans to help search for potential terrorists, insurance cheats and crooked pharmacists, according to a government report obtained Tuesday.

Records about identity thefts, real estate transactions, motor vehicle accidents and complaints about Internet drug companies are being searched for common threads to aid law enforcement officials, the Justice Department said in a report to Congress on the agency's data-mining practices.

In addition, the report disclosed government plans to build a new database to assess the risk posed by people identified as potential or suspected terrorists.

Justice spokesman Dean Boyd said the databases are strictly regulated to protect privacy rights and civil liberties.

This is the same FBI that has proved that actual legal and policy restrictions are no barrier to it breaking the rules when it comes to National Security Letters. Hey, the tell us that we should just trust them because there are safeguards in place to protect privacy, even though that hasn't stopped agents in the past from committing thousands of violations in the past!

What they should be a lot more afraid of are embarrassing security lapses like this one where the GAO was able to scam the Nuclear Regulatory Commission into selling them the fuel they would need to build a dirty nuclear bomb. If the FBI's goal isn't to create an environment of more surveillance, but rather to fight terrorism, then why are they focusing on things like datamining instead of undercover operations like this? Why was it the GAO, and not the FBI, that conducted this operation against the NRC?