Before the capability was made public, it _likely_ wouldn't
have been used against mere political nuisances, at least not without
the additional cost of creating a solid pretext for the resulting
intelligence. But now this deterrent is gone: the burden of utter secrecy
is reduced. And if these programs are not eliminated, greatly curtailed,
or made moot, we can expect them to be employed much more freely.

This is an important point. I would add that a lot of people who might want to use the data in this database couldn't because they didn't know that it existed. Can any court in the land issue a court order subpoenaing records from this database? If so, its going to become a massive liability.