Quotes from What to Do When Uncle Sam Wants Your Data. Nice story about what is being done with the Patriot Act.

In addition to the usual beach bums, water bugs and vacationers renting equipment and booking trips, there were FBI agents demanding the names and addresses of everyone the shops had taught to dive since 1999.
They wouldn’t say why.

PADI’s vice president of industry and government relations. In order to spare the dive shops further harassment on their first busy day of the year, Nadler made a critical decision: PADI would give the FBI a copy of its own database.

But this eagerness to comply is a recipe for litigation, since volunteering data is quite different from being ordered to divulge information by a court

The cost of not complying is even higher; the government fined Western Union $8 million in December when it failed to spot multiple transfers made by the same people.

[thanks Fizzz]