Government wants site visit and email data kept for future investigation and prosecution

The FBI and Justice Department is "interested in records that would allow them to identify which individuals visited certain Web sites and possibly conducted searches using certain terms. It also wants the Internet companies to retain records about whom their users exchange e-mail with..."

I cannot believe what has happened to our country in the last 8 years. Forget for a moment what you have been taught since you were very young - that the U.S. is a great bastion of freedom and democracy and think about what our country does both in the world and here at home: preemptive war on unfounded grounds, torture and illegal detention, murder (and cover-up) of civilians (oh my god there is another report of this!), spying and wiretapping the phones of it citizens, removing protections to whistle-blowers, fixing elections, and now asking that all user data online be retained for future "use". Aren't these the things that those other countries that we despise do? What way of life are we now protecting and promoting if not one that is free from such things?