The only way forward is for everybody to be guaranteed the same access. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Create a level playing field, and watch innovation take off as people try to gather their lives back together.
Public access to the dragnet data would make it easier to evade the dragnet.
The ability to pretext and get more information about people would go from a somewhat guarded skill to something any child could do, and problems like domestic abuse victims being tracked down via those types of things now becomes a trick anyone can pull.
We need to put the genie back in the bottle, now.
Terminals with access to the DB and analysis tools in every city hall. Accounts and access for all citizens of good standing (make a new security clearance level for this to codify the notion - revoked for stalking, felonies, publishing DB information outside the terminals etc). Access is logged and also in the DB. A set of forums reachable through the terminals that allow discussion of findings and policies (some with real names attached some with pseudonyms).
The implication being, that you could read someone's email, but it is a matter of record that you did. Or perhaps the new citizens' security clearance would be stratified so that one needs to earn one's way up the scale of accessing info about other people, perhaps quorum's to grant higher clearance levels or temporary opening of some records.
Yeah, rather unrealistic techno-utopian in thinking, I admit. But this is an entry-level idea of equal access taken straight-forwardly. Born a bit from me trying to keep myself wondering, how would this work in Banks' Culture?
"When we allow for organizations such as the NSA to monopolize these tools for their own ends, we take the power away from ourselves to shape our own identities and for what purposes such information is used. We must realize that if we have already let things get to this point, that there will be no going back. That is why it is important for us to shift the focus on how data is collected on us as a whole, in favor for public uses."[0]
[0]: http://blog.pictobar.com/post/52533760444/the-nsa-is-closed-...
Except that's not true. Before it was the NSA it was criminals and Chinese government-backed hackers stealing our documents. Suppose we implemented a transparent society in some utopia. What about the non-utopian foreigners and criminals?
Another way forward is secure communications and storage. That would place natural limits on surveillance. If you are suspected of a very serious crime, the FBI would have to plant a bug to intercept your communications.