I'm not sure which scares me more. Marketers amassing surveillance data or the government. At least with the government, we might reign in the practice. Private industry seems to have some blessing from the public to do anything and everything profitable.
Just the opposite is true. People that live in large cities (and subject to random crime) adopt a strategy of blending in, not one of "sticking out and relying on their lawyers"...
Hobbes would disagree [1]. The Sovereign's mandate via the social contract is to maintain peace by absolute means. It is not bound by law only duty.
[1] if he was not dead.
[1] Promulgate would have also perhaps been a better word.
[2] With an effective series of checks & balances, etc.
Blackwater (XO) is acting at the behest of, and on the payroll of, government.
They're not getting rid of it - they're just selling it now (most likely to the highest bidder).
[citation needed]
They also have extended analytics for the nice clean price of 150k/year - http://www.google.com/analytics/premium/
Also extended analytics do not provide any private data that is not available in the general version of analytics.
Where marketing and private intelligence bothers me is when it's not obvious to consumers when they're providing data. And also it's not always expected the ways in which it's used. And in the increasingly interconnected world of marketers selling and sharing data, the full implications won't be realized for some time.
edit:
Recently it's bothered me more and more that the software world tries to find hidden ways to charge users. It would be like highway construction companies tracking traffic patterns by embedding data sensors in their roads to collect consumer data and while they're at it, share it with the government to win some favors. Or like your carpenter going ahead and embedding sensors into the drywall to collect your data to resell and help them generate more revenue. People have paid for stuff directly for a long time and been happy to. But internet companies have this thirst to get millions of users by offering something for free, gambling investor dollars, and hope it pays off huge (which it occasionally does).