Technically, GW Bush was the President that started this level of total surveilance on American citizens.
Recall that Admiral John Poindexter was put in charge of the "Total Information Awareness (TIA) project in February 2003.
In May 2003 it was renamed, "Terrorist Information Awareness" in an effort to halt the flow of criticism on its information gathering practices on average citizens. It turned out that these criticisms were completely warranted and accurate.
TIA was part of the President's Surveillance Program created by GW Bush immediately following the attacks on September 11, 2001.
The last presidential authorization expired on February 1, 2007, but some of the collection activities were continued, first under the authority of the Protect America Act of 2007, passed in August of that year, and then under the FISA Amendments Act (FAA), which was enacted in July 2008.
The act required the Inspectors General of all intelligence agencies involved in the program to "complete a comprehensive review" of the activities through January 17, 2007, and produce an unclassified report within one year after enactment. The report published on July 10, 2009 concluded that the President's program involved "unprecedented collection activities" that went far beyond the scope of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. The report raised questions over the legal underpinnings of the authorizations, a lack of oversight, excessive secrecy, and the effectiveness of the program. The report concluded that the program was built on a "factually flawed" legal analysis.
Public disclosure of the Terrorist Surveillance Program in 2005 ignited the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.
I recall TIA being discussed at the time here on FR and the general consensus is that it would not just allow, but, invite, the types of abuses we've seen with Trump.
The political point is not the collection per se, but how it is used.
Obama vastly extended it all by removing the NSA as the check point for FBI & DOJ getting that information, moving the O.K. vetting process to each agency instead of having to show cause to the NSA. Then he merged that process as regards all 16 intelligence agencies. We saw in 2016 how with all checks off the DOJ and FBI were using the data for (a) domestic political spying and (b) umasking people’s whose identity in the data was not supposed to be unmasked.