Dangerous Government Spying "Program", or is it?

The sound of computer fans and computations fills the air as computer screens lit up the dark room.  One person is staring at the lines of code flying through the screen, content with the current status of things.  Suddenly one monitor lights up red.  A profile of a person pops onto the screen with his name, confidential information, and an alert that read “Dissenting opinion found! Take action?”.  The man smirks and presses a green “Yes” button located on his armchair and then waits.  Within 5 minutes, a breaking news article appears with yet another victim of a fatal accident, this time by a faulty aerial drone.  The man laughs maniacally as he turned to his White House Staff as he proclaimed, “Too easy. With this, there is no one who can ever stand against us! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!”

                This is the biggest fear of “The Program” designed by the government to spy on the lives of American citizens.  What if corrupt officials got a hold of such a program?  What would stop them from eliminating their political enemies and forever have either democrats or republicans reign supreme?  This could possibly be the most dangerous thing ever created in the world!  You know, besides nuclear warheads capable of erasing cities, silent UAV drones capable of deadly pinpoint strikes, car emissions creating greenhouse gases that will bring about global warning… I believe that there was an unnecessary amount of disdain for “The Program” that is quite frankly hypocritical of many other factors and dangers that exist in this world.

What really are the dangers of a program capable of listening in on your phones and emails?  “They give the government access to our personal conversations so that they can spy on us!” Then again, the government already has our most important information documented such as our Name, DoB, Social Security Number, residency… so what extra information would they actually obtain that will be “dangerous” to normal citizens?  Information on what you ate last Friday? Your rants about your broken relationship?

As far as I can tell, “The Program” would have been a new weapon that our government could utilize to protect its citizens.  It will give them the potential to spot out enemies plotting within American grounds and to stop them before they cause trouble.  It’d be a weapon, just like how street cameras are installed to catch reckless drivers or how our UAV drones are developed to be more efficient in a warzone.  So, if there is a fear the “The Program” will be used to control the American citizens, what about all the other technology in place?  Street cameras already monitor our actual movement throughout cities, especially New York.  Could these not be used to track our everyday actions?  What about drones?  We have seen their effectiveness against ISIS and in an interview in a news article with some citizens that live in those danger zones, they say that they are more afraid of drones than airplanes.  This is because drones can move in silently and drop a payload without anyone noticing.  Could these drones not be a threat to citizens if they were released on American soil?  Moreover, I don’t think I need to explain the dangers of the nuclear weapons that our country owns and the harm they could cause us.

But our government does have these tools and weapons, and that is because we put trust in our government to use these tools and weapons responsibly and for the benefit of our country.  So why should it be any different with “The Program”?  It would be a new tool in the current advancing world of technology to help protect our country from new and unseen threats that could endanger our country.