As modern technology gets more and more sophisticated as well as more and more invasive, the common citizens of America are subject to being watched, monitored, and spied upon at unprecedented levels of which, most citizens, aren't consciously aware of how much information is being gathered by governmental agencies, of which, most of it is done under the guise of protection and security for the state against enemies foreign and domestic.
There isn’t anything quite sweeter, than government mouthpieces assuring the citizenry that their powerful and thorough surveillance tools are used only for the protection of the homeland of its citizens, of which, stories exaggerated or not, made-up or not, with fall guys or not, are then fed to the credulous media to be disseminated to the public in which the government surveillance state is shown to be the protector of the people. While there might even be truth to this sort of propaganda, what is missing from the discussion is the fact that when the citizens cede or have usurped, all of their rights by design or by default to the government so that the government is permitted to see all in public, as well as to monitor internet traffic and cell phone traffic that may originate in private space, but will as a matter of course travel through "open" space allowing such to be "sniffed" by governmental authorities, than your life is an open book to the government, in which, at its discretion it can come after you, for violation of the law, for which, there is always some law, somewhere, that can be found to have been violated at some point, by everyone.
In point of fact, to give the government, the benefit of the doubt, the government seldom has an interest to go after most citizens, for most citizens are not, in fact, a clear and present danger to the government. What the government really wants to do, though, is to consolidate and increase its power, apparently done for the benefit of the security of the nation, in which personal freedom is completely sacrificed, for the perceived protection of its citizens. However, not too surprisingly, those citizens that are difficult, have unusual or provocative ideas, or dare to think outside of the box, are by virtue of these same ubiquitous surveillance tools susceptible to that government deliberating targeting and neutralizing their dissent as well as their inconvenience to state agencies. This, then in a nutshell, is the danger of a society in which its citizens have no freedom of assembly, no freedom of thought, no freedom of speech, because such freedoms have been eradicated in the service of state security.
A government that knows all about its citizens, is truly a government that has separated its apparatus in effect from the people, so that those governmental beneficiaries can now live and do whatever they so desire, recognizing that the law doesn't apply to them, whereas those that dare to stand in their way, are compromised, arrested, marginalized, or eliminated, with nary a soul to make a plea for their case, for to do so, will subject those voicing such concern, to suffer the punishment of the state that will broker no dissent, for either you are with the state, or you are enemies of the state.