So? If I were given the opportunity to work on this amazing technology for the salaries they were making I would have taken it as well.
hahaha, that's rich; "fellow man"
I don't think the tool itself is necessarily evil (actually, I think it's super impressive from a technical standpoint), but it has to be implemented properly. It needs to have proper access restrictions and data retrieval methods built in from the ground up. One person shouldn't be able to query anything they want, multiple people authorizing any access, perfect logging, etc etc.
It could be an amazing tool for tracking down lost persons, solving crimes (aka bad people doing things to good people), etc etc. That is, assuming that our government isn't full of corrupt shitty people (mostly false).
US intel agencies aren't known for self-restraint. They are usually lobbying for more, not less access. Additionally, if the data's collected, it's not just vulnerable to abuse of power, it's also vulnerable to being hacked.
According to Snowden, accesses to the current system are largely unaudited (even accesses from foreign intelligence agencies: only 5% of accesses by GCHQ were audited). It doesn't sound like there's anything stopping the current system from being abused to gather business intelligence, etc.
>It could be an amazing tool for tracking down lost persons, solving crimes
There are lots of things that could be done for public safety that have the downside of being open to potential abuse by the state (sampling the DNA of newborns, implanting tracking devices in newborns, etc.).
>That is, assuming that our government isn't full of corrupt shitty people (mostly false).
Folks involved in PRISM have been knowingly working on a secret program that violates the 4th Amendment: I'd say that counts as shitty. But if that doesn't qualify in you mind, history offers many more spectacular examples of egregious abuses by shitty people: in America COINTELPRO, MK ULTRA, etc. Banking on your rights not being abused by trusting in the good of mankind isn't a great strategy.