I am unconvinced from a practical standpoint that this vision of the world that you wish to live in is even possible today due to the increase in sectarian communal tensions, dense cities, widely available cars/guns/etc and stresses from cost of living and income inequality, as well as the spread of ideas that mass casualty attacks might be a thing to do (the US did not have school attacks until it became an unfortunate "thing" in the culture that sick people glommed onto).

An absence of surveillance causes increased frequency of terrorist attacks which causes people to demand solutions (necessarily involving surveillance and other authoritarian measures) which leads to increased surveillance. It's an unfortunate negative feedback loop.

If you lack solutions for too long, the negative feedback loop becomes severe and instead of just surveillance within a liberal democratic context, you get public safety authoritarians like Bukele or Duterte.

"Surveillance doesn't materially reduce terrorist attacks" - I am not sure about that based on the number of arrests of plotters and the lack of visibility I have into the tools and methods they used to find those plotters.

"Terrorist attacks still happen even with surveillance" - Yes, but if they happen less frequently, this reduces the demand from the public to ratchet up authoritarianism. See the problem?

"Terrorist attacks are a price worth paying for our freedom." - I mostly agree, but feeling like this doesn't make any difference to the negative feedback loop, does it? Regular people want public safety from physical danger almost as much as food and water.

And long before that too, it's just taken different soundbites that play on people's fears at the time.

It's actually much more older argument. Hurr durr muh children is so common in history yet so effective that this is beyond absurd.