I was thinking more along the lines of cultural/opinion suppression or genocide. This is a very similar type of infrastructure.

https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surveillance-silicon-vall...

The way I see it, there are bad people everywhere (even in the government).

https://local12.com/news/nation-world/police-chief-gets-caug...

And, in a safe country like this one (I am in the United States but most developed countries are pretty safe), if a little petty crime is so scary to them that they need a mass surveillance network to sleep at night... I don't see any reason why the public should have to sacrifice potential freedoms for that weakness.