I've seen similar sentiment shared by people that follow privacy topics. It's a bad take and you are minimizing the significance of the surveillance state being built.

There is a difference between 'anyone' can be watched and 'everyone' can be watched.

There is a difference between implementing laws that could be used to monitor anyone and implementing systems that will be able to monitor everyone very cheaply and easily.

This is not the same as the patriot Act https://www.businessinsider.com/...

Peasants were entirely self sufficient and had nothing to lose. It simply isn't the case for anyone who lives in a city.

Military coup is possible though