Here's a thought.
Lets say this machinery (by which I of course mean the whole animal: the security services, the software, the datacentres, the staff, the protocols in place that keep it running) can know almost everything about you, where you are, where you have been, what you read, what you buy, what you talk about. It can go back and retroactively convict you of crimes it might find, and it is run by the same general group of people who decide what is and is not a crime. It knows this not just about you but about your family and friends, your doctor, the violent thugs that live down your street, the judge that might oversee any legal case of yours, the lawyer you would hire, everyone.
Knowing that, the question is: is that machine beatable? If it ever came down to a fight between this machinery, and the people of this country, is it possible the people could win and take power and get what they want?
Do you think it is possible that there could ever be widespread civil disobedience or a revolution against the government again? Something like the civil rights movement in America perhaps, where a few brilliant leaders slowly gathered together millions of people who listened to them and protested against the government for change? How would it start?
As soon as you got a guy like Martin Luther King who started writing a few books and giving speeches at coffee shops and people started to take him seriously, he started to pose a real threat to the staus quo, they would try to discredit and destabilise him, as indeed, the security services of the time did - only, they had very limited power compared to today. If it happened today I am confident they would have been able to find a way to make him submit. And that that is true of everyone.
Of course this apparatus is no match for a million men with pitchforks and torches and so on, but it will never again get to that stage. Because as soon as the crowd grows to even a thousand, whoever is organizing the thing will be targeted and tracked and arrested and blackmailed. It is so much power for the security services, it's almost godlike: near omnipotence, near omnipresence.
You might say so what, that's a good thing - there will never be a major rebellion in this country, that's good, I like peace and order. So then the second question is: can you imagine the government ever doing something wrong? Something that does need to be stopped? Maybe not now, but in the next ten years? Twenty years? A hundred? Is it possible?