Remember that modern societies allow their governments (nearly) exclusive use of firearms and jails, and yet those societies did not turn into a dystopian hellhole. Because laws, courts, checks and balances, all that stuff.
Step outside of the modern world and think about it - the tremendous imbalance of power still allows the freedoms we have today. Properly securing information access rights is a child's play by comparison.
If they surveil you without your knowledge, you don't know. They're just one step ahead of you. They can gaslight you. Know where you're about to be and leave something there for you to trip over.
Or they can just evaluate whether you're too much of an inconvenience and then arrest you -- Three Felonies a Day and all that, easy to find when you're spying, and then parallel construction and you're out of the way.
Surveillance is secret, and that's the problem - secret surveillance that gives law enforcement an advantage. As well as whoever in governmental and political power may choose to abuse this secret surveillance.
Throwing people in prisons or gunning them down is visible and able to be protested against - like is happening now.
How can people protest against something they don't know is even happening? It took Snowden to even know that.
Secrecy is fire, and humans ought not to play with it too much.