My comment was not limited to Western countries. Most people don't live in the West after all. If you're going to make a ridiculously overbroad statement like

My comment was not limited to Western countries. Most people don't live in the West after all. If you're going to make a ridiculously overbroad statement like "surveillance increases security" then I hope you have some very strong evidence or else be ready for people like me to point out that not really true across the board at all. Do you have any evidence that surveillance of citizens increases national security? Even we you did, it's not clear that it's worth the trade-off in freedom. And even then, that is irrelevant for what we're talking about, which is whether a given individual would benefit from submitting to the surveillance state (99% won't). Also, the West has a storied history of abusing it's surveillance powers. Are we just handwaving this away or what?