Does anyone else find it absolutely hilarious how scared everyone vaguely left of center was about surveillance, tracking, and facial recognition, and then all

Does anyone else find it absolutely hilarious how scared everyone vaguely left of center was about surveillance, tracking, and facial recognition, and then all they had to do to make these things "good" was invent a narrative about how the plucky rebel alliance of "normal people" used these forbidden techniques to defeat the evil bad guys? I am physically in hysterics at this, did these anti-surveillance people ever actually believe any of that crap? Was all that libertarian bullshit ever only ever possible in the absence of a sufficiently strong "bad guy"?