FWIW, I have convinced myself that ubiquitous surveillance is pretty much inevitable as a side-effect to automation of infrastructure, so the question is how to manage it (rather than whether.) Right now we are seeing a split between "Morlocks" and "Eloi" where there is a huge gap between the understanding of the folks working at these AI-developing super-silos and the understanding of Joe and Jane User on the street.

The insidious thing is that sufficient storage + innocous tech can be transformed into surveillance... when everything's aggregated.

Right, but it seems then you're saying that surveillance is more of an intention than it is a set of technologies. Some technologies make those intentions easier to act upon certainly, but the concept of "surveillance" needs to be defined better so that we can recognize what specifically makes it sinister.