I don't think it's practical to focus on the amount of surveillance as it is its nature and whether or not it can justify itself.

We already live in a society where widespread aggressive authoritarian surveillance that doesn't justify itself is commonplace. Snowden proved this. Your emails are read. Your naked selfies looked at. Personal data is used frequently to crack down heavily on legitimate dissent. These are unquestionable and it's getting worse and more entrenched, not less and it hasn't caught a single act of terrorism like it was set up (ostensibly) to do. The question is, how do we personally react to the unchecked growth of stasi-friendly surveillance infrastructure?

I think arguing that western governments could be better behaved is a fair point. The stasi also could have been better behaved. Frequent appeals to moderation didn't make them behave though and they haven't and won't make western governments behave either, though.

Appeals to moderation have a null effect because if the goalposts keep being moved, so does the moderate position. If you want your opinion to never matter at all, always pick the moderate, middle ground opinion.