Private corporations at least do it for money. Governments do it for power. I think it’s a hard case to make that that’s a better reason than to do it for money.
But… money is one kind of power, so I don’t think it’s “better”.
Given what happened in living memory to a previous government in (East) Germany that abused surveillance power, I both accept the concern, and yet also don’t expect it to actually apply here, at least not until about 2040 when the last people who remember experiencing the receiving end of it retire.
Also large enough corporations tend to do things for power reasons rather than money, as once you are a billionaire your money is mostly just a means to exert power so trading money for power is what you do. And at that size they start to intermingle with governments, making the acts of the company hard to separate from acts of the government.
A small democracy can still be an illiberal democracy, and a large democracy can still be a liberal democracy. However the size of the democracy nor the probable liberalness of a democracy should serve as a grant for arbitrary power wielded on behalf of anyone, even “the people”.
For example, take the surveillance and excess force against protestors during the summer of 2020 in the US (various judges and courts have agreed that some of the most high-profile police actions were illegal.)
Of course, the existence of a mechanism to enable this is itself a thing which can be exploited by the exact same criminals I’m most concerned about with data retained by private businesses, so it’s not much of an improvement even though the attack surface is probably smaller.
[0] and indeed this is why I was already looking to leave the UK even before Brexit; the Investigatory Powers Act gives the Welsh Ambulance Service access to anyone’s “internet connection records” without a warrant.