The point of the original article is that it's not black and white. There is no, and never can be any, entirely free country. I want to be free enough to have good privacy, but not so free as to allow a crime ring to take over my town.
if you are in a position a crime ring can take over your town, no amount of surveillance will help, it will most likely make the crime ring stronger by giving them access to it, there's a joke here about the government being already the crime ring I guess.