Britain leads in surveillance among democratic states

Guardian writer calls for bounding hands of surveillance, rather than post-hoc oversight

Surveillance for safety?

Is sousveillance in which I strategically reveal my self-recordings an adequate counterprotection against spurious charges from out-of-context quotes that may be brought against me by a surveillance state?

Part of me wonders if decrying surveillance is missing the root of the problem which is that a government no longer trusts its citizens, which also misses the point that the government is supposed to work for it's citizens, at least in the US. Or that the things we surveill to protect ourselves are caused by certain policies that make some people want to aggress against us.

So if surveillance is merely mechanism employed in other causal circumstances, what are the dimensions of properties of that mechanism?

1. transparency - do people know they are being surveilled? do they know when they are being surveilled? can they find out after the fact?
2. permanence - how long will records be kept?
3. accountability - who controls the surveillance apparatus? how do they attain that position? what legal recourse is their against them?
4. context of repression - how clearly understood and enforced are laws? are laws irregularly enforced and ever changing, which means that surveillance effective acts as a mechanism for enforcing on whim?

What am I missing?