I'm not a big fan of government surveillance, but I find this argument problematic. Crime was different before the Internet and cell phones. Criminals learned to use the new tech with the rest of us. For example, not that long ago if the FBI had a person followed and his land line monitored, they could know who that person was in contact with. Today, that person might be exchanging messages over an encrypted app, on an encrypted phone, and there's no way of telling who with.
I'm with you about the fact that privacy of ordinary citizens is being undermined, and that through technology, invasive surveillance became so cheap and easy to deploy, that it's everywhere.
But let's not confuse state level surveillance of the whole population with targeted surveillance approved in a legitimate proceeding by an independent judge in an independent court against an actual criminal. Citizens typically want to allow the latter, while preventing the former. Governments tend say they're doing the latter, while doing both. So "public safety" arguments might be used to promote anti-democratic surveillance of a population, but can also be legitimate concerns of a law enforcement agency trying to investigate actual crimes.