The NSA might in fact be occasionally helping to stop relatively small-scale attacks. However, as Prigozhin's march on Moscow in Russia and the 10/7 attacks in Israel show, even running an authoritarian surveillance state or a heavily militarized state with top-notch intelligence services can only do so much to prevent attacks. I think that adding more and more surveillance has diminishing returns in preventing attacks, meanwhile its existence is a threat to free society both directly, in that it could theoretically be used against political dissidents, and indirectly, in that it encourages a culture of self-censorship that is antithetical to political freedom.
If no amount of risk is acceptable, then any amount of surveillance is justified. To have a free society some level of risk must be accepted.