This sounds like a "first they came for the socialists..." moment. Where we might not feel oppressed with the increased surveillance but as we go further and further into the surveillance state, eventually we'll be the ones that are pushed into a bad situation where a surveillance state is used against us.
> We increasingly put people in bad situations and then blame them when they lash out.
They are not _justifying_ it, they are calling out a cause/effect relationship. When people are desperate, they do destructive things. And our society is doing things that increase the number of desperate people.
A lot of crime gets blamed on all kinds of causes, but with a cause so vague all kinds of counterfactuals can be listed out: poverty doesn't explain why countries with more surveillance and more poverty have less crime like home invasions (CCCP).
I am eager to learn more if you have some data/links on this
WRT home invasions, I'm sure the ubiquity of guns in the US is another relevant dimension.