Don't we? I guess it varies depending on the neighborhood, but there are more guns in the U.S. than cell phones, and it's not just the government that's armed to the teeth, it's everyone from your local mugger to your local teenager (and I'm not just talking about school shooters, I'm talking about adults under 20 who legally hold as well as the range of kids illegally blasting themselves and others in the streets).
This is all to say, I agree with the parent; you can't close Pandora's box. Mass surveillance is quickly becoming too cheap not to be inevitable, not to mention that most people voluntarily crowdsource the surveillance behemoth by uploading their entire lives to facebook and passing everything else into google. One might argue that mass surveillance is already here, if it's a true dystopia remains to be seen.