People make these technologies for the government, and many private firms do much of the work as contractors or by selling products as had been documented in many Snowden leaks. In addition i doubt any of the employees who do this are conscript. Simple venality and maybe a dash of patriotism suffices for us to always lose this game.

Nobody has managed to roll back the arms merchants' profits and influence, hell some of our governments (US, Canada) are the biggest arms dealers around. I see no reason why we'd be able to hold back this monster (profiteering and control through complex and often secret surveillance) when we can't hold back profiteering and control through mind numbingly obvious stuff like bombers and guns. Hell Trudeau talks a game about lgbt people and human rights and turns around and sells arms to the KSA to help bomb Yemen into hell.

The military industrial complex won, don't see why the surveillance industrial complex won't either.