Many a bad thing has been done in the name of "the greater good". Take the NSA's and GCHQ's hovering up all our personally data for example, that was done for "the greater good" and we're still living with it two decades later, the Investigatory Powers Act was passed for the supposed greater good but personally i don't see what good comes from bulk data collection (guilty or not), i don't see what good is served from my ISP keeping a history of what websites i visit despite being innocent, i don't see what greater good is served by government department managers being able to view those records without a warrant, etc, etc, so on and so forth.
While that may have been true in the past it's no longer the case, we've given up those freedoms because people didn't defend them, it's why are China and Russia are modelling their surveillance laws after those already enacted in the UK and America, we can't exactly criticise them when they're simply copy us.
I couldn't decide what video to post in my previous post (hence the edit), however if you think we're one of the free-est societies in the world then it's only because they've done a good job of either hiding what's going on or making it seem acceptable.