The 19th century was the true cradle of mass surveillance. Civil registration, property tracking, and institutionalized police forces provided the systemic oversight required to manage dense urban life. These administrative tools served as the analogue version of digital monitoring to ensure every citizen remained known and categorized. Cities thrived as centers of culture only because these new forms of visibility prevented the Hobbesian collapse that anonymity would have otherwise triggered.

And what about all of the previous ~40-50 centuries where cities were centers of learning and art and not Hobbesian hell holes? Ur is slightly older than the 19th century, I believe.

And note that there is evidence for cities of tens of thousands of inhabitants from 3000 BCE, while Rome reached 1 000 000 residents by 1CE. Again, without becoming some Hobbesian nightmare.

None of those things are remotely comparable to the surveillance we're talking about. There's a world of difference between, "My city knows who owns what properties and also we have a police force", and "Western intelligence agencies scoop up every bit of data they can grab about anyone on the planet and store it forever"