Agreed. It is the feature of every authoritarian state since feudal days and even before. Putting a single label on it obscures that it is also National Socialist, Italian Fascist, Soviet Socialist and Sino-Socialist, as well as part and parcel of the Islamic hardliners and hardcore secularists as found in the West. It is human nature, and parts of human nature have always been "restrained" by law, such as murder. Ditto with surveillance.
Personally, I think the push for surveillance is rising, because the media gatekeepers are no longer able to tamp down a rather free internet, such that alternative views and hard data can be shared. Information access scares the authoritarian, as it topples the corrupt.
No wonder it rises in this moment. So does it seem.