[dandellion]

That justification is a red herring. The goal is the surveillance, and safety is just an interchangeable excuse. It should be obvious when they'll do things like increasing surveillance to "protect the children" and at the same time avoid other measures that would be far more effective at keeping children safe. The real irony is when it turns out they themselves were the biggest danger for children all along.

[naniwaduni]

It matters because while the choice of excuse doesn't really matter to the surveilling end, they still need to make the excuse with the fig leaf of plausibility. The worse their excuses look, the easier it is for you to convince other people who don't already agree with you that you're right and they're wrong.