Arguments against government monitoring

1. Surveillance infringes on civil liberties - there is a lack of anonymity if facial recognition systems can be used, for example, to identify protestors in a demonstration.
2. CCTV cameras displace crime, rather than eliminate it - criminals move to areas where CCTV is not in place.
3. Due to the enormous manpower required to operate and monitor, many crimes (even if recorded) go unnoticed for hours, days, or even months, while costing money for upkeep and wages.
4. Monitoring can be used in committing crime, for example police officers have been caught using cameras to invade the personal privacy of women walking through airports.
5. Gathering data about many people in one place (the monitoring centre) provides a valuable source of data which would fuel illegal activities if the integrity of the operators were ever compromised.
6. The same technology used for disclosing networks of terrorists and criminals can be used by repressive regimes for finding dissidents, and allows easy blackmailing, blacklisting or prosecuting of people for their guilt by association (see the Second Red Scare for a set of historical examples). Its presence itself can provide a considerable chilling effect for political dissent.
7. An increase in methods to track individuals and their movements could create a large distrust in the government.
   

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy