The answer is almost always economics.
Unfortunately, in modern society, or really since the human condition has existed, we address symptoms and short-term fixes not root cause analysis and long term fixes.
Criminals don't usually want to be criminals, but sometimes that life is alternatively better. For instance, cartels in Mexico or mafias in general sometimes offer a better quality of life and protection that regular citizens don't get, so it is an attracting force.
We could fight cartels with guns and enforcers, leading to ramped up violence all around and making a health issue a dangerous violent criminal one that decreases harm reduction and increases addiction, production issues and safety issues.
Or to get at the root cause, we could fight cartels by ending the drug war taking away their massive hundreds of billions of annual black market funds, which gives them power of nation states over decades, and shift that to the legal market to help regulate and make recreational/health uses safer with harm reduction and addition support, as well as providing economic plans to give people a positive legal market choice.
Unfortunately we choose wrong largely because of propaganda by the military and prison industrial complexes and the incessant pressing haphazard decisions to blame, fight and go to war with the human condition when health/medical/personal freedom matters are criminalized.
We go to war on everything as a solution to peace and quality of life... surveillance state comes from that same corrupted/short-term thinking place.
The surveillance state has been going on for decades now in all major countries, there probably isn't much actual detective or investigative work even being done anymore, nor a case by case analysis for justification of these methods, just massive privacy breaches and lots of data noise. Smart criminals and corporate espionage will learn how to use that lack of investigative skill and manipulate the surveillance data, or gain access to it to it and dominate.