When were those days, exactly? I've studies a hell of a lot of history, and I can really only point to two moments:
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The American Civil War, but we were both the good guys and the bad guys there, so doesn't really count.
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WW2. We fought against fascism. We were squarely on the side of the good guys.
I've never been alive when America was the good guys, and neither has the vast majority of anyone else.
That's sort of the whole premise of The Wire, especially the 1st, 4th, and 5th seasons. The mass surveillance side is mostly shown through the cops' perspective, and the show is now 20+ years old, but it shows an extremely realistic portrayal of how cops use surveillance to build cases against criminal organizations and career criminals.
It's set in the early days of mass adoption of cell phones, so there are some pretty dated moments. The entire 1st season centers around monitoring a drug enterprise that uses pay phones to communicate. There's a moment in a later season where the cops have to have text messaging and sending pictures over cell phones explained. They go into a lot of detail about what a burner phone is. It's kind of funny in retrospect, but it was all very timely when the show originally aired.
The title "The Wire" is a reference to wire taps, ie the police getting warrants to allow them to listen to phone calls.