As yet another example of why we should always look askance at the government collecting data, I offer the recently revealed debacle of the Swedish government’s loss of control of government and police databases. The databases contain information on almost all Swedish citizens and may also reveal the identities of military and security personnel.
The loss was apparently due to incompetence (see here and here) rather than malevolence but at least two ministers have already resigned and there’s a real possibility the government could fall. In the mean time, the personal information of almost all Swedish citizens is at risk.
This seems outrageous but it’s what always happens when a government is allowed to collect and centralize information: sooner or later it will be abused or the government will lose control of it. Either way, the subject of the data will be the ones to suffer.