Comment by 9dev
2 days ago
Government is doing a lot of work here. We’re talking about thousands of people, who, other than working for the government, also are humans with their own agenda. Are you okay with just giving all of them access to your most personal data? Even if some of them live right next to you, have a personal grudge, and may be slightly psychotic? No? Well apparently, then, it’s not just as hand-wavy as you claim it to be. The only reasonable thing is granting access to data on a need-to-know basis, with tight access control, audit logging, and anonymisation where not strictly impossible. That would be the reasonable thing if you’re handling data for hundreds of millions of people. It isn’t what’s happening.
It would have been better for the government not to collect all this information in the first place. For decades libertarians have been warning about the scenario we seem to find ourselves in.