I wish Europeans were more afraid of it, because trusting your government too much is dangerous. The thing with governments is that they change. They may change

I wish Europeans were more afraid of it, because trusting your government too much is dangerous. The thing with governments is that they change. They may change for the better, for worse, or somewhere in the middle; you can never be sure. For every piece of data you collect, you should weigh the benefits of keeping it with the risks of doing so. Any personal data you keep represents a privacy risk, and the importance of privacy can not be understated. Before WW2, the Netherlands had an innocuous field in its citizen database: Religion. Nothing really wrong with that, not particularly useful either. Then came the invasion, the government fell, and Nazi Germany took its place. They were looking for Jewish people...