One fundamental struggle between a government and its citizens is that it is believed the more control of/visibility into citizens' lives it has, the more effec

One fundamental struggle between a government and its citizens is that it is believed the more control of/visibility into citizens' lives it has, the more effective it can be at its goals. (I'm not going into whether I think this is actually true.) Given that, there's the continual struggle between people not wanting government interference in their lives, but wanting the government to be able to accomplish some goals - people ~universally dislike taxation, but many of us think the government should be permitted to levy taxes to fund itself and programs we would like to see. When people are uncertain or afraid, they will often make more emotional rather than purely rational decisions about clinging to solutions which purport to offer a way back to safety, even if they don't see or understand how their plan provides that. And once people have gotten themselves into a belief system which they did not reason their way into, they are far more likely to double down if you attempt to reason them out of it. Authoritarian measures are the political equivalent of "if you sign here, I promise to do whatever it takes to make [bad thing] stop bothering you", nevermind that "whatever it takes" is something you would never have agreed to otherwise, and probably wouldn't have agreed to before your first emotionally-fraught decision. Government agencies have incentives to favor them, because they believe the authority to do X (especially if they're given a blank check and can fill in Y,Z, and W as additional things) will let them accomplish something more readily.