There are a few reasons why government would want to keep data for that long. Educated guess: playing the odds that currently encrypted data could be broken in

There are a few reasons why government would want to keep data for that long. Educated guess: playing the odds that currently encrypted data could be broken in the near future. My primary argument isn’t security theater, although I do agree it applies. My argument is that no democracy / republic should assume that every resident/citizen is a potential criminal without some probable cause / particularized suspicion/ significant evidence. The larger the percentage of citizens who experience unjustified searches, the lower the institutional trust level falls. Eventually citizens stop trusting elections, courts, police, etc. then people start massive social panics on the assumption that everything government is corrupt.