I can think of a couple not-so-strange reasons. 1) Note the qualifier "the government knows everything"? There are plenty of things the government doesn't know

I can think of a couple not-so-strange reasons. 1) Note the qualifier "the government knows everything"? There are plenty of things the government doesn't know. ghusto's comment doesn't seem to be that those should be public too. 2) ghusto might be a $FAMOUS_PERSON who wanted to make comments on HN, but not let fame influence the conversation.