This is not an either or situation, both government and private business get hacked and data stolen.
BUT: Only the government has the force of law to aid in their data collection.
Theoretically: if you wanted to avoid Google/Facebook web tracking, you could never use their services, block all cookies and domains. You might not have the best web experience but you could still browse the web.
If the government made a WebID to help people stop the tracking/prevent certain ads from being served to minors/think of the children/... then you would have a nice juicy target of information on a whole bunch of people.
The same with gun control arguments, if there is a gun registry then it is a target. Now there can be a debate on if the trade off of having that target helps prevent other more serious crimes.
Another example might be library system membership. Libraries membership lists have but they are not all linked, this is inconvenient if you want to take out books from different systems but might help protect the data more.
BUT: Only the government has the force of law to aid in their data collection.
Theoretically: if you wanted to avoid Google/Facebook web tracking, you could never use their services, block all cookies and domains. You might not have the best web experience but you could still browse the web.
If the government made a WebID to help people stop the tracking/prevent certain ads from being served to minors/think of the children/... then you would have a nice juicy target of information on a whole bunch of people.
The same with gun control arguments, if there is a gun registry then it is a target. Now there can be a debate on if the trade off of having that target helps prevent other more serious crimes.
Another example might be library system membership. Libraries membership lists have but they are not all linked, this is inconvenient if you want to take out books from different systems but might help protect the data more.