> The Stasi would be the obvious cultural context.

There is also the rather famous example of how earlier census data was used in the 40’s.

Once the government has your data, they have it. The next generation of representatives may not follow all the same rules and norms

The West-German debate in the 70s came from the realization that the sheer size of the Holocaust/Shoah was in no small degree due to bureaucratic record keeping. Storing someone's ethnicity is potentially dangerous for that person.

The stasi could only dream of the kind of surveillance the NSA et al has today.