We are all aware of the terrors of data. There are hundreds of cases where millions of people’s lives have been affected because of data leaks and companies selling data to third parties. According to research from proton in 2025 alone, nearly 800 verified data breaches affected over 300 million individuals. That stolen data is then used in everything from changing entire election results to increasing your car insurance rates.
But until today, it was mainly corporations involved in such practices. That no longer seems to be the case. Many governments are starting to realize how much money can be made and are trying to join the same bandwagon.
Governments gather far more data than any company, and it goes well beyond simple details. They hold information that could seriously harm anyone if misused. But it is the government, so surely they make sure that doesn’t happen, right? Not really. Governments claim they do not sell sensitive data and that any data sold is anonymized, but nobody is naive enough to believe that makes a real difference. We have already debunked the idea of anonymized data. You can read this post.
Below are a few cases of governments monetizing data.
1 US state DMVs selling driver and vehicle data
Many US state DMVs earn millions of dollars every year by selling bulk driver and vehicle data to private companies, including insurance firms, towing companies, private investigators, data brokers, and others. The data sold typically includes a driver’s full name, home address, dates of birth, license status, driving history, traffic violations, and other sensitive information that could be extremely harmful in the wrong hands. An investigation by InvestigateTV found that in the 2024 to 2025 fiscal year, 23 state DMVs earned at least $282 million, Georgia earned $53 million and California $49 million. (Source : InvestigateTV)
This data is used for background checks by private investigators and security firms, marketing and sales leads, fraud detection, insurance underwriting, and any other purpose it could possibly be used for.
2 China’s state-backed data exchanges
In China, there are state-backed data exchanges where companies and governments buy and sell structured data, including finance, transportation, healthcare, and more. As of early 2025, there are 39 operational exchanges nationwide, offering a total of 38,900 data products. Essentially, every kind of data you can imagine is available for sale
In 2024 alone, the total transaction volume reached about ¥160 billion, or $22.71 billion. (Source: Gov.CN)
3 UK health minister Matt Hancock letting Palantir access NHS data
During COVID-19, Matt Hancock approved a deal giving Palantir access to large amounts of medical data for just £1. In December 2020, a follow-up contract worth £23 million was signed again without a full public tender (Read about it here). After civil rights groups and doctors pushed back, the department agreed not to extend the contract beyond COVID-related work without public consultation. Despite that, in 2023 Palantir won a much larger contract worth £330 million, a seven-year deal to build the NHS’s Federated Data Platform, which will unify data from hundreds of NHS trusts.(Source: NHS)
The dataset included hospital records, diagnoses, medication history, test results, treatment outcomes, demographic information (age, sex, location), COVID-19 testing and vaccination data, comorbidities, and patterns of how patients use the health system. It also contained highly sensitive categories such as mental health records, chronic illness data, genetic information, maternity records, and long-term care data. This kind of data can never truly be anonymized, making it far more sensitive and valuable than an average dataset.
Although this wasn’t a case where the government profited from the data, it is a perfect example of how dangerous it might get when governments start riding this bandwagon.
In all three of these examples, it is personal data that is being sold, and even though officials always claim it is handled in ways that will not harm anyone, it is obvious it can do that and also go far beyond just that. It literally includes everything from where you are, who you are, and what you do, to where you live and your health.
For decades, people have been fighting lawsuits, petitions, protests, and regulations to stop tech companies from doing similar things. And the crazy part is that in many cases, those companies weren’t even collecting anywhere near the level of detail governments do. A social media app might know what posts you like, but the government knows that plus everything else worth knowing about you. So when governments jump into the same data-selling market, the scale is on a completely different level.
What’s even worse is that, unlike with an app, you can’t just uninstall or opt out. You literally have no choice. They already have the data, and trusting them is mostly based on hope, not any real assurance. Once the data leaves the government database, it is almost certain that it will end up in the hands of people who could weaponize it against you.
This is exactly why the idea of governments chasing the same profits as tech companies is terrifying. They collect more data, far more detailed data, and much more sensitive data than any corporation on Earth. The examples from the UK, China, and the U.S. show that once the door is opened, even a little, it gets pushed wider and wider every year.
The conclusion is pretty simple. The line between “data used for public good” and “data used for profit or control” is getting thinner by the day. And while there are people trying to fight this, we aren’t even close in terms of awareness when it comes to governments doing it. With companies, people at least know what’s happening. With governments, most people don’t even realize their data is being packaged, analyzed, and traded.
If governments keep escalating this, we’re heading towards a future where personal privacy basically doesn’t exist. Not because of tech giants, but because the institutions that are supposed to solve the problem become the problem.
