* Your government won't adequately protect collected information from your stalker
* Your stalker has friends who work for the government
* Your stalker works for the government
* You're gay, and live in the UAE, where your outing may result in your death
* You're gay, and live in the USA, where your outing may result in your death
* Your government has too many laws to count - nevermind read - and can find a violation of them for anyone, given enough time
* Your government won't adequately protect collected information from other governments
* Your government won't adequately protect collected information from your competitors
* Your government won't adequately protect collected information from identity thieves
So yes, for this any many other reasons, it's good to keep secrets from the government.
By the way, pot is just an example, you can literally dig millions of unjust laws up if you looked, we're all just conditioned to OBEY.
It's not like we need more people running around with impaired decision making ability.
The government is not perfect. It's made of people. People who may be racist, sexist, homophobic, desperate for money, greedy, or corrupt.
- Someone's ex burned them, now they hate everyone of __ gender and go out of their way to dig through information of those people and get them in trouble.
- Someone is anti-LGBTQ+ and uses information to hunt people down and get them killed.
- A racist particularly hates a certain race, and now goes after them in particular for small law breaking things -- jaywalking when no cars are coming, not using their blinker, not coming to a complete stop at a stop sign. And while those are all crimes, now people of that race are being punished disproportionately.
- Businesses with their hands in the government now have information to use against their competitors and create monopolies
- Limits free speech - can't even discuss things privately.
- Further removal of all freedoms because now you can't get away with anything even if it's a controversial thing such as drugs, sexuality, art/music, and protest.
etc.
I certainly do not want my bank passwords to be with the government. My bank accounts can be wiped out. Hence I do not like my communication recorded at all for this reason.
Governments are not permanent. Significant changes in government can occur through democratic election, revolution, invasion (Ukraine?). Such changes can happen very rapidly. Records can not always be easily purged.
If the incoming government is ideologically opposed to something that you are or you declare (race, religion, political views) and they have a lot of information about you collected by the previous government - then you could very well be in mortal danger.
There are many examples of this in history.
So benign governments should aim to collect the minimum of information required to deliver good service to its citizens. Neither you nor your hopefully benign current government can trust the governments that are to come.