Interesting discussion.
A short while ago I watched a recording of President Eisenhower's parting speech, where he warned of the 'military/industrial complex'. Times are very different now, but here was a very wise man who knew what was going on, and was warning us that it was our duty to be vigilant against the natural urge of governments and industry to accrue power.
The use of national databases is just an aspect of this. As we know a lot about databases, and know only too well how data access can be abused, surely we should be in the vanguard of alerting the public of the potential dangers. (actually, in the UK, they aren't even potential dangers; the latest government initiative is to put legislation in place to enable them to sell our Healthcare records to commercial organisations!)