Local governments are notoriously corrupt, frequently destroy records, not keep them at all, and take years to deal with requests for information. Are you not unaware of the long history of civil asset forfeiture and the long, very long, timeline it takes for people to find out where their stuff even is, how much they even kept track of, and to get it back?
https://www.aclu.org/issues/criminal-law-reform/reforming-po...
"For people whose property has been seized through civil asset forfeiture, legally regaining such property is notoriously difficult and expensive, with costs sometimes exceeding the value of the property. "
Anyone with a long history on the internet, and in civil libertarian, privacy, and security circles would be aware of the long history of abuses, including targeting internet activists. Local law firms in the 80s and 90s, often pushed local governments to use CAF to seize computers from people suspected of piracy or hacking, often without evidence or conviction.
In a country with the highest per capita incarceration rate in the modern world, with a trail of dead and damaged bodies around the globe from military adventures, with systemic racism still in force today, and kids separated from parents and held in internment camps, some unable to even be reunited with parents and turned into orphans, I don't want to hear how easy it is to reign in our government because the evidence suggests restraint has been largely a failure.
The fact of the matter is, our government is not being checked and balanced, not by the legislatures, not by the fifth estate (news media), and not by the people. So on my hierarchy of needs: fighting climate change, war, poverty, gun violence, racism, disease, malnourishment, lack of access to healthcare and education, all of which are being held up by forces that have captured the government and by the apathy of the people and even the news media these days, your obsession that ad targeting is the top evil, and that the other things will be taken care of by oversight, rings hollow.
We are still living with the Patriot Act, the AUMF, National Security Letters, the Five Eyes agreements that enable problems like MUSCULAR, and that's been going on for 18 years now. Do I think FOIA requests will reign this in? Even Snowden didn't really reign it i much. And things like widespread automatic license plate readers and face detection being used by local governments, like with the voting machine changes, gerrymandering, and voter suppression, will largely be installed with only a wimper.