"The federal government" does not do these things in a vacuum - they are influenced by voters. Re-aligning incentives can be a pretty intense activity (it is also a euphemism used by intelligence agencies).

From a very high level view, "the federal government" is concerned about type 2 errors - not having enough information to prevent 'bad things' from happening.

If enough people become concerned enough about the type 1 errors that come from this overreach, then political pressure will be exerted to re-align incentives.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_I_and_type_II_errors

> A type II error, or a false negative, is the failure to reject a null hypothesis that is actually false. For example: a guilty person may be not convicted.