The government wants to know more about you than is healthy.

It must have felt nice for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy not to be the bad guy. Just for a little while.At a Senate estimates hearing last week, being peppered by questions finding even more flaws in his internet filter plan, Conroy seized an opportunity to direct a bit of fury Google's way. And at Facebook, too - the minister was on a roll.

Conroy accused Google of the ''largest privacy breach in history across Western democracies'' for its apparently accidental sampling of publicly accessible data from home wireless internet networks. Then he claimed Facebook had ''gone rogue'' because the social network's privacy policy was getting increasingly complex and confused.

''What would you prefer?'' asked Conroy. ''A corporate giant who is answerable to no one and motivated solely by profit making the rules … or a democratically elected government with all the checks and balances in place?''

Sure, Conroy's sudden, passionate defence of the privacy of Australian Facebook profiles could be totally sincere. But recall this: he is a member of a government that is about to install body scanners in airports. Body scanners aren't ''mistakes'', as Google described its inadvertent over-collection of data.