Democracy in action!
The 20 year retention period is so ostentatiously excessive that it might be deliberately provocative. For one thing it is a dead cat that most people are focusing on at the expense of all the other stuff in there - which will consequently get waved through without comment.
And perhaps the Government actually wanted five years. After that time the data is probably too stale to be useful for identifying the friends of people deemed troublemakers. It's still vastly excessive for the infection control purposes stated, so there would still be the firestorm of criticism if they demanded that up front. So they stick 20 years in and then will eventually begrudgingly compromise on ten years. The Government gets everything they want and more, and at the same time fool the plebs into feeling that the Government has listened to criticism, bowed to public opinion etc. It will look like democracy in action.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
