The difference is legislation, in both cases. Permissible data exchange between government services is legislatively encoded. Permissible sentences are legislat

The difference is legislation, in both cases. Permissible data exchange between government services is legislatively encoded. Permissible sentences are legislatively encoded. Since we don't see a whole lot of moderately healthy democracies arbitrarily jailing people for life, one might reasonably assume these sorts of controls work.