Incompetence vs. Maliciousness

I was in a conference the other day and while being audience to a presentation in the eGovernment track the following was stated:

"People tend to interpret misuse of their personal data as incompetence of their governments and not as maliciousness"...

Going that a step further (applying it not just to the misuse of personal data), I was wondering about the Bush icon. Could it be that by projecting an incompetence icon, maliciousness from the government's side will be overlooked? - Something to ponder on there...