That's a pretty dystopic view. I'd rather the government not collect the data at all. The massive perpetual databases that are amassing around the world are really ticking time bombs.
The cameras are there. They are not going away. Cameras are incredibly cheap, tiny and readily available, and legislating them out of private hands just isn't going to happen.
So we'll have to deal with them somehow, and I'd prefer that the government not have a monopoly on the data -- frankly, I think that the data that the government collects in public should be made public, rather immediately, so that we can see what is being collected.
I don't have a huge problem with individuals running license plate readers, since that is necessarily limited in scope. I meant that it's a bit of a dystopic view to assume that the government should be allowed to have their license plate readers and use them to accumulate massive databases that track the position of every car on every road.
So we'll have to deal with them somehow, and I'd prefer that the government not have a monopoly on the data -- frankly, I think that the data that the government collects in public should be made public, rather immediately, so that we can see what is being collected.