[bloak]

I think a lot of petty criminals are driving vehicles which are not correctly registered. (I've heard about cases in which a cyclist has been hit by a white van, gone to the police with the van's number plate and been told: Oh, they don't seem to have registered themselves properly. Since no one's been killed we can't be bothered to investigate any further.) So a lot of this computer-based, large-scale surveillance is more effective against law-abiding political activists than it is against ordinary criminals, who drive second-hand white vans and pay for everything with cash.

From your last paragraph, I think we basically agree.