[cookiecaper]

The thing is that while they come under apparently "reasonable" auspices, like automating traffic cops, they are still cameras that already have all the fundamental components of a surveillance system; it just has to be hooked up to a database somewhere and the same thing is easily implemented. They already have OCR software reading plates and printing out and mailing tickets, so if the feds, a state, or municipality were so inclined, they could without much additional effort tack on a database that tracked what-cars-were-where.

That's just one nefarious purpose and deployment, I'm sure if we thought about it more we'd come up with many others. The CCTV cameras that litter Britain were also installed under the "reasonable" auspice of catching people who stab each other. The red-light cameras are not so blatant, but the principle is the same, and as people become more and more acclimated to those, it'll be an easier sell to do Britain-like CCTV monitoring.

So it's really an issue of trust. Do you trust the government to keep their promises and never use these widely-deployed networks of cameras for evil? Do we believe that the government will only ever use these to catch those who violate traffic law? Do we expect an equitable and reasonable enforcement when we outsource to machines? If you're speeding because your wife is in labor or your grandma is dying and you get pulled over, the policeman will usually do an immediate reversal and offer an escort instead of a citation. Do we want to replace that with automated cameras so that one with a medical emergency gets 3-4 tickets from machines that detected he violated the speed limit or ran a red light on the way to the hospital?

The Constitution is proactive against the attainment of such government power because its framers knew that even though you may have one set of administrators that are pretty good and upright, the next set may be more crooked, and when the crooked people see all this unexploited potential, they're that much more likely to attempt to attain to a position that will allow them to enact uncouth practices.