[bathat]

Sure, but then how do you tell the police that you just saw a black SUV with Massachusetts plates ending is 907 blow through a red light and almost run down an old lady with a cane at 7th and main? How would they ever find the driver or owner?

While there are many ways to abuse the fact that license plates are publicly-visible (the aforementioned abortion protester being one example), there are still very legitimate reasons they should continue to be that way (holding people responsible for their actions when they infringe on the rights of others, as in my example). This isn't to say that we should always and forever attach a stamped piece of metal to cars, but the current system does have the advantage of being compatible with the Mk. I Eyeball.

[nitrogen]

While we're on the subject of a slippery slope of increasing police power, we might as well assume that eventually the people will have zero power and zero responsibility with regard to crime. In this hypothetical future, you won't need to tell the police you saw a black SUV almost run down a pedestrian; it's a police problem. This is the illogical end of abdicating personal responsibility in favor of total surveillance.

[jack-r-abbit]

Maybe I am naive but it seems like there would be a pretty small sub-set of the population that could actually do anything with someone's plate number that would be an abuse of the system. There isn't some publicly available API into the DMV records is there?

[nisse72]

With a system like that, the intersection itself would be capable of logging the passing of every vehicle: time, direction, speed. There is no escape.