[sbarre]

I think the article nails it on the head when it talks about technology getting ahead of social/legal controls.

I'm sure when license plates were devised, no one thought ahead to the day a single unregulated for-profit company could automate the scanning and geolocation of many millions of vehicles a year.

[rmc]

There are legal controls in some places. The EU has had Data Protection law since 1995. There was a lot of history in Europe of organisations (usually countries) collecting massive amounts of data on people.