[deeths]

The law has thousands of examples of quantity turning permitted things into forbidden ones (or at least regulated ones, which is probably more the case here). This is in no way a unique restriction.

For example:

1) If someone glances in your window as they walk by your house, that's fine. If they stand there all day, they're probably guilty of stalking, a crime.

2) If one person is holding a protest sign in front of city hall, that's legal. If a thousand people do it, that's a protest, which in most cities is a regulated activity requiring a permit.

3) If you pour your morning orange juice out in a storm drain, that's probably legal. If you pour thousands of gallons of OJ into a storm drain, you're breaking environmental laws.

4) If someone drives by a street, that's fine. If they go back and forth down it, they're cruising, which is a crime in many cities.

5) If you give a friend $100, it's an unregulated gift. If you give them $20k, then that's regulated by tax laws.

6) If someone sells a stock and buys it back, that's fine. If they do it tens of thousands of times in a minute, they may be breaking securities laws.

7) If you bring $1000 into the country, that's an unregulated event. If you bring $100k, it becomes regulated.

8) If you access a web site with an automatic tool, that's fine. If you access it a thousand times a second, that's a DDoS attack, which is a crime.

9) If you cut a tree down on your property to sell the wood, that's fine. If you cut hundreds down, then you're running an illegal logging operation.

and on and on.

I totally don't buy the argument that it's unreasonable to forbid or regulate the case of collecting license plate numbers based on it just being a different quantity of something that's permitted. Laws use quantity as the basis for drawing the line between legal/illegal or unregulated/regulated all the time.

[PeterisP]

Okay, this is a very valid point that laws can and make a distinction based on quantity.

However, in this point no such distinction has been made, and thus they should be treated equally. There is clear law on the "low quantity" case, and no distinct law on the "high quantity" case - so the same principles should be applied even for thousandfold or millionfold increases unless/until the lawmakers (not the courts) draw a line somewhere.

[deeths]

I totally agree. I think the point most people are trying to make here is not that this _is_ illegal, but that it should be made illegal.

[me_again]

This article is specifically about a lawmaker trying to draw a line, and the lobbying around that process. At least as far as this article goes, no court case is underway, nor is there a claim that this is currently illegal.

[PeterisP]

On the other hand, I'm very very worried about the risk of making it illegal - because those justifications can be used to make the low-scale personal activities into 'victimless crimes', leaving the government with a monopoly on surveillance while criminalizing citizens who do the same thing.

I'd rather prefer if everyone was permitted to do this at all scales, rather than risk restrictions on what people can do with their minds and devices with stuff that they can plainly see - it's similar to various restrictions on recording police officers in action, so as "to protect their privacy".

The government will do their thing anyways (as Snowden showed us), so if any restrictions are implemented then they will only restrict us, but not protect us.