So then low-paid hotel night-clerks are part of the front lines of the intelligence services. I just rented a hotel room with no reservation in the US a few ni

So then low-paid hotel night-clerks are part of the front lines of the intelligence services. I just rented a hotel room with no reservation in the US a few nights ago. I gave ID, credit card, and car's license plate number. I was like 80% sure I had my license plate number memorized, but didn't feel like going outside to check, so I just wrote what I thought it was (without even indicating which US state it was from, I realized later) because I figured it didn't matter if they weren't going to verify it. Hopefully my memory was right, or it's a good thing my ID was not a convincing fake and that I'm not a terrorist, because the clerk would have failed to feed Big Brother good data even if there was a real-time national system to enter it into. After writing that, I realized your "tracking license plates" may have referred to automated plate scanners. I think it would still be too easy to fake or mislead that, and it's going to cost a lot to deploy everywhere. After they are in every conceivable public location, another attack will happen and somebody will write, "if we had just known X car was in Y private house's garage..." and now we have to put surveillance equipment in every home, or concede that we're founded on ideas that preclude surveillance that intrusive and there will be times when that prevents law enforcement or national security.