Two thoughts: 1) It's a lot easier to recognize 100M distinct plates than faces. I don't see anyone having the resources and patience to do the latter any tim

Two thoughts: 1) It's a lot easier to recognize 100M distinct plates than faces. I don't see anyone having the resources and patience to do the latter any time soon. Even the FBI isn't claiming they can recognize 1 face/100M with low error today. At best, they have such a database of pictures. I'm have big doubts that usefully matching against so many faces is even technically possible. 2) I think you're right, given the rapid advancement of tech, our emphasis shouldn't be whether we should outlaw surveillance practices and methods. Instead we should focus on controlling access to such databases. Who gets to gather or use such data and when should it be authorized? Should we require that each ID match request be explicitly granted (like a warrant) or should we at least require that all such requests be logged, and perhaps publicly reported? Once access to sensitive data is regulated, it no longer matters how the data is gathered. Abuse of such a law should poison any fruits of the data, at least on the part of lawful agencies.