This has been the norm in the Netherlands for about 20 years now. Since then the number of license plate readers has expanded enormously. This is so old that th

This has been the norm in the Netherlands for about 20 years now. Since then the number of license plate readers has expanded enormously. This is so old that the laws about it have been updated several times already. https://digitalfreedomfund.org/case-studies/collection-and-mass-storage-of-data-through-automatic-number-plate-recognition/ https://digitalfreedomfund.org/case-studies/collection-and-m... (dutch, sorry) https://anprcameras.nl/ https://anprcameras.nl/ (a partial list, oh and there's mobile "stations" doing it too) At one point they were very proud of having developed an algorithm to go much further than just license plate reading: "trajectory control". By placing ANPR cameras on every road and checking the traffic, they could not just detect when your license plate drove by a camera, but locate the vehicle down to a few meters at all times. This algorithm is now also used for traffic indicators, speeding fines, ... They also identify the vehicle (to check if you've paid correctly, and to give fines relating to vehicle type). They check how many people are in the car (there's a tax advantage for cars that never carry more than 2 people). And I'm sure this is not a full list. Oh and in case you're wondering about the GPDR: every EU state, as well as a looong list of international organizations (from the UK tax service to Interpol) have the right to grant permanent and transitive exceptions to the GPDR to anyone they want. The license plates are collected and processed by a private company. A blanket GPDR exception has been granted to them. They have other business deals involving the license plate data. The Netherlands is also doing face recognition in the public space, by the way. In a very similar way. The very thing the GPDR was explicitly "created to prevent", or so the story goes. It was even put into the GPDR law that without the GPDR face recognition would become commonplace. Well, GPDR passed, and it is commonplace. At airports + a lot of train stations + a number of locations in big cities. About 1.3% of all arrests in the Netherlands were made on the basis of face recognition cameras in 2023. https://algoritmes.overheid.nl/en/algoritme/oorg10264/35433239/catch-central-automatic-technology-for-recognition-of-persons https://algoritmes.overheid.nl/en/algoritme/oorg10264/354332...