The most aggressive anti-surveillance legislation we can muster in the US seems to be "30 day retention". How is this a reasonable compromise? I don't want su

The most aggressive anti-surveillance legislation we can muster in the US seems to be "30 day retention". How is this a reasonable compromise? I don't want surveillance cameras at all, but a neutral position might sound something like "sure, put up cameras everywhere, and once you get a warrant or probable cause (sigh), you can punch in the plate number and police will get notified when they see that car." Now, obviously it's a surveillance state that's ripe for abuse and relies on trust in government and process, but at _least_ it's predicated on some level of suspicion. "Record and catalog every piece of movement all these cameras see, store it for a long time, hand it over to whatever person with access to the system feels like searching it, send huge amounts of data secretly in response to National Security Letters, and while we're at it, just |tee the whole feed to the CIA. Maybe tracking everyone all the time will come in handy some day!" just seems _batshit insane_. It's not even in the REALM of possibly-constitutional from where I sit. And yet the judge in the Norfolk, VA case said "well, this technology COULD represent a 4th amendment violation in the future, but 200 cameras in our town isn't so bad". What???