This feels like too far the other direction. I am of the opinion that the following are all reasonable, and I think most people would agree with me:
* Toll enforcement (the only thing allowed by the law)
* Speeding enforcement
* Parking enforcement
* Real-time alerting for vehicles that could be pulled over if you knew nothing other than the vehicle's identity. Stolen, unregistered, uninsured, amber-alert, etc. [1]
I think the following are all unreasonable, and I think most people would agree with me:
* Selling the data for any commercial purposes (perhaps with the exception of aggregated statistical data)
* Mining the data "suspicious patterns of activity".
I think the following is reasonable, but some people may disagree:
* Retaining the data for a limited time, so that if a crime is reported involving a specific vehicle, you can look back for sightings of the vehicle contemporaneous with the crime to help catch the bad guys.
Given my thoughts on what is and is not reasonable, I think the ideal policy is one that focuses on limiting retention, limiting sharing, and limiting the types of queries that can be performed on the data. Something like:
* Can retain the data for 90 days. Data that is evidence of a specific crime can be kept longer with the evidence file for that crime, and destroyed when the investigation is done.
* Can use the data where knowing a series of (time, place) pairs for a vehicle is probable cause of an infraction (or toll due). This covers speeding and parking and tools and red lights and registration/etc, but doesn't allow looking for suspicious patterns of activity.
* Can query the data for sightings of a specific vehicle with reasonable suspicion that the vehicle was involved in a crime. Need to keep records of these queries to identify abuse. Maybe need to notify owner when such a query is made.
* Can not disclose the data to third parties, except in the case when they agree to follow all these same rules (so you can share with other departments or law enforcement service providers, but that doesn't enable an end-run around the rules)
[1]: And I think it's important here that if data about a vehicle be eligible to be pulled over knowing nothing but it's license plate is out of date or otherwise wrong, then someone gets in serious trouble. Otherwise nobody is incentivized to keep their database up to date.
Just this morning I listened to an EFF podcast episode (Effector) about how license plate readers tend to suffer from mission creep. They might be deployed for one of the "reasonable" purposes you list but when the tool is available to lawenforcement it almost always becomes used for more and more purposes, like the example given in the article about tracking a woman who had an abortion.
The problem with these types of tools are that they provide a foothold into absolute enforcement, not just for current laws you find reasonable, but for all future laws from all future administrations which may not be reasonable.
Why should these cameras used for speeding enforcement today be used to track down protesters the admin decides to label as terrorists or legal immigrants who attended a pro Palestine rally tomorrow? They shouldn't.
What would stop that from happening? Nothing.
As usual, it's a question of balance. In a country where people trust the government enough, or at least trust the system of checks and balances that must keep the government at bay, the idea of the benefits provided by proper use of the cameras outweighs the fear of the scope creep.
In a country where people expect the government to act unreasonably and to flout legal constraints, the fear of the scope creep and total surveillance outweighs the perceived benefits of legitimate use.
By answering this question, it's easy to determine how people feel about their country :-/
USC 1983 prevents that from happening.
Not that I like surveillance capitalism but...
If a ALPR search was gated by a search warrant, upon probable cause by witness and signed by judge, I would have much less concern. Its still surveillance capitalism, but that at least would be due process.
> I am of the opinion that the following are all reasonable
I'm not. Tolls are fine since the "enforcement" there is of a known cost that you have to pay to use the road.
But I don't think speeding laws, or indeed any traffic laws that allow people to be fined or punished just because they broke some administrative rule, should exist at all as they exist now, let alone be enforced by automated cameras.
Even with cameras, it's obvious to anyone who drives that such laws are not even close to being actually enforceable as they're written. Raise your hand if you've gone faster than the posted speed limit on a US road, along with probably 95 percent or so of all the other cars on that road. Raise your other hand if you've not come to a complete stop at a stop sign because you can see that there are no other cars coming. And so on.
Such laws should not exist because "enforcement" becomes an arms race between the police and the citizen. It would be better to get rid of them and make things like speed limit signs, etc., advisory--you can't be ticketed just for not obeying them, but if you get in an accident and it's found that you weren't obeying a sign, you're presumed to be at fault. Then this whole issue would evaporate. The cameras could still be there--and their footage would be admissible evidence in any dispute about an actual accident. But they couldn't just trigger an automated ticket to be sent to you if no accident took place.
See this is exactly how we got here.
You multiply the "well we should allow it for uses X Y and Z" takes by every issue and the end result is that there's just enough political will to let the government walk all over everyone and everything else.
You have to draw a line in the sand otherwise you get the political equivalent of everyone littering "a little" and the cumulative result is things being crappy.
Punishment should never be automated.
You're out of touch. People hate speed cameras.
I disagree with you