[gatehouse]

Cameras are cheap, networking is cheap and processing is cheap. The government is just the first mover, but there are many other parties that have the ability to build this kind of thing even just based on current technology.

Imagine if UPS placed cameras giving a 360 degree view on all of their vehicles, ran it through license place recognition to give a database of observations each having plate number, time, and location, and then allowed lookups or algorithms to be run for a price or subscription fee.

Any company with a large network of vehicles could do this, or it could be done less effectively but more cheaply with cameras on property. It would be easy to pool the data or sell it to anyone. In some ways it is similar to doing large scale face recognition, except it is much easier with current technology.