In one article, they talked about how they record the video, and that later if they are investigating something that happened at location X, they can go back and track all the cars and people that came and went.
> How would the world respond? How would American respond? Would we collectively decide this is not something we want and pass laws to stop it?
You can see the response of Americans right now, which is nothing. My hypothesis is that the public is reactive to sensational issues (real or not), and is almost never proactive. The public lacks the time, understanding, attention and wisdom to be proactive about even a tiny fraction of public issues; that's why we need experts and "elites" in representative government, not pure democracy. Right now those elites are letting us down, badly, and on many issues.
Here in Norway I took a summer trip from Oslo to the children's park Hunderfossen north of Hamar. We drove through about 7+ motorway toll stations, all automated, all collecting license plate info used to bill us (and what else?). There are also cameras on poles beside the road to 'monitor traffic'.
Norway wants a cashless society, govt. clearly stating it's because they want to put an end to businesses who do cash work and don't declare it, thus avoiding tax (but this is because tax is high, and a lot of people can't afford to get a carpenter in if they have to pay an extra 25% on work and materials). A cashless economy is a traceable economy/individual.
There's more, for example cars going fully digital and traceable. You can guess the effects of an 'always on', zero analog society. I personally have not carried cash for about 18 months. I remember going on a trip at the advent of the mobile phone era, and the joy of 'being lost' until I decided not to be. No more.
It's enough to make one paranoid.
Might be worth considering.
Just do a data dump at the end of shift (saves on those pesky mobile data usage fees) for later processing and aggregation into a stored location history.
Are we ready for that? How would the world respond? How would American respond? Would we collectively decide this is not something we want and pass laws to stop it? How would those work, when the same laws that protect those methods also protect citizens right to photograph anything they want from a public location? Is there any degree of surveillance that Americans would reject, and would the government accept that rejection? Or has the world changed so much now that that's our inevitable future?
Honestly I think it's the latter.