If the courts and the police are both colluding against you, then, I'm sorry to say, you don't actually have any rights. In that case, the ship has already sailed, and license plate readers should be the last of your worries.

Welcome to the reality of being poor in America. You summed up the exasperation we feel every day quite nicely, it's like the game is already over before I even got a court date.

retention rules, access rules, and verification of both, are what secure us from abuse. violations should be defined as criminal violation subject to prosecution.

except that where we have this three strikes for civilian criminal activities we should have a one strike and your out for public officials

Either way, abuses will happen. Would you rather be abused by the government or by random strangers?

In general, a random stranger - or even someone I knew from school, folks working for the parks department, and so on have little or no power over me.

The police or other law enforcement, however? These are folks that not only can abuse the power, but use it to factually or falsely accuse me of a crime. That's enough to ruin a life. You don't even need to be convicted for it to cause serious life issues, sometimes for years. These are the very people that I should be able to turn to when someone abuses it, and I am under the impression they would cover up their own abuses ... much like they do now.

The same really goes for politicians, but the scenario is different.

Honestly, random strangers.

Their motivations will be far more transparent than those of gov't level entities. Also, you can respond to your house getting robbed by adding locks, bars, camera's etc. If a gov't level entity is abusing you, your options are much more limited. That's why nipping over-reach in the bud is important.

Random strangers tend to abuse specific individuals. Governments tend to abuse classes of people. So I'll take the former, if those are my two options.

I think when the guys says random strangers, he's still talking about the police, just that if you leave it to individual police stations then anyone working there can basically wander in, not at every police station obviously, but if they're each doing their own info security, then many of them.

One large database that requires a warrant to access can at least be more easily held to higher standards.

On the flip side, 1. the local Sheriff is much easier to get rid of through elections for not keeping himself or his officers from such behavior 2. the local Sheriff can be impeached, meaning there is a higher authority to appeal to when abuse happens. If the highest authority is committing the abuse, what recourse do you have?

In general, it is always better to let the lowest possible authority level handle something. If parents can handle it, the city shouldn't take it over. If the city can, the state shouldn't. If the state can, the Fed shouldn't.

This isn't a question of different levels "handling" the issues, it's a case of different levels maintaining their own databases of highly sensitive information, I still think a local sheriff should be running local investigations, but think a local sheriff seriously should fucking not have unfettered access to the exact location of my car at all times without needing a warrant.

The choices are not mutually exclusive, and also things can happen like random strangers who work for the government abuse a citizen in their spare time.