In the 80s, 30+ years ago, license plates were discernible from orbit. Are you sure about that? I'm not even sure about that now. Any credible information on the net, somewhere?

I thought that was movie stuff, like in https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/

I'm aware that this is difficult to prove, because secrecy, national security and so on, but license plates from orbit? In the 80ies?