Just to clarify what “wouldn’t find out” means – the letter was classified. We’ve known about the practice for some time, though I don’t know if that came out after the letter was declassified. If the practice was classified, it’d make sense to classify the letter, right? 
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Amsterdam administrator Alexander Scholtes said yesterday (Monday) that the 1,280 Chinese cameras that are used for surveillance and traffic monitoring will be phased out within the next five years following concerns that the images the devices capture are transmitted to the manufacturer or the Chinese government.
The move echoes a similar decision by the U.K. last month in which Chinese-made surveillance technology will be removed from sensitive sites by April 2025. The British government said that 50 percent of Chinese camera systems at sensitive locations have already been replaced.
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Uh, no, not exactly. Since you are a critical thinker, “YOU” are the enemy. 
Remember this from the wiki?
Here’s another reason to not let anyone scan or take a photo of your DL:
TLDR: she created various gig economy app accounts using real people’s DL’s but photoshopped in real faces (to pass spot checks), then “rented” them out to drivers, usually illegal immigrants without US DLs or permission to work, who then did the work on all the different apps. She was an “honest broker” and never sold the info so her victims didn’t incur monetary damages, but she could’ve easily sold her data to ID thieves.
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Great story!
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Something extra here…
And Mr. Aguilar got 45 months of free room and board.
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… bunch of Norwegians coming across our secure, northern border. 
Cry me a a river. She is a thief and liar … maybe a creative one, but so was the last pyramid guy.
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I did not defend her. My comment was meant to highlight the privacy issues and stolen identities, which are at the root of this thread.
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I didn’t think you said she was an honest broker. I was responding to the article you quoted.
Any opinion on this service?
Came up on my radar as a Skype replacement, but I haven’t looked into it. What do you need it for?
Just saw it as an increasingly scarce possible privacy centric communication service. Not sure I need it, just keeping tabs on the space.
Google sent around cars with cameras to get their street view photos, and as recently as a decade ago fixed location license plate reader cameras on police cars or mounted at intersections could record everyone’s car plate who was nearby. with more self driving cars now and better AI and cameras, the government and/or large private companies can conduct continuous surveillance of the bulk of the populace via these recordings - tracking your cars regular movements / locations, and now getting things like which political signs you might have up in your yard or which bumper stickers you have on your car.
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This summer we drove on a toll road that had no toll booths. Either you had a toll transponder, or you magically got a bill in the mail for the toll checkpoints you drove past. I never noticed anything that looked like it was scanning license plates, but I got a detailed invoice for about 2 dozen toll segments we drove through last month.
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I don’t think toll booths exist anymore, at least I haven’t seen one in CA in many years. The toll cameras are usually on posts above the road, but they’re small and don’t look like much.
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The street and license plate scanning has been bothering me too, but there’s little one can do. You can’t hide your license plate, and the street is a public space where you can’t have any reasonable expectation of privacy.
As far as lawn signs and bumper stickers go, that’s an individual choice. If you insist on telling your neighbors that Jesus is king or Trump won the 2020 election, then you won’t mind the whole world or the government knowing. You won’t find anything like that on my property.
The even more concerning thing about cameras everywhere is that they’re also scanning faces. There’s some “technology” (weirdly patterned masks really) that confuse facial recognition software. Something to consider for our dystopian future.
Yeah, they do.
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I think I’ve seen that before 
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That one’s too easy. I’m talking more complex, like this
We installed Flock cameras in our subdivision entrance/exits a couple or three years ago. I think they are a decent value. Their installation has also given me the opportunity to experiment with deceiving them, with very limited success, as they also catch the make/model of your vehicle. Fortunately, they delete the captured data after 30 days.
ETA: They supposedly delete the data, and I have no proof, nor any suspicion that they don’t.
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