Police Want To Track Everybody's Driving Habits

What do you have to hide? Oh ... that.

Imagine a searchable database that would enable police or federal agents to instantly track everywhere you've ever driven in your car, like a "Google search" of your location over a period of months or even years. According to a law enforcement data manager speaking at a 2010 National Institute of Justice conference, that's where the government is headed.

A driver location "Google search" is not available to police today because there aren't enough license plate readers to ensure total information awareness about our driving habits. But if the federal government's seed funding of the surveillance camera boom over the past ten years is any indication of where we are headed with license plate readers—and we have evidence to suggest a similar process is unfolding—we will get there soon enough.