There were 210M licensed drivers in the US with an expected annual growth rate of 1.6% [1]. Extrapolating this data gives 231M licensed drivers in 2016. From the article: "...law enforcement in more than half of all states can search against the trove of photos stored for IDs like drivers’ licenses." Half that number and you get a number that's pretty close to the number of faces in the database.<p>I've got no issue with using law enforcement having access to these pictures for identity verification (i.e. checking to make sure the face on a license matches the face of the person in the database). Although automatic systems setup to identify people in crowds is a bit too Minority Report for me. I understand that I don't have any expectation to privacy when walking around in public but its a bit unnerving to have someone logging my every location and never needing a warrant, as publicly taken pictures wouldn't require one whereas cellphone tracking would.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/chapter4.cfm" rel="nofollow">https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/c...</a>
okay, so when do we see police departments getting sued for unauthorized searches of members of the public?<p>when do we see police departments sanctioned for tracking people not suspected of any crime?<p>when do we find out that the police arrested or killed the wrong person based off of a faulty algorithm?<p>when do we start wearing dazzle camo on our face to disrupt them?
License plate technology lets the police identify you from far away and in secret without ever talking to you.<p>(with some chance of error)<p>The government being able to figure out who you are, is not a story.<p>(Systematic & automatic use of ID information to continually track you, is)