I agree that this part is scary, but it isn&#x27;t <i>news</i>.<p>I first heard about license-plate readers back in 2008, and at that point police could already take a wired-up squad car for a cruise through a grocery store parking lot, scanning a couple hundred plates. Onboard software would run the numbers for outstanding warrants or lapsed registrations, and alert the officer.<p>This has already been going on for years. The capacity to mine that data effectively is slightly more recent, but I&#x27;m sure the logfiles exist.