&gt; <i>I don&#x27;t follow. How are the two mutually exclusive? Your false dichotomy between license plate readers and medieval times isn&#x27;t very convincing to me.</i><p>What is the current direction of technological progress? More computing. Faster computing. More ubiquitous computing. More connectivity. Leveraging all that for optimization. Today we have cameras so small that every one is carrying <i>two</i> of them in their pocket. Tomorrow, at least one of which will be replaced or augmented with a geometry scanner. Scientists want to have nanosats in orbit that will keep continuous, real-time surveillance of the planet. Can&#x27;t you really see that almost everything we do now erodes privacy?<p>Or in more theoretical sense - every single thing you do generates ripples in reality that spread and interact with other things (generating more ripples) with the speed of light. Every thing you say or do leaves traces. Most of them escape our notice, because there&#x27;s only so much things we can pay attention to. But they are still there, and with more sensors and more computing powers, we&#x27;re untangling the great web of causality. Whatever is not known we can try to infer. Privacy disappears with the amount of compute we can throw at it.<p>&gt; <i>Really? So since it is technologically possible for me to remove my license plates from my car, no judge will be able to make me put them back?</i><p>You know that your car probably has several RFID tags and radio chips in various places like e.g. tires? With time it may be the case that no judge will <i>care</i> to make you put them back - they won&#x27;t need to.<p>Anyway, my point does not apply to individuals, but on a large scale. Whenever a new technology arrives that is so useful&#x2F;popular that lots of people start to use it, laws and customs adjust to accomodate it. Since laws and customs follow technological progress and not the other way around, it follows that laws are weaker than technology.