Fast-forward about 40 years. The car behind you – or coming at you – could be "Stasi" also, courtesy of Flock Safety.

You don't really need to know more than that (the name) to know something not good is coming. Flock – a collection animals, such as sheep. Safety – goes without saying. Or ought to by now. Put the two together and what you have is a company that wants to use the "flock" – privately owned vehicles with dashcams – to force-multiply the Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) it builds for the American iteration of the Stasi; i.e., law enforcement.

That term, by the way, at least has the merit of straightforwardness going for it (unlike "democratic" as the greasy euphemism for Communism). The law must be enforced – because it's the law. No room for nuance, much less difficult questions about whether a thing is right or wrong. Just inflexible, mindless obeisance.

Which brings us back to these Automated Plate Readers.

ALPRs are a species of intelligent camera system used by law enforcement to passively scan the license plates of all the vehicles that pass by the ALPR – they work very much like the bar code scanner that is used to identify groceries on the conveyor belt at a supermarket checkout – and cross-reference each with plate number with state databases that correlate license plate numbers with the owners of the vehicles the plates are affixed to.

The ALPR can quickly identify vehicles with out-of-date registration, un-renewed or nonexistent insurance and just about anything else that correlates the license plate number with the vehicle's registered owner. It's a fine way to force-multiply the fines that can be issued because it doesn't even require that a cop issue them. They can be sent automatically, through the mail – while the cop sips his coffee and eats his donut.

You can bet the insurance mafia is champing at the bit to get in on this action, too.

ALPRs can also be used to create a massive database of people's movements. Including the movements of people who have not committed any crime or offense against the state.

This latter is important.