OK, let’s look at enhancing some comparable systems, and try to predict the reaction of the population involved:
- Toll-road transponders are enhanced to be read from satellites. Effectively, that makes all roads, potential toll-roads. Forget whether tolls are actually charged, the passengers of the car are now under potential surveillance.
- The current situation with multiple cellphone companies, their thousands of towers and bazillion plans and features, is not sustainable when we have sat-phone technology we could build out. It sounds like an improvement until you realize that would essentially place every phone-carrying person under surveillance. We’re almost there with the current system.
Under either of those scenarios, having a single piece of information (license plate, name, tail number, phone number, current location) would allow anyone to know who and where that person is. This is not dystopian science fiction. How fast do you think the general population would revolt? Or do you think that the vast majority of Americans are so stupid that they would agree to it in order to get instant fast-food coupons nearby?
The camel’s nose is already under the tent, and it’s getting much more difficult to write dystopian science fiction.