We had an example not even a month ago. In many cities, there are enough parking spots for everyone, so many citizens will leave their cars for the night near their homes in places where they do not cause significant disturbance, and the police will tolerate this behavior and not ticket them for it. This is a win for everyone: the citizens have a spot to park, and the mayor doesn't have to spend public funds to set up parking spots.

In completely unrelated news, the city of Beauvais voted 67% against the municipal police force carrying weapons. The municipal police retaliated by not tolerating night-time parking anymore, resulting in a significant increase in parking tickets in locations that had been safe for years.

And while the mayor did apologize for this, the municipal police said it was "just doing our job".

http://www.leparisien.fr/beauvais-60000/beauvais-des-pv-pour...

Making common behavior illegal, and then tolerating it, is a great way to harass dissenters in a perfectly legal way.

Hardly.

Thanks to a spectacularly complex legal system, we all break plenty of laws each day. If our every action is recorded, then so are those currently inconsequential violations of law, giving whoever controls the panopticon the ability to pick and choose who to prosecute with near impunity.

Why? If laws are so complex that at any given time anyone is breaking at least one, then a surveillance dragnet gives you cause to indict anyone at any time.

We are talking about a country that routinely acts like a terrorist organisation. Look up who blew up Greenpeace boat ~30 years ago.