No, my point is that it's the people doing the checking to then hurt others that are the problem, not the tools used to track, and not even the act of tracking.
> You really can't imagine a scenario where a rogue cop pulls over a young girl, becomes obsessed with her and then begins stalking her(...)
I can, but again, it's the cop who is the problem, not Google or Facebook or ALPRs.
> This is astoundingly pseudo-intellectual tripe.
It may sound like that for people who don't grok it, but it's actually also the base for my whole argument. If you understand this "tripe", then you can see that there are pretty much infinite ways you can use to obtain particular information; they only differ in cost. You can't ban them all. Progress of technology only reduces the cost of accessing some facts about the real world.
Let's look for ways to stop people from doing bad things instead of trying to fight the progress, with all the benefits it brings. For centuries we relied on limited access to information as a proxy for safety. We can't do that anymore.