It involves an invasion of privacy and invites further invitation of privacy, no matter what some apologists for government power may claim. It is part of the infrastructure that enables open-ended dragnets.

[Big Brother is coming alive in more recent years in a way that couldn't happen even in 1984. This is part of that.]

Some local/county/state government organizations are even receiving offers from private sector parties to fund license plate reading systems as long as the data is fed to them too.