Dad thought “permanent trailer plate” meant permanent. Government apparently meant, “until you buy another trailer, peasant.” For generations, recycling an old trailer plate was the kind of technically-wrong rural economics nobody noticed unless a cop had an actual reason to look. Today, cameras, databases, and algorithms potentially can notice—and remember—things no human officer ever would have bothered with.
That raises a bigger question than Dad’s Great Trailer Plate Crime Spree: **When technology makes it possible for government to notice nearly everything, should it?**