The message that needs to be hammered in harder than anything is that times when these are used to solve crimes and find missing innocent people are the EXCEPTION and not the rule. nor are they are the purpose.

Most criminals are just as stupid today as they were 50 or 100 years ago, and despite massive advances in a shitload of surveillance and forensics, not to mention MASSIVE increases in police funding, the rates of unresolved crime have only increased. Crime rates have dropped since their peak in the early 90s, but that is more than likely due to environmental factors and an ageing population more than anything else (crime is generally a thing young people do, by the time they hit middle age they’ve either given it up or gotten so good at it that they know how to evade the system). In Canada for example, despite massive increases in car telemetry and tracking and all that shit, the overwhelming majority of car thefts are unsolved. This is often when the car theft itself is caught on camera and probably the car driving away is also captured by multiple cameras. Unless the car is then used in a homicide, the police rarely care to investigate that much.

The point of all of these is to document any form of organisation, protest, or activism. If some group of people want to unionize or protest an unpopular law being proposed, planning that isn’t like planning a burglary. It necessitates communication and organization, and you need transportation. Most protestors can leave their phones behind at home (with me I’d turn it off and put it in a Faraday bag). Also the whole ‘nothing to hide, nothing to fear’ is utter shit. A single heated argument, sour facial expressions at hearing certain news reports (if you wanted to see me be visibly pissed off, look at me when I was seeing the horrific reports of how Palestinians were (are still) being killed). They can use this to develop a profile of what kind of person you are. Are you a super progressive person and also have skills useful in tech? Good luck getting that job now, because no matter how or where you apply, the AI will work to exclude your application.

I know some people who are VERY vocal about their views and also have a lot of highly in-demand skills but cannot find any work despite applying relentlessly. Their views also got them fired from their work since the companies they work for don’t like certain… leftist views. Those people are the squeakiest clean people in terms of the law, but that doesn’t mean the powers above like them.