I figured this would happen sooner or later. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department has begun testing an Italian license plate scanner system to find stolen cars. This technology has it roots in the optical scanning of postal mail in Italy. Now it has been adapted to read license plates. The system uses four cameras in a teardrop shaped unit about a foot long. It is mounted on the front brackets of police cars.

This system can scan 500 license plates in an hour, and check with a police database for stolen cars. In one night of testing, it has scanned 12,000 plates, 7 of which belonged to stolen cars. 3 Arrests were made based on the findings.

If this goes into widespread use, it could make it a lot harder on car theives. Imagine if these cameras were installed in intersections, and simply driving a stolen car through an intersection would summon police. There are lots of "big brother" aspects to consider as well. What if they use this to detect cars on the road with expired tags?

http://www.wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,67864,00.html?tw=rss.TEK