The point of my comment wasn't that we shouldn't use technology to enforce our laws (though our drug laws are ridiculous and counterproductive). It was that our local, state, and federal governments operate as a collection of thousands of fiefdoms that run for the most part without supervision from any other agency. Each of those fiefdoms can implement programs like this in secret, and no one can challenge them because no one knows about them. Every so often one of these programs is identified and disbanded after years of litigation, but hundreds more will soon appear in its place.

The simplicity of implementing such programs combined with the near impossibility of identifying and eliminating them makes this an insurmountable problem. Our government seems to have adopted the mantra of the criminals they claim to dislike so much: If you don't get caught, it's not illegal.