I don't see how using a proprietary license will help your dilema.

[ertai@programming.dev]

I don't see how using a proprietary license will help your dilema. If I install proprietary software in my car, I have 0 idea what it is doing, I can have no assurance that it is not doing telemetry and sending all the collected license plates to a centralized system. You want a way for users to control their own copy of the software whilst you retain the ability to control other's copies of the software. That's impossible. Either the users control the software or the software controls the users, there's no other way.

You are afraid that if you license your software under a libre license, a government will fork the project and add centralized telemetry which to their version which they will install on their own fleet of vehicles. As you said, "The argument generally goes that people should be willing to give up some privacy if it means helping police identify stolen vehicles, AMBER alerts". The fact is, ALPR monitoring systems are already existent and in use, so governments have decided to trade some of the people's privacy for security and this trade has been accepted by people.

THE ROOT ISSUE is that, since the software is absolutely proprietary, people have no idea which amount of their privacy is being traded for security so they have no way of holding their governments accountable, they cannot revolt if their governments overstep boundaries because they cannot know/prove if the government did step over the boundaries.

If you license your project under the AGPL, the code is required to be available so people can ensure that their government is respecting the deal, and that the deal is worth it.

[Guest]

I don’t see how using a proprietary license will help your dilema

I guess I should clarify: Predator itself is already entirely open source, offline, and self-contained. The issue here is regarding an external service that allows you to import and manage data collected by Predator. By making this external service proprietary, I would be able to host the service and regulate how it is used. By making it open-source and self-hostable, I'm giving up control over how people use it.

If you license your project under the AGPL, the code is required to be available so people can ensure that their government is not abusing the power they have lent

I'm not sure this is how that would work. The AGPL specifically guarantees users of the software the right to use it for whatever purpose they want. Assuming the government doesn't host a public instance of the software for third-party users, they are under no obligation to share the source code. As such, they could continue doing whatever they want with it with zero oversight.

The argument for a proprietary license would be that V0LT maintains control over the only public instance, meaning it could enforce the rules each agency agreed to. For example, a university wanting to do parking enforcement could be given a 7-day license plate retention limit, and have their ALPR geofenced to the perimeter of the campus. This oversight would not be possible with a free license, hence the dilemma.