Among the reasons politicians should never be trusted,

and 'for the public good' is such a line of crap to excuse/demand things:
The system, which would place 220 cameras across the state to photograph the license plates of passing vehicles,is designed to catch insurance scofflaws, those without the mandatory vehicle insurance.

But privacy advocates and civil libertarians see a much more sinister use of the information that would be gathered by the cameras. They note the apparent ease of tracking the movements of motorists, and the ability of the state to harvest unrelated information about the vehicle owner and place it into a computer database. That fear appears to be reinforced by advocates of the "Automated License Plate Recognition" (ALPR) system.

Governor Henry proposed the system as part of an effort to raise new revenue. The push to put the system in place, and those involved, was not revealed in full until The McCarville Report Online published a series of stories about it. (Access those stories by clicking on the Highway Cameras label below.) Norman blogger Kaye Beach first reported on the plan; she and Oklahoma City blogger Andrew Griffin followed its development. Journal-Record columnist Scott Carter also called attention to the plan.

This started off not long ago, apparently there wasn't much knowledge of this outside of those setting it up until TMRO started talking about it.
Governor Henry's spokesperson said there hasn't been a final decision, but a legislative source close to the Department of Public Safety told FOX23, Governor Henry has already told the Department of Public Safety to move ahead with the installation of the cameras.

The idea is to check for uninsured motorists and make some money doing it. The proposal is to install 200 cameras on highways. The cameras read every license plate as you drive by, checking your license plate with an insurance database. But some worry it may find other personal information.

It's called automatic license plate recognition.

Now, there are a number of arguments to be made on this, but one thing that's caused a lot of problems with red-light cameras in many places is money:
The state wouldn't pay for the system; the company would be reimbursed from funds received from fines or administrative penalties.
Which opens up all kinds of possible problems. But one of the most basic problems is "If this is such a good idea, why wasn't it openly brought up and debated?
No attention was drawn to the $50 million-in-new-revenue plan until The McCarville Report Online began a series of articles about it last Friday.

No attention in a major way, that is. But months ago, Norman blogger Kaye Beach was asking pointed questions about the plan. She, along with fellow blogger Andrew Griffin, delivered a letter to Governor Henry's office asking that "sunlight" be allowed to shine on the plan. She never got a response.

In retrospect, Henry might today wish he had addressed the subject then because today, the lack of public discussion about the plan figures in the theory by some that Henry and others wanted the plan to "fly under the radar" and they hoped few outside state government would notice it.

Even some in state government didn't have a clue about the program until TMRO reported on it. Said one House member: "I had never heard of this until I saw your first story."

So we've got something real interesting going on, that- it appears- the Governor wanted to slide in with as little notice and attention as possible. Happily, some people are blowing that up.