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 people have decided to trade some of their privacy for security, trusting that their government will stick to a balance of privacy/security that is worth the trade.

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.

justdeleteme.xyz is a lifehack

dnsmasq with a blocklist, like /etc/hosts except you can use wildcards on whole domains. Then you just make your router’s default dns to point to the computer running dnsmasq. https://landchad.net/dnsmasq/

Perhaps an addition to your guide: Although I have not tried it myself, I hear it is quite easy to run local open-source AI models. By instructing the AI to reformulate your texts whilst adopting a certain personality, one should be able to efficiently protect against stylometry. This can even work with realtime chat.

That’s why internet anonimity is so important for free speech.