I've been thinking about a way to defeat the camera.

You can get LED's that emit in the IR, which is (I believe) the wavelength of those cameras. If that's true, then why not ring the license plate with IR-emitting LED's such that it blows-out the pixels in the IR camera? I'm thinking like the way a bright sun-lit chrome surface will flood your eyes so you can't see any details near it. Can an LED put enough IR energy out there to do that? Is there an EE in the house?