Sunday, November 30, 2014

Ever-Falling Cost of Surveillance Talk

US v Jones is one of the more important recent SCOTUS cases on the 4th Amendment. Kevin Bankston and Ashkan Soltani wrote a great paper analyzing the case, Tiny Constables, on how the rise of software and small sensors is bringing about a sea change in tracking technologies available to law enforcement. Their talk at New America in 2014, The Cost of Surveillance was a great overview of the economics, and how that should affect the legal analysis. I attended, and found the graphs of the cost outlays with and without technology really interesting, and it helped show how economic analysis can be helpful in thinking about how the law should respond to changes in technological capabilities.