Electronic Surveillance: Good and Bad Sides

Reason Contributing Editor Julian Sanchez has written at length for us (see his classic 2007 cover story "The Pinpoint Search") and elsewhere on the legal and practical intricacies and complications of a world of high-tech electronic surveillance.

This week he writes a revealingly ironic, nuanced and detailed account of how some of those very same tools he is concerned about in some contexts might be used to help find the person who burgled him the other day in D.C. The thief definitely used one stolen item (a Metro card) and will likely use another (a Sony PS3) that could, in the high-tech world of tomorrow today, be used to track him down. Burglars and the burgled alike will learn valuable information from the article.