[Saryctos]

Haezed said:

How far off would it be from a tech POV to put a GPS device on everyone and have a computer program monitor locations and look for patterns? I don't see why that presents a huge technical problem given that the NSA can already shift through massive amounts of financial and other data and companies like Axiom.

Fisrt, sorry about the blanket misrepresentation* of what you were meaning towards Paranoia's comments(I guess I misread you).

Secondly, in reply to the quote; Technology wise it is already here, infact it's my field of work(data fusion). The far off comment was one of law making and politics.

I would imagine that the same kinds of restrictions on information would still apply. Like say, needing a warrant before investigating someone. The information is there, but the courts won't let you look at it, for legal reasons. How long would that kind of restriction hold? If there was a murder with no suspects, would you be allowed to scan through the data on everyone looking for the murderer, or would that be an invasion of everyone else's privacy? What if you found a new murder that hadn't been discovered yet in the data while looking for another case? Would you be allowed to use that data in court to convict said 'new murder'? Or would he go scott free because all the data required to convict him had to been thrown out due to accessing it without a warrent?
These sorts of questions aren't old, however most legislation is. The stigmas towards new technology of the older generations, I think, are holding back real questions that could use some looking into before the relavent* technology arrives on the scene(tech is here, just not implemented due to legal restrictions). An example would be of one of these servailance networks in a city. The supreme court won't hear hypothetical cases, so you'd have to get the thing approved, funded, and built before they'd be able to that you can't build one due to privacy violations and then tear down the whole expensive thing.