New technologies like connected TVs, cars, bulbs, wearables, and more give government ample means to track suspects, Berkman Center study finds
New Technologies Give Government Ample Means to Track Suspects, Study Finds — WASHINGTON — For more than two years the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Berkman Center's finding lands at the start of a curve the related coverage keeps extending: the same consumer devices it catalogs — connected TVs, cars, bulbs, wearables — are exactly the record sources law enforcement later learns to mine. By 2020, US agencies were pulling evidence from smart speakers and other household devices for criminal investigations, turning the study's inventory into routine practice.
The arc also has its counterweight. Civil liberties experts warned during the COVID-19 response that emergency electronic surveillance tends to outlive its justification, citing the post-9/11 precedent, and by 2021 the purchase of commercially available location data was already blurring the line between due diligence and warrantless search — the legal gap the 2016 study implicitly flagged.
First-order effects
- The F.B.I. and intelligence agencies gain a widening set of passive tracking channels: every connected TV, car, bulb, or wearable a suspect owns becomes a potential sensor, with no new hardware required by the government.
- Device makers and service providers become de facto data custodians for investigations, since the telemetry that makes their products 'connected' is the same telemetry law enforcement can request.
Second-order effects
- As agencies get savvier about device data — the smart-speaker evidence gathering documented by 2020 — civil liberties groups respond by framing each expansion as a ratchet, arguing the COVID-19 tracking push repeats the post-9/11 pattern of temporary tools becoming permanent.
- Commercial data brokers emerge as the pressure-release valve: when direct device access requires legal process, buying commercially available location data offers law enforcement a faster route, forcing the debate from device privacy onto broker regulation.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, surveillance capacity stops depending on targeted programs and becomes a byproduct of consumer IoT adoption itself — China's buildup of poorly secured police and private databases shows the same structure at national scale, where every sensor feeds a persistent record.
- The likely systemic correction is regulatory: warrant requirements and broker rules lagging behind capability is precisely the gap the 2021 coverage describes, making statutory limits on device-data access the predictable next battleground between law enforcement and civil liberties advocates.
The trend: Government tracking is shifting from purpose-built surveillance programs to the ambient data exhaust of consumer connected devices, with legal constraints trailing technical capability by years.