This is really interesting. I know the old "Attacks always get better; they never get worse." but I've never thought about "Tools and technology always get cheaper and easier to use" before as it applies to security.
As Dan Geer warned[1], technology changed the balance of powers when
the cost tends towards zero:
The central dynamic internal to government is, and always
has been, that the only way for either the Executive or the Legislature
to control the many sub-units of government is by way of how much
money they can hand out.
...
Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter,
that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes. Does
that lessen the power of the Legislature more, or the power of the
Executive more? I think that ever-cheaper surveillance substantially
changes the balance of power in favor of the Executive and away
from the Legislature. While President Obama was referring to
something else when he said "I've Got A Pen And I've Got A Phone,"
he was speaking to exactly this idea -- things that need no
appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances.
The "power of the purse" doesn't mean much when technology drives prices towards zero.
While a bit banal in this regard, it bring to mind the notion i have had that copyright was not strongly enforced previously in part because it would necessitate a cop in every home.
Now however there is at least one cop in every home, or at the very least a snitch. This thanks to internet connected computing devices.
There was a thread around here a few days ago about armed micro drones. What happens when you can build an autonomous assassination device and launch it from a mile away for under a thousand dollars? Soon politicians may be unable to ever appear in public or travel outdoors without their own "drone fog."
Privacy is dead also cuts both ways. Say goodbye to undercover policing.
The other interesting technology vector related to security is cost of storage. I ran some numbers on storing 100 bytes of location metadata per minute per person. Assuming 85% compression and using current S3 storage costs of $0.03 GB per month it costs about $0.03 to store ten years worth of personal location data.
Extrapolating out to a population of 300M that gives you a yearly cost of about $8.5M, which appears to be the same cost as building 2.5 miles of freeway in California.
Basically there's no longer an economic barrier to storing almost unlimited amounts of metadata for individuals. The fact is we just don't generate that much. And the costs will only decline over time.
(Would love it if somebody could run the same numbers and see if the result is replicated.)
Note that S3 is extremely expensive. Pure storage media cost with hard disks is around 0.001 USD per GB-month unreplicated--and replication might not necessarily be a priority, depending on the goals one has with that data collection.
Also, that would give you about 1 m precision at one second intervals, which might be excessive (or not).
Really, there is no longer an economic barrier to storing "real" (as in "non-meta") data. 24/7 audio recording in telephone quality with ten year retention would cost about 4 USD/year in pure storage cost at current prices per person. Or in other words: storing all phone calls forever doesn't really cost anything. Actually, it's so cheap one can expect that the NSA is already doing it.
