It's such a difficult problem to parse. The invasion of privacy aspect is obvious and extremely problematic, but how do you balance the potential public safety benefits? Regarding the whole field of these technologies, not just Signal Trace, how much more quickly could an Amber Alert be resolved, a serial killer be caught, or some other type of criminal be found if these technologies are used responsibly and effectively?

Is it possible even to use them responsibly? What if they were made inadmissible in court, but could still be used to identify previously unknowable suspects which more traditional investigative means could be used to build a case against? Can you limit access to the tools to a small number of specifically trained and vetted individuals within a law enforcement organization with independent audits to reduce the likelihood of abuse? Can you limit the type of crime that can be investigated to only violent crimes, or some other higher tier of crime to prevent combing through minority neighborhoods to harass low level drug offenders?

It's tough to throw the baby out with the bath water, though at the end of the day I would land on the side of privacy if there aren't legitimate and effective ways to guard against abuses.

The problem is that we already know a significant slice of law enforcement will absolutely abuse this technology. They're already abusing what's out there, this enhancement just makes it more effective.

And in theory, the Constitution should be an obstacle to this abuse, but in reality law enforcement partnering with private companies, have created a hole through the Constitution that would easily accommodate a fleet of oil tankers. And that's before you include the courts pretty much looking the other way on privacy matters.

We're clearly at the point where we have to ask the hard question: What's more important, our privacy or some theoretical crime-reduction asset.