It's $50,000 worth of cameras from one supplier - a supplier with a name that presumably made it easy to identify what they're selling.

There could be other suppliers.

And presumably large orders get bulk discounts.

These are very unlikely to be $250 each considering they are niche produces made for the government. I'd guess more like $5k each.

Guarantee you most legitimate targets of this “surveillance” are quite a few steps ahead. Do drug cartels even care if the DEA has installed cameras everywhere? Doubtful. Being able to do this kind of math is a great example of the simple reasoning it takes to start analysis of systems like this once in place.

What are the cartels thinking? Probably that they’ll just have to pay informats more money as the system becomes more complex. They’ll have to pay their tech people more for increased counter surveillance. And so forth.

I’m picking on the DEA but of course similar equations must exist for ICE.

IMO What’s so dystopian about all this is not so much that the tech exists but that our tax dollars pay for these projects and we really don’t have much say.

>Do drug cartels even care if the DEA has installed cameras everywhere?

Back of the envelope math shows that they can't be installed everywhere; not on that kind of budget. The only thing that one could do with 10-1000 cameras is install them at specific, targeted places where the DEA already has some reason to suspect that they'll find something.

>IMO What’s so dystopian about all this is not so much that the tech exists but that our tax dollars pay for these projects and we really don’t have much say.

I don't agree. Spending is controlled by Congress. If you and enough people who agreed with you combined your efforts, you could alter the law so that the purchase of this sort of technology was illegal. Perhaps you hold an opinion that only a minority of America agrees with.

Twice is a severe underestimate.

agree with your back of the envelope math.