Numerous cities, states, and localities have adopted police body camera programs to enhance police accountability in the wake of repeated instances of police misconduct, as well as recent reports of more deep-seated police problems. These body camera programs hold great promise to achieve accountability, often backed by millions of dollars in federal grants. But so far, this promise of accountability has gone largely unrealized, in part because police departments exercise…
We are living in an era of dramatic and unpredictable technological and business innovation. Federal agencies have been at the forefront of updating substantive legal rules to meet new challenges not originally contemplated by Congress. Yet some innovations—for example, autonomous vehicles—also upset longstanding allocations of authority between the federal and state governments. Significant uncertainty about whether local or national concerns will predominate as innovations develop requires temporary flexibility in allocations…
Findings at the frontier of economics suggest startling implications of an under-appreciated fact about technological development: innovation builds on itself, developing path dependencies in which past innovations attract similar, but more advanced, innovations. Innovation snowballs. The world economy needs to undergo a dramatic transformation to avoid the risk of catastrophic effects from climate change. Policy to encourage this transformation should be sensitive to innovation snowballing. The conventional policy view has…
Over the years, various federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies have enjoyed the growth and development of technology in aiding their efforts to combat crime. Until recently, not much information had been available regarding the use, or existence, of cell-site simulators. Cell-site simulators have been around for at least fifteen years, and they operate by mimicking cell phone towers. Known also by their popular brand name, Stingray, cell-site simulators…
“If I could just change one law,” lamented Bill Gates, “it would be this.” What law provokes the ire of the Silicon Valley titan and co-chairman of the world’s largest philanthropic organization? Hint: it was at the center of a publicity maelstrom that struck the happiest place on earth—Walt Disney World—as well as one of California’s largest power utilities, Southern California Edison (SCE). In 2015, reporters revealed that Disney and…
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