Yeah I think it's very easy to forget we live in a surveillance state. Periodically something happens that lets us see it but we somehow, as a society, stop talking about it and next time something like this happens we're surprised.
We have the DEA and other three-letter agencies stashing cameras all over highways and even in residential areas.
We have mass surveillance of communications.
We have license plate readers everywhere.
We literally carry tracking devices everywhere we go.
Our cars also have their own tracking devices.
Facial recognition(and probably other recognition tech like gait) is widespread.
We have systems that can mass surveil entire cities from the sky.
And these are just the confirmed systems that we know about.
Parallel construction is frequently used and it's not even a secret at this point.
That said, don't underestimate the ability of a criminal, even a smart one, to screw up. As a group of smart engineers, we all know too well that even smart people make mistakes. They make even more mistakes when they're operating outside of their domain and under pressure/nervous. It shouldn't be surprising that the perp got caught.
We have the DEA and other three-letter agencies stashing cameras all over highways and even in residential areas.
We have mass surveillance of communications.
We have license plate readers everywhere.
We literally carry tracking devices everywhere we go.
Our cars also have their own tracking devices.
Facial recognition(and probably other recognition tech like gait) is widespread.
We have systems that can mass surveil entire cities from the sky.
And these are just the confirmed systems that we know about.
Parallel construction is frequently used and it's not even a secret at this point.
That said, don't underestimate the ability of a criminal, even a smart one, to screw up. As a group of smart engineers, we all know too well that even smart people make mistakes. They make even more mistakes when they're operating outside of their domain and under pressure/nervous. It shouldn't be surprising that the perp got caught.