About this episode
Democrats just handed ICE exactly what ICE asked for.[FREE SPEECH FRIDAY]If you value my reporting, please, please support my work ???Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/taylorlorenz Subscribe to my Substack: https://www.usermag.co Body cameras were supposed to hold police accountable. So why is police violence still rising? Why are cops almost never convicted using body cam footage? And why are Democrats (the same politicians who just tripled the ICE budget) now demanding that ICE agents wear body cameras?In this episode of Free Speech Friday, I sit down with Alec Karakatsanis, lawyer and author of the fantastic book Copaganda, to uncover the hidden history of police body cameras. While body cams are presented as a technological fix to deeply rooted institutional problems, they actually have the opposite effect.We talk about how the multi-billion dollar police surveillance industry originally struggled to get funding for these cameras, how Steven Spielberg donated money to put cameras on cops, how the narrative completely shifted, and how Big Tech is cashing in.Big Tech interest groups and reactionary non-profits are spending millions to push mass surveillance and censorship laws. My work is 100% self-funded. This series is not backed by any advertisers or tech giants. If you value my reporting, please, please support my work ???Join the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/taylorlorenz Subscribe to my Substack: https://www.usermag.co Follow me:https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz https://www.instagram.com/taylorlorenz3.0 https://www.tiktok.com/@taylorlorenz https://bsky.app/profile/taylorlorenz.bsky.social https://twitter.com/taylorlorenz We break down:How the police surveillance industry lobbied for body cameras for years before Ferguson, and why they desperately wanted themThe brilliant marketing switch that rebranded body cams from a police surveillance tool into an "accountability and transparency" reformWhy body camera footage is used every single day to prosecute poor people in courtrooms across America, but almost never used against the policeHow Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and the D
