
Taylor Lorenz’s Power User
Everything You Know About Police Body Cameras Is Wrong
Listen to the full episodeDo not have it yet? Parasocial is a podcast player by Super Simple.

Taylor Lorenz’s Power User
Do not have it yet? Parasocial is a podcast player by Super Simple.
Before you call for more body cameras watch this!! 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 cens