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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How much does your own AI use matter? With all the warnings about AI’s adverse impact on the environment, it can be tough to understand what that means at the individual level. In this episode, Morgan breaks down the hidden costs of generative AI into something more relatable: microwave time. She’s joined by MIT Technology Review reporters Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, who spent months investigating how much energy and water AI systems actually use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together, they unpack how AI models are trained and which ones are more resource-intensive, what effect the expansion of AI data centers has on local energy grids and just how much electricity it takes when we ask AI to generate text, images and videos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC3471727862\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/author/casey-crownhart/\">Casey Crownhart\u003c/a>, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/author/james-odonnell/\">James O’Donnell\u003c/a>, senior AI reporter at MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://huggingface.co/blog/sasha/ai-energy-score-v2\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI Energy Score v2: Refreshed Leaderboard, now with Reasoning 🧠\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>Sasha Luccioni and Boris Gamazaychikov, \u003ci>Hugging Face\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/11/06/1127579/ai-footprint/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stop worrying about your AI footprint. Look at the big picture instead.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Crownhart, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/report/763080/google-ai-gemini-water-energy-emissions-study\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Google says a typical AI text prompt only uses 5 drops of water — experts say that’s misleading\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Justine Calma, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Verge\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You may have heard this one warning over and over recently. AI is bad for the environment. It’s using up all our clean water. It’s draining the power grids. It’s polluting our one precious world. But how? Let’s start with a video that fooled me a couple of months ago: bunnies on a trampoline. This video has like 250 million views on TikTok.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bouncing sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a nighttime video, so it’s pretty dark and grainy. It looks like it could be in some suburban backyard. We see six or seven curious rabbits hopping onto the edge of a trampoline. Three of them move bravely toward the center and test a few jumps. Suddenly, all of the bunnies are bouncing up and down. It’s absolutely delightful. I mean, it’s bunnies on a trampoline. The person who posted it said they caught this moment on their ring camera. But my delight was cut short when I realized that one of the bunnies disappeared midair. The entire video was AI generated. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to researchers, one five-second video, like this one, generated using one of top-of-the-line open source AI models, uses about 3.4 million joules. Joules are the standard unit to measure energy. I’ll say that again. One five-second video uses 3.4 million joules to generate. Now, what does that mean to the average person who probably doesn’t measure their day in joules? Well, MIT Technology Review published a report on AI energy use. For that report, Casey Crownhart, who covers the climate, and James O’Donnell, who covers AI, did the math to translate that energy usage into something accessible. Here’s Casey.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One thing we really set out to do with this project was be able to answer that question for people who are using AI in their lives and wanna really understand what the energy footprint looks like. So we looked at a lot of things in our story. We also used distance on an e-bike, light bulbs, electric vehicles, but we found that the microwave was something that most people have experience with and it was units that sort of made sense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As part of this project, Casey and James worked with researchers to figure out how much AI generation really costs in microwave time. So that video of the bunnies on the trampoline, let’s say that five second video cost 3.4 million joules. That’s the equivalent of running the microwave for about an hour. You can get 30 bags of popcorn out of that if you’re lucky. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The video of the bunnies on the trampoline was just one of dozens of AI-generated videos that I happen to scroll by every day. There are the videos of cats playing the violin, the physically impossible firework shows that my older family members keep sending the group chat, the many totally inappropriate videos of deep fake celebrities, the Facebook slop bait of animals rescuing old people from natural disasters, the AI- generated influencers shilling drop shipped products. Like, I could go on forever. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The reality is that all of this content that’s being generated, seemingly 24-7, comes at a huge cost, energy-wise. Slop is literally draining our resources. And that’s not even accounting for the constant ChatGPT queries or the flood of image generation prompts every hour of every day, and that is only what we see produced by AI. There’s a lot going on in the backend that also takes up a ton of energy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In our reporting, we found that, you know, those different use cases that can come with very different energy footprints. If you add it all up, ultimately, it can be significant. It’s probably a relatively small part of your total energy footprint, but it is definitely something that I think people are right to be thinking about in this new age.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Concern is growing about AI’s toll on the environment. And yet, AI companies would have you believe that their products are indispensable and that their impact is manageable. So, what’s the truth? How do we know what to believe? And what, if anything, should we do about it? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically-online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Casey and James spent six months crunching the numbers to give us some real world comparisons for the amount of energy it really takes every time you type up a prompt. This was actually more complicated than it seems. The companies that run the most popular models aren’t the most upfront about the numbers. So the stats that we do have are based on the AI companies that are a bit more open. Casey and James worked with researchers at the University of Michigan’s ML Energy Initiative as well as researchers at Hugging Face’s AI Energy Score Project. Hugging Face is a platform that allows users to share AI tools and data sets. With the help of the researchers, Casey and James were able to get under the hood of a pretty closed off industry, which they’ll break down for us today. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The explosion of AI use comes with many impacts, societal, economic, public health, and so none of them are equally distributed in terms of harm. But today, we’re just focusing on the environmental cost. And speaking of cost, let’s open our first tab. How much energy does a query cost? Let’s start with a little AI 101. When we talk about the environmental impact and energy use, where is all of this computing actually taking place? MIT Technology Review’s James O’Donnell broke it down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The computing is really taking place in buildings called data centers, which there’s about 3000 of them, uh, around the country. There’s even more as you go worldwide and really to visualize this, these are just like monolithic, huge, boring looking buildings that don’t have any windows or anything interesting on the outside and inside are just racks and racks of computers and chips and servers, crunching a lot of numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What we call artificial intelligence has existed in some form since the 1950s. But the technology that we call AI today is very different. There are many types that we now lump together under the AI umbrella, which all have different energy requirements. But for this deep dive, when we say AI, we’re referring to generative AI, specifically, the models that produce content based on a human entering a prompt. They include large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini. When it comes to generative AI models, there are typically two different processes involved: training and inference. These also factor into the total energy use.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So training is what you do when you want to build an AI model from scratch, from nothing and you, you have a large language model that is only going to be as smart as the data that you feed it. So training is basically the phase where you’re taking massive amounts of data. Normally this is a lot of language and text, which could be everything from the internet, could be every book that’s ever been written, uh, regardless of if these companies have the legal right to access that data, but they’re putting a bunch of data into this AI model. And the AI model is basically learning how to create better and better guesses of the text that it outputs. So it’s learning to generate texts, to string words together, to string sentences together and paragraphs together that sound realistic and accurate. And it’s doing that by noticing patterns of what words go together in this large data set.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So training is sort of the number crunching of feeding all of that data into an AI model and at the end, it spits out this model that has learned millions and millions of parameters, we call them, basically like knobs on an AI model that help the model understand the connections between different words. And at the end, you have this model that can generate text.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A lot of electricity is used in the process of training that AI model. Years ago, that was like, when I say years ago, maybe two or three years ago that was the main concern of how much energy AI was using was really in that training phase. And what Casey and I discovered in our reporting is that that has changed really significantly. So most AI companies today are, you know, they’re planning for their energy budgets to be spent more on inference.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, what is inference?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inference is every time you ask an AI model something, so every time you ask a question or have it generate an image or a video, anytime it actually does the thing of generating something that’s called inference. And so the individual amounts of energy that are used at the time of inference can be quite small or, or sort of big. Um, but it’s really the summation of all of that, that gives you kind of the energy footprint of a given AI model.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The generated output also changes the energy usage. The more complicated the prompt, the more energy it uses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, in our reporting we looked at text, images, and video. So kind of really broadly, and again, it can still vary, even within kind of a text query, depending on how complicated your ask is. So are you asking something to rewrite the whole works of Shakespeare, but like, in pirate speak, or are you just asking for a suggestion for a recipe? The open source models that we looked at, we found that the smallest models, if you were kind of asking a sort of standard query, might use about 114 joules of electricity. That’s equivalent to roughly a 10th of a second in a microwave, so a very, very small amount of electricity. A larger text model and one of the largest text models we looked at would use a lot more, so more like 6,700 joules, that’s about eight seconds in a microwave. So again, fairly small numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also, the bigger the model, the more energy it uses. AI models have parameters. Like James said earlier, these are basically the adjustable knobs that allow models to make a prediction. With more parameters, AI models are more likely to generate a better response and are better equipped to handle complex requests. So, asking a chat bot, “What year did Shakespeare write Hamlet?” Is generally a less complex request than, say, “Translate all of Hamlet into pirate speak.” The smallest model that Casey and James tested had eight billion parameters. The largest had 405 billion parameters. OpenAI is pretty hush-hush about their infrastructure, but some estimate that the company’s latest model, GPT-5, is somewhere up in the trillions. So, as models get bigger, they need to run on more chips, which needs more energy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What was really surprising and what I think really stood out in our reporting was that videos, based on the models that we were looking at, used significantly more energy, so thousands of times more energy than some of the smallest text models. So one model that we looked at used about 3.4 million joules of energy. That’s about an hour of microwave time. So there’s a really wide range here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s another factor: reasoning models. Investors are all over these right now. Reasoning models are marketed as literal thinking machines that are able to break down complex problems into logical steps instead of just predicting the next answer based on the patterns it recognizes. They’re advertised to think like a human would and supposedly will become more energy efficient the smarter the model gets. One of the researchers that Casey and James worked with at Hugging Tree put this to the test.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, a lot of people are excited about this idea of reasoning models. And so when this researcher studied these and figured out whether or not they’re energy efficient, she found that a lot these reasoning models can actually use 30 times more energy than a non-reasoning model.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s the water usage. AI datacenters use massive quantities of water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is something that has been a conversation and there’s still I think, to some extent, a lot of uncertainty about. But basically, data centers use water directly for a lot cooling systems. A lot of data centers are cooled with what’s called evaporative cooling. So, you know, water evaporates to cool down the equipment. There’s also sort of indirect water use, which is a little trickier to calculate, but there’s also water that’s used in power plants. And so if you kind of think, okay, the power plant is needed to power the data center. So the water used in the power plant, you can kind of attribute to AI as well. Oftentimes the water that is required in a data center has to be very, very high quality, very pure water because you’re dealing with very sensitive equipment. And so there is this big conversation about water. Google released estimates about its water use per query as well, but kind of to sum it up, there is a pretty major water requirement and we’re starting to see that as, again, data centers are being built in places, including those that are very water stressed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that’s what we do know about AI and energy consumption. This is the usage that can be measured, even if companies aren’t the most upfront about their numbers. But what about everything else? We’re opening a new tab, after this break. Welcome back, we’re opening a new tab. What AI energy use isn’t being measured? So we’ve talked about the front and most visible uses, energy usages, generating videos, generating lists, translating Shakespeare’s text into pirate speak, right. What’s happening in the background that’s also using up energy? Like, how many times do you have to run a microwave for those processes?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I think it’s hard to know. Like since we’ve done this reporting, AI is being put into many parts of our online life and we don’t always have a lot of choice or visibility into how AI is being using used. So for example, Google famously, uh, went from just presenting you search results to then summarizing those search results with AI overviews. So now for the most part, people aren’t looking very far down that search page, they’re actually just relying on the AI overview. We would love to know how much energy is used by Google every time it creates an AI overview and the percentage of those searches that it uses overviews for, we weren’t able to get that information. Uh, Google wouldn’t share it with us. And so, you know, AI is being put into all these different parts of our online life. And I think we’ll look back on this as the sort of like simplest calculation of, of being able to estimate, you now, how much is used when you try and make a recipe or generate an image or something. But the truth is, as you point out, AI is sort of being put into everything and it’s going to be harder and harder to sort of track the footprint as that goes on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you elaborate on why this topic appears to be so divisive and so confusing for so many people having to confront their energy usage through AI?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. I have thoughts, but I’m sure Casey does too. So, you know, it’s not like asking ChatGPT a question is like, you know, polluting the earth as much as driving a 3000 mile road trip, right? Like ,we’re talking about small, relatively small numbers here, but it gets a lot of attention, I think, because public opinion for AI right now is just so abysmally low because so many people are skeptical of whether or not it’s really benefiting all of us. And I think the energy footprint is just kind of this glaring issue for people that say, like, what are we getting out of this technology, especially if it’s sort of draining us of resources.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think part of the interesting phenomenon is that AI has really like crashed onto the scene for the general public. It’s this whole kind of new thing that we’re all having to kind of reckon with, like what is this doing to our brains? What is this going to our grids? It’s I think it’s natural to question this like entirely new thing. Another thing that I think is really interesting is that, as James mentioned, this is becoming less so, but to this point, it’s kind of discreet and countable in a way that a lot of our other activity, especially online activity, isn’t. You can go out on and, you know, how many times am I messaging this thing? So I think that kind of has lended itself to the natural kind of like, well, how much does each one of these queries, what does that mean for energy?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Google recently released data on the energy footprint of its AI model, Gemini, a couple of months after you guys put out your report. What did you make of that? Like, was it helpful? Can we trust those numbers? I guess wouldn’t they be incentivized to portray themselves as very energy friendly?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it would have been nice to get these when we were reporting, but as James mentioned earlier, these companies know better than anybody what their energy footprint is. So I think there’s such value in getting some of this data. And Google had a really good technical report that went through kind of in-depth, you know, here’s where the energy is coming from this much from, you know the AI chips, this much from other processes. But I think it’s really significant what wasn’t included in that report. And what wasn’t included in the report is any sort of information about, you know, the total queries that its Gemini model gets in a day. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Google is able to point to this number and say, hey, look, this is such a small number. It’s in line with what we found for, kind of, our median text model. You know, something like a second or so in the microwave per query. But that’s, you know, for what Google says is an average or median query. You know, it’s not kind of giving us the full range, including, you now, different kind of queries that we know would take up a lot more energy. It doesn’t include image and video, which we know are more energy intensive. And ultimately we’re not able to, without that total number of, you not, how many times is this model being queried and giving responses a day? How many users, how many daily users? We don’t know the total footprint. We can only say, here’s this little number.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the energy grid. The type of energy matters, right? Like there are a lot of discussion on renewables versus fossil fuels. What might impact where that energy comes from when it comes to building data centers and maintaining them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is something that I really focused on in our reporting because as I think I put it in the piece, if we just had data centers that were hooked up to a bunch of solar panels and they ran when the sun is shining, oh, what a lovely world it would be, and I would be a lot less worried about all this. But the reality is that today, grids around the world are largely reliant on fossil fuels. So burning things like, you know, natural gas and coal to run the grid, keep the lights on. And one concern is what the grid will look like as energy demand from AI continues to rise.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So today, we see that data centers are really concentrated on the East Coast, in places like Virginia, tends to be very natural gas heavy, reliant on coal. There are data centers that are on grids that have a lot more solar and hydropower and wind, and that means that the relative climate impact of data centers in those places can be lower than in the more fossil fuel-heavy places.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think there’s a concern that as a lot, a lot of data center come online really quickly and need more electricity added to the grid in order to run, what is being added to grid in in order support those? Right now, the overwhelming answer is natural gas. And so that means that a lot of these new data centers will come with a pretty significant climate footprint attached.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We may not know the exact amount of energy that the AI industry is actually using, but what we do know is that it’s a lot, and it is putting a strain on our already limited resources. Each individual query does cost something, and it adds up. Plus, there’s everything running in the background that we can’t measure. So what is each individual person responsible for? I mean, should we be worried about the future? Is there anything that we could actually do? Time for a new tab: does my AI footprint matter in the big picture? Luckily, Casey dove into this exact topic last year. She believes that policing individual AI usage isn’t as helpful in the grand scheme of things. Here’s why we should shift our focus, instead of putting the onus on each person to change their own behavior.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As we went through this reporting, I got a lot of questions and I had a lot of questions myself about, you know, what does this mean for me and my personal choices about AI? And again, kind of as somebody who spent a lot of time reporting on climate change, it really reminded me of the conversation around climate footprint. You know, what is my climate footprint? What should I personally do differently to help, kind of, address climate change? And what I’ve come to kind of understand through my reporting and believe is that climate change is this massive problem that goes beyond any single one of us. And there’s a really significant limit to how much our individual choices can address a global problem that is very systemic. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can compost all you want, but if only gas vehicles are available to you and that’s the only way you can get around in your community, there’s only so much you can do. And we now know that some fossil fuel funded PR campaigns helped to popularize this idea of carbon footprint to kind of shift the focus on to individuals and away from these big, powerful companies. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think that I see some parallels with AI today, you know, this attempt to kind of shift focus on, you now, well, are you using ChatGPT too many times in a day rather than what is the global impact and like, why aren’t these companies being more transparent about what the energy use of AI is on their scale. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think ultimately, you know, there are limits to this. Like if you’re making a million AI slop videos every single day, I think that’s an individual action that you could probably safely make a choice that would be better for energy use. But overall, I think we should more be using our limited time and energy in the day to push for more transparency. You know, ask for regulations around AI and what’s powering it, and just generally not be so hard on ourselves because we operate in this system where it’s increasingly hard to get away from AI. As we’ve talked about, even if you don’t choose to go onto, you know chatgpt.com, you’re often, you’re part of this AI ecosystem. So we need to be talking about what that overall system looks like and how we can change it rather than the limited power of individuals.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the biggest unanswered questions every time a data center is open is actually like, what’s the energy source going into that? And is it going to be, you know, powered with renewable sources or not? Is it just going to run 24 seven on natural gas? And so sometimes if you hyper focus on this question of your own individual footprint, it can kind of make you forget that actually there are decisions still to be made every time the data center goes up that will arguably have a bigger impact on the sort of net footprint, net emissions of it all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do we know about where the AI industry wants to take us in the future, near future, like three years from now? What do they need energy-wise or water-wise to get us there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI companies are planning for some pretty, uh, unprecedented levels of investment in, in data centers and, you know, to power all of those unprecedented levels of investment in power plants and nuclear energy and things like that. Um, I think where they want to go, uh, is to build AI models that are bigger first of all. To do that you need more and more chips and more and more power, and so there’s an incentive to just amass all of this energy and electricity. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then on the product side of it, I think these AI companies imagine that the world of AI in five years will not just be large language models that people type to and get an answer back, but that image generation and video generation and real time voice chats are kind of a part of our everyday lives. And so they’re planning for a lot more demand as well. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so you could think of this project from OpenAI and others called Stargate, which is basically a half a trillion dollars of investment into data centers that they want to pop up around the country. And I think the reason why they’re seeing success politically from this is that AI companies have framed AI as a question of national security, right? If the US wants to win this AI race against China, then the country that has the most energy is the country will create the best AI and the sort of you know, impedance to all of that is access to, to energy. And that’s why these companies have sort of made it their top priority.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and just to add to that, I mean, I think these big dreams about, you know, how big AI could get, it’s going to be a lot of electricity. So as of 2024, data centers used over 400 terawatt hours of electricity, about 1.5% of all electricity used around the world. By 2030, the International Energy Agency says that that could more than double reaching 945 terawatts. Sorry to use inscrutable units, but that’s about 3% of global electricity consumption.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is that in microwave hours? [\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A whole lot of microwaves, so many microwaves. So I think that basically we’re seeing really significant, really fast shifts and fast growth in electricity, including in places like the US that have seen very flat electricity demand for over a decade. And so I think that this is all going to add up to really complicated effects and really complicated, kind of, effects for local communities where these data centers and where these power plants are gonna be used.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is something I didn’t totally get before I learned more from Casey and before we started reporting on this. So data centers were doing a lot of stuff in the early 2000s, like, this is Netflix, social media, like, all sorts of streaming, but electricity going to those data centers stayed pretty flat, and it wasn’t until AI that you actually started to see a huge jump in the amount of electricity that data centers required.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most AI companies, or AI hype guys who are investing very heavily in AI companies will say something like, oh, AI can solve problems like climate change, so the energy usage is worth it. How much do you guys buy into that argument? Llike, does it hold any water?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s so much potential for all kinds of AI, again, beyond chatbots, in all kinds problems that are related to climate change, from materials discovery, finding new materials that could make better batteries or help us capture carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, superconductors that can move electricity around super efficiently. There’s also ways that AI could be used to help the grid run more efficiently. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s really interesting research in all of these areas that I’m following very closely. But at this point, it’s all early stage. It’s all research. And I think there’s great potential for AI to be a positive force for the climate. But I think it’s absolutely irresponsible for us to punt on all of this concerns about AI’s current energy use because of some potential. Because there’s always the chance that this doesn’t work. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think in any case, the progress could be significant, but it’s not gonna be a silver bullet. So I think we need to reckon very seriously with the current energy problems that we’re seeing now, rather than try to make some future promise that may never come true, build all this infrastructure that will be online for decades to come and could change our climate forever. Just doesn’t make sense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do you think the most misunderstood part of this whole energy AI use conversation is?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that there’s kind of a nuanced picture of just how important AI energy use is in context. So it is true that AI is probably a small part of your individual energy picture. And in fact, in terms of like the global energy use picture, it’s 3% in 2030. That doesn’t seem like very much. But that kind of change over such a short amount of time is going to be very significant for especially local grids where this is taking place. It will have significant impacts for climate change. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of build out will definitely not go unnoticed by the climate, but I think the biggest impacts here will be faced by local communities seeing data centers going up, local communities with new fossil fuel infrastructure going up. And so all at once, this is a small fraction of individual and even global energy use, and a very, very significant trend for the energy system of the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Looking toward the future is important, but the AI industry is changing residential communities right now in real time. The data center room promises to bring jobs and economic growth, but are AI companies following through on that? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Next week, we’re taking our deep dive to one of the fastest growing hubs for AI data centers, Atlanta. But for now, let’s close all of these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was edited by Chris Hambrick and produced by Chris Egusa, who’s our senior editor and also composed our theme song and credits music. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager a\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Apple Maker Ala F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nOkay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but… if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends too, or even your enemies, or frenemies. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "The Real Cost of AI Slop | KQED",
"description": "How much does your own AI use matter? With all the warnings about AI’s adverse impact on the environment, it can be tough to understand what that means at the individual level. In this episode, Morgan breaks down the hidden costs of generative AI into something more relatable: microwave time. She’s joined by MIT Technology Review reporters Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, who spent months investigating how much energy and water AI systems actually use. Together, they unpack how AI models are trained and which ones are more resource-intensive, what effect the expansion of AI data centers has on local energy grids and just how much electricity it takes when we ask AI to generate text, images and videos.",
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"socialDescription": "How much does your own AI use matter? With all the warnings about AI’s adverse impact on the environment, it can be tough to understand what that means at the individual level. In this episode, Morgan breaks down the hidden costs of generative AI into something more relatable: microwave time. She’s joined by MIT Technology Review reporters Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, who spent months investigating how much energy and water AI systems actually use. Together, they unpack how AI models are trained and which ones are more resource-intensive, what effect the expansion of AI data centers has on local energy grids and just how much electricity it takes when we ask AI to generate text, images and videos.",
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"headline": "The Real Cost of AI Slop",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How much does your own AI use matter? With all the warnings about AI’s adverse impact on the environment, it can be tough to understand what that means at the individual level. In this episode, Morgan breaks down the hidden costs of generative AI into something more relatable: microwave time. She’s joined by MIT Technology Review reporters Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, who spent months investigating how much energy and water AI systems actually use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Together, they unpack how AI models are trained and which ones are more resource-intensive, what effect the expansion of AI data centers has on local energy grids and just how much electricity it takes when we ask AI to generate text, images and videos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC3471727862\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/author/casey-crownhart/\">Casey Crownhart\u003c/a>, senior climate reporter at MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/author/james-odonnell/\">James O’Donnell\u003c/a>, senior AI reporter at MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Crownhart and James O’Donnell, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://huggingface.co/blog/sasha/ai-energy-score-v2\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI Energy Score v2: Refreshed Leaderboard, now with Reasoning 🧠\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — \u003c/span>Sasha Luccioni and Boris Gamazaychikov, \u003ci>Hugging Face\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/11/06/1127579/ai-footprint/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Stop worrying about your AI footprint. Look at the big picture instead.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Casey Crownhart, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">MIT Technology Review \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.theverge.com/report/763080/google-ai-gemini-water-energy-emissions-study\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Google says a typical AI text prompt only uses 5 drops of water — experts say that’s misleading\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Justine Calma, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Verge\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You may have heard this one warning over and over recently. AI is bad for the environment. It’s using up all our clean water. It’s draining the power grids. It’s polluting our one precious world. But how? Let’s start with a video that fooled me a couple of months ago: bunnies on a trampoline. This video has like 250 million views on TikTok.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bouncing sounds\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a nighttime video, so it’s pretty dark and grainy. It looks like it could be in some suburban backyard. We see six or seven curious rabbits hopping onto the edge of a trampoline. Three of them move bravely toward the center and test a few jumps. Suddenly, all of the bunnies are bouncing up and down. It’s absolutely delightful. I mean, it’s bunnies on a trampoline. The person who posted it said they caught this moment on their ring camera. But my delight was cut short when I realized that one of the bunnies disappeared midair. The entire video was AI generated. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to researchers, one five-second video, like this one, generated using one of top-of-the-line open source AI models, uses about 3.4 million joules. Joules are the standard unit to measure energy. I’ll say that again. One five-second video uses 3.4 million joules to generate. Now, what does that mean to the average person who probably doesn’t measure their day in joules? Well, MIT Technology Review published a report on AI energy use. For that report, Casey Crownhart, who covers the climate, and James O’Donnell, who covers AI, did the math to translate that energy usage into something accessible. Here’s Casey.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One thing we really set out to do with this project was be able to answer that question for people who are using AI in their lives and wanna really understand what the energy footprint looks like. So we looked at a lot of things in our story. We also used distance on an e-bike, light bulbs, electric vehicles, but we found that the microwave was something that most people have experience with and it was units that sort of made sense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As part of this project, Casey and James worked with researchers to figure out how much AI generation really costs in microwave time. So that video of the bunnies on the trampoline, let’s say that five second video cost 3.4 million joules. That’s the equivalent of running the microwave for about an hour. You can get 30 bags of popcorn out of that if you’re lucky. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The video of the bunnies on the trampoline was just one of dozens of AI-generated videos that I happen to scroll by every day. There are the videos of cats playing the violin, the physically impossible firework shows that my older family members keep sending the group chat, the many totally inappropriate videos of deep fake celebrities, the Facebook slop bait of animals rescuing old people from natural disasters, the AI- generated influencers shilling drop shipped products. Like, I could go on forever. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The reality is that all of this content that’s being generated, seemingly 24-7, comes at a huge cost, energy-wise. Slop is literally draining our resources. And that’s not even accounting for the constant ChatGPT queries or the flood of image generation prompts every hour of every day, and that is only what we see produced by AI. There’s a lot going on in the backend that also takes up a ton of energy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In our reporting, we found that, you know, those different use cases that can come with very different energy footprints. If you add it all up, ultimately, it can be significant. It’s probably a relatively small part of your total energy footprint, but it is definitely something that I think people are right to be thinking about in this new age.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Concern is growing about AI’s toll on the environment. And yet, AI companies would have you believe that their products are indispensable and that their impact is manageable. So, what’s the truth? How do we know what to believe? And what, if anything, should we do about it? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically-online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Casey and James spent six months crunching the numbers to give us some real world comparisons for the amount of energy it really takes every time you type up a prompt. This was actually more complicated than it seems. The companies that run the most popular models aren’t the most upfront about the numbers. So the stats that we do have are based on the AI companies that are a bit more open. Casey and James worked with researchers at the University of Michigan’s ML Energy Initiative as well as researchers at Hugging Face’s AI Energy Score Project. Hugging Face is a platform that allows users to share AI tools and data sets. With the help of the researchers, Casey and James were able to get under the hood of a pretty closed off industry, which they’ll break down for us today. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The explosion of AI use comes with many impacts, societal, economic, public health, and so none of them are equally distributed in terms of harm. But today, we’re just focusing on the environmental cost. And speaking of cost, let’s open our first tab. How much energy does a query cost? Let’s start with a little AI 101. When we talk about the environmental impact and energy use, where is all of this computing actually taking place? MIT Technology Review’s James O’Donnell broke it down.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The computing is really taking place in buildings called data centers, which there’s about 3000 of them, uh, around the country. There’s even more as you go worldwide and really to visualize this, these are just like monolithic, huge, boring looking buildings that don’t have any windows or anything interesting on the outside and inside are just racks and racks of computers and chips and servers, crunching a lot of numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What we call artificial intelligence has existed in some form since the 1950s. But the technology that we call AI today is very different. There are many types that we now lump together under the AI umbrella, which all have different energy requirements. But for this deep dive, when we say AI, we’re referring to generative AI, specifically, the models that produce content based on a human entering a prompt. They include large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini. When it comes to generative AI models, there are typically two different processes involved: training and inference. These also factor into the total energy use.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So training is what you do when you want to build an AI model from scratch, from nothing and you, you have a large language model that is only going to be as smart as the data that you feed it. So training is basically the phase where you’re taking massive amounts of data. Normally this is a lot of language and text, which could be everything from the internet, could be every book that’s ever been written, uh, regardless of if these companies have the legal right to access that data, but they’re putting a bunch of data into this AI model. And the AI model is basically learning how to create better and better guesses of the text that it outputs. So it’s learning to generate texts, to string words together, to string sentences together and paragraphs together that sound realistic and accurate. And it’s doing that by noticing patterns of what words go together in this large data set.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So training is sort of the number crunching of feeding all of that data into an AI model and at the end, it spits out this model that has learned millions and millions of parameters, we call them, basically like knobs on an AI model that help the model understand the connections between different words. And at the end, you have this model that can generate text.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> A lot of electricity is used in the process of training that AI model. Years ago, that was like, when I say years ago, maybe two or three years ago that was the main concern of how much energy AI was using was really in that training phase. And what Casey and I discovered in our reporting is that that has changed really significantly. So most AI companies today are, you know, they’re planning for their energy budgets to be spent more on inference.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, what is inference?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Inference is every time you ask an AI model something, so every time you ask a question or have it generate an image or a video, anytime it actually does the thing of generating something that’s called inference. And so the individual amounts of energy that are used at the time of inference can be quite small or, or sort of big. Um, but it’s really the summation of all of that, that gives you kind of the energy footprint of a given AI model.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The generated output also changes the energy usage. The more complicated the prompt, the more energy it uses.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, in our reporting we looked at text, images, and video. So kind of really broadly, and again, it can still vary, even within kind of a text query, depending on how complicated your ask is. So are you asking something to rewrite the whole works of Shakespeare, but like, in pirate speak, or are you just asking for a suggestion for a recipe? The open source models that we looked at, we found that the smallest models, if you were kind of asking a sort of standard query, might use about 114 joules of electricity. That’s equivalent to roughly a 10th of a second in a microwave, so a very, very small amount of electricity. A larger text model and one of the largest text models we looked at would use a lot more, so more like 6,700 joules, that’s about eight seconds in a microwave. So again, fairly small numbers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also, the bigger the model, the more energy it uses. AI models have parameters. Like James said earlier, these are basically the adjustable knobs that allow models to make a prediction. With more parameters, AI models are more likely to generate a better response and are better equipped to handle complex requests. So, asking a chat bot, “What year did Shakespeare write Hamlet?” Is generally a less complex request than, say, “Translate all of Hamlet into pirate speak.” The smallest model that Casey and James tested had eight billion parameters. The largest had 405 billion parameters. OpenAI is pretty hush-hush about their infrastructure, but some estimate that the company’s latest model, GPT-5, is somewhere up in the trillions. So, as models get bigger, they need to run on more chips, which needs more energy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What was really surprising and what I think really stood out in our reporting was that videos, based on the models that we were looking at, used significantly more energy, so thousands of times more energy than some of the smallest text models. So one model that we looked at used about 3.4 million joules of energy. That’s about an hour of microwave time. So there’s a really wide range here.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s another factor: reasoning models. Investors are all over these right now. Reasoning models are marketed as literal thinking machines that are able to break down complex problems into logical steps instead of just predicting the next answer based on the patterns it recognizes. They’re advertised to think like a human would and supposedly will become more energy efficient the smarter the model gets. One of the researchers that Casey and James worked with at Hugging Tree put this to the test.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, a lot of people are excited about this idea of reasoning models. And so when this researcher studied these and figured out whether or not they’re energy efficient, she found that a lot these reasoning models can actually use 30 times more energy than a non-reasoning model.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then there’s the water usage. AI datacenters use massive quantities of water.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is something that has been a conversation and there’s still I think, to some extent, a lot of uncertainty about. But basically, data centers use water directly for a lot cooling systems. A lot of data centers are cooled with what’s called evaporative cooling. So, you know, water evaporates to cool down the equipment. There’s also sort of indirect water use, which is a little trickier to calculate, but there’s also water that’s used in power plants. And so if you kind of think, okay, the power plant is needed to power the data center. So the water used in the power plant, you can kind of attribute to AI as well. Oftentimes the water that is required in a data center has to be very, very high quality, very pure water because you’re dealing with very sensitive equipment. And so there is this big conversation about water. Google released estimates about its water use per query as well, but kind of to sum it up, there is a pretty major water requirement and we’re starting to see that as, again, data centers are being built in places, including those that are very water stressed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So that’s what we do know about AI and energy consumption. This is the usage that can be measured, even if companies aren’t the most upfront about their numbers. But what about everything else? We’re opening a new tab, after this break. Welcome back, we’re opening a new tab. What AI energy use isn’t being measured? So we’ve talked about the front and most visible uses, energy usages, generating videos, generating lists, translating Shakespeare’s text into pirate speak, right. What’s happening in the background that’s also using up energy? Like, how many times do you have to run a microwave for those processes?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I think it’s hard to know. Like since we’ve done this reporting, AI is being put into many parts of our online life and we don’t always have a lot of choice or visibility into how AI is being using used. So for example, Google famously, uh, went from just presenting you search results to then summarizing those search results with AI overviews. So now for the most part, people aren’t looking very far down that search page, they’re actually just relying on the AI overview. We would love to know how much energy is used by Google every time it creates an AI overview and the percentage of those searches that it uses overviews for, we weren’t able to get that information. Uh, Google wouldn’t share it with us. And so, you know, AI is being put into all these different parts of our online life. And I think we’ll look back on this as the sort of like simplest calculation of, of being able to estimate, you now, how much is used when you try and make a recipe or generate an image or something. But the truth is, as you point out, AI is sort of being put into everything and it’s going to be harder and harder to sort of track the footprint as that goes on.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Can you elaborate on why this topic appears to be so divisive and so confusing for so many people having to confront their energy usage through AI?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay. I have thoughts, but I’m sure Casey does too. So, you know, it’s not like asking ChatGPT a question is like, you know, polluting the earth as much as driving a 3000 mile road trip, right? Like ,we’re talking about small, relatively small numbers here, but it gets a lot of attention, I think, because public opinion for AI right now is just so abysmally low because so many people are skeptical of whether or not it’s really benefiting all of us. And I think the energy footprint is just kind of this glaring issue for people that say, like, what are we getting out of this technology, especially if it’s sort of draining us of resources.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think part of the interesting phenomenon is that AI has really like crashed onto the scene for the general public. It’s this whole kind of new thing that we’re all having to kind of reckon with, like what is this doing to our brains? What is this going to our grids? It’s I think it’s natural to question this like entirely new thing. Another thing that I think is really interesting is that, as James mentioned, this is becoming less so, but to this point, it’s kind of discreet and countable in a way that a lot of our other activity, especially online activity, isn’t. You can go out on and, you know, how many times am I messaging this thing? So I think that kind of has lended itself to the natural kind of like, well, how much does each one of these queries, what does that mean for energy?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Google recently released data on the energy footprint of its AI model, Gemini, a couple of months after you guys put out your report. What did you make of that? Like, was it helpful? Can we trust those numbers? I guess wouldn’t they be incentivized to portray themselves as very energy friendly?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it would have been nice to get these when we were reporting, but as James mentioned earlier, these companies know better than anybody what their energy footprint is. So I think there’s such value in getting some of this data. And Google had a really good technical report that went through kind of in-depth, you know, here’s where the energy is coming from this much from, you know the AI chips, this much from other processes. But I think it’s really significant what wasn’t included in that report. And what wasn’t included in the report is any sort of information about, you know, the total queries that its Gemini model gets in a day. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So Google is able to point to this number and say, hey, look, this is such a small number. It’s in line with what we found for, kind of, our median text model. You know, something like a second or so in the microwave per query. But that’s, you know, for what Google says is an average or median query. You know, it’s not kind of giving us the full range, including, you now, different kind of queries that we know would take up a lot more energy. It doesn’t include image and video, which we know are more energy intensive. And ultimately we’re not able to, without that total number of, you not, how many times is this model being queried and giving responses a day? How many users, how many daily users? We don’t know the total footprint. We can only say, here’s this little number.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s talk about the energy grid. The type of energy matters, right? Like there are a lot of discussion on renewables versus fossil fuels. What might impact where that energy comes from when it comes to building data centers and maintaining them?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is something that I really focused on in our reporting because as I think I put it in the piece, if we just had data centers that were hooked up to a bunch of solar panels and they ran when the sun is shining, oh, what a lovely world it would be, and I would be a lot less worried about all this. But the reality is that today, grids around the world are largely reliant on fossil fuels. So burning things like, you know, natural gas and coal to run the grid, keep the lights on. And one concern is what the grid will look like as energy demand from AI continues to rise.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So today, we see that data centers are really concentrated on the East Coast, in places like Virginia, tends to be very natural gas heavy, reliant on coal. There are data centers that are on grids that have a lot more solar and hydropower and wind, and that means that the relative climate impact of data centers in those places can be lower than in the more fossil fuel-heavy places.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But I think there’s a concern that as a lot, a lot of data center come online really quickly and need more electricity added to the grid in order to run, what is being added to grid in in order support those? Right now, the overwhelming answer is natural gas. And so that means that a lot of these new data centers will come with a pretty significant climate footprint attached.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We may not know the exact amount of energy that the AI industry is actually using, but what we do know is that it’s a lot, and it is putting a strain on our already limited resources. Each individual query does cost something, and it adds up. Plus, there’s everything running in the background that we can’t measure. So what is each individual person responsible for? I mean, should we be worried about the future? Is there anything that we could actually do? Time for a new tab: does my AI footprint matter in the big picture? Luckily, Casey dove into this exact topic last year. She believes that policing individual AI usage isn’t as helpful in the grand scheme of things. Here’s why we should shift our focus, instead of putting the onus on each person to change their own behavior.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">As we went through this reporting, I got a lot of questions and I had a lot of questions myself about, you know, what does this mean for me and my personal choices about AI? And again, kind of as somebody who spent a lot of time reporting on climate change, it really reminded me of the conversation around climate footprint. You know, what is my climate footprint? What should I personally do differently to help, kind of, address climate change? And what I’ve come to kind of understand through my reporting and believe is that climate change is this massive problem that goes beyond any single one of us. And there’s a really significant limit to how much our individual choices can address a global problem that is very systemic. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can compost all you want, but if only gas vehicles are available to you and that’s the only way you can get around in your community, there’s only so much you can do. And we now know that some fossil fuel funded PR campaigns helped to popularize this idea of carbon footprint to kind of shift the focus on to individuals and away from these big, powerful companies. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think that I see some parallels with AI today, you know, this attempt to kind of shift focus on, you now, well, are you using ChatGPT too many times in a day rather than what is the global impact and like, why aren’t these companies being more transparent about what the energy use of AI is on their scale. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I think ultimately, you know, there are limits to this. Like if you’re making a million AI slop videos every single day, I think that’s an individual action that you could probably safely make a choice that would be better for energy use. But overall, I think we should more be using our limited time and energy in the day to push for more transparency. You know, ask for regulations around AI and what’s powering it, and just generally not be so hard on ourselves because we operate in this system where it’s increasingly hard to get away from AI. As we’ve talked about, even if you don’t choose to go onto, you know chatgpt.com, you’re often, you’re part of this AI ecosystem. So we need to be talking about what that overall system looks like and how we can change it rather than the limited power of individuals.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the biggest unanswered questions every time a data center is open is actually like, what’s the energy source going into that? And is it going to be, you know, powered with renewable sources or not? Is it just going to run 24 seven on natural gas? And so sometimes if you hyper focus on this question of your own individual footprint, it can kind of make you forget that actually there are decisions still to be made every time the data center goes up that will arguably have a bigger impact on the sort of net footprint, net emissions of it all.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do we know about where the AI industry wants to take us in the future, near future, like three years from now? What do they need energy-wise or water-wise to get us there?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">AI companies are planning for some pretty, uh, unprecedented levels of investment in, in data centers and, you know, to power all of those unprecedented levels of investment in power plants and nuclear energy and things like that. Um, I think where they want to go, uh, is to build AI models that are bigger first of all. To do that you need more and more chips and more and more power, and so there’s an incentive to just amass all of this energy and electricity. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then on the product side of it, I think these AI companies imagine that the world of AI in five years will not just be large language models that people type to and get an answer back, but that image generation and video generation and real time voice chats are kind of a part of our everyday lives. And so they’re planning for a lot more demand as well. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so you could think of this project from OpenAI and others called Stargate, which is basically a half a trillion dollars of investment into data centers that they want to pop up around the country. And I think the reason why they’re seeing success politically from this is that AI companies have framed AI as a question of national security, right? If the US wants to win this AI race against China, then the country that has the most energy is the country will create the best AI and the sort of you know, impedance to all of that is access to, to energy. And that’s why these companies have sort of made it their top priority.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, and just to add to that, I mean, I think these big dreams about, you know, how big AI could get, it’s going to be a lot of electricity. So as of 2024, data centers used over 400 terawatt hours of electricity, about 1.5% of all electricity used around the world. By 2030, the International Energy Agency says that that could more than double reaching 945 terawatts. Sorry to use inscrutable units, but that’s about 3% of global electricity consumption.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is that in microwave hours? [\u003cem>Laughter\u003c/em>]\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A whole lot of microwaves, so many microwaves. So I think that basically we’re seeing really significant, really fast shifts and fast growth in electricity, including in places like the US that have seen very flat electricity demand for over a decade. And so I think that this is all going to add up to really complicated effects and really complicated, kind of, effects for local communities where these data centers and where these power plants are gonna be used.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>James O’Donnell: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, this is something I didn’t totally get before I learned more from Casey and before we started reporting on this. So data centers were doing a lot of stuff in the early 2000s, like, this is Netflix, social media, like, all sorts of streaming, but electricity going to those data centers stayed pretty flat, and it wasn’t until AI that you actually started to see a huge jump in the amount of electricity that data centers required.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Most AI companies, or AI hype guys who are investing very heavily in AI companies will say something like, oh, AI can solve problems like climate change, so the energy usage is worth it. How much do you guys buy into that argument? Llike, does it hold any water?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s so much potential for all kinds of AI, again, beyond chatbots, in all kinds problems that are related to climate change, from materials discovery, finding new materials that could make better batteries or help us capture carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, superconductors that can move electricity around super efficiently. There’s also ways that AI could be used to help the grid run more efficiently. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There’s really interesting research in all of these areas that I’m following very closely. But at this point, it’s all early stage. It’s all research. And I think there’s great potential for AI to be a positive force for the climate. But I think it’s absolutely irresponsible for us to punt on all of this concerns about AI’s current energy use because of some potential. Because there’s always the chance that this doesn’t work. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I think in any case, the progress could be significant, but it’s not gonna be a silver bullet. So I think we need to reckon very seriously with the current energy problems that we’re seeing now, rather than try to make some future promise that may never come true, build all this infrastructure that will be online for decades to come and could change our climate forever. Just doesn’t make sense.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What do you think the most misunderstood part of this whole energy AI use conversation is?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Casey Crownhart: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that there’s kind of a nuanced picture of just how important AI energy use is in context. So it is true that AI is probably a small part of your individual energy picture. And in fact, in terms of like the global energy use picture, it’s 3% in 2030. That doesn’t seem like very much. But that kind of change over such a short amount of time is going to be very significant for especially local grids where this is taking place. It will have significant impacts for climate change. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This kind of build out will definitely not go unnoticed by the climate, but I think the biggest impacts here will be faced by local communities seeing data centers going up, local communities with new fossil fuel infrastructure going up. And so all at once, this is a small fraction of individual and even global energy use, and a very, very significant trend for the energy system of the world.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Looking toward the future is important, but the AI industry is changing residential communities right now in real time. The data center room promises to bring jobs and economic growth, but are AI companies following through on that? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Next week, we’re taking our deep dive to one of the fastest growing hubs for AI data centers, Atlanta. But for now, let’s close all of these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was edited by Chris Hambrick and produced by Chris Egusa, who’s our senior editor and also composed our theme song and credits music. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Additional music by APM. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs producer is Maya Cueva. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager a\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor-in-Chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode’s keyboard sounds were submitted by my dad, Casey Sung, and recorded on his white and blue Apple Maker Ala F99 keyboard with Greywood V3 switches and Cherry Profile PBT keycaps. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nOkay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but… if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends too, or even your enemies, or frenemies. And if you really like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate.kqed.org/podcasts. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How easy is it to find someone from a single video posted online? To find out, Morgan put her own privacy to the test. She asked TikTok creator JoseMonkey, who’s famous for geolocating people who send him videos asking to be found, to track her down. JoseMonkey started as a geolocation hobbyist who turned to creating videos to bring attention to common mistakes people make when posting online.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan breaks down why personal operational security matters and what digital hygiene actually looks like in practice. JoseMonkey walks through how he finds people using the smallest scraps of information, and the steps you can take to make sure you aren’t exposing too much in your posts. And Eva Galperin, cybersecurity director of Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains how to use a process called “threat modeling” to protect your online privacy in a way that’s practical rather than paranoid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC4398554612\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://josemonkey.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose Monkey\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, content creator and online privacy advocate\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/about/staff/eva-galperin\">Eva Galperin\u003c/a>, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We partnered with KQED’s audience news team on a companion guide that breaks down online privacy in a clear, shareable format. You can find it, along with other explainers and guides, on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/explainers\">KQED’s explainers page\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2025/06/06/have-llms-finally-mastered-geolocation/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Have LLMs Finally Mastered Geolocation?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Foeke Postma and Nathan Patin, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bellingcat\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://ssd.eff.org/\">Surveillance Self-Defense\u003c/a> — The Electronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j00qG1bDlP8\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How micro-online posting can be a macro privacy risk \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— JoseMonkey, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TedX Talks\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of us might feel pretty confident about our online privacy. But how confident are you, really? Enough to challenge Josemonkey? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m JoseMonkey and I find people who ask to be found. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 1 from JoseMonkey TikTok video]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, JoseMonkey, where am I? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 2 from JoseMonkey TikTok video] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tell me where I am, JoseMonkey. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 3 from JoseMonkey TikTok video]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">JoseMonkey, please come and find me\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You may have seen Jose’s videos on TikTok or YouTube. He’s a content creator, online privacy advocate, and amateur geolocation researcher.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> People send me videos recorded from all over the world, and I try to figure out where those videos were recorded and say, you know, here is where you were when you did that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oversharing is the social norm online. Take one scroll through any social media app, and count how many posts you see of someone else’s private life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I, for one, tend to be overly cautious when it comes to posting and privacy. As a journalist, and also someone who’s been maybe too online since a young age, I don’t know how to not post. But I also take my privacy very seriously and take precautions when I post. I scrutinize every photo and video to make sure that there’s nothing identifiable like street names or even window views. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I share my location with trusted loved ones on “Find My Friends,” but you’ll never catch me publicly posting about where I am until after I’ve left. I don’t like the idea of total strangers knowing where I am at any given moment.But for the sake of content and this show, I faced my fears and asked Jose to find me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan video for JoseMonkey 1]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi Josemonkey, I’ll give you a hint. I am somewhere in Los Angeles. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I recorded that video, wiped the location metadata and then triple checked that it was in fact wiped, and then sent it off to Jose. We got on a call a few days later. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Well, I have to say that video, um, I don’t know if, if it is possible for me to find it or not. I will be, you know, totally transparent and say that,\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Honestly? I went out of my way to give Jose a bit of a challenge. I recorded this video across the street from a strip of bars and restaurants in East Los Angeles. I took it at night, with the flash on, so the background was pretty dark. In fact, Jose wasn’t able to find me by the time I interviewed him a few days later.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There’s not a lot of writing. I think there was the word public, um, it looked like, uh, behind you, um, on a building. But other than that, there really wasn’t a lot to see there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was convinced that I had done it. I was the one who stumped JoseMonkey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My stranger danger philosophy finally paid off. Until Jose emailed me two weeks later with Google Maps coordinates. There, on Eagle Rock Boulevard, was a little red pin where I had parked and recorded the video before heading to the wine bar. So, I called up Jose again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I, I found an area that looked like it might be right, so I was like checking to look at, and I, and I panned over and I saw the words on there and I was like, wait a minute. And I was like, if that says public, and, uh, I, I audibly gasped. I could not believe I found it. It was a bit of needle in the haystack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I also can’t believe you found it. And it’s funny because I went through the effort of like, I even cropped in the video a bit, so you couldn’t even see, I don’t think you could see any street signs. I was like, I’m gonna make sure you can’t even see the corner of the sidewalk. In case that’s like a hint.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>JoseMonkey: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I basically sent you a video that I would’ve recorded and put online myself, um, knowing that I am a little bit paranoid about this kind of thing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right. So I think that’s a really good point and I think that’s why it’s a good example because while I like to, you know, come up with clever ways to find people, um, the important takeaway here is that a sufficiently motivated individual who has an attention to detail and time to spend can find you from a video like that now. Again, I don’t wanna scare people by saying that, but, uh, people should know it is possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just what you post that makes your privacy vulnerable. Your digital footprint includes all of your online activity. Passwords, location data, banking details, and tons of other sensitive information can be obtained regardless of your social media use. That information, in the hands of bad actors can be used for scams, stalking, and a whole slate of nefarious activities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what does practicing digital hygiene entail? How do you make yourself less findable, without giving up on the internet entirely? And, the burning question: How did JoseMonkey find me? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this is a practice known as Personal OpSec. That’s short for Operations Security. It involves assessing risk and taking precautions to protect your personal information. Essentially, trying to minimize your digital footprint. And this can be super overwhelming, especially if you, like many other people, have used the internet for the last 20 years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s start by breaking down how bad actors get a hold of this information. And it usually starts with details that are already posted on public social media accounts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time to open our first tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you find someone online? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose spent a lot of time trying to find me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So for the, the video that you sent me from Los Angeles, there was not really a lot of information there. Honestly, it was a grind. I was looking at just many, many different locations.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some of the things I observed, um, as I did that is that your video had utility poles on the side of the road that you were on, as well as on the other side. And, um, it seems like a small detail, but not every street in LA has those kinds of utility poles and doesn’t necessarily have them on both sides. The intersection that you were sort of close to wasn’t at like a 90 degree intersection. It was at sort of an angle and I could tell that there was a road kind of coming into another road where there was what appeared to be, like, a median in the middle because we have a bush that appears just like in the middle of the road. So I knew that, that that had to be a divided road, which again, you know, helps to, helps to limit the number of possible places, right? So, um, so long story short, and I probably spent hours. It was multiple hours for sure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s worth noting that Jose doesn’t have a background in privacy or security. He was a geolocation hobbyist for over a decade—a hobby that revolves around online maps and location data. This hobby made him more aware of how much people were sharing about themselves online and how that information could be used against them. So a few years ago, he decided to raise awareness by using an approach that would actually get people to pay attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I had this idea that maybe I could demonstrate that, through a video in which I would walk through the process of how I could look at a seemingly, you know, um, you know, mundane video that doesn’t show very much and show how I was able to figure out exactly where it was. And I, I thought that might be something that people would think was both interesting, but maybe slightly unsettling and then they would, you know, pay attention to this, um, this idea of, of, uh, internet safety.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When someone first, uh, tags you in a video and they’re like, hi, JoseMonkey, please find me. Um, you pull up that video, what’s the first thing you do?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> First I download the videos so that I can get them on a big screen. I can, you know, freeze frame, slow it down, zoom way in, all the things that are gonna give me the best shot at seeing everything that’s in the video. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose isn’t using highly technical or exclusive tools in his process. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> People often joke that like, oh, you must be with one of the three letter agencies. Nah, I’m just a regular guy and I’m just using, you know, the same stuff that, that you have access to on your computer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You might see this one tag on his videos: OSINT. That’s the practice of using open source intelligence or publicly available sources to collect and analyze information. Those sources can include public government databases, mapping tools like Google Maps, or crowdsourced projects like OpenStreetMap, a collaborative map of the world. And sometimes, it gets a little more niche. You know those sites where train hobbyists track railroad routes, or preservationists archive old headstones in cemeteries? Turns out, those niche sites are super helpful for geolocation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Just the other day I posted a video in which I found someone who was standing in a, a park near a, a bridge\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and I happen to know that there is a website that catalogs historic bridges and that you can search for them by various different characteristics of those bridges, like, what kind of bridge it is, what, what the bridge carries, how many spans it has, things like that. And, um, I was able to find them actually fairly quickly just by using, you know, that database to look up, uh, the bridges that matched the criteria I was looking for. So that was a very specific case. Like I knew I needed a bridge, so I used a bridge website, right. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But sometimes I will need to correlate bits of information I see in the video, like, you’re at a particular brand of gas station and it’s close to a water tower and also very close to, I don’t know, say like a, a golf course. Like, if I can see all those things in a video, there are tools that you can use to, uh, find those things in close proximity to each other. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When people record videos, usually if you record a video that you’re posting on the internet or a photo, whatever it is, you are usually very focused on the things in the foreground: yourself, your cat, whatever you’re, you know, you’re recording a video of. But it’s all the things in the background that I’m looking at. So I’m just trying to see was there a sign you didn’t realize was there? Is there, uh, a car with a license plate that might tell me what state this is, things like that. I’m looking at all the details in the background. Very specifically, anything with writing on it is always, um, something that to me, um, you know, is, is likely to be useful in my search.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometimes, a person might not even need those little details to find someone else’s location, because an app will do the work for them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So before Jose was able to find my first location in Los Angeles, I had actually sent him a second video, as a backup, in case he couldn’t find me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Morgan video for JoseMonkey 2]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s a hint … I am not in LA anymore … Good luck with the search! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He was able to locate that one pretty quickly and wanted to highlight a specific tool he used. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Um, some of the things we can see in that video are what appears to be an outdoor hockey rink. Um. It’s, uh, it is near a fairly large body of water. I didn’t know if it was a lake or a river or a bay or what it was.But it looked pretty big. Across the water. We can see some, some buildings and they look like older buildings, maybe brick buildings. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose started looking for outdoor hockey rinks near bodies of water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I used a different tool and this is a thing that I feel like people should know about. I used a reverse image search tool. The specific one I used is Google Lens, which many people are probably, uh, familiar with. What it does is you can take a picture, whether it’s just a photograph or a still frame from a video and plug that into this tool, and it will try to find images online that match that thing. And frequently it can tell you where a place is. So I, I guess you were in Queens, like Bayside, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. Exactly there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I was able to plug that into Google Lens and it showed me somebody’s Instagram post, which was taken very near there. And it wasn’t obvious at first exactly where it was, but it was pretty straightforward from there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose doesn’t like to use Google Lens for his videos, because he said it takes the fun out of the game. For him, finding people is like solving a puzzle. But he pointed out that AI-powered tools like Google Lens are becoming increasingly common. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You know, there are fancy tools and sophisticated queries that you can do to find all sorts of places, and I love doing that. But sometimes it’s either somebody with access to something like Google Lens that we all have access to, or somebody who’s just willing to look at the streets of Los Angeles for hours on end. Um, so people need to know that. Those are all possibilities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so now that we understand how people can be found through their videos, let’s talk about how to avoid being found. And no, you don’t necessarily have to move off the grid and stop using the internet entirely to do that. We’re talking about internet safety … that’s after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you post safely? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back with JoseMonkey. He’s the TikTok creator who finds people, but only if they want to be found. If you don’t want to be found? He’s going to walk us through some of the most common mistakes that people make when posting photos or videos of themselves online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> One mistake that is really easy to rectify is really to just review what you’re posting before you post it. Many people really don’t, they record something and they just press send, whatever the button says in the app.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, you know, if they’re recording those things and not really reviewing them, they may not even realize that there was like some big thing that they forgot that they didn’t want to include. And sometimes fixing that is so easy. Most of the social media apps, even if you record a video in app, they give you editing tools to trim and, you know, edit or, or put a sticker, right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So like, even if you recorded a video and you realize after the fact, once you review it, that, oh no, there was a street sign right behind me that tells everybody where I was. You can either trim that piece out, sometimes you can put a sticker over it in the app and you know, those can be good ways to obscure the information or, you know, if there’s time you might be able to just rerecord it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But if you never reviewed it, you wouldn’t even have a chance to figure that out and it might be out there before you even realize what you know, what information you revealed. So I’d say that’s a really big one.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I feel like there are very obvious ways to find people. Like I see so many videos of people posting their new apartment tours or posting their walk from their home, from the front door of their home all the way to like, walking their kids to school, you know, and like kind of showing that whole walk. And that’s pretty obvious, like, that is a safety risk. But what are the more, I guess, subtle tells that people should be more aware of?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The more you move the camera, the more information you’re going to show. So I think people don’t realize sometimes, it’s definitely true that like if you’re out for a walk somewhere, people can see everything around you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometimes people record videos in their car, even in moving cars, which I don’t really recommend because it’s not particularly safe. But I think people underestimate how much you can see through the windows of your car. I think they think that, like, they’re in their car, it’s kinda like being in their house and, you know, nobody’s gonna see anything. But that is not always the case. Sometimes you can see quite a lot through the rear windshield, through the windows, sometimes even in the mirrors. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another thing I would say about cars is that sometimes people really don’t think about the fact that most of us have a GPS in our car that tells you where you are at any given time. And if you just happen to be recording in your car and you just are looking around and you show people your GPS, well you just told everybody where you are. So I think that it is good to consider each individual video, or photo or whatever you’re creating.But it’s also important to consider the aggregate. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it may be that you only revealed one little piece of information in your video that tells people something, but you may not remember that like three years ago, you posted something that’s still there on your account that revealed some other bit of information. Right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another thing that I would say is your digital footprint is really bigger than one account or one platform. Chances are you have lots of different accounts and now it’s like, okay, well now I have this whole, you know, just wealth of data about you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if, two years ago, you tweeted something and it kind of gave people a vague idea of what city you lived in. And then over on Instagram you posted something else that shows your face, right? And so now people they know what city you live in, they know what you look like.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then maybe on some other social media site, maybe you use your real name, right? Like, maybe your LinkedIn is connected there and now that says like your full name and where you work. So now people have like, you know, all these bits and pieces of information about you, right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that it’s really worth everyone’s time to consider like, how much of my information do I want out there? And if you feel like, you know, well, I’m not really at risk there, well then, you know, you can roll the dice and see what happens.But people’s information ends up getting leaked even when they’re being relatively good about it. So some people are just like, well, you know, why should I bother? But you don’t necessarily need to make it easier for people. Right? Just because it’s already possible that they might get your information some other way.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I would say there’s never a better time to start, you know, policing your own internet hygiene than when you realize you made a mistake. Practicing it is really the best thing you can do because it becomes easier when you’re in the habit of reviewing the video, you’re in the habit of saying like, oh wait, what was in shot when I took, that photo? It becomes a bit second nature, I think.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Digital hygiene involves more than just what you post. Your social accounts might be private, or, you might not use social media at all. But you probably still use the internet—for online shopping, or job applications, or just logging into your banking app. All of that involves a feast of personal data which might land in the wrong hands. So how do you protect it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is a threat model? \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eva Galperin is the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for digital privacy and free speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So trying to protect everything from everybody all the time is, uh, is overwhelming and confusing, and honestly, you don’t need to do it. The only way to protect everything from everybody all the time is to go live as a hermit, on a mountain and fling all of your devices into the sea, uh, which is presumably located near this mountain.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t panic though, Eva’s going to explain why you don’t need to do all that just to stay safe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Threat modeling is, uh, a way of thinking about. Uh, what you wanna protect, who you want to protect it from, uh, in such a way that leads you to the appropriate mitigation so that you do the stuff that protects the things that are important in cases that are likely to happen instead of spending all of your time just becoming a hermit and fleeing your devices into the ocean.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Threat modeling is important, because everyone has different security needs. It involves asking yourself a series of questions: what you want to protect? who you want to protect it from? How do you want to protect it? how bad will the consequences be if you fail? And how far are you willing to go to protect it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, I have a very precious American Girl doll that I’ve had since I was a kid—that’s what I want to protect. Who do I want to protect it from? My rambunctious family members who are a bit too young to play with it. How bad are the consequences if I fail? Well, my doll’s hair will probably never be the same. How much trouble am I willing to go through to prevent that? I’m not going to go as far as locking the doll away in some museum grade case—keeping it on a shelf that the kids can’t reach until they’re older will probably be enough. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s threat modeling, but the cherished childhood toy is your personal information. Who you want to protect it from, and how you need to protect it, depends on your situation. And threat modeling looks different for everyone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For example, abortion is now illegal in 13 states. Let’s look at the needs of those involved in abortion access—a group that will want to protect themselves and patients from government surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Someone who volunteers to drive patients to and from their abortions might use a VPN and a secondary, anonymous social account for their volunteer work. They may use an encrypted messaging app like Signal to communicate with patients. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Presumably you are not interested in having some sort of third party get their hands on those messages. A lot of the time people will tell you, you know, our messages are encrypted. Encryption is a term that could mean a lot of different things. And sometimes what it means is that the message is encrypted in transit, meaning that like, a third party, like the telco, can’t read it. And sometimes it is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that even the platform that you are on is unable to read your messages. And this is really important because if governments and law enforcement wanna get their hands on your messages, what they do is they show up with like, a warrant or a subpoena to the telco or to the company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so if the telco or the company doesn’t have that information, then they need to show up to you in order to get that information, or they need to show up to the person who is on the other end of that conversation, and that gives you the ability to go lawyer up and potentially fight this subpoena and to know when your information is being handed out, which is a thing that you would not, uh, necessarily know otherwise. So what you should be looking for in your messaging service is end-to-end encryption. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anyone involved in abortion access may also disable location services or turn off their phone when they’re around reproductive healthcare clinics. And why does that matter? Well … \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So there is an entire industry of people who run around building up sort of profiles of people based on who they are and where they’re going, and what websites they look at, and what apps they download and where they are located, what their preferences are, what they buy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And what they do is they gather up all of this information. Uh, sometimes they, uh, gather it from many different sources and then they aggregate it in order to make an even more detailed and clear picture about who you are. And then they turn around and they sell this information usually to advertisers, or to people who are interested in sort of targeting certain kinds of groups with advertising but also to governments and law enforcements and even to individuals. You can sign up for, uh, all kinds of data broker services. They market themselves as people finder sites and you can find out a lot about people simply by subscribing to one of those and entering the information that you want about somebody into one of those. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A journalist covering abortion, on the other hand, will have a different threat model, especially when it comes to protecting their sources and themselves.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Some of the other things that you might want to do as a journalist is you might wanna think about the way in which you communicate with your sources, especially if your sources prefer to remain anonymous. You wanna make sure that you can protect them. So you might wanna communicate with them through Signal, for example, instead of over WhatsApp or over SMS or carrier pigeon.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You may also wanna think about anti-harassment. One of the big problems that journalists face, especially female journalists and journalists from marginalized groups and communities, is they disproportionately face harassment for their work.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And you might wanna think about just doing a full review of what it is possible to find out about you online through like, a simple search engine search. And if you find stuff that you think is, may potentially be used against you by harassers, you can take that stuff down. You can lock it up. You can make those posts private, If it is on a platform that has, uh, you know, the ability to make private posts, um. Or if somebody else is hosting it, this is actually one of the most common sources of, uh, sort of data leaks about our private lives. It’s not, uh, our posting stuff about where we are and what we’re doing, but our friends posting stuff and often they will. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It would also behoove journalists to talk to their friends and family and their colleagues about how they talk about each other in public spaces. And I don’t mean like at the cafe, I mean like in digital public spaces where, where everything can be seen, where you just make an agreement that you’re not going to post stuff about each other, uh, without permission. So if you’re gonna post a photo that your friend is in, you just ask your friend in advance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And sometimes the threat isn’t anonymous trolls, the government, or friends from afar. It could be the people you live with.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Threat modeling for domestic abuse situations is actually incredibly hard. Uh, one of the reasons for that is because you are dealing with a person who has physical access to your stuff, who may be able to compel you to hand over your passwords to your various devices, who knows you and your friends and where you are likely to go.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s very difficult to come up with a way to fool someone with whom you have a very close romantic connection because they could, you know, they could call up your friends and family and tell them, I’m just really concerned about my partner and their wellbeing, so if you could just tell me where they are. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s one of the things that I see the most often and so when I talk to survivors of domestic abuse who are looking for a way to leave their abuser, the very first thing that I do is I try to help them just come up with like one account or one device, or one platform where they know their communications are safe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, threat modeling looks different for everyone. If you’re not a journalist, or an activist, or celebrity, or influencer, or anyone else in a public-facing, highly scrutinized career, what’s the threat? For most people, it’s the scammers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> One of the big problems that we have right now is that we are in a golden age of grift. This is, if you exist in the digital world at all, if you have a phone, if you have an email address, if you have ways of getting messages sent to you, then you’re constantly getting messages from scammers and from criminals, and often they’re, they’re after different things. In the long term what they’re after is usually money, sometimes. In the short term what they’re after is access to your accounts, or access to other people who trust you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One common method is known as ransomware, which is a type of malware, an umbrella term for malicious software. Bad actors trick you into downloading software that locks up your device and holds it hostage until you pay a ransom. Do they unlock your device once you pay? Not always. Sometimes, adversaries use malware to spy on you, control your devices, and steal your information.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A more common threat is known as phishing. That’s phishing with a PH. Sometimes, it arrives in your inbox with the same logo and name as your bank, inviting you to log in. But if you look closer, the email address is slightly off. Or it could look like someone claiming to be your boss, instructing you to log into your work account as soon as possible. They even impersonate family members and partners. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Basically, phishing scams pretend to be someone you trust, and they lure you to click on a link, or log into their fake site, in order to obtain your username and password. Sometimes, clicking on a phishing attack link also installs malware, so it’s a real double whammy of security hell.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Some of the stuff to look for as a sort of indicator of a scam is a sense of urgency. Something is on fire, an emergency is happening, or like you could get rich if you click here in the next like five minutes. And that sense of urgency is aimed at overriding your common sense. And a lot of us feel very smart because, you know, every day we get targeted with like six of these things and we don’t fall for it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But what’s really important to understand is that all the scammer needs is for you to have one bad day. If they come at you half a dozen times a day, eventually you’re gonna be tired, you’re gonna be cranky. Something’s gonna look plausible to you. And even the smartest person, even the most, you know, technically adept and aware person can get scammed and can end up sort of the, the victim of one of these grifters.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have to stay humble. We need to maintain eternal vigilance and also we need to not blame the people who fall for these things. I think that there’s a lot of like, well, you’re, you’re just too dumb. You didn’t see it. I wouldn’t have clicked on that. And I think that kind of victim blaming really is counterproductive.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, so we’ve covered threat modeling. Luckily, there are precautions you can take that might give you a few extra layers of protection in case you do fall for one of these scams. They’re also just good habits for everyone. What do they look like in practice?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s open one last tab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Digital hygiene checklist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Well the good news is that there’s some just basic like wash-your-hands, data privacy hygiene that everyone can engage in that will make things safer for them from most of the kinds of threats that most people face every day,\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> First on the checklist: Passwords \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Secure your accounts. In order to secure your accounts, you wanna make sure that all of your passwords are different from one another, and that they are long.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because a long password is what makes a password harder to crack. But then you are left with the question of how are you going to remember all of these very long, strong passwords that are different from one another? And for that, you use a password manager. So I recommend that everybody install a password manager on their devices. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Your password manager will be unlocked with a single password. That single password, again, should be long and strong and easy for you to memorize. In order to make it easier for you to memorize, I usually recommend a pass phrase, like five or six words chosen at random, because that’s easier to remember than just like 40 or 50 random numbers and letters. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are a couple of things that you should think about. The most important one is to go to your nearest friendly search engine and do a search on the name of the passport manager and security incident. So you wanna go look to see whether or not it has a history of being broken into, a history of being untrustworthy. If it has a history of being untrustworthy, don’t touch it. If you don’t find a bunch of security incidents, it’s probably okay or good enough. The best password manager is the one that you actually use. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then there’s a nifty little shield called two-factor authentication. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So two-factor authentication just means that in order to get into this account, you now need two things instead of one thing. You need the password and you need an authentication code, which is sent to you in some fashion. The most common way in which we receive authentication codes is usually over SMS.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you are sent a text message. That text message goes to your phone. This is the least secure way of securing an account. And the reason for this is SMS messages are not encrypted, which means that it is possible to intercept them, for example, at the Telco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is much easier for other people to get their hands on these messages and to use them to log into your account. Uh, it is still better than nothing in most cases. Having 2FA over SMS is in most cases probably better than having no 2FA at all. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the better way in which to have your second factor of authentication work is through an authenticator app. So you install an app on your device, and what it does is you sync it to your account and when you are logging in you go to the app and it will give you the code that you enter in addition to your password. This is safer because it is not sending that data over SMS. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For extra security, some people might opt for a physical key, which is almost like a little keychain-sized flash drive you stick into your devices to log in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Now this is both good and bad, if you lose your physical key, you are permanently locked out of your device. So the bad news is it works. This also means that if you break your physical key and you don’t have like, a backup key somewhere, you can end up locked out of your account.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And most importantly, if you are in a situation in which you need to secure your account against somebody who has access to your stuff, who has physical access to you, who might get their hands on your key chain, where you have put all of your physical keys, then this is especially unsafe. So this is not a solution that I recommend, uh, to survivors of domestic abuse, whose abusers still have physical access to them or the spaces they’re in or to their stuff.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then, there’s dodging the data brokers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The other thing that you might wanna do is, with your web browser, you might want to install Privacy Badger, which is a web extension which eats tracking cookies. One of the ways in which data brokers figure out where you’re going from one website to another and what you are doing is through the use of cookies. And if you have a web extension that makes it impossible for those cookies to follow you across the web, that makes things more difficult. So those are the basic things that are probably very good for everyone to do and that will take care of most of your problems most of the time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">See, that’s not so bad, is it? You don’t need the shiniest, most expensive, top of the line cybersecurity tools just to stay safe online. Most of the time, a little digital hand washing goes a long way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The truth here is that trying to protect everything from everybody all the time is a good way to drive yourself insane. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Some people are almost like either overwhelmed by the idea of having to lock it all down, or some people are almost like resigned to a world without privacy because that’s just the new normal. What would you say to them? Why does privacy still matter?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Well to begin with, you don’t have to lock it all down. You really don’t. You can still exist in the world. The whole idea behind privacy is not that, again, you should be a hermit who lives on a mountain with no devices. The idea behind securing your digital existence and understanding your footprint on the internet is to enable you to do the things that you want to do and that are important to you in the safest possible way.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, before you post yourself, and especially before posting other people, consider practicing a little digital hygiene—at least a spritz of some digital hand sanitizer. As you can hear from my voice today, it’s flu season, after all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We also teamed up with KQED’s audience news team on a digital guide that breaks down everything we talked about today in a convenient, shareable format. You can find that guide, and a bunch of other great explainers, at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/explainers\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED.org/explainers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. And check the show notes for more privacy and security resources. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And one more quick thing before we go, we’re working on a Valentine’s Day episode and we want to hear from you! When do you think is the right time, if ever, to share your location with a significant other? Do you have a hot take on this, or a juicy story? Send us a voice note at closealltabs@kqed.org.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, now let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Hambrick. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Egusa is our senior editor, and also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, and I know it’s podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives, and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends, too. Or even your enemies! Or… frenemies? And if you \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">really\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate dot KQED dot org slash podcasts! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also, we want to hear from you! Email us CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on instagram at “close all tabs pod.” Or TikTok at “close all tabs.” Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
"blocks": [],
"excerpt": "How easy is it to find someone from a single video posted online? To find out, Morgan put her own privacy to the test.",
"status": "publish",
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"title": "Your Digital Footprint Reveals More Than You Think | KQED",
"description": "How easy is it to find someone from a single video posted online? To find out, Morgan put her own privacy to the test. She asked TikTok creator JoseMonkey, who’s famous for geolocating people who send him videos asking to be found, to track her down. JoseMonkey started as a geolocation hobbyist who turned to creating videos to bring attention to common mistakes people make when posting online.In this episode, Morgan breaks down why personal operational security matters and what digital hygiene actually looks like in practice. JoseMonkey walks through how he finds people using the smallest scraps of information, and the steps you can take to make sure you aren’t exposing too much in your posts. And Eva Galperin, cybersecurity director of Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains how to use a process called “threat modeling” to protect your online privacy in a way that’s practical rather than paranoid.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How easy is it to find someone from a single video posted online? To find out, Morgan put her own privacy to the test. She asked TikTok creator JoseMonkey, who’s famous for geolocating people who send him videos asking to be found, to track her down. JoseMonkey started as a geolocation hobbyist who turned to creating videos to bring attention to common mistakes people make when posting online.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In this episode, Morgan breaks down why personal operational security matters and what digital hygiene actually looks like in practice. JoseMonkey walks through how he finds people using the smallest scraps of information, and the steps you can take to make sure you aren’t exposing too much in your posts. And Eva Galperin, cybersecurity director of Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains how to use a process called “threat modeling” to protect your online privacy in a way that’s practical rather than paranoid. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC4398554612\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guests:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://josemonkey.com/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose Monkey\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, content creator and online privacy advocate\u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/about/staff/eva-galperin\">Eva Galperin\u003c/a>, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We partnered with KQED’s audience news team on a companion guide that breaks down online privacy in a clear, shareable format. You can find it, along with other explainers and guides, on \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/explainers\">KQED’s explainers page\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/how-tos/2025/06/06/have-llms-finally-mastered-geolocation/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Have LLMs Finally Mastered Geolocation?\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Foeke Postma and Nathan Patin, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Bellingcat\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://ssd.eff.org/\">Surveillance Self-Defense\u003c/a> — The Electronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j00qG1bDlP8\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How micro-online posting can be a macro privacy risk \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— JoseMonkey, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TedX Talks\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A lot of us might feel pretty confident about our online privacy. But how confident are you, really? Enough to challenge Josemonkey? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I’m JoseMonkey and I find people who ask to be found. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 1 from JoseMonkey TikTok video]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hey, JoseMonkey, where am I? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 2 from JoseMonkey TikTok video] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Tell me where I am, JoseMonkey. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 3 from JoseMonkey TikTok video]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">JoseMonkey, please come and find me\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You may have seen Jose’s videos on TikTok or YouTube. He’s a content creator, online privacy advocate, and amateur geolocation researcher.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> People send me videos recorded from all over the world, and I try to figure out where those videos were recorded and say, you know, here is where you were when you did that.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Oversharing is the social norm online. Take one scroll through any social media app, and count how many posts you see of someone else’s private life.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I, for one, tend to be overly cautious when it comes to posting and privacy. As a journalist, and also someone who’s been maybe too online since a young age, I don’t know how to not post. But I also take my privacy very seriously and take precautions when I post. I scrutinize every photo and video to make sure that there’s nothing identifiable like street names or even window views. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I share my location with trusted loved ones on “Find My Friends,” but you’ll never catch me publicly posting about where I am until after I’ve left. I don’t like the idea of total strangers knowing where I am at any given moment.But for the sake of content and this show, I faced my fears and asked Jose to find me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[\u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Morgan video for JoseMonkey 1]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Hi Josemonkey, I’ll give you a hint. I am somewhere in Los Angeles. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I recorded that video, wiped the location metadata and then triple checked that it was in fact wiped, and then sent it off to Jose. We got on a call a few days later. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Well, I have to say that video, um, I don’t know if, if it is possible for me to find it or not. I will be, you know, totally transparent and say that,\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Honestly? I went out of my way to give Jose a bit of a challenge. I recorded this video across the street from a strip of bars and restaurants in East Los Angeles. I took it at night, with the flash on, so the background was pretty dark. In fact, Jose wasn’t able to find me by the time I interviewed him a few days later.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> There’s not a lot of writing. I think there was the word public, um, it looked like, uh, behind you, um, on a building. But other than that, there really wasn’t a lot to see there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I was convinced that I had done it. I was the one who stumped JoseMonkey. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">My stranger danger philosophy finally paid off. Until Jose emailed me two weeks later with Google Maps coordinates. There, on Eagle Rock Boulevard, was a little red pin where I had parked and recorded the video before heading to the wine bar. So, I called up Jose again.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I, I found an area that looked like it might be right, so I was like checking to look at, and I, and I panned over and I saw the words on there and I was like, wait a minute. And I was like, if that says public, and, uh, I, I audibly gasped. I could not believe I found it. It was a bit of needle in the haystack.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I also can’t believe you found it. And it’s funny because I went through the effort of like, I even cropped in the video a bit, so you couldn’t even see, I don’t think you could see any street signs. I was like, I’m gonna make sure you can’t even see the corner of the sidewalk. In case that’s like a hint.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>JoseMonkey: \u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Laughs]\u003c/span>\u003c/i> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I basically sent you a video that I would’ve recorded and put online myself, um, knowing that I am a little bit paranoid about this kind of thing.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Right. So I think that’s a really good point and I think that’s why it’s a good example because while I like to, you know, come up with clever ways to find people, um, the important takeaway here is that a sufficiently motivated individual who has an attention to detail and time to spend can find you from a video like that now. Again, I don’t wanna scare people by saying that, but, uh, people should know it is possible. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And it’s not just what you post that makes your privacy vulnerable. Your digital footprint includes all of your online activity. Passwords, location data, banking details, and tons of other sensitive information can be obtained regardless of your social media use. That information, in the hands of bad actors can be used for scams, stalking, and a whole slate of nefarious activities. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So what does practicing digital hygiene entail? How do you make yourself less findable, without giving up on the internet entirely? And, the burning question: How did JoseMonkey find me? \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So this is a practice known as Personal OpSec. That’s short for Operations Security. It involves assessing risk and taking precautions to protect your personal information. Essentially, trying to minimize your digital footprint. And this can be super overwhelming, especially if you, like many other people, have used the internet for the last 20 years.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s start by breaking down how bad actors get a hold of this information. And it usually starts with details that are already posted on public social media accounts. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Time to open our first tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you find someone online? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose spent a lot of time trying to find me. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So for the, the video that you sent me from Los Angeles, there was not really a lot of information there. Honestly, it was a grind. I was looking at just many, many different locations.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some of the things I observed, um, as I did that is that your video had utility poles on the side of the road that you were on, as well as on the other side. And, um, it seems like a small detail, but not every street in LA has those kinds of utility poles and doesn’t necessarily have them on both sides. The intersection that you were sort of close to wasn’t at like a 90 degree intersection. It was at sort of an angle and I could tell that there was a road kind of coming into another road where there was what appeared to be, like, a median in the middle because we have a bush that appears just like in the middle of the road. So I knew that, that that had to be a divided road, which again, you know, helps to, helps to limit the number of possible places, right? So, um, so long story short, and I probably spent hours. It was multiple hours for sure.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s worth noting that Jose doesn’t have a background in privacy or security. He was a geolocation hobbyist for over a decade—a hobby that revolves around online maps and location data. This hobby made him more aware of how much people were sharing about themselves online and how that information could be used against them. So a few years ago, he decided to raise awareness by using an approach that would actually get people to pay attention. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I had this idea that maybe I could demonstrate that, through a video in which I would walk through the process of how I could look at a seemingly, you know, um, you know, mundane video that doesn’t show very much and show how I was able to figure out exactly where it was. And I, I thought that might be something that people would think was both interesting, but maybe slightly unsettling and then they would, you know, pay attention to this, um, this idea of, of, uh, internet safety.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> When someone first, uh, tags you in a video and they’re like, hi, JoseMonkey, please find me. Um, you pull up that video, what’s the first thing you do?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> First I download the videos so that I can get them on a big screen. I can, you know, freeze frame, slow it down, zoom way in, all the things that are gonna give me the best shot at seeing everything that’s in the video. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose isn’t using highly technical or exclusive tools in his process. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> People often joke that like, oh, you must be with one of the three letter agencies. Nah, I’m just a regular guy and I’m just using, you know, the same stuff that, that you have access to on your computer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You might see this one tag on his videos: OSINT. That’s the practice of using open source intelligence or publicly available sources to collect and analyze information. Those sources can include public government databases, mapping tools like Google Maps, or crowdsourced projects like OpenStreetMap, a collaborative map of the world. And sometimes, it gets a little more niche. You know those sites where train hobbyists track railroad routes, or preservationists archive old headstones in cemeteries? Turns out, those niche sites are super helpful for geolocation. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Just the other day I posted a video in which I found someone who was standing in a, a park near a, a bridge\u003c/span> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">and I happen to know that there is a website that catalogs historic bridges and that you can search for them by various different characteristics of those bridges, like, what kind of bridge it is, what, what the bridge carries, how many spans it has, things like that. And, um, I was able to find them actually fairly quickly just by using, you know, that database to look up, uh, the bridges that matched the criteria I was looking for. So that was a very specific case. Like I knew I needed a bridge, so I used a bridge website, right. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But sometimes I will need to correlate bits of information I see in the video, like, you’re at a particular brand of gas station and it’s close to a water tower and also very close to, I don’t know, say like a, a golf course. Like, if I can see all those things in a video, there are tools that you can use to, uh, find those things in close proximity to each other. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When people record videos, usually if you record a video that you’re posting on the internet or a photo, whatever it is, you are usually very focused on the things in the foreground: yourself, your cat, whatever you’re, you know, you’re recording a video of. But it’s all the things in the background that I’m looking at. So I’m just trying to see was there a sign you didn’t realize was there? Is there, uh, a car with a license plate that might tell me what state this is, things like that. I’m looking at all the details in the background. Very specifically, anything with writing on it is always, um, something that to me, um, you know, is, is likely to be useful in my search.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometimes, a person might not even need those little details to find someone else’s location, because an app will do the work for them. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So before Jose was able to find my first location in Los Angeles, I had actually sent him a second video, as a backup, in case he couldn’t find me.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Morgan video for JoseMonkey 2]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s a hint … I am not in LA anymore … Good luck with the search! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">He was able to locate that one pretty quickly and wanted to highlight a specific tool he used. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Um, some of the things we can see in that video are what appears to be an outdoor hockey rink. Um. It’s, uh, it is near a fairly large body of water. I didn’t know if it was a lake or a river or a bay or what it was.But it looked pretty big. Across the water. We can see some, some buildings and they look like older buildings, maybe brick buildings. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose started looking for outdoor hockey rinks near bodies of water. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I used a different tool and this is a thing that I feel like people should know about. I used a reverse image search tool. The specific one I used is Google Lens, which many people are probably, uh, familiar with. What it does is you can take a picture, whether it’s just a photograph or a still frame from a video and plug that into this tool, and it will try to find images online that match that thing. And frequently it can tell you where a place is. So I, I guess you were in Queens, like Bayside, right? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Yeah. Exactly there.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I was able to plug that into Google Lens and it showed me somebody’s Instagram post, which was taken very near there. And it wasn’t obvious at first exactly where it was, but it was pretty straightforward from there. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Jose doesn’t like to use Google Lens for his videos, because he said it takes the fun out of the game. For him, finding people is like solving a puzzle. But he pointed out that AI-powered tools like Google Lens are becoming increasingly common. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> You know, there are fancy tools and sophisticated queries that you can do to find all sorts of places, and I love doing that. But sometimes it’s either somebody with access to something like Google Lens that we all have access to, or somebody who’s just willing to look at the streets of Los Angeles for hours on end. Um, so people need to know that. Those are all possibilities.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, so now that we understand how people can be found through their videos, let’s talk about how to avoid being found. And no, you don’t necessarily have to move off the grid and stop using the internet entirely to do that. We’re talking about internet safety … that’s after this break. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">How do you post safely? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back with JoseMonkey. He’s the TikTok creator who finds people, but only if they want to be found. If you don’t want to be found? He’s going to walk us through some of the most common mistakes that people make when posting photos or videos of themselves online. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> One mistake that is really easy to rectify is really to just review what you’re posting before you post it. Many people really don’t, they record something and they just press send, whatever the button says in the app.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, you know, if they’re recording those things and not really reviewing them, they may not even realize that there was like some big thing that they forgot that they didn’t want to include. And sometimes fixing that is so easy. Most of the social media apps, even if you record a video in app, they give you editing tools to trim and, you know, edit or, or put a sticker, right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So like, even if you recorded a video and you realize after the fact, once you review it, that, oh no, there was a street sign right behind me that tells everybody where I was. You can either trim that piece out, sometimes you can put a sticker over it in the app and you know, those can be good ways to obscure the information or, you know, if there’s time you might be able to just rerecord it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But if you never reviewed it, you wouldn’t even have a chance to figure that out and it might be out there before you even realize what you know, what information you revealed. So I’d say that’s a really big one.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I feel like there are very obvious ways to find people. Like I see so many videos of people posting their new apartment tours or posting their walk from their home, from the front door of their home all the way to like, walking their kids to school, you know, and like kind of showing that whole walk. And that’s pretty obvious, like, that is a safety risk. But what are the more, I guess, subtle tells that people should be more aware of?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>JoseMonkey:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The more you move the camera, the more information you’re going to show. So I think people don’t realize sometimes, it’s definitely true that like if you’re out for a walk somewhere, people can see everything around you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sometimes people record videos in their car, even in moving cars, which I don’t really recommend because it’s not particularly safe. But I think people underestimate how much you can see through the windows of your car. I think they think that, like, they’re in their car, it’s kinda like being in their house and, you know, nobody’s gonna see anything. But that is not always the case. Sometimes you can see quite a lot through the rear windshield, through the windows, sometimes even in the mirrors. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another thing I would say about cars is that sometimes people really don’t think about the fact that most of us have a GPS in our car that tells you where you are at any given time. And if you just happen to be recording in your car and you just are looking around and you show people your GPS, well you just told everybody where you are. So I think that it is good to consider each individual video, or photo or whatever you’re creating.But it’s also important to consider the aggregate. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So it may be that you only revealed one little piece of information in your video that tells people something, but you may not remember that like three years ago, you posted something that’s still there on your account that revealed some other bit of information. Right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Another thing that I would say is your digital footprint is really bigger than one account or one platform. Chances are you have lots of different accounts and now it’s like, okay, well now I have this whole, you know, just wealth of data about you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So if, two years ago, you tweeted something and it kind of gave people a vague idea of what city you lived in. And then over on Instagram you posted something else that shows your face, right? And so now people they know what city you live in, they know what you look like.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And then maybe on some other social media site, maybe you use your real name, right? Like, maybe your LinkedIn is connected there and now that says like your full name and where you work. So now people have like, you know, all these bits and pieces of information about you, right?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I think that it’s really worth everyone’s time to consider like, how much of my information do I want out there? And if you feel like, you know, well, I’m not really at risk there, well then, you know, you can roll the dice and see what happens.But people’s information ends up getting leaked even when they’re being relatively good about it. So some people are just like, well, you know, why should I bother? But you don’t necessarily need to make it easier for people. Right? Just because it’s already possible that they might get your information some other way.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So I would say there’s never a better time to start, you know, policing your own internet hygiene than when you realize you made a mistake. Practicing it is really the best thing you can do because it becomes easier when you’re in the habit of reviewing the video, you’re in the habit of saying like, oh wait, what was in shot when I took, that photo? It becomes a bit second nature, I think.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Digital hygiene involves more than just what you post. Your social accounts might be private, or, you might not use social media at all. But you probably still use the internet—for online shopping, or job applications, or just logging into your banking app. All of that involves a feast of personal data which might land in the wrong hands. So how do you protect it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Let’s open a new tab. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What is a threat model? \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Eva Galperin is the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advocates for digital privacy and free speech. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin, Guest:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So trying to protect everything from everybody all the time is, uh, is overwhelming and confusing, and honestly, you don’t need to do it. The only way to protect everything from everybody all the time is to go live as a hermit, on a mountain and fling all of your devices into the sea, uh, which is presumably located near this mountain.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Don’t panic though, Eva’s going to explain why you don’t need to do all that just to stay safe. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Threat modeling is, uh, a way of thinking about. Uh, what you wanna protect, who you want to protect it from, uh, in such a way that leads you to the appropriate mitigation so that you do the stuff that protects the things that are important in cases that are likely to happen instead of spending all of your time just becoming a hermit and fleeing your devices into the ocean.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Threat modeling is important, because everyone has different security needs. It involves asking yourself a series of questions: what you want to protect? who you want to protect it from? How do you want to protect it? how bad will the consequences be if you fail? And how far are you willing to go to protect it? \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Like, I have a very precious American Girl doll that I’ve had since I was a kid—that’s what I want to protect. Who do I want to protect it from? My rambunctious family members who are a bit too young to play with it. How bad are the consequences if I fail? Well, my doll’s hair will probably never be the same. How much trouble am I willing to go through to prevent that? I’m not going to go as far as locking the doll away in some museum grade case—keeping it on a shelf that the kids can’t reach until they’re older will probably be enough. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That’s threat modeling, but the cherished childhood toy is your personal information. Who you want to protect it from, and how you need to protect it, depends on your situation. And threat modeling looks different for everyone. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For example, abortion is now illegal in 13 states. Let’s look at the needs of those involved in abortion access—a group that will want to protect themselves and patients from government surveillance. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Someone who volunteers to drive patients to and from their abortions might use a VPN and a secondary, anonymous social account for their volunteer work. They may use an encrypted messaging app like Signal to communicate with patients. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Presumably you are not interested in having some sort of third party get their hands on those messages. A lot of the time people will tell you, you know, our messages are encrypted. Encryption is a term that could mean a lot of different things. And sometimes what it means is that the message is encrypted in transit, meaning that like, a third party, like the telco, can’t read it. And sometimes it is end-to-end encrypted, meaning that even the platform that you are on is unable to read your messages. And this is really important because if governments and law enforcement wanna get their hands on your messages, what they do is they show up with like, a warrant or a subpoena to the telco or to the company.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And so if the telco or the company doesn’t have that information, then they need to show up to you in order to get that information, or they need to show up to the person who is on the other end of that conversation, and that gives you the ability to go lawyer up and potentially fight this subpoena and to know when your information is being handed out, which is a thing that you would not, uh, necessarily know otherwise. So what you should be looking for in your messaging service is end-to-end encryption. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Anyone involved in abortion access may also disable location services or turn off their phone when they’re around reproductive healthcare clinics. And why does that matter? Well … \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So there is an entire industry of people who run around building up sort of profiles of people based on who they are and where they’re going, and what websites they look at, and what apps they download and where they are located, what their preferences are, what they buy.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And what they do is they gather up all of this information. Uh, sometimes they, uh, gather it from many different sources and then they aggregate it in order to make an even more detailed and clear picture about who you are. And then they turn around and they sell this information usually to advertisers, or to people who are interested in sort of targeting certain kinds of groups with advertising but also to governments and law enforcements and even to individuals. You can sign up for, uh, all kinds of data broker services. They market themselves as people finder sites and you can find out a lot about people simply by subscribing to one of those and entering the information that you want about somebody into one of those. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A journalist covering abortion, on the other hand, will have a different threat model, especially when it comes to protecting their sources and themselves.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Some of the other things that you might want to do as a journalist is you might wanna think about the way in which you communicate with your sources, especially if your sources prefer to remain anonymous. You wanna make sure that you can protect them. So you might wanna communicate with them through Signal, for example, instead of over WhatsApp or over SMS or carrier pigeon.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You may also wanna think about anti-harassment. One of the big problems that journalists face, especially female journalists and journalists from marginalized groups and communities, is they disproportionately face harassment for their work.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And you might wanna think about just doing a full review of what it is possible to find out about you online through like, a simple search engine search. And if you find stuff that you think is, may potentially be used against you by harassers, you can take that stuff down. You can lock it up. You can make those posts private, If it is on a platform that has, uh, you know, the ability to make private posts, um. Or if somebody else is hosting it, this is actually one of the most common sources of, uh, sort of data leaks about our private lives. It’s not, uh, our posting stuff about where we are and what we’re doing, but our friends posting stuff and often they will. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It would also behoove journalists to talk to their friends and family and their colleagues about how they talk about each other in public spaces. And I don’t mean like at the cafe, I mean like in digital public spaces where, where everything can be seen, where you just make an agreement that you’re not going to post stuff about each other, uh, without permission. So if you’re gonna post a photo that your friend is in, you just ask your friend in advance.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And sometimes the threat isn’t anonymous trolls, the government, or friends from afar. It could be the people you live with.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Threat modeling for domestic abuse situations is actually incredibly hard. Uh, one of the reasons for that is because you are dealing with a person who has physical access to your stuff, who may be able to compel you to hand over your passwords to your various devices, who knows you and your friends and where you are likely to go.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s very difficult to come up with a way to fool someone with whom you have a very close romantic connection because they could, you know, they could call up your friends and family and tell them, I’m just really concerned about my partner and their wellbeing, so if you could just tell me where they are. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And that’s one of the things that I see the most often and so when I talk to survivors of domestic abuse who are looking for a way to leave their abuser, the very first thing that I do is I try to help them just come up with like one account or one device, or one platform where they know their communications are safe.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, threat modeling looks different for everyone. If you’re not a journalist, or an activist, or celebrity, or influencer, or anyone else in a public-facing, highly scrutinized career, what’s the threat? For most people, it’s the scammers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> One of the big problems that we have right now is that we are in a golden age of grift. This is, if you exist in the digital world at all, if you have a phone, if you have an email address, if you have ways of getting messages sent to you, then you’re constantly getting messages from scammers and from criminals, and often they’re, they’re after different things. In the long term what they’re after is usually money, sometimes. In the short term what they’re after is access to your accounts, or access to other people who trust you.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One common method is known as ransomware, which is a type of malware, an umbrella term for malicious software. Bad actors trick you into downloading software that locks up your device and holds it hostage until you pay a ransom. Do they unlock your device once you pay? Not always. Sometimes, adversaries use malware to spy on you, control your devices, and steal your information.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">A more common threat is known as phishing. That’s phishing with a PH. Sometimes, it arrives in your inbox with the same logo and name as your bank, inviting you to log in. But if you look closer, the email address is slightly off. Or it could look like someone claiming to be your boss, instructing you to log into your work account as soon as possible. They even impersonate family members and partners. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Basically, phishing scams pretend to be someone you trust, and they lure you to click on a link, or log into their fake site, in order to obtain your username and password. Sometimes, clicking on a phishing attack link also installs malware, so it’s a real double whammy of security hell.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Some of the stuff to look for as a sort of indicator of a scam is a sense of urgency. Something is on fire, an emergency is happening, or like you could get rich if you click here in the next like five minutes. And that sense of urgency is aimed at overriding your common sense. And a lot of us feel very smart because, you know, every day we get targeted with like six of these things and we don’t fall for it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But what’s really important to understand is that all the scammer needs is for you to have one bad day. If they come at you half a dozen times a day, eventually you’re gonna be tired, you’re gonna be cranky. Something’s gonna look plausible to you. And even the smartest person, even the most, you know, technically adept and aware person can get scammed and can end up sort of the, the victim of one of these grifters.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We have to stay humble. We need to maintain eternal vigilance and also we need to not blame the people who fall for these things. I think that there’s a lot of like, well, you’re, you’re just too dumb. You didn’t see it. I wouldn’t have clicked on that. And I think that kind of victim blaming really is counterproductive.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, so we’ve covered threat modeling. Luckily, there are precautions you can take that might give you a few extra layers of protection in case you do fall for one of these scams. They’re also just good habits for everyone. What do they look like in practice?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Let’s open one last tab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Digital hygiene checklist. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Well the good news is that there’s some just basic like wash-your-hands, data privacy hygiene that everyone can engage in that will make things safer for them from most of the kinds of threats that most people face every day,\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> First on the checklist: Passwords \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Secure your accounts. In order to secure your accounts, you wanna make sure that all of your passwords are different from one another, and that they are long.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Because a long password is what makes a password harder to crack. But then you are left with the question of how are you going to remember all of these very long, strong passwords that are different from one another? And for that, you use a password manager. So I recommend that everybody install a password manager on their devices. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Your password manager will be unlocked with a single password. That single password, again, should be long and strong and easy for you to memorize. In order to make it easier for you to memorize, I usually recommend a pass phrase, like five or six words chosen at random, because that’s easier to remember than just like 40 or 50 random numbers and letters. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are a couple of things that you should think about. The most important one is to go to your nearest friendly search engine and do a search on the name of the passport manager and security incident. So you wanna go look to see whether or not it has a history of being broken into, a history of being untrustworthy. If it has a history of being untrustworthy, don’t touch it. If you don’t find a bunch of security incidents, it’s probably okay or good enough. The best password manager is the one that you actually use. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then there’s a nifty little shield called two-factor authentication. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> So two-factor authentication just means that in order to get into this account, you now need two things instead of one thing. You need the password and you need an authentication code, which is sent to you in some fashion. The most common way in which we receive authentication codes is usually over SMS.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So you are sent a text message. That text message goes to your phone. This is the least secure way of securing an account. And the reason for this is SMS messages are not encrypted, which means that it is possible to intercept them, for example, at the Telco.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is much easier for other people to get their hands on these messages and to use them to log into your account. Uh, it is still better than nothing in most cases. Having 2FA over SMS is in most cases probably better than having no 2FA at all. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the better way in which to have your second factor of authentication work is through an authenticator app. So you install an app on your device, and what it does is you sync it to your account and when you are logging in you go to the app and it will give you the code that you enter in addition to your password. This is safer because it is not sending that data over SMS. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">For extra security, some people might opt for a physical key, which is almost like a little keychain-sized flash drive you stick into your devices to log in. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Now this is both good and bad, if you lose your physical key, you are permanently locked out of your device. So the bad news is it works. This also means that if you break your physical key and you don’t have like, a backup key somewhere, you can end up locked out of your account.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And most importantly, if you are in a situation in which you need to secure your account against somebody who has access to your stuff, who has physical access to you, who might get their hands on your key chain, where you have put all of your physical keys, then this is especially unsafe. So this is not a solution that I recommend, uh, to survivors of domestic abuse, whose abusers still have physical access to them or the spaces they’re in or to their stuff.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then, there’s dodging the data brokers. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The other thing that you might wanna do is, with your web browser, you might want to install Privacy Badger, which is a web extension which eats tracking cookies. One of the ways in which data brokers figure out where you’re going from one website to another and what you are doing is through the use of cookies. And if you have a web extension that makes it impossible for those cookies to follow you across the web, that makes things more difficult. So those are the basic things that are probably very good for everyone to do and that will take care of most of your problems most of the time.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">See, that’s not so bad, is it? You don’t need the shiniest, most expensive, top of the line cybersecurity tools just to stay safe online. Most of the time, a little digital hand washing goes a long way. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The truth here is that trying to protect everything from everybody all the time is a good way to drive yourself insane. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Some people are almost like either overwhelmed by the idea of having to lock it all down, or some people are almost like resigned to a world without privacy because that’s just the new normal. What would you say to them? Why does privacy still matter?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Eva Galperin:\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Well to begin with, you don’t have to lock it all down. You really don’t. You can still exist in the world. The whole idea behind privacy is not that, again, you should be a hermit who lives on a mountain with no devices. The idea behind securing your digital existence and understanding your footprint on the internet is to enable you to do the things that you want to do and that are important to you in the safest possible way.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So, before you post yourself, and especially before posting other people, consider practicing a little digital hygiene—at least a spritz of some digital hand sanitizer. As you can hear from my voice today, it’s flu season, after all. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We also teamed up with KQED’s audience news team on a digital guide that breaks down everything we talked about today in a convenient, shareable format. You can find that guide, and a bunch of other great explainers, at \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://kqed.org/explainers\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED.org/explainers\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">. And check the show notes for more privacy and security resources. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And one more quick thing before we go, we’re working on a Valentine’s Day episode and we want to hear from you! When do you think is the right time, if ever, to share your location with a significant other? Do you have a hot take on this, or a juicy story? Send us a voice note at closealltabs@kqed.org.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, now let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This episode was produced by Maya Cueva and edited by Chris Hambrick. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Chris Egusa is our senior editor, and also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music by APM.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Brendan Willard is our audio engineer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is KQED’s Director of Podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. San Francisco Northern California Local.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink Dustsilver K-84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron Red switches. \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ok, and I know it’s podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives, and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Don’t forget to drop a comment and tell your friends, too. Or even your enemies! Or… frenemies? And if you \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">really\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> like Close All Tabs and want to support public media, go to donate dot KQED dot org slash podcasts! \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also, we want to hear from you! Email us CloseAllTabs@kqed.org. Follow us on instagram at “close all tabs pod.” Or TikTok at “close all tabs.” Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp> \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "are-you-allowed-to-record-ice",
"title": "Are You Allowed to Record ICE?",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, it became an instant flashpoint in the ongoing escalation of federal law enforcement violence. It also put a spotlight on the U.S. government’s efforts to prevent people from documenting federal agents in public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this episode, we dig into a simple but important question: do you have the right to record ICE? Criminal justice reporter C.J. Ciaramella explains how the Trump administration is working to create a chilling effect around filming law enforcement, why legal challenges are intensifying, and how courts are increasingly pushing back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5878884828\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://reason.com/people/cj-ciaramella/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">C.J. Ciaramella\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Criminal Justice Reporter at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reason\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/01/07/ice-officer-fatally-shoots-driver-through-car-window-in-minneapolis/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICE officer fatally shoots driver through car window in Minneapolis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Max Nesterak, Madison McVan and Alyssa Chen, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Minnesota Reformer \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://reason.com/2026/01/08/you-have-the-right-to-record-ice/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Trump administration says it’s illegal to record videos of ICE. Here’s what the law says.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — C.J. Ciaramella, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reason\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://reason.com/2025/12/22/dhs-says-recording-or-following-law-enforcement-sure-sounds-like-obstruction-of-justice/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DHS says recording or following law enforcement ‘sure sounds like obstruction of justice’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — C.J. Ciaramella, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reason\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11871364/recording-the-police-what-to-know-and-how-to-stay-safe-doing-it\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recording the Police: Tips for Safety and Awareness\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Carly Severn and Mina Kim, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://prospect.org/2025/09/09/2025-09-09-dhs-claims-videotaping-ice-raids-is-violence/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DHS Claims Videotaping ICE Raids Is ‘Violence’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Matthew Cunningham-Cook, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The American Prospect\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/11/ice-detains-us-citizen-for-7-hours-after-she-photographed-agents-in-gresham.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICE detains U.S. citizen for 7 hours after she photographed agents in Oregon\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Yesenia Amaro, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Oregonian\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/ice-immigration-protests-prosecutions-doj-arrests-591f155d50c13756842e033ea23f16d3?link_source=ta_bluesky_link&taid=6943fae5c2e22c00016e74ad&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dozens of felony cases crumble in DOJ push to punish protesters\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Michael Biesecker, Jamie Ding, Christine Fernando, Claire Rush, and Ryan J. Foley, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Associated Press \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://time.com/7344924/federal-officers-shooting-immigration-portland-minneapolis-prosecution-immunity/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Happens When Federal Officers Use Force \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Miranda Jeyaretnam, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TIME \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/12/immigration-mask-ban-new-law/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California is banning masks for federal agents. Here’s why it could lose in court\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Nigel Duara, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CalMatters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just a note, this episode contains references to violence and strong language. Listen with care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from 50501_Key_Largo Instagram Account]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Border Patrol Officer: If I continue to see you following me around, I’m gonna pull you over and arrest you.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Local Observer: For what? What law am I breaking?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Border Patrol Officer: You’re impeding one of the investigations, okay?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was an interaction between a Border Patrol officer and a local observer in Key Largo, Florida, posted on Instagram on Monday morning. The officer threatened to arrest the observer for following and filming him, but didn’t say what law they were breaking.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from 50501_Key_Largo Instagram Account]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Local Observer: How am I impeding you?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Border Patrol Officer: I’m not going to argue with you.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Local Observer: Are you going to shoot me?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Border Patrol Officer: Why would I shoot you?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Local Observer: Because one of your guys, one of you federal people just shot an innocent woman and murdered her in Minneapolis.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last week, on January 7th, federal immigration and customs enforcement officers shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was 37. The Trump administration has launched an extensive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis singling out the city’s large Somali community. Last week they sent 2,000 federal agents in what ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons described as the largest immigration operation ever.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In response, a lot of citizens have been protesting and following and monitoring ICE and CBP officers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is C.J. Ciaramella, a reporter for Reason magazine who covers criminal justice and civil liberties. He’s been reporting on the Trump administration’s crackdown on those who record or photograph ICE operations. Last Wednesday, Renee Good and her wife had just dropped their six-year-old son off at school when they came across a group of ICE agents. Bystander video shows that Renee’s car was stopped perpendicularly on the road.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And an ICE, uh, a pickup of federal immigration officers stopped in front of her and went up and were shouting at her to…there were some contradictory orders to both leave and get out of her car and started tugging on her car. She started backing up first and then as she was doing that, one of the immigration officers stepped in front her car and she started moving forward and pulling out to leave with the officer in front of her. And as he was stepping around her car, as it was moving towards him, he pulled out his gun and fired three shots and killed her.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are several bystander videos that captured different angles of Renee’s last moments and the gruesome aftermath. One shows an officer denying medical assistance for Renee after a bystander identified himself as a doctor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from a video recorded by eyewitness Emily Heller]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doctor: Can I go check a pulse? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICE Officer: No! Back up! Now!\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doctor: I’m a physician!\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emily Heller: Hey, listen here! You just killed my f***ing neighbor!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Videos of the incidents immediately spread online, sparking nationwide outrage. Over the weekend, hundreds of protests gathered across the country, demanding accountability and an end to mass deportations. The Trump administration has tried to paint Renee as an agitator who was stalking and impeding upon ICE operations. On Truth Social, the president said that Renee, “Violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who shot her in self-defense.” But as visual forensic analysis by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Bellingcat shows, the officer was able to step away from the car and while still standing, fired at least 2 of the 3 shots through the window as the car turned away from him. As ICE operations continue across the country, the Trump administration has escalated retaliating against anyone who follows or records federal officers. This includes journalists, and any civilian just observing ICE. In the last year, ICE and Border Patrol officers have threatened, arrested, and detained those who document their activities or report on their whereabouts. And now, federal agents have appeared to reference the shooting of Renee Good in confrontations with observers, like in this video, which was posted on the r/minneapolis subreddit this week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 1 from r/minnesota Reddit page] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer:This is your warning! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Driver: For what? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer: Stop f***ing following us! You are impeding operations! This is the United States Federal Government! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Driver: I live over here, I gotta get to my house! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer:This is- this is your warning! Go home!\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Driver: Go to church. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer: Did you not learn from what just happened? Go home! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Driver: Learn what?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or in this video, which was posted on the r/minnesota subreddit days after Renee was killed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 2 from r/minnesota Reddit page] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer: Have y’all not learned from the past couple of days? Have you not learned?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recorder: Learned what? What’s our lesson here? What do you want us to learn?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer: Following federal agents.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recorder: Give me my phone back!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In light of all this, many people are asking, are you allowed to record federal agents? And what are your rights when it comes to recording ICE, especially as the Trump administration increasingly tries to target those who do? This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. Let’s start with a new tab. Are you allowed to record ice? We’re back with C.J. Ciaramella, who reports on criminal justice and civil liberties for Reason Magazine. He’s going to put this into context for us. ICE activities have been escalating all throughout the past year, but what led up to this moment? And does it feel like a tipping point to you?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It really does. This has been sort of the, I don’t want to say logical conclusion because that doesn’t put it in the right light, but over this past summer, we’ve seen escalating rhetoric from the Trump administration about people filming and recording and monitoring ICE and also trying to warn other people about ICE activities. They described this as illegal activity, saying that it’s obstruction of justice or impeding federal immigration officers and they vowed to like, prosecute people who do this. And they also made it clear to these line officers working at CBP and ICE, yeah that they consider this illegal activity. That they consider following around and monitoring these agents to be very confrontational, illegal. There are dozens of videos of ICE and CBP officers threatening to arrest people and pulling them out of the car solely for following and recording them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the main reasons that this incident specifically has exploded is because there are multiple video recordings taken by bystanders that have been shared online, gone viral, you know, just been spread among news outlets. You’ve been reporting on how the Trump administration is trying to make the case that recording ICE officers in public is illegal, like you said. But just to be clear, does the public have the right to record law enforcement and specifically ICE?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I gotta be a little bit nuanced about this because the Supreme Court actually hasn’t put out a ruling saying there’s an unambiguous First Amendment right to film the police. But all of the seven US Federal Circuit Courts that have considered the issue have pretty much said there is a First Amendment right to record the police and observe the police, and they’ve all decided that pretty unambiguously. And this ranges from, you know, the ninth circuit, which is traditionally a pretty liberal leaning court to the fifth circuit, which has a reputation as a more conservative circuit court, you know? The fifth circuit looked at it and said, you know, based on the first amendment tradition, the Supreme court presidents, this seems pretty unambiguous to us. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh, so it’s not a completely like black and white issue, but it’s also not a, like, a thorny or divisive first amendment question. Every court that’s looked at, it has said, yeah. Based on our long First Amendment traditions. And in America, you have a right to record the police. Now, Minnesota is in one of the circuits that hasn’t yet ruled on this. So it’s not like black letter law in Minnesota.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. What protections does the public have, if any, when it comes to recording the police or recording law enforcement?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, you do have strong First Amendment protections, especially if you’re engaged in news gathering activity, if you’re monitoring a protest or monitoring police activity. And you don’t have to be an official journalist to do this because there’s no, you know, definition of journalists in the First Amendment. There are very strong protections for news gathering. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since about 2020, some states have passed what are called buffer laws that restrict people from recording the police within about 25 feet when they’re asked to get out of the way. And those have faced a lot of scrutiny from courts. Arizona and Indiana both had buffer laws that were overturned for being unconstitutionally vague. There would be too much of a chilling effect for preventing the public from recording police. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a really fundamental principle and privacy First Amendment and public record law in the United States, is that government officials doing official government work in public don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy. You know, this is another example of a really sort of watershed moment in policing and law enforcement in America that’s based on recorded video evidence. The same as in Minneapolis with George Floyd in 2020, Rodney King, you know, is these have all had huge impacts on our nation’s history and they’re all based on people recording police activity and documenting it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The founders really believed that we should be able to hold our government accountable. And that includes having access to popular information and knowing what our government is doing. And that’s why recording the police and creating this sort of evidence trail is such a core protected first movement activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In June last year, dozens of journalists were injured by law enforcement while covering the Los Angeles protests against mass deportation. Many journalists and protesters were tear gassed or shot at with pepper rounds and rubber bullets, or their phones and cameras were smashed while recording. One reporter was shot by a rubber bullet live on air.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Months later, a federal district court issued an injunction blocking the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE and Border Patrol from brutalizing journalists, protesters, and legal observers. That means that federal agents aren’t allowed to threaten or assault the press or protesters unless they have probable cause to believe they’ve committed a crime. They also can’t use chemical, projectile, and auditory weapons against protesters, journalists, or legal observers who don’t pose imminent harm to law enforcement. Basically, they can’t tear gas or shoot people just for exercising their First Amendment rights. Enforcement is another story, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There were injunctions against that, if I’m remembering correctly. There were a couple of injunctions trying to restrict the sort of tactics that federal law enforcement was using. We also saw the same thing in Chicago. There was injunctions trying to restrict ICE from retaliating against protesters and reporters who were engaged in really clear-cut First Amendment activity. And the judges kind of struggled to enforce that. In Chicago we saw the plaintiffs kept coming back with new motions saying like, here’s more evidence that your injunction is not being followed.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s been really hard to enforce because the Trump administration has, if not an officially stated, a de facto policy that anyone who is opposing them or filming them is subject to intimidation and retaliation. There was a Cato report that came out in December that outlined dozens of instances of people who are being intimidated and threatened by federal agents for engaging in really clearly protected First Amendment activity such as just following from a distance or recording police. In fact, I wrote a story about an Oregon woman who was followed by ICE agents because she was filming them in a parking lot and they followed her after she left and her lawyer shared video with me. She stopped at an intersection and you can see the the agents come up to her window and the first thing they say is ‘Why are you filming us?’ \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I want to say also as well that people who monitor police, reporters, and activists have faced First Amendment retaliation for decades. But what’s really startling and unprecedented here is that we’re hearing this coming from the top of the federal government. That is something that’s quite new, I would say. Secretary Noem was on record in July saying that, you know, violence is anything that threatens them and their safety and she included videotaping federal immigration officers. They’re equating videotaping officers with violence and domestic terrorism.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s what DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said during a press conference last summer\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during July 12, 2025 Press Conference inTampa, Florida].\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">…And I will tell you that violence is anything that threatens them and their safety. So it is doxing them. It’s videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations, encouraging other people to come and to throw things, rocks, bottles…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Notice the use of the word doxing here. That’s the act of posting private information about someone to target and harass them, usually like their home address or personal phone number. The Trump administration has equated identifying and publicly naming ICE agents to dox-ing. California recently banned federal officers from wearing masks on duty, with exceptions for medical masks like N95s, wildfire protection, and agents undercover. The ban was supposed to go into effect this month. Here’s state Senator Scott Wiener talking about the ban on Instagram.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Senator Scott Wiener speaking on Instagram ]\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I introduced and passed this law to stop ICE and any other law enforcement from covering their faces and effectively operating as secret police. It is horrifying what federal agents are doing, tearing communities apart, operating in the shadows, not identifying themselves, covering their faces so you don’t even know who you’re dealing with.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the Trump administration has sued to block the bill, citing threats to federal officers like taunting, online doxing, and stalking. They argue that states like California have no authority to interfere with federal immigration operations, which means that state and local officials can’t enforce the mask ban. So are you allowed to record ICE? Yes, but like we’ve seen with California’s mask ban, the White House has been very opposed to any attempt at identifying federal officers. In fact, they’ve gone as far as trying to prosecute those who record and identify ICE agents. So what does this targeting and retaliation from the administration look like? And how is it holding up in courts? That’s after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back. Time to open a new tab: The legal battle over recording law enforcement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Trump administration is going as far as trying to prosecute people for following and recording ICE. And they’re using this federal statute to threaten those who get in their way. It’s called 18 USC 111. C.J. is going to tell us about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, well, it’s both a felony and a misdemeanor depending on the severity or why they want to charge it. But it’s for assaulting, impeding, or obstructing a federal law enforcement agent and it’s pretty much what it sounds like. It’s more or less a federal analog of the obstruction laws that you see at your local level where if you, you know, if a police officer is trying to arrest someone and you get in their way and try and pull the person away or physically obstruct the officer, you can get charged with obstruction. But this also, I would mention, obstruction is a classic, what’s known as a contempt of cop charge. It’s something that’s thrown at people when they annoy cops, and the police are looking for something that they can punish them with. But it’s also used frequently for people who are being a real nuisance to police, and that’s what it’s intended for. It’s for assaulting and physically obstructing officers. And it accounts for all federal law enforcement, including immigration.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. How is the administration trying to use this statute specifically to target those who film ICE? Have they had any success?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is, you know, this sort of top-down order is to treat people who are opposing them through, you know, First Amendment or activities of recording or warning other people as violating this statute to sort of broaden this to include non-violent or non-physical means of obstruction. And what’s been really interesting about that is that these prosecutions have faired really poorly compared to federal prosecutors’ usual track record. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Usually when a U.S. Attorney’s office brings a case to a grand jury, they almost always get it. It is extremely rare for federal prosecutors to bring a case to a jury and have them reject it. And most cases that they do bring end in guilty pleas and plea agreements. But what we’ve seen is grand juries refusing cases in Chicago and elsewhere, refusing to indict. And those cases then getting thrown out when body cam footage and other evidence comes to light showing that these actions that people are being charged for aren’t meeting the elements of this crime which requires physically obstructing or assaulting agents and you know by that definition following an officer isn’t obstructing them you know recording them isn’t physically obstructed them even alerting other people to the presence of ICE is not obstructing them. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The law on that is a little more mixed, but there have been courts that have upheld the right to, for example, warn motorists of speed traps ahead or to flash your lights to warn people of cops in the distance. They consider that First Amendment speech as well. So what we’ve seen is a lot of these prosecutions failing at an unprecedented rate. There have been quite a few cases where they’ve charged people with a felony charge. And then when a grand jury refuses to indict them, they are refiled as a misdemeanor, which doesn’t actually require a grand-jury indictment. And some of those cases have pled out guilty after the misdemeanor charge was refiled. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But there’s been other cases where the federal prosecutors haven’t even been able to secure a misdemeanor conviction. The most famous case was the sandwich guy in DC, Sean Dunn, who threw a Subway sandwich at a CBP officer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from WUSA 9 newscast] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Customs and Border Patrol agent hit with the sandwich, characterized it as a profanity laced tirade, and he told the jury Dunn threw the sandwich so hard, it exploded against his bulletproof vest, “I could smell the onions and mustard.”\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The prosecutors were trying to convince the jury that this officer had a real fear for his safety when he got pelted with a sandwich, and the jury did not agree.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an investigation published late last year, the Associated Press found that, since May, of the 100 people charged with felony assaults on federal agents, 55 saw their charges reduced to misdemeanors or just outright dismissed. Only 23 pleaded guilty.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ve found that dozens of the cases have kind of fallen apart. That is a really high failure rate for federal prosecutors who nearly, when it comes to these sort of cases, are almost always batting a hundred. So it’s been a, it’s been very strange, I think, for the U.S. Prosecutor’s offices as well, who have had to face judges who are being very, well judges have to be very circumspect in their language, but are questioning these cases pretty harshly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even talking about this top-down almost order, right? JD Vance has made statements about how ICE agents have total immunity. How does that play into this? Like, what can you tell us about how much of the talk of ICE’s immunity can actually hold up against legal challenges?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I asked DHS public affairs office in December if they considered following and recording officers to be obstruction of justice. You know, I wanted to get a straight answer from them. And the office of public affairs sent me a statement attributed to an unnamed spokesperson who said, that sure sounds like obstruction of justice, which, you know, isn’t a super clear answer, but it gives you the mindset. And like I said, that is coming and that is trickling down from the very top of DHS to the line officers who are being told that they have immunity and that anyone who is sort of bothering them is probably violating the statute.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve established that recording law enforcement is a right upheld by federal courts. That’s not stopping ICE agents from continuing to target those who do record them. You had mentioned the woman in Oregon that you covered. What happened there when she was stopped?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She was detained for, I believe, five or six hours. She was taken to a detention facility and detained and eventually released without charges. Last time I checked, they still not filed any charges against her. So, you know, this was, um, can almost be seen as a purely retaliatory or punishment sort of, and that’s really, I think, what this comes down to is a textbook definition of a chilling effect on free speech. When you have these statements from top officials, when you have the vice president basically saying that these agents will have immunity for what they’re doing, it makes everyone who wants to participate and exercise their First Amendment right second guess whether it’s worth it.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I was out driving around in my hometown in December. Um, following ICE and CBP and taking pictures, you know, um, from a distance, but, uh, just seeing what they were doing because I’m a reporter and I had a unambiguous, crystal clear, First Amendment right to do that. But it was still in the back of my head, if these guys decided I was bothering them, they could bust out my car windows. They could detain me. They could pull their guns on me, which is all things that have happened to people for doing the same thing. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I was a reporter at 25, that wasn’t as much of a worry, but I have a kid at home, ah, you know, you start doing…the calculus gets a lot harder. And that’s exactly what this sort of policy and what this activity does is make people self-censor under the threat of government retaliation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was this woman who was detained for seven in Oregon. She’s just one of many dozens at this point who have been targeted by ICE. There are all the journalists in Los Angeles who were shot up by rubber bullets and injured. Is there any recourse for victims of retaliation like this?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so it is very, very hard to hold federal law enforcement agents accountable for their actions. They do have sovereign immunity from some criminal prosecutions. In federal court, you have to file a lawsuit against the U.S. Government. You actually can’t sue them as individuals. So you basically have to go to court against the US government. And it is a very, very long and hard road to follow to successfully sue the U.S. Government for civil rights deprivations.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The best options, um, are probably more sweeping class action injunctions and sort of broader rulings against the general activity, just because it’s so hard to hold individual officers accountable even on a class action or individual level.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Considering everything we just talked about, what should people know before they consider recording ICE or other law enforcement activities?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What I say you should know is that you do have the First Amendment right to do this. You have the right to record and monitor, and you even have the right to verbally oppose the police. One of the Supreme Court decisions that a lot of circuit courts have looked back on when they’re deciding these sort of questions was a 1987 Supreme Court ruling in a case called Houston v Hill, where they struck down an ordinance that made it unlawful to oppose or interrupt a police officer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr. wrote, “The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principle characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.” And courts they’ll look back to that when they’re deciding things like whether you should be able to yell an obscenity at a police officer or record them. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nAnd like I said, what the administration is trying to do is create a chilling effect here. And what people should know is that they are banking on fear and banking on you not wanting to exercise your First Amendment rights. And what we’re seeing all around the country with these protests and with people coming out and confronting ICE agents and CBP agents more is that it’s not working.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So remember, recording ICE, or any law enforcement, is your constitutional right, but it’s not without risks. We’ll link some resources for staying safe in the show notes. And check out our two-part series, The Surveillance Machine, for a deeper dive on the history of protest surveillance and how it’s used today. Okay, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva, and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and our credits music. Chris Hambrick is our editor. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "Are You Allowed to Record ICE? | KQED",
"description": "When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, it became an instant flashpoint in the ongoing escalation of federal law enforcement violence. It also put a spotlight on the U.S. government’s efforts to prevent people from documenting federal agents in public.In this episode, we dig into a simple but important question: do you have the right to record ICE? Criminal justice reporter C.J. Ciaramella explains how the Trump administration is working to create a chilling effect around filming law enforcement, why legal challenges are intensifying, and how courts are increasingly pushing back.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"#episode-transcript\">\u003ci>View the full episode transcript.\u003c/i>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, it became an instant flashpoint in the ongoing escalation of federal law enforcement violence. It also put a spotlight on the U.S. government’s efforts to prevent people from documenting federal agents in public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In this episode, we dig into a simple but important question: do you have the right to record ICE? Criminal justice reporter C.J. Ciaramella explains how the Trump administration is working to create a chilling effect around filming law enforcement, why legal challenges are intensifying, and how courts are increasingly pushing back.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC5878884828\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Guest:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://reason.com/people/cj-ciaramella/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">C.J. Ciaramella\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Criminal Justice Reporter at \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reason\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading/Listening:\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://minnesotareformer.com/2026/01/07/ice-officer-fatally-shoots-driver-through-car-window-in-minneapolis/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICE officer fatally shoots driver through car window in Minneapolis\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Max Nesterak, Madison McVan and Alyssa Chen, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Minnesota Reformer \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://reason.com/2026/01/08/you-have-the-right-to-record-ice/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Trump administration says it’s illegal to record videos of ICE. Here’s what the law says.\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — C.J. Ciaramella, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reason\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://reason.com/2025/12/22/dhs-says-recording-or-following-law-enforcement-sure-sounds-like-obstruction-of-justice/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DHS says recording or following law enforcement ‘sure sounds like obstruction of justice’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — C.J. Ciaramella, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Reason\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11871364/recording-the-police-what-to-know-and-how-to-stay-safe-doing-it\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recording the Police: Tips for Safety and Awareness\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Carly Severn and Mina Kim, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">KQED\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://prospect.org/2025/09/09/2025-09-09-dhs-claims-videotaping-ice-raids-is-violence/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">DHS Claims Videotaping ICE Raids Is ‘Violence’\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Matthew Cunningham-Cook, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The American Prospect\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2025/11/ice-detains-us-citizen-for-7-hours-after-she-photographed-agents-in-gresham.html\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICE detains U.S. citizen for 7 hours after she photographed agents in Oregon\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Yesenia Amaro, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Oregonian\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/ice-immigration-protests-prosecutions-doj-arrests-591f155d50c13756842e033ea23f16d3?link_source=ta_bluesky_link&taid=6943fae5c2e22c00016e74ad&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=bluesky\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dozens of felony cases crumble in DOJ push to punish protesters\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Michael Biesecker, Jamie Ding, Christine Fernando, Claire Rush, and Ryan J. Foley, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Associated Press \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://time.com/7344924/federal-officers-shooting-immigration-portland-minneapolis-prosecution-immunity/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What Happens When Federal Officers Use Force \u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">— Miranda Jeyaretnam, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TIME \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ci>\u003c/i>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/justice/2025/12/immigration-mask-ban-new-law/\">\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">California is banning masks for federal agents. Here’s why it could lose in court\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> — Nigel Duara, \u003c/span>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">CalMatters\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>Want to give us feedback on the show? Shoot us an email at \u003ca href=\"mailto:CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\">CloseAllTabs@KQED.org\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Follow us on\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/closealltabspod/\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instagram\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> and\u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"https://www.tiktok.com/@closealltabs\"> \u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">TikTok\u003c/span>\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2 id=\"episode-transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cb>Morgan Sung, Host: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Just a note, this episode contains references to violence and strong language. Listen with care.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from 50501_Key_Largo Instagram Account]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Border Patrol Officer: If I continue to see you following me around, I’m gonna pull you over and arrest you.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Local Observer: For what? What law am I breaking?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Border Patrol Officer: You’re impeding one of the investigations, okay?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">That was an interaction between a Border Patrol officer and a local observer in Key Largo, Florida, posted on Instagram on Monday morning. The officer threatened to arrest the observer for following and filming him, but didn’t say what law they were breaking.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from 50501_Key_Largo Instagram Account]\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Local Observer: How am I impeding you?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Border Patrol Officer: I’m not going to argue with you.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Local Observer: Are you going to shoot me?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Border Patrol Officer: Why would I shoot you?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Local Observer: Because one of your guys, one of you federal people just shot an innocent woman and murdered her in Minneapolis.\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Last week, on January 7th, federal immigration and customs enforcement officers shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was 37. The Trump administration has launched an extensive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis singling out the city’s large Somali community. Last week they sent 2,000 federal agents in what ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons described as the largest immigration operation ever.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella, Guest: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In response, a lot of citizens have been protesting and following and monitoring ICE and CBP officers.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is C.J. Ciaramella, a reporter for Reason magazine who covers criminal justice and civil liberties. He’s been reporting on the Trump administration’s crackdown on those who record or photograph ICE operations. Last Wednesday, Renee Good and her wife had just dropped their six-year-old son off at school when they came across a group of ICE agents. Bystander video shows that Renee’s car was stopped perpendicularly on the road.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And an ICE, uh, a pickup of federal immigration officers stopped in front of her and went up and were shouting at her to…there were some contradictory orders to both leave and get out of her car and started tugging on her car. She started backing up first and then as she was doing that, one of the immigration officers stepped in front her car and she started moving forward and pulling out to leave with the officer in front of her. And as he was stepping around her car, as it was moving towards him, he pulled out his gun and fired three shots and killed her.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There are several bystander videos that captured different angles of Renee’s last moments and the gruesome aftermath. One shows an officer denying medical assistance for Renee after a bystander identified himself as a doctor.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Audio from a video recorded by eyewitness Emily Heller]\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doctor: Can I go check a pulse? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">ICE Officer: No! Back up! Now!\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doctor: I’m a physician!\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Emily Heller: Hey, listen here! You just killed my f***ing neighbor!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Videos of the incidents immediately spread online, sparking nationwide outrage. Over the weekend, hundreds of protests gathered across the country, demanding accountability and an end to mass deportations. The Trump administration has tried to paint Renee as an agitator who was stalking and impeding upon ICE operations. On Truth Social, the president said that Renee, “Violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who shot her in self-defense.” But as visual forensic analysis by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Bellingcat shows, the officer was able to step away from the car and while still standing, fired at least 2 of the 3 shots through the window as the car turned away from him. As ICE operations continue across the country, the Trump administration has escalated retaliating against anyone who follows or records federal officers. This includes journalists, and any civilian just observing ICE. In the last year, ICE and Border Patrol officers have threatened, arrested, and detained those who document their activities or report on their whereabouts. And now, federal agents have appeared to reference the shooting of Renee Good in confrontations with observers, like in this video, which was posted on the r/minneapolis subreddit this week.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 1 from r/minnesota Reddit page] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer:This is your warning! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Driver: For what? \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer: Stop f***ing following us! You are impeding operations! This is the United States Federal Government! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Driver: I live over here, I gotta get to my house! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer:This is- this is your warning! Go home!\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Driver: Go to church. \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer: Did you not learn from what just happened? Go home! \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Driver: Learn what?\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Or in this video, which was posted on the r/minnesota subreddit days after Renee was killed.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip 2 from r/minnesota Reddit page] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer: Have y’all not learned from the past couple of days? Have you not learned?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recorder: Learned what? What’s our lesson here? What do you want us to learn?\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Officer: Following federal agents.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Recorder: Give me my phone back!\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In light of all this, many people are asking, are you allowed to record federal agents? And what are your rights when it comes to recording ICE, especially as the Trump administration increasingly tries to target those who do? This is Close All Tabs. I’m Morgan Sung, tech journalist and your chronically online friend, here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let’s get into it. Let’s start with a new tab. Are you allowed to record ice? We’re back with C.J. Ciaramella, who reports on criminal justice and civil liberties for Reason Magazine. He’s going to put this into context for us. ICE activities have been escalating all throughout the past year, but what led up to this moment? And does it feel like a tipping point to you?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It really does. This has been sort of the, I don’t want to say logical conclusion because that doesn’t put it in the right light, but over this past summer, we’ve seen escalating rhetoric from the Trump administration about people filming and recording and monitoring ICE and also trying to warn other people about ICE activities. They described this as illegal activity, saying that it’s obstruction of justice or impeding federal immigration officers and they vowed to like, prosecute people who do this. And they also made it clear to these line officers working at CBP and ICE, yeah that they consider this illegal activity. That they consider following around and monitoring these agents to be very confrontational, illegal. There are dozens of videos of ICE and CBP officers threatening to arrest people and pulling them out of the car solely for following and recording them.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the main reasons that this incident specifically has exploded is because there are multiple video recordings taken by bystanders that have been shared online, gone viral, you know, just been spread among news outlets. You’ve been reporting on how the Trump administration is trying to make the case that recording ICE officers in public is illegal, like you said. But just to be clear, does the public have the right to record law enforcement and specifically ICE?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, I gotta be a little bit nuanced about this because the Supreme Court actually hasn’t put out a ruling saying there’s an unambiguous First Amendment right to film the police. But all of the seven US Federal Circuit Courts that have considered the issue have pretty much said there is a First Amendment right to record the police and observe the police, and they’ve all decided that pretty unambiguously. And this ranges from, you know, the ninth circuit, which is traditionally a pretty liberal leaning court to the fifth circuit, which has a reputation as a more conservative circuit court, you know? The fifth circuit looked at it and said, you know, based on the first amendment tradition, the Supreme court presidents, this seems pretty unambiguous to us. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Uh, so it’s not a completely like black and white issue, but it’s also not a, like, a thorny or divisive first amendment question. Every court that’s looked at, it has said, yeah. Based on our long First Amendment traditions. And in America, you have a right to record the police. Now, Minnesota is in one of the circuits that hasn’t yet ruled on this. So it’s not like black letter law in Minnesota.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. What protections does the public have, if any, when it comes to recording the police or recording law enforcement?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, you do have strong First Amendment protections, especially if you’re engaged in news gathering activity, if you’re monitoring a protest or monitoring police activity. And you don’t have to be an official journalist to do this because there’s no, you know, definition of journalists in the First Amendment. There are very strong protections for news gathering. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Since about 2020, some states have passed what are called buffer laws that restrict people from recording the police within about 25 feet when they’re asked to get out of the way. And those have faced a lot of scrutiny from courts. Arizona and Indiana both had buffer laws that were overturned for being unconstitutionally vague. There would be too much of a chilling effect for preventing the public from recording police. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a really fundamental principle and privacy First Amendment and public record law in the United States, is that government officials doing official government work in public don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy. You know, this is another example of a really sort of watershed moment in policing and law enforcement in America that’s based on recorded video evidence. The same as in Minneapolis with George Floyd in 2020, Rodney King, you know, is these have all had huge impacts on our nation’s history and they’re all based on people recording police activity and documenting it.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The founders really believed that we should be able to hold our government accountable. And that includes having access to popular information and knowing what our government is doing. And that’s why recording the police and creating this sort of evidence trail is such a core protected first movement activity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In June last year, dozens of journalists were injured by law enforcement while covering the Los Angeles protests against mass deportation. Many journalists and protesters were tear gassed or shot at with pepper rounds and rubber bullets, or their phones and cameras were smashed while recording. One reporter was shot by a rubber bullet live on air.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Months later, a federal district court issued an injunction blocking the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE and Border Patrol from brutalizing journalists, protesters, and legal observers. That means that federal agents aren’t allowed to threaten or assault the press or protesters unless they have probable cause to believe they’ve committed a crime. They also can’t use chemical, projectile, and auditory weapons against protesters, journalists, or legal observers who don’t pose imminent harm to law enforcement. Basically, they can’t tear gas or shoot people just for exercising their First Amendment rights. Enforcement is another story, though.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There were injunctions against that, if I’m remembering correctly. There were a couple of injunctions trying to restrict the sort of tactics that federal law enforcement was using. We also saw the same thing in Chicago. There was injunctions trying to restrict ICE from retaliating against protesters and reporters who were engaged in really clear-cut First Amendment activity. And the judges kind of struggled to enforce that. In Chicago we saw the plaintiffs kept coming back with new motions saying like, here’s more evidence that your injunction is not being followed.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">It’s been really hard to enforce because the Trump administration has, if not an officially stated, a de facto policy that anyone who is opposing them or filming them is subject to intimidation and retaliation. There was a Cato report that came out in December that outlined dozens of instances of people who are being intimidated and threatened by federal agents for engaging in really clearly protected First Amendment activity such as just following from a distance or recording police. In fact, I wrote a story about an Oregon woman who was followed by ICE agents because she was filming them in a parking lot and they followed her after she left and her lawyer shared video with me. She stopped at an intersection and you can see the the agents come up to her window and the first thing they say is ‘Why are you filming us?’ \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">And I want to say also as well that people who monitor police, reporters, and activists have faced First Amendment retaliation for decades. But what’s really startling and unprecedented here is that we’re hearing this coming from the top of the federal government. That is something that’s quite new, I would say. Secretary Noem was on record in July saying that, you know, violence is anything that threatens them and their safety and she included videotaping federal immigration officers. They’re equating videotaping officers with violence and domestic terrorism.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Here’s what DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said during a press conference last summer\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during July 12, 2025 Press Conference inTampa, Florida].\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">…And I will tell you that violence is anything that threatens them and their safety. So it is doxing them. It’s videotaping them where they’re at when they’re out on operations, encouraging other people to come and to throw things, rocks, bottles…\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Notice the use of the word doxing here. That’s the act of posting private information about someone to target and harass them, usually like their home address or personal phone number. The Trump administration has equated identifying and publicly naming ICE agents to dox-ing. California recently banned federal officers from wearing masks on duty, with exceptions for medical masks like N95s, wildfire protection, and agents undercover. The ban was supposed to go into effect this month. Here’s state Senator Scott Wiener talking about the ban on Instagram.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>[Senator Scott Wiener speaking on Instagram ]\u003cb>\u003cbr>\n\u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I introduced and passed this law to stop ICE and any other law enforcement from covering their faces and effectively operating as secret police. It is horrifying what federal agents are doing, tearing communities apart, operating in the shadows, not identifying themselves, covering their faces so you don’t even know who you’re dealing with.\u003c/span>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But the Trump administration has sued to block the bill, citing threats to federal officers like taunting, online doxing, and stalking. They argue that states like California have no authority to interfere with federal immigration operations, which means that state and local officials can’t enforce the mask ban. So are you allowed to record ICE? Yes, but like we’ve seen with California’s mask ban, the White House has been very opposed to any attempt at identifying federal officers. In fact, they’ve gone as far as trying to prosecute those who record and identify ICE agents. So what does this targeting and retaliation from the administration look like? And how is it holding up in courts? That’s after this break.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’re back. Time to open a new tab: The legal battle over recording law enforcement.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Trump administration is going as far as trying to prosecute people for following and recording ICE. And they’re using this federal statute to threaten those who get in their way. It’s called 18 USC 111. C.J. is going to tell us about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u003c/span>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, well, it’s both a felony and a misdemeanor depending on the severity or why they want to charge it. But it’s for assaulting, impeding, or obstructing a federal law enforcement agent and it’s pretty much what it sounds like. It’s more or less a federal analog of the obstruction laws that you see at your local level where if you, you know, if a police officer is trying to arrest someone and you get in their way and try and pull the person away or physically obstruct the officer, you can get charged with obstruction. But this also, I would mention, obstruction is a classic, what’s known as a contempt of cop charge. It’s something that’s thrown at people when they annoy cops, and the police are looking for something that they can punish them with. But it’s also used frequently for people who are being a real nuisance to police, and that’s what it’s intended for. It’s for assaulting and physically obstructing officers. And it accounts for all federal law enforcement, including immigration.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Right. How is the administration trying to use this statute specifically to target those who film ICE? Have they had any success?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is, you know, this sort of top-down order is to treat people who are opposing them through, you know, First Amendment or activities of recording or warning other people as violating this statute to sort of broaden this to include non-violent or non-physical means of obstruction. And what’s been really interesting about that is that these prosecutions have faired really poorly compared to federal prosecutors’ usual track record. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Usually when a U.S. Attorney’s office brings a case to a grand jury, they almost always get it. It is extremely rare for federal prosecutors to bring a case to a jury and have them reject it. And most cases that they do bring end in guilty pleas and plea agreements. But what we’ve seen is grand juries refusing cases in Chicago and elsewhere, refusing to indict. And those cases then getting thrown out when body cam footage and other evidence comes to light showing that these actions that people are being charged for aren’t meeting the elements of this crime which requires physically obstructing or assaulting agents and you know by that definition following an officer isn’t obstructing them you know recording them isn’t physically obstructed them even alerting other people to the presence of ICE is not obstructing them. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The law on that is a little more mixed, but there have been courts that have upheld the right to, for example, warn motorists of speed traps ahead or to flash your lights to warn people of cops in the distance. They consider that First Amendment speech as well. So what we’ve seen is a lot of these prosecutions failing at an unprecedented rate. There have been quite a few cases where they’ve charged people with a felony charge. And then when a grand jury refuses to indict them, they are refiled as a misdemeanor, which doesn’t actually require a grand-jury indictment. And some of those cases have pled out guilty after the misdemeanor charge was refiled. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">But there’s been other cases where the federal prosecutors haven’t even been able to secure a misdemeanor conviction. The most famous case was the sandwich guy in DC, Sean Dunn, who threw a Subway sandwich at a CBP officer.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">[Clip from WUSA 9 newscast] \u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003ci>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Customs and Border Patrol agent hit with the sandwich, characterized it as a profanity laced tirade, and he told the jury Dunn threw the sandwich so hard, it exploded against his bulletproof vest, “I could smell the onions and mustard.”\u003c/span>\u003c/i>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The prosecutors were trying to convince the jury that this officer had a real fear for his safety when he got pelted with a sandwich, and the jury did not agree.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">In an investigation published late last year, the Associated Press found that, since May, of the 100 people charged with felony assaults on federal agents, 55 saw their charges reduced to misdemeanors or just outright dismissed. Only 23 pleaded guilty.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">They’ve found that dozens of the cases have kind of fallen apart. That is a really high failure rate for federal prosecutors who nearly, when it comes to these sort of cases, are almost always batting a hundred. So it’s been a, it’s been very strange, I think, for the U.S. Prosecutor’s offices as well, who have had to face judges who are being very, well judges have to be very circumspect in their language, but are questioning these cases pretty harshly.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Even talking about this top-down almost order, right? JD Vance has made statements about how ICE agents have total immunity. How does that play into this? Like, what can you tell us about how much of the talk of ICE’s immunity can actually hold up against legal challenges?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">I asked DHS public affairs office in December if they considered following and recording officers to be obstruction of justice. You know, I wanted to get a straight answer from them. And the office of public affairs sent me a statement attributed to an unnamed spokesperson who said, that sure sounds like obstruction of justice, which, you know, isn’t a super clear answer, but it gives you the mindset. And like I said, that is coming and that is trickling down from the very top of DHS to the line officers who are being told that they have immunity and that anyone who is sort of bothering them is probably violating the statute.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">We’ve established that recording law enforcement is a right upheld by federal courts. That’s not stopping ICE agents from continuing to target those who do record them. You had mentioned the woman in Oregon that you covered. What happened there when she was stopped?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">She was detained for, I believe, five or six hours. She was taken to a detention facility and detained and eventually released without charges. Last time I checked, they still not filed any charges against her. So, you know, this was, um, can almost be seen as a purely retaliatory or punishment sort of, and that’s really, I think, what this comes down to is a textbook definition of a chilling effect on free speech. When you have these statements from top officials, when you have the vice president basically saying that these agents will have immunity for what they’re doing, it makes everyone who wants to participate and exercise their First Amendment right second guess whether it’s worth it.\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">You know, I was out driving around in my hometown in December. Um, following ICE and CBP and taking pictures, you know, um, from a distance, but, uh, just seeing what they were doing because I’m a reporter and I had a unambiguous, crystal clear, First Amendment right to do that. But it was still in the back of my head, if these guys decided I was bothering them, they could bust out my car windows. They could detain me. They could pull their guns on me, which is all things that have happened to people for doing the same thing. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">When I was a reporter at 25, that wasn’t as much of a worry, but I have a kid at home, ah, you know, you start doing…the calculus gets a lot harder. And that’s exactly what this sort of policy and what this activity does is make people self-censor under the threat of government retaliation.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">There was this woman who was detained for seven in Oregon. She’s just one of many dozens at this point who have been targeted by ICE. There are all the journalists in Los Angeles who were shot up by rubber bullets and injured. Is there any recourse for victims of retaliation like this?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, so it is very, very hard to hold federal law enforcement agents accountable for their actions. They do have sovereign immunity from some criminal prosecutions. In federal court, you have to file a lawsuit against the U.S. Government. You actually can’t sue them as individuals. So you basically have to go to court against the US government. And it is a very, very long and hard road to follow to successfully sue the U.S. Government for civil rights deprivations.\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">The best options, um, are probably more sweeping class action injunctions and sort of broader rulings against the general activity, just because it’s so hard to hold individual officers accountable even on a class action or individual level.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Considering everything we just talked about, what should people know before they consider recording ICE or other law enforcement activities?\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>C.J. Ciaramella: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">What I say you should know is that you do have the First Amendment right to do this. You have the right to record and monitor, and you even have the right to verbally oppose the police. One of the Supreme Court decisions that a lot of circuit courts have looked back on when they’re deciding these sort of questions was a 1987 Supreme Court ruling in a case called Houston v Hill, where they struck down an ordinance that made it unlawful to oppose or interrupt a police officer. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr. wrote, “The freedom of individuals verbally to oppose or challenge police action without thereby risking arrest is one of the principle characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.” And courts they’ll look back to that when they’re deciding things like whether you should be able to yell an obscenity at a police officer or record them. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\nAnd like I said, what the administration is trying to do is create a chilling effect here. And what people should know is that they are banking on fear and banking on you not wanting to exercise your First Amendment rights. And what we’re seeing all around the country with these protests and with people coming out and confronting ICE agents and CBP agents more is that it’s not working.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Morgan Sung: \u003c/b>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">So remember, recording ICE, or any law enforcement, is your constitutional right, but it’s not without risks. We’ll link some resources for staying safe in the show notes. And check out our two-part series, The Surveillance Machine, for a deeper dive on the history of protest surveillance and how it’s used today. Okay, let’s close all these tabs. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced by Maya Cueva, and edited by Chris Egusa, who also composed our theme song and our credits music. Chris Hambrick is our editor. Additional music by APM. Brendan Willard is our audio engineer. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is KQED’s director of podcasts. Katie Sprenger is our podcast operations manager, and Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our editor-in-chief. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco Northern California Local. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keyboard sounds were recorded on my purple and pink dust silver K84 wired mechanical keyboard with Gateron red switches. \u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u003cbr>\n\u003c/span>\u003cspan style=\"font-weight: 400\">Okay, and I know it’s a podcast cliche, but if you like these deep dives and want us to keep making more, it would really help us out if you could rate and review us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to the show. Thanks for listening.\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"soldout": {
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"info": "Tech Nation is a weekly public radio program, hosted by Dr. Moira Gunn. Founded in 1993, it has grown from a simple interview show to a multi-faceted production, featuring conversations with noted technology and science leaders, and a weekly science and technology-related commentary.",
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