404 Media Live: LA! [TEASER]

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Can you do it from memory?

Welcome to the 404 Media podcast, where we talk about unparalleled

access in the world, both online and IRL.

404 Media is a journalist.

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44 Media is a journalist.

Every time we do this, it's me reading from a Google Doc.

And people don't realize that.

I have Riverside on the left side and then the Google Doc on the right side.

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As well as bonus content every single week.

We should do it again with the music and you read it out and I'll share it.

Okay.

Okay.

When you're ready to start, start.

Yes, we'll do that.

Are you doing the music again?

I thought we did.

Do the music.

I probably did start.

Okay.

I'm going to try to join your accent.

Hello.

And welcome to the 44 Media Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL.

44 Media is a journalist founding company and needs your support.

Subscribe, go to 44media.co as well as bonus content every single week.

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I'm your host Joseph

and with me are 44 media co-founders Sam Cole.

On mute.

Hi.

Joseph Cox.

I thought I was going to get to mock your voice.

Oh, go for it.

No, No, no, no.

I don't agree with you.

Jason Kebler.

Hey, hey, good to be here.

Emmanuel wishes he could be here.

He is not.

I think before we start, thank you all so much for coming.

This is the first time that we've done anything in LA.

I live here, so it's very good.

Thank you.

Thank you to everyone at RipSpace for having us.

Amazing, amazing space.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you to Dexter Thomas, who will be up here in a minute.

Thank you to Raul, who is running all of our tech.

Could not do it without him.

Thank you to Rosie, our intern, Rosie.

I don't know where you are.

Bought the balloons.

Amazing, amazing help.

And thank you to all of you for being here.

This is, I don't know.

Didn't think that anyone would come and you all did.

If people in the back want to come in, there's space in the middle.

And also you could come sit in the floor in the front.

Please come in.

I know you're like in the hallway.

I mean, no pressure.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm sorry.

This is the situation.

But just on that, I've constantly been asking Sam and Jason, like, so how many people signed up?

And it's like the number going up.

And I didn't think anybody would come.

So it's very

surprised.

I'm always surprised when people come in real life because I'm a homebody and I stay home always.

So when people come out, I'm excited.

Yeah, we've done two parties before and they were both a lot of work.

One was in New York and

I had COVID, so I did not attend.

And the other was at South by Southwest, where we sort of piggybacked on someone else's party.

And both of those parties were

like

somewhat easy to put on.

We brought all of these cameras.

You know, John with Ripsteads made it very easy for us, but this is truly like a DIY thing.

So I'm very, very happy that we haven't all exploded and that there is sound coming out of the speakers.

We will probably keep this to like, I don't know, like 30-ish minutes and then do some like Q ⁇ A at the end.

But we're going to talk a little bit about our reporting about ICE and the technology that they use.

Sam?

Yes.

Yeah.

So this is, we're going to talk first.

We're going to kind of walk you through like the last few months of coverage that we've done about ICE.

So this is from, that's this story.

Oh no, that's a different story.

Slide, please.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't really matter.

I can't see the story.

Oh, we reused the photo, which is a little peek behind the mirror

of the indie media.

Yeah, so the first story we're going to talk about is

inside a powerful database ICE uses to identify and deport people.

So

do we want to kind of walk through what the database is, what we saw?

I believe we all got to look at the database behind the scenes.

But yeah, can we just kind of describe what it was in as much detail as we can?

Because I remember seeing it and I was thinking, okay, this is, you think, oh, inside a database and you're thinking something very like sleek and sexy and like techie.

And it was like pretty boring, like content management file system that looked very like archaic.

Um, and the stuff inside was like pretty insidious, and you would never know it.

So, yeah,

I think this was one of the first stories we did after Trump took office.

And uh, Sam and I worked on this together.

Uh, it's a system called the investigative case management system,

which

was set up uh during the Obama administration.

I believe.

Bump her up.

Which number are you again?

Four.

Four.

Okay.

It's called the Investigative Case Management System.

We have to keep it low.

If it's low for YouTube, that's like too bad, unfortunately.

Sorry, YouTube.

Sorry, YouTube.

Yeah.

So it's called the Investigative Case Management System, and it was set up during the Obama administration.

And it's a DHS database that I know you cannot see up here

because the screen is very cool, but it's not made for displaying black tech or white text on a black screen.

The one thing it can't display.

Yeah, but it's a very good vibe.

It's a very good vibe.

So basically, this database allows filtering according to your visa status and a bunch of other things like when you enter a port of entry.

So it has things for, quote, refugee, border crossing card, non-immigrant alien refused admission.

So anyone turned away at the border.

Temporary protected status, alien, non-immigrant alien transiting without a visa, et cetera, et cetera.

And then it also has things for, quote, scars, marks, tattoos, criminal affiliation, location data, license plate reader data, spoiler alert, that will be important later,

country of origin, hair and eye color, race, social security number, birthplace, place of employment, driver's license status, et cetera, et cetera.

And basically what we learned was this was a huge database that DHS was creating.

And when it was first enacted by the Obama administration, there were guardrails on when ICE could use this and which parts of DHS could use this.

And surprise, surprise, they had to do something called a privacy impact assessment when it was first unveiled.

And they said, well, a future administration could take all these guardrails off, but like, we're going to launch it anyway.

And,

well.

Maybe that gets to our second story, which came very soon after this.

So that was a preview of our live event in Los Angeles in July, where we spoke all about the tech that ICE was and is using from Flock to Palantir, facial recognition stuff, spyware now as well.

If you want to hear the rest of that conversation, please become a paying 404 Media subscriber.

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Thank you so much.