Tucker Carlson 🙃

As some of you may have noticed, I was a somewhat brief guest on Tucker Carlson’s episode on mass surveillance yesterday.

I've never been a fan of the vast majority of Tucker’s opinions, and while I do realize that some of his opinions are becoming more aligned with mine or those of the community, I still strongly disagree with language that I feel is dehumanizing to immigrants or other marginalized communities.

The thing is, mass surveillance is being used to target marginalized communities and is responsible for moving law enforcement resources away from protocols and practices that encourage policing to operate equitably. Flock can and has been used by ICE. Flock has been used to track and attempt to prosecute individuals for their personal healthcare decisions.

Flock and other surveillance vendors are betting on support by the right-wing government that is currently in control of federal (and in many places, local) legislation. Many politicians have told me that being anti-surveillance is often painted as being “soft on crime”. This results in the controlling party ignoring the problem while a surveillance network expands far beyond 110,000 cameras.

Due to the nature of my content, I don’t have many opportunities to speak to voters on the right in a way where I’ll be heard. Being able to deliver these talking points on Tucker Carlson’s interview channel was an opportunity to do this. I knew this would not be well received by some people on social media, but I didn’t think it would be poorly received by some important and valued members of this community.

For what it’s worth, I took great care for this appearance to be exclusively me issuing talking points to Tucker’s platform. The episode is not shared on my YouTube page, my name is not in the title, and my photo is not in the thumbnail. Furthermore, I exclusively talked about my knowledge and experience with Flock’s surveillance ecosystem and reformative policing. I took care to join this particular episode so as to not let the conversation bleed out into partisan issues.

The goal was to increase knowledge about government surveillance and to increase both the strength and size of the opposition to it in a demographic I naturally have trouble reaching. For that purpose, I don’t think it could’ve gone more smoothly, and I’m very happy with how I delivered my talking points. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who were impartial about Flock cameras will now see them for what they are.

I initially didn’t want to do the interview, but I think it was the right thing to do and I do not regret doing it.

I’m sad to hear that some members of this community do not agree with my decision, and I don’t blame them for feeling that way. Tucker has said a lot of divisive things that has likely resulted in a lot of harm. Whether they support my decision or not, I just want them to know that I understand and still support their freedom to be themselves at any opportunity. The reason I’m in this battle at all is to protect peoples' privacy and human rights.

Finally, I hate being in this battle against police surveillance, it’s consumed my entire life for over a year. After this year’s election cycle, I intend on moving on to other things that I’m happier advocating for or making content about.

Love,

B