We are in a phone war. Ever since cameras became embedded in cellphones, people have been using their devices to bear witness to state violence. But now, the state is striking back.
I don’t think it is any coincidence that Alex Pretti was holding his phone when he was shot to death by federal agents in Minneapolis. Or that Renee Good’s partner was filming a federal agent seconds before he killed Ms. Good. Agents have repeatedly knocked phones out of the hands of observers. They have beaten people filming them and followed them to their homes and threatened them. Of the 19 shootings by federal agents in the past year identified by The Trace, a news outlet that investigates gun violence, at least four were documenting federal agents’ actions.
Courts have long granted citizens a First Amendment right to film in public. But this right on paper is now being increasingly contested on the streets as federal agents try to stop citizens from recording their activities.
“We are seeing a pattern of them intimidating people who are just trying to observe,” said Alicia Granse, a staff attorney at the A.C.L.U.’s Minnesota chapter, which is suing the Department of Homeland Security for using violent tactics to suppress residents’ right to free speech. A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in the case this month, prohibiting ICE from retaliating against peaceful observers and protesters in the state. But that injunction was lifted on Wednesday by an appeals court.
Government officials have openly equated filming an agent with violence in statements and in court testimony. In July, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that violence against agents includes “videotaping them where they are at, when they are out on operations.”
The nation’s founders worried that if the state had a monopoly on weapons, its citizens could be oppressed. Their answer was the Second Amendment. Now that our phones are the primary weapons of today’s information war, we should be as zealous about our right to bear phones as we are about our right to bear arms. To adopt the language of Second Amendment enthusiasts, perhaps the only thing that can eventually stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a camera.
More than 25 years ago, the science fiction writer David Brin foretold this exact crossroads. In his 1998 book “The Transparent Society,” he painted two alternate snapshots of a futuristic city festooned with tiny, ubiquitous cameras. In one scenario, the government uses the devices to monitor residents in an Orwellian police state. In the other, citizens can look at the live footage from any camera to watch out for one another and to keep tabs on the police, resulting in a just and fair society. The difference between oppression and liberation, he wrote, is, “Who will ultimately control the cameras?”
Of course, our administration and its enforcers are also wielding phones to their advantage as they build their counternarratives in our social-media age. The Trump administration is waging a propaganda campaign through videos on social media showcasing its mass deportation operations. In December, when ICE launched its onslaught in Minnesota, the agency posted a video on X showing a montage of brown-skinned men being chased, tackled and handcuffed by ICE agents, set to the soundtrack of Foreigner’s “Cold as Ice.” The post accompanying the video said, “Minnesota’s weather is cloudy with a 100% chance of ICE.” An analysis of footage by The Daily Northwestern suggested that agents were filming protesters in a Chicago suburb with what appeared to be Meta’s Ray-Ban sunglasses equipped with cameras.
The smartphone camera is a potent weapon because it offers the promise of future accountability. Even if the person filming is killed, the camera can preserve evidence of a crime that could be prosecuted in the future. A desire to evade such accountability is why governments engaged in violent repression often shut off internet access and thus prevent witnesses from sharing video and photos — as Israel has done regularly during its Gaza bombardment and Iran recently did during its massacre of thousands of protesters.
The best defense is to double down on documentation. Those who can afford the personal risk should keep filming. And those who can’t risk being on the front lines can support those doing the documenting in other ways. The brave citizens of Minnesota and elsewhere are fighting back, monitoring federal agents using chokeholds, chemical agents and excessive force on immigrants, observers and protesters. As Gov. Tim Walz recently urged Minnesotans: “Carry your phone with you at all times,” in order to “help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans.” Videos captured by bystanders in Minneapolis have already allowed news outlets to debunk the government’s claims that agents shot Mr. Pretti because he was brandishing a gun.
We need to question whenever the government asks us to put away our phones — especially when it comes to filming people we pay with our tax dollars.
Photo credits, top row, left to right: Tim Evans/Reuters, Roberto Schmidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, Leah Millis/Reuters. Middle: Leah Millis/Reuters, David Guttenfelder/The New York Times, Tim Evans/Reuters. Bottom row: Angelina Katsanis/Associated Press, David Guttenfelder/The New York Times, Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times.
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