The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Joseph: 00:04

Hello, and welcome to the four zero four Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four zero four Media is a journalist on the company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.co.

Joseph: 00:29

I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are two of the four zero four media cofounders, the first being Sam Cole Hey. And the other being Jason Kebler.

Jason: 00:39

Hello. Hello.

Joseph: 00:41

Final reminder. Well, if you're a paying subscriber, you get this on Tuesdays. If you're listening to the free feed the free feed, you get it on Wednesdays, and that is the same day as our latest FOIA forum. As a reminder well, I even did the cadence of the intro then or the outro as a reminder. Anyway, the FOIA forum, a livestreamed event where we will teach you how to file public records requests.

Joseph: 01:10

This one specifically, as I've said before, is about flock reporting and that of researchers as well. We're gonna show you those requests, how people learn from their local police departments or sheriff offices or local government, how and why police have been using flock cameras in their local communities and what that all means. And, of course, our reporting shows the local cops have been doing lookups for ICE in there. Of course, this very important abortion story we did as well. Actually, there's one which I always forget to bring up, which is that flock cameras were used to monitor an immigration protest.

Joseph: 01:52

I feel like we barely barely even mention that in the pieces when we're sort of rounding up our our reporting, but there's a link in the show notes to the page on the site. Go to that, and then paying subscribers will find the livestream link to the event on the site. And again, that is the November 19, Wednesday at 1PM eastern. If you can't make it or you do become a paid subscriber later, we upload all of them to a certain section of the website, and you'll be able to watch an archive there. Jason, we should probably do the slides for now.

Jason: 02:32

Yeah. It's been busy. It's only Tuesday. It's been a very, very busy week, and we have to put together a presentation for tomorrow. But we've done a lot about this, so I'm very excited for it.

Jason: 02:42

We've been meaning to do this flock foyer forum for, like, quite some time. So very excited to talk about it. And the last few FOIA forums have been like more and more people have been at them, which has been really awesome. So very excited for

Joseph: 02:57

Yeah. I we'll we will bring it all together, and, of course, we will answer a bunch of questions live on the on the livestream as well. Alright. For this week's first section, we're doing something a little bit different. We're not talking about an article we wrote and published.

Joseph: 03:16

We're talking more about something that we were maybe going to write about, but, you know, then we we don't have enough time or whatever, but something that's still wild and important and that we felt like talking about. And then the two other sections are gonna be about articles we publish. So the headline of this story isn't, but could be something like the formatting on the Epstein emails is crazy is what I have in the Google Doc. Jason, what do you mean by that? And then I'm sure we'll go back and give people context, but like what was your beef?

Jason: 03:51

Yeah. I mean, I think that we're trying to talk about something that everyone else is talking about. And as you mentioned, like, I did run I did wanna write an article about this last week. I just got really busy. But basically, the house oversight committee has been releasing tons and tons of emails and documents pulled from Jeffrey Epstein's estate.

Jason: 04:14

It's actually been a a bit of a sparring match between the Democrats in the house oversight committee, and the oversight committee is like the part of congress of the house representatives that oversees the government, is responsible for government accountability and various investigations and things like that. And so as part of, you know, the the sort of tussling over the Jeffrey Epstein documents and investigations, the Democrats have been releasing some files, and then the Republicans have also been releasing other files. And just as, like, people who go through a lot of documents for our jobs and also care about archiving and government transparency and things like this, I thought that we could maybe talk a little bit about it. So

Joseph: 05:11

And and I I guess just before you go ahead, these also aren't, in case it wasn't clear to people who've been following. This isn't like the Epstein files either. The Epstein files, quote unquote, are the FBI investigative files, which lawmakers may actually vote to release now. These are like the Epstein emails in a way. Right?

Jason: 05:37

So there are there are many, many, many, many, many, many Epstein files, and I think that when we're talking about, like, cons I don't even wanna call it conspiracy theories, but when people are saying, like, release the Epstein files, I think that they are talking about the FBI's investigative files as you said. That said, the FBI and the Department of Justice have released various Epstein files. It's just that many of them are redacted and many of them have come out as parts different parts of court cases over the years. And that's another, like, kind of issue with this is that there has been, like, many, many different times where documents related to Jeffrey Epstein and his sex crimes and pedophilia crimes and sexual abuse and all the people that he interacted with, his plane records, like all these sorts of things have come out as different parts of different court cases over the years. And now what's being released, as I understand, are subpoenaed records from the house oversight committee from the Epstein estate.

Jason: 06:47

Yeah. But there were also some Department of Justice records that got released somewhat recently in the same chaotic, insane way that we're about to talk about. And so I think, yes, like, the Epstein emails is probably the correct way to think about it, as you said. But but then again, it's like, I actually just got a push alert as we're recording this that the house voted overwhelmingly to release the Epstein files, demand that the justice department release all files tied to its Jeffrey Epstein investigation is how the New York Times words it. And it's like, now that'll go to the senate, who knows if the senate takes it up?

Jason: 07:23

Who knows if if Donald Trump will sign it? It's like, we don't really need to get into it for this podcast. But these document dumps that have been happening over the last few months and then very notably last week have been released on Google Drive with a backup on Dropbox.

Joseph: 07:49

And and and who sends that Google Drive link out? Is it like an is it like an official congressional email? Like, where does this Google Drive come from?

Jason: 07:58

So on November 12, there is a press release from the committee on oversight and government reform, and it here's the entirety of the press release.

Joseph: 08:09

Okay.

Jason: 08:09

It says, oversight committee released additional Epstein estate documents. Then it says Washington, where they're located, Washington DC. The house committee on oversight and government reform released an additional 20,000 pages of documents received from the estate of Jeffrey Epstein. Documents can be found here. And it's a link to a Google Drive with no title, no anything.

Jason: 08:31

And then it says a backup of documents can be found here, and it's a link up link to the Dropbox. First of all, it's like pretty insane that that congress is releasing files via Google and Dropbox. And it's also kind of crazy that they are, like, having a backup link, like a mirror as though they are worried that Google is gonna delete these as though they are, like, an adult actor who's, like, follow my follow my backup account here. Like, it's it's kind of odd, I would say. I guess kind of given what we know about PACER, which is the, you know, court systems file file system, which is a shit show and very hard to search and very expensive.

Jason: 09:17

Like, I guess the house committee on oversight doesn't have its own server to to upload these to. Maybe this is actually I mean, we can debate it. Maybe this is not the worst way to release these sorts of documents, but basically, it's like you click a link and it and it's just called Epstein Estate documents, and then there's four folders. And the folders are data, images, text, and natives. And then there's a bunch of subfolders that are just like zero zero one, zero zero two, so on and so forth.

Jason: 09:55

And I'm like really

Joseph: 09:58

It's not sorted at all, like chronologically or anything like that?

Jason: 10:02

Not from what I can tell. It really honestly, when it came out, it felt to me like I was playing Jeffrey Epstein email lottery or slot machine because you open up, like, the image folder zero zero six, and then you click into something, and then it's just, like, screenshots of articles or, like, it's just random stuff. Like, there's PowerPoint presentations. There's, you know, many many emails. There's emails in different formats.

Jason: 10:36

I I don't even know if that's necessarily like that bad. Like, know, some of the emails have or some of the images have thumbnails and things like that. But it is just like an incredibly chaotic way to release something that has so much public interest, I guess I would say. And then one of the earlier documents just had a bunch of JPEGs of emails that were not OCR ed in any way. OCR means optical character recognition, meaning you can search them, like control f, you can search through them.

Jason: 11:13

That hadn't been done on anything. And I guess I'm curious what you think, like, why this is the case. I have a few theories, but from a usability perspective, from a, like, hey. I'm interested in this as a normal person, it's very it's not the best.

Joseph: 11:31

My guess is it sounds like a raw export in response to the subpoena in that when the subpoena is issued and then it's received by the target, they will you know, maybe the legal department will do it in in conjunction with the IT department. I don't know about the Jeffrey Epstein IT department. It could be, you know, lawyers or or whatever. Right? But they will have software to produce the correct records in response to a subpoena, and the fact that it hasn't been it sounds really curated in any way.

Joseph: 12:06

It sounds like it's just like a raw export, especially a native's folder. So maybe it's just that, you know, And they didn't really I mean, maybe they read them obviously for their congressional investigation, but it doesn't sound like they then went and curated them at all to then publicly release them. It's more like a dump. And it's weird because, yeah, the argument for it being on Google Drive, I mean, pretty accessible. Everybody has a Google account.

Joseph: 12:34

And even if you don't, you can usually download stuff from a public Google Drive link even if you don't have a Gmail. Right?

Jason: 12:41

I guess it's also not gonna get hugged to death. Right. Right. It's likely to stay up.

Joseph: 12:46

A ton of that. And then so I can see the argument for it. It's just funny where we've been covering data dumps for, like, ten years at this point. And sometimes, like, hackers are more organized than this. You know, like, young, sometimes reckless hackers, you know, they'll put more effort into their press release with their ASCII art than it sounds like the committee did here in in getting these documents online.

Jason: 13:14

I just clicked three files that are next to each other. One is an email from 2016, one is an email from 2018, and the other is an email from 2017. It's like they're they're not in any sort of order, really, from what I can tell. And so I think that you're correct. And I think also so this entire, like, case or a huge part of this entire situation is built on the idea that we can't trust the government, we can't trust the official narrative of what happened here or investigation.

Jason: 13:44

And there have been instances where the government has been accused of altering files. For example, the surveillance footage of his jail cell when he died, there's like, you know, Wired did a story where there's like the metadata shows that there's missing footage. So I do think that it's I actually think despite everything that I said, it's good that they did a raw dump or what seems to be a raw dump of the files. What I don't understand is why, and, like, maybe then maybe this is, getting too political, but, like, why did the Democrats who want wanted to release this not spend more time curating these emails and creating a website or somewhere that you can read them in, like, a way that makes sense in addition to the raw dump? Like, from a political narrative.

Jason: 14:41

Like, why are they like, here's a bunch of random files with random formats in no order. Good luck. Like, do you think that it's just like a, hey. Have fun with this. Like, go go crazy.

Jason: 14:52

Read these read this stuff. Like, does it feed into the conspiratorial nature of it or the the, like, you know I don't know. Maybe maybe this is, a better way of releasing it because things did then seem to, like, come out slowly over the weekend as journalists and people on Blue Sky and Twitter and Reddit started finding interesting emails. But I don't know. It just it feels like not very calculated, I guess.

Joseph: 15:23

Yeah. And, Sam, I'm gonna ask you something without revealing what you're working on. But you're working on something at the moment where you have to go through a lot of data to figure out who you're gonna reach out to the story, that sort of thing. How would if you were covering this Epstein story, how would you prefer it was delivered to you rather than this?

Sam: 15:52

I don't think I would want, like oh, I don't think I would want, like, a neat organized version because it would make me wonder what they if they left anything out or, like, what they cut or, like, if they were like, oh, that's not important, but maybe it was important. Like, I don't know. It's like, I don't I think, like, don't touch it and just dump it is probably the smartest way to do it. That said, I don't think this is I don't think they're thinking that hard. I don't think there's a smart way and a not smart way that they've considered.

Sam: 16:26

I think this is just, like, chumming the water. Like, just, like, get it out and let journalists and whoever and whatever, like, talking head wants to deal with it at a cable news network can go through it. Like, I don't I just don't think anyone's, like, spending that much time thinking about how to do this, which is probably why we end up with it the way that it is. I don't know. I mean, I guess you could go down various rabbit holes and, like, wonder if it's a mess on purpose, if it's hard to go through on purpose.

Sam: 17:01

But it's also, like, I don't know. It's like you click. I have barely touched it, but, like, you it's like you can just throw a dart and end up with, like, a billionaire admitting to, like, horrible crimes, which is also, like, its own bizarre you know, it's like you can't really go wrong clicking around on that thing. It's there's not really a a boring file in there because it's all horrible.

Jason: 17:26

That's part of what is so horrifying where it's just like, oh, click one email. It's something terrible from Peter Thiel saying, like, had a good time hanging out. Then it's like the next one is like Larry Summers, and then it's just like behind every door a new horror. So I mean, yeah, maybe the the slot machine aspect of it is actually, like, smart.

Sam: 17:49

So I guess how would you organize it anyway? It's like, I guess chronologically would be chronologically would be the only way that I would think would make any sense. But then if you want to organize it more than that, it would be like, what would it be like by billionaire, by a state that they're located in during the email? It's like, how do you kind of go more granular than just, like, by date? But even by date would be helpful, I guess.

Sam: 18:14

But I don't know. It's like, don't really need them to be helpful. It's like, I don't be helpful. Honestly, just let let the people who are actually doing the process do the process. But you know?

Joseph: 18:27

Yeah. And as you say, journalists have been going through it, and there's, you know, a few stories that come out of it. There's the Michael Wolff stuff for those who don't know. I mean, a very famous journalist slash writer. And in the emails, he's seen giving a, quote, heads up to Epstein that, hey.

Joseph: 18:48

CNN is working on something. They're planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you. And then Epstein replies, if I were to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be? And Michael Wolff, again, apparently the journalist, says, oh, you should let him hang himself metaphorically. Actually, a really poor choice of words looking back back in time.

Joseph: 19:13

But, obviously, what the hell are you doing? You're you're, like, giving PR advice to, you know, a pedophile, and then even if he wasn't you shouldn't be giving PR advice to anybody. You're a journalist. What the hell are you doing? Anyway, there was that, and there was some stuff like New York Times writer, and that's like a whole other thing.

Joseph: 19:32

There was, I think, a Democrat on a committee during a Michael Cohen hearing was texting with Epstein. So there's definitely interesting stuff in there. But as you say, Jason, it took a few days for it sort of to come out because it required people to really dig through it and then probably do additional reporting as well. When when Epstein documents have come out before, we've even published them. I think the most traffic we've ever got when we published the some Epstein docs.

Joseph: 20:03

Right?

Jason: 20:03

It was very funny. We were we were the Google Drive in this instance because there was a there's a big dump of Epstein documents soon after we launched, like within a couple months of us launching, I think. And I downloaded them all off of Pacer. We bought them. We paid for them.

Jason: 20:23

And then we uploaded them to our own site. And I think it is still our highest trafficking article of all time Yeah. I think.

Joseph: 20:34

It's literally to be honest, it's probably more sketch than the Google Drive. It's literally a link at the bottom of the article. It's like, do you just wanna download the PDFs? It's like raw straight from our server, basically.

Jason: 20:48

But those not. It's not the biggest anymore. It it was it was the biggest for a while, but we passed it many times this year. But that that was at the that was, like, soon after we launched. So it was, like, a bunch of articles that had just a few thousand people read them and then, like, tens of thousands, hundreds of over, well, 200,000 people Sure.

Joseph: 21:12

Looked at this one. And, crucially, those court documents were probably OCR ed or capable of being OCR ed. Right? Like, you just download them and you can kind of search them if you have the right tools. Right?

Jason: 21:24

They were all PDFs, which is like helpful. There's like not a PDF to be found, honestly.

Joseph: 21:32

In the latest stuff. Yeah.

Jason: 21:33

Not that I mean, there's some, but they're they're mostly in just like weird formats. The interestingly, on that first one where we upload them, we, like, upload them to our website. And I did hear from Ghost, our our service provider after that, that it was like they were like, that was, like, very expensive for us Oh. To host those files because they got downloaded so many times. And that was, like, when we were smaller, when they were smaller.

Jason: 22:02

I just don't think that anyone was kind of, like, expecting an influx of, like, downloading gigabytes and gigabytes of data from our website. But, anyways Well,

Joseph: 22:17

what I mean, two things. Obviously, we're joking a bit, but there is also, like, a serious element to this in that it's really important to be able to access information. So why do you think that's so important? Because, you know, journalists will figure out eventually. We have these stories.

Joseph: 22:33

Like, why does it really matter that it gets delivered more easily, and how would you prefer it? Well, I

Jason: 22:41

was gonna say there actually have been a few projects Right. Immediately after these documents have been released to OCR them, sort of run them through, you know, optical character recognition software and then to upload them in a more searchable format. I think Zitteo, which is another independent media company, made a tool that allows you to search things. And then there's been a few projects, one of which we wrote about a few weeks ago, that tried to use AI to do it. And so they would, like, OCR it, but then they also had AI summaries of different documents and things like that.

Jason: 23:18

It's like interesting project, like interesting attempt at AI, especially because he used like an offline AI, like he used one that he had like an open source one that that he had on his computer. And those you can those websites allow you to search like all documents that mention Trump, all documents that mention Larry Summers, all documents that mention Michael Wolf. Like, you can search by, I don't know, like type of document, things like that. But I've heard, like, pretty mixed things about how well they are OCR ed just because there's so many documents and, like, these projects are really rushing. And so there is maybe, like, a loss of fidelity in in that process.

Jason: 24:06

I think that those projects are cool and and are, like, needed, and I think we love an archive project. We've talked a lot about different archive projects. I do think that I don't know. Like, I don't know what the best way to do it is, but I I I kind of wanted to just bring it up because we have been talking a lot about ICE on this podcast over the last few months and we're gonna talk about it again in the month. But I think it was just like, let's do something that's not like in another show that's entirely about ICE and this is something else that people are talking about, that and Olivia Nazzi, which I think we probably won't talk about.

Jason: 24:45

But that's like the thing that is like going on at this juncture in the discourse. But but with the FOIA forum coming up tomorrow and things like that, like, the ways that governments release documents is pretty interesting and is it's crazy. It's like all over the map. Like, if you filed public records requests, I think everyone has some sort of story about a weird file format or like a proprietary file format or a password protected PDF that they don't tell you the password for that they've gotten, things like this. Like, I got a floppy disk from a government, like, maybe three years ago.

Jason: 25:26

It's just like they are they are sending fit stuff out in really bizarre ways very often, and this is a function of different local governments using different computer systems, different filing systems. A lot of them use Outlook, but they don't know how to, like, export Outlook email boxes, things like that. Gotten a lot of corrupt files, things like that. And so part of being a journalist is figuring out how to open up all of these file formats and how to search through them and and all that. And this just seemed like a good opportunity to talk a little bit about that.

Jason: 26:06

I've learned how to open up Windows, like Windows only files on a Mac more times than I would like to count. Yeah. And it it doesn't go very well very often, but yeah.

Joseph: 26:16

Dealing dealing with my small farm of virtual machines I have to tend to, You know? I I think I just gave up. Well, no. I used to do that a lot running various Linux version machines, then Windows ones, dropping all different files. Now I'm just like, Emmanuel, could you just open this a new Windows machine and just send a screenshot to me?

Joseph: 26:35

I don't have time to fucking do all of that. Okay. We will leave that there unless well, I know we're gonna finish this podcast, maybe they have dumped the documents. I guess we're gonna see. When we come back after the break, we're gonna talk about a fun recruiting effort on LinkedIn.

Joseph: 26:53

I'll put it like that. We'll be right back after this.

Jason: 27:08

Okay. And we're back. Joseph, this is a story you did about ice. We're gonna continue writing a lot about ice, by the way. What I mentioned in the first section was just like, you know, we care very deeply about it.

Jason: 27:21

It's just that we wanna talk about something else for at least one section of the pod. Contractor recruiting people on LinkedIn to physically track immigrants for ICE will pay $300. Joseph, this all started with a LinkedIn post. What what was the post?

Joseph: 27:38

Yeah. I'm looking at it now. So it's from a guy called Jim Brown, who is the president at Feds United. Feds United is a federal contractor consultancy. So it is a contractor in some ways, but it's more they work with other contractors to figure out their contracts.

Joseph: 28:01

It's probably the most, you know, DC, Bell, Virginia, Maryland thing you could probably think of, that a company exists to do the contracts for the contractors, blah blah blah. Anyway, Jim posted on LinkedIn. While I was writing this, it was three weeks ago, and now it's a month. So, you know, basically, bang on a month ago, he writes this LinkedIn post, and he says, hello to my LinkedIn retired law enforcement and military friends. He then goes on to say that FedsUnited is looking for around 20 more of these retired or former law enforcement or retired military personnel in DC or Northern Virginia to participate in what he calls a, quote, ninety day pilot project that is expected to kick off within the next few weeks, end quote.

Joseph: 28:50

And he says that the project is to assess whether contractors can validate addresses associated with subjects of interest. You're to only observe and report. That's it. All pretty vague, you know, not a lot of details, but he says if you're interested in in in true LinkedIn fashion, if you're interested in the opportunity, please contact me here via LinkedIn messaging or share it in your, you know, your wider network. He doesn't have hashtag hiring in his LinkedIn profile photo.

Joseph: 29:25

I didn't see anybody with hashtag open to work in their profile photos even though Jason made that pretty good joke. So, yeah, it all it all started there, basically.

Jason: 29:34

Yeah. One of the worst LinkedIn posts I've read in quite some time. So so basically, you see this LinkedIn post, and then you spoke to some people who had been briefed on the plans. Like, what what did you learn?

Joseph: 29:51

Yeah. So as you heard, that LinkedIn post, as I said, was vague. It didn't say what exactly the work was, who exactly they would be working for, but I then spoke to multiple people who have been briefed on those plans, and they said that it is verifying information for ICE. So FedsUnited or the contractor they're working with that we'll probably talk about in a minute, they would provide addresses from ICE of immigrant targets, undocumented people, alien targets, alien obviously being the US government's term for somebody who's in the country who's not a citizen, and they will be tasked with, here are some vehicles. You have to go verify whether this address belongs to this person or not So we can figure out, yes, this undocumented person is at this location.

Joseph: 30:49

That gets reported back to ICE, and then presumably, that is going to be so then ICE can act on that information. From what I was told, ICE does not have doesn't always have a good address for the people it is trying to go after. I think there's a lot of different reasons for that probably. One might be that ICE's targets might be mobile. Maybe they use some services and not others.

Joseph: 31:19

And I think a very interesting one, which came up in some of my conversations, is that DHS is repeatedly being cut out of a lot of tools that they used to have access to, so stuff like utility bill data. I remember in the first Trump administration, there was a big story in the Washington Post, which I think came after a wide in office investigation about how utility companies were selling personal data, and that was ending up with DHS. As far as I know, that got cut off. So what is this pilot trying to do? Well, we have all these addresses, and other people can go verify them with the tools they have, which, you know, different tools in private industry or simply there's just a lot of work to do, like going out and verifying whether somebody lives here or something and observing them, that is a lot of manual work for a lack of a better way of pulling it, but that is what this plan was.

Joseph: 32:18

Start with a LinkedIn post, then write up to you go verify these addresses and we'll give you $300 per address up to a maximum of 30.

Jason: 32:29

Yeah. So this is part of a bigger ICE initiative to work with skip tracers, which are bounty hunters essentially, which

Joseph: 32:40

Basically.

Jason: 32:41

I actually I saw and private investigators, I I think it's fair to say. Like, I I didn't know that bounty hunters was a real job, honestly, outside of Star Wars until a few years ago when you did an article about the bounty hunting industry where we tracked ourselves using a tool that they had access to, And that was a huge, huge story. I did not understand that this was a thing. So maybe it would be helpful just to, like, talk about the ICE project, but also just a little bit about the skip tracing industry.

Joseph: 33:17

Yeah. I mean, my I learned they're not just dogs the bounty hunter. That was my one. Not not just the the Star Wars one. But, yeah, I had to learn this all pretty quickly back in 2018 when we did that story, as you said, where it turned out bounty hunters and script skip tracers had access to the basically real time location data of, I think, most phones in America sold by T Mobile, Sprint, AT and T at the time.

Joseph: 33:48

And I didn't really know what a skip tracer was, so then I ended up speaking to a few, pretty sure before I published that and then definitely after. I've been speaking to a lot of these people for years at this point, and a skip tracer will do a few different things. I mean, a lot of it comes down to finding people who skipped bail. That's where the term comes from. A skip tracer is somebody who finds somebody else who has skipped bail, and then you need to, you know, locate them, and you'll be paid for those services.

Joseph: 34:21

They also do stuff like finding stolen vehicles where and that'll be on behalf of, I don't really think an individual, but more like an insurance company or something like that, and they'll they'll go find those vehicles, find people as well, as I said. And I think to be fair to that industry, we and others sometimes use the terms skip tracer and bounty hunter basically interchangeably because I think people people know what a bounty hunter is. And I know skip tracers won't agree with this, but they're kind of the same. You were being paid a commission to go find a person or find an item or something like that. Right?

Joseph: 35:07

But whenever I speak to somebody who says, no. I'm specifically a skip tracer, obviously, I respect that, and I will attribute it as such in the article. But what I learned through doing that phone location story is that bounty hunters, skip tracers, and private investigators, and then, of course, in many states, you have to get a license to be a private investigator, and I believe sometimes a skip tracer as well. They have access to all sorts of different technologies and tools and data. That's sometimes phone location data.

Joseph: 35:39

It's stuff like TLOxp, which is a powerful data tool that we've covered, actually, way when we way back when we first launched in 2023, where it has the personal data from the top of a credit from a credit report, so name, address, that sort of thing, and that can be really, really useful for tracking down somebody because presumably, they put their real address on their credit card bill so they can receive it even though they might not give their address elsewhere or something like that. So skip tracers, they have access to all of that sort of stuff. Smartphone location data as well potentially, and license plate readers, which are all over the country. We actually covered one recently, which, like, we were gonna talk about in detail today, but, like, the Motorola Thomson Reuters one and the Vigilant one. There's all of these cameras all over the all over the country, and law enforcement can use a tool to search those.

Joseph: 36:35

Private investigators can as well. And years ago, a private investigator source showed me that tool in action and actually tracked someone with their consent. So I've always been drawn to the skip tracers and the bounty hunters and the private investigators ever since, like, 2018 because I don't think people understand. They basically have the same capabilities as COPS, like, technologically and data wise. It's just that, you know, potentially, there's far less accountability because although, yes, a PI might be licensed and, yes, they could use their license, they're much closer to a member of the public than a cop.

Joseph: 37:19

Right? Now, of course, these people don't have always the authority to arrest you, but they can get pretty damn close if they can't.

Jason: 37:28

Yeah. And so so now ICE is reaching out to this industry. They're giving contracts to this industry and they are saying, hey, you, you know, largely do this for private purposes or, like, sometimes for courts perhaps. Now do it for ICE.

Joseph: 37:48

Yeah. That's base yeah. That's basically right. Where what we we already have this massive private industry of skip tracers who their entire thing is finding people's addresses and finding their physical location, why don't we essentially outsource that part of ICE's mass deportation effort to skip tracers and bounty hunters. And I'm pretty sure this pilot that this article is about paying the randos off LinkedIn $300, I'm pretty sure it is part of this broader plan, which was first reported by the Intercept in October where on a Friday night, ICE published procurement documents.

Joseph: 38:30

I think I was already several beers down, and then they saw the Intercept piece. Was like, damn. I should have seen that. Intercept publishes that. Very, very interesting.

Joseph: 38:40

We then cover, I think, couple of weeks later that we find that ICE has allocated as much as a $180,000,000 to this effort. I then speak to PIs and skip tracers, and they say well, some of them are horrified. Some of them are like, yes. I will do this work. And one of them says, well, the budget is so big that this is probably gonna be for, like, large scale government contracts.

Joseph: 39:07

It's like it's probably not gonna be your random, like, family run PI business. Although, you know, I imagine ICE will probably take all the help they can get. So we publish that, and then somebody reaches out about this latest contracting effort. And, you know, our our style very much is to do story after story after story after story. Like, we don't wait to do, like, one big 3,000 word article or something.

Joseph: 39:37

Sometimes we do, but I much prefer this cadence because it leads to these sorts of stories where people reach out. And for me and I guess I'll just leave it here. For me, this is a story not just because it provides some specifics of what's going on. It's like, oh, it started with ICE being like, yes. We'll get skip tracers and probably licensed PIs and that sort of thing.

Joseph: 40:01

Now they're getting Randoz off LinkedIn. And to me, I think that was really, really crazy. You know? Jason, last thing. I think we changed the headline on this.

Joseph: 40:13

What what why why did we do that?

Jason: 40:15

I mean, we just added LinkedIn on it because the origin story of it being these people being recruited off of LinkedIn is just so crazy. It's like the the whole thing is so dehumanizing and upsetting and, you know, ICE's mass deportation campaign is it's bad for all the reasons that we've talked about. And and it's it's just like when the government is doing it I mean, when this government is doing it, there's not a whole lot of, like, care and guardrails and restraint and all that sort of thing, but but at at least, I guess, at least it is, like, the government. And now it's, like, con subcontractors of the government finding people on LinkedIn to do this type of work. It's just like, what could possibly go wrong?

Jason: 41:08

You know? Like, any number of things could go wrong. And I think there's been a whole controversy about, you know, ICE officials identifying themselves and and that sort of thing. And now it's like, yes, the apparently, this project, there's not supposed to be altercations. It's like these people are supposed to quote observe and report is how you put it in the the article or I think how the How they post put it.

Jason: 41:35

Yeah. But but what happens when someone's observing and reporting and then someone asks like, what the hell are you doing here vibes? Like that, it's it's easy to say that, but then who knows what happens? And it just, like, raises all these questions about, you know, like, you sort of expect law enforcement to identify themselves, and and there's already been cases of people impersonating ICE agents and FBI agents and and all that sort of thing, and this just, like, raises that to a 10, I think. Yeah.

Jason: 42:07

So very not not good. This of of like I say this all the time, but of the many, many stories that we've done about ice, like, this is one that is very alarming. I feel this is very alarming.

Joseph: 42:21

Yeah. Actually, I'll I'll just add that Spencer Ackerman mentioned this on Blue Sky after we published, but, like, there has been these sorts of pervasive rumors for months and months and months on Blue Sky and other social media platforms where it's like, oh, that that ice official you're filming, he's actually a bounty hunter. He's actually somebody from the Proud Boys. He's pretending to be ICE so then get paid money. And, frankly, it's an it's an unsubstantiated myth.

Joseph: 42:51

Right? I think people are kinda just buying in into that for whatever reason. I mean, maybe it's easier to believe that than, no. That's a federal government employee, and they're not identifying themselves, and they have the full power of the state behind them and a culture of impunity, and there's nothing you can do about it. Maybe that's a little bit scarier.

Joseph: 43:12

But that said, that was a myth for months. Now it's like, oh, they actually did it. They actually hire the bounty hunters now, and it became real. I just don't think it was really real before October, or it wasn't a formal policy before October is my understanding.

Jason: 43:30

Before you end the podcast, may I simply go back to Epstein for a second and ask Curious.

Joseph: 43:37

What happened?

Jason: 43:38

No. It's just like the the Donald Trump blew Bill Clinton. Are we not even gonna even discuss at all?

Joseph: 43:44

Well, Emmanuel's not here, he's obsessed with it.

Jason: 43:47

Yeah. So I feel like, Sam, like, you what where do you come down on this? How do you feel? How do you

Sam: 43:52

feel about this? Is that even I didn't even know if it was a meme or a joke or real, which is kind of how I'm engaging with this entire this entire news cycle. So is it real?

Jason: 44:04

It's a meme, it's a joke, and it's real. No. That's right.

Sam: 44:10

Is there video?

Jason: 44:12

No. I would like to see it.

Joseph: 44:14

Can you explain it, Jason?

Jason: 44:16

So I don't have the exact email in front of me, but there is an email. I believe it's from Jeffrey Epstein's brother to someone where he says that Trump blew Bubba, and Bubba is like a nickname for Bill Clinton. And so, you know, there there it's sort of become like the J. D. Vance couch meme situation, but there is an email claiming that Trump blew Bubba and Bubba, perhaps Bill Clinton.

Jason: 44:53

There's been some reporting that Bubba act is not Bill Clinton, but

Joseph: 44:57

is No

Jason: 44:57

way. A private citizen, is like another person. But it raises, like, many questions. May it raises questions just in terms of, like, what's what's going on here. I've I've seen some very good jokes.

Jason: 45:11

This is obviously, like, extraordinarily upsetting stuff and, like, very dark and and terrible. However, the some of the jokes are funny, I must say.

Joseph: 45:25

I would say that I mean, it's basically and it's not gonna be as big as this, but it's basically p tape too, right, where people are like, yes. Yes. Yes. If if this happened, it will come out. And then I'm talking about, like, you know, the hashtag resistance, mullishy wrote, or whatever, x accounts and blue sky accounts or whatever.

Joseph: 45:46

Like, yeah, if this comes out, finally, it'll be over for Trump, and and he'll be out or whatever. It's like, dude, absolutely delusional copium. Like, that is not happening. We already know that there isn't, a single story that changes things, like, post 2016. That just that just doesn't happen.

Jason: 46:08

You know? So Snopes has fact checked this and and has rated it true.

Joseph: 46:15

Oh, you've put that true in an email says

Jason: 46:17

The here is what the email says. The email says, from Epstein's brother to Jeffrey Epstein. It says, ask him if Putin has the photos of Trump blowing Bubba, question mark. And then Epstein then they make, like, various jokes about it that well, of which I can't, like, really understand. Epstein says back, and I thought I had siris, t s u r I s.

Jason: 46:49

And then one of the reasons why some of these emails are so, like, difficult to parse is because they're all boomers who don't know how to type.

Joseph: 46:57

It's crazy. It's just, like,

Jason: 46:59

worth mentioning. It's just, like, these people email how you think that they would email. It's like they're one, they're, like, confessing to crimes, like, and right. Like, I saw a good joke that it was, like, like, teenager downloading anime from piracy website uses, like, six VPNs, you know, tour network, etcetera. And then it's just like Jeffrey Epstein discussing pedophilia and sex crimes.

Jason: 47:27

It's just like just talks about it in the open on emails. It's it's very crazy. But they also, like, can't type at all.

Joseph: 47:36

Yeah. Billionaires are incapable of sending, like, a cogent email, it seems. Alright. We'll leave it there. If you're a billionaire who can read can write a coaching email, please send once in, and we'll take a look.

Joseph: 47:52

If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are paying for a full year subscriber, we're gonna talk all about this new code of conduct in the adult industry that Sam has covered, which has been frankly a long time coming, you can subscribe and gain access to that content at 404media.co. We'll be right back after this. Subscribers only section. That, like, jug or jar of water you got is fucking huge.

Joseph: 48:34

Maybe it's the camera. It's No. Oh, it's like as big as your head. Yeah.

Sam: 48:39

My head my head's not very big, but a

Joseph: 48:41

big car. Is is

Sam: 48:41

that It's a It's 800 milliliters. Advice, I used to drink out of a vase.

Joseph: 48:48

Nice. Are you doing more, like, if I drink five of these today, then I'm healthy?

Sam: 48:54

I'm not keeping count, but I am hydrated. I'm also sitting directly next to a very hot space heater that is blasting me all day long, so it is dry as fuck in here.

Joseph: 49:05

Yeah. Try to do that whole thing of like, oh, I need to drink. I don't. I'm just severely dehydrated. Jar.

Joseph: 49:12

I mean, I You

Sam: 49:13

can watch the little this is better than, like, those stupid cups that everybody has now with the measurements.

Joseph: 49:19

Well, I think I have I have something similar to that, and it turns out I just don't enjoy the act of drinking water. I think so I can't really get into it, really.

Sam: 49:28

Gotta into the hydro homie community on Reddit.

Joseph: 49:31

Sure. Alright. The headline the headline of this one I'm actually gonna check that. The headline of this one is major porn studios joined forces to establish industry code of conduct. Before talking about the new code of conduct, this is a very obvious question, but I think just to give like a baseline to to level set.

Joseph: 49:55

No. That's I'm actually using

Sam: 49:56

Okay. Other

Joseph: 49:59

talking about that, what can working in the adult industry be like? Like, why is something like this necessary?

Sam: 50:08

So for I wanna say the most part, probably for the most part, working in needle entry today, like, these days, it's not that different from being it's different, obviously, because it's it carries a ton of stigma. There are risks inherent to sex work and porn performing that are not present in, like, acting. But for the most part, it's like a job on a set anywhere that you have a job on a set. It's like the crew, the cast, the directors, the producers. The roles are very similar and parallel each other as you would think of, like, a a Hollywood, like, a movie set or a TV set.

Sam: 50:52

So and I say today because it didn't always operate that way. I think things have gotten better. But for the most part today, a porn set is very safe, very, like, above board as far as signing contracts and things like that. But there was this huge shift away from what is known as, like, Porn Valley. So Southern California, specifically where people had to be based to participate in porn a lot of the time because that's where all the studios were, where the shift happened because studios and the studio system dictates where you're gonna be.

Sam: 51:42

So Southern or Southern California, or Valley, who you're gonna shoot with. You show up, and you find out that you know, maybe beforehand your agent tells you who your scene partner is gonna be, or maybe you show up and it's somebody different. Usually, you have to have an agent, so that's expensive and inaccessible for a lot of people. You have to have a certain and I'm talking about, like, the the pre ten years ago studio system. You have to have a certain look.

Sam: 52:10

You have to get your nails done. You have to get your hair done. You have to have a maybe bring your own makeup stylist if there's not one provided by the set. You have to, you know, be a certain weight. Often, you have to be white.

Sam: 52:25

That's how it operated for a long time. And, you know, it's unless you were unless you were in some kind of fetish, like, quote, unquote, fetish scene. So in that case, maybe you're doing, like like, quote, unquote, interracial or some other kind of, like if your body was outside of those, like, very normative, like, cis hetero white norms, you were a part of, like, a different system and, like, fetish and specialty. So, anyway, all that changed because of independent gig gigafied

Joseph: 53:03

Early fans, I saw a thing.

Sam: 53:04

So OnlyFans, webcamming before OnlyFans, things that you could do at home, and that comes along with, like, the rise of social media, rise of smartphones where you could record your own content, the, like, lowering cost of technology. So it's consumer technology is much cheaper than it used to be, so you can afford to have a camera at home even if it's not your smartphone. You can afford to have, like, a handy camera or something. And then, obviously, like, the Internet and being able to stream and send custom content. So in the last, like, ten to pushing at fifteen years, the studio system has been like, oh, we're we're losing people to the indie world because Right.

Sam: 53:43

Now they would prefer to have control over their working hours, have control over where they live. Maybe they don't wanna live in extremely expensive Southern California. Maybe they don't wanna have, like, that, you know, like, very specific porn look that so many people had felt like they had to have to be, like, on the cover of a DVD or a VHS tape sort of poster.

Joseph: 54:07

And it definitely feels safe.

Sam: 54:09

Because Yeah. And it

Joseph: 54:10

feels safe. Solo performer at home, you can take all the serious precautions you want. Right?

Sam: 54:13

Yeah. It's like a thousand times more work. You're performing all those roles, cast crew, director, producer, everything. But it's safe because you know who's showing up. It might be you or, like, your friends.

Sam: 54:25

And you know who's been tested. You can see their test results, and you can control the environment. And I think in I don't have numbers for this. I'm sure the numbers do exist, but, like, just from talking to people in the industry, I think that shift has caused the studio system, especially to kind of adjust the way it does things. Obviously, there were there's a lot more, like, inclusivity as far as, like, diversity in porn now because oh, yeah.

Sam: 54:56

Actually, everything like, something is hot to everybody. Like, you don't have to be, like, the specific look to be a porn star. The idea of a porn star is, like, lots of things now. So, anyway, that's kinda where we're at as far as the landscape. And then I think a lot of that is being reflected or at least, like, grappled with as part of this this code of content code of conduct and this, like, coalition of porn studios that just came out last week.

Joseph: 55:27

Yeah. So what is this code of conduct? And, I mean, very importantly, who is behind it? Who who signed on to it?

Sam: 55:35

Yeah. So it's called the adult studio alliance. ASA

Joseph: 55:41

is

Sam: 55:41

what they're calling themselves. The founding members are they're not just, like, big porn studios. They are, like, the, like, leaders and tastemakers of porn. Like, these are the people who set the cadence, the standard, you know, in the porn world in a lot of ways. So let's see.

Sam: 56:06

And then we have ALO, which owns Pornhub, which is a platform, not not just a studio, but it Halo owns so many studios. So lots of things that you would imagine. Like, Brazzers is probably the one of their biggest studios, but there are lots of others. Dorso, Erica Lust, Gamma Entertainment, which is which owns adult time, which is another porn studio, My High Media, and Ricky's Room, which I had not heard of before this writing as Ricky's Room. But these are, like, the big ones.

Sam: 56:39

There's so under just under Elo, there's brothers. There's digital no. Actually, no. Elo doesn't own digital paradigm. Digital paradigm is is indie, but there's also Reality Kings.

Sam: 56:55

It's just like

Joseph: 56:56

The major place.

Sam: 56:57

Think they do own Digital Playground. It's so the this is the thing about porn is, like, it is like Hollywood in that there are big conglomerates and big companies that own it's like how Disney owns, like, a billion different properties that you would not even imagine. It's like, Halo is kind of that for the industry where, like, they own things that you're just like, oh, shit. I forgot, or I didn't know that they bought that studio. So that's the these are the people who are, like, founding the the thing that then wrote the code of conduct, which we can get into.

Sam: 57:32

But

Joseph: 57:33

Yeah. So, I mean, what is the deal with it? It's specifically does it tell people to do or or not to do?

Sam: 57:42

Yeah. Let me pull up the specific site because they put

Joseph: 57:45

in a nice little While you're pulling it up, you can have a bad code of conduct. Like, of course, it's a good step to write. And I'm not saying

Sam: 57:53

For sure.

Joseph: 57:53

Applies here. I'm just saying that they vary. You know?

Sam: 57:56

Yeah. And I think also just also as another disclaimer, this is not a perfect document, and I'm not endorsing the codecomic as, like, oh, we're done. We fixed it. Like, this is the industry's, like, the all end all. I think it's a good step.

Sam: 58:17

And, also, it's good to put these things down and make them public in general, which has not really been done by, like, this really big coalition before. But it's definitely it's it's been established these standards have been established before by other groups, and there are more things that they could add in here that aren't addressed. So let's see. They break it down into sections. So there's performers' rights, crew crew code of conduct, agency code of conduct, which I think is really interesting that they include agencies in this, which is like a third party to the set, but are very much part of the process.

Sam: 58:52

So under performer rights, it says that performers have the opportunity to meaningfully consent to conditions and acts performed on set, including scene type, proposed partners, proposed sexual acts, script or created document, length of shoot day, which the shoot days will be very, very long, Location well, they're they're saying you should get to say how long your your shoot day is. Location, the people who are not in the scene but are, like, in the room are part of this also that you should have a say in. Rights and remunerations, which are also a huge reason why people went away from studios is that when you shoot with a studio out a lot of the time, use you say, I I will take in exchange for showing up, you know, $2, and you can have the rights to buy image in this particular scene. And then you don't get what's it called when you get paid later?

Joseph: 59:46

Royalty.

Sam: 59:46

Something. Yeah. Royalty. Residuals. Residuals.

Sam: 59:49

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's not really a thing so much in porn, and this is saying that you should get to talk about it. The reason why I say this maybe has some it's not a flaw, but it's, like, it's not specifically addressed.

Sam: 01:00:03

It's left vague for a reason, I'm sure, but it doesn't specifically say it says, you know, you should you should get to meaningfully consent to these things, and you should get to have the chance to discuss these things. And you shouldn't have a kill fee or lose future work for disagreeing with or discussing these things with your set or with the studio. But it doesn't say that, like, you are guaranteed to have any of these things. You know? Right.

Sam: 01:00:32

It's like that's

Joseph: 01:00:32

because it's not a contract.

Sam: 01:00:34

It's a trade contract. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just saying these are the things that your contract should have to address if if that's what you want.

Sam: 01:00:41

And then it also does get into, like, you should performers as a performer, you should be able to have access to your partner's your scene partner's STI test status. You'll be able to look at that. You should get snacks and water and stuff like that during the day. They you should be provided things like, you know, hygiene stuff throughout the day if you need it. And then you should be paid your the rate that you agreed on, which is, like, duh.

Sam: 01:01:11

Like, obviously. But there are times when this doesn't happen, and it it is something that has been an issue not just with like, it's not a foregone era. It's, like, something that was very much reckoned with in 2020 and 2021 where a lot of performers were coming forward and saying, you know, we didn't feel the power to step forward and say that we've had abuse on set and that maybe the studio didn't do anything about it or that there was a scene partner that was abusive to them during a scene or off or even outside of the scene, and they didn't speak up because there is this feeling that or they felt that there was gonna be repressions for speaking up. So it's like it's a career risk to say, I didn't like what happened on that set because maybe you won't get jobs again from that set. It's a very, like it's like me too.

Sam: 01:02:05

You know? It's that's kind of the it's it's the same thing. So reputationally, it was a risk to say, hey. And it still is. And then it's that way in every career.

Sam: 01:02:16

Honestly, I would say probably most careers are this way. But, you know, people talk. People say, you know, oh, she wanted, like, three breaks in an eight hour day. Don't hire her. And it's like, you should have the ability to say what you need in the work environment and not be punished for that is basically what this code is saying.

Sam: 01:02:38

And then some of the other stuff is, like, it addresses things like talent agents should not let's see. I'll just read it because it's such a crazy line. It's not crazy, but it's, like, crazy that we have to say it. Agents must inform performers of their rights and duties and legitimate expectations with no expectation of sexual contact with agency staff, which, like, do it's I can't believe we have to say it out loud, but, like, that does happen. It's and, again, it's it's casting couch type shit.

Sam: 01:03:11

It's me too type stuff. So as the gatekeepers of people's careers, the agent should be addressed in a code of conduct like this because a lot of times, it's who do wanna work with you unless you have an agent, or it's harder to get a job without an agent. And then, you know, your agent is, part of the problem.

Joseph: 01:03:31

Right. With the gatekeeping comes law of power, which

Sam: 01:03:33

can be

Joseph: 01:03:34

abused as well. Exactly. And, of course, this isn't just to wrap up, this isn't the first code of conduct in the adult industry. That'd be stupid. But it is significant because because of the people doing it.

Joseph: 01:03:48

Is is that fair?

Sam: 01:03:49

Yeah. I mean, it's so again, these are like the big dogs. Like, these are the serious huge studios. They hold so much capital in this industry. In the past, this has been like, there have been codes of conducts put out by, like I think the the site kink.com put out a code of conduct a couple years ago where they were like, this is what we do on our studios, and you should have access to that because everyone should know what we're doing, and we're trying to set a bar, and we're a big studio.

Sam: 01:04:25

And then there are, like, performer side advocacy committees and organizations and unions that have put out their own missions and, you know, codes of conduct that they expect studios and performers to abide by. So there's there was one a couple years ago from I guess it's been it's been longer than that, but the adult performer advocacy adult former advocacy committee. That's a hard one to say. They've done work on this. The free speech coalition has done work on this.

Sam: 01:04:58

It's it's not like and I don't think they are claiming, but it's not like these studios are are having some grand novel idea that workers' rights are important. But, yeah, like you said, it like, who is doing the the speaking out about this is important because they are big ones that should be setting this kind of bar and laying out these kind of frameworks. So, yeah, it's cool to see. I think it's like, again, it's a it's a step. There's nothing addressed in here about, like, what happens if a studio doesn't abide by this and, like, what's the accountability process?

Sam: 01:05:36

What's the enforcement of this code of conduct look like? I think a lot of it's voluntary, which is, you know, like, not always doesn't always work out. Not always great. But the fact that it's out there and it's being said out loud is, I think, a good stuff.

Joseph: 01:05:53

Yeah. Or you would hope self enforcement by the industry when a bad actor does this sort of thing, but self enforcement only works to a certain extent, which is the entire point of why you have a code of conduct to formalize it. Yeah. That makes sense. Alright.

Joseph: 01:06:11

We will leave that there, and I will play us out. As a reminder, four zero four Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you do wish to subscribe to four zero four Media and directly support our work, please go to 404media.co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about story each week.

Joseph: 01:06:37

This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast. That stuff really helps us out. Here is one of those from MouseWitch, in-depth reporting from truly independent journalists, an essential listen for staying informed and sane during this moment of corporate capture over our media environment. Thank you so much.

Joseph: 01:07:01

This has been Thorough Full Media. We'll see you again next week.