The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

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 founded 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.

I'm your host, Joseph, and with me are four zero four media cofounders, Sam Cole Hi. And Jason Kebler.

Hello. Good to be here.

So tiny bit of housekeeping. On Wednesday, June 18 at 1PM eastern, we will have our latest FOIA forum. This is a livestreamed event where paid four zero four media subscribers can join, and we will tell them how to pry records from the government. We've done a few of these. Sometimes it's pretty hard to find time to schedule them, but really looking forward to this one.

Jason, just briefly, what is the story we're going to be explaining to subscribers, like, how we got these government records?

Yeah. We are going to primarily be talking about this article that Emmanuel and I did called about Massive Blue, which is where cops were deploying AI avatars to social media in order to gather evidence. The reason that we're doing this one is because the actual FOIA process was really interesting, I think, and it was pretty complicated. So, we're gonna be talking about exactly how we did that and how you can do it as well. Are we gonna talk at all about Flock?

If there's time, maybe we'll talk briefly about Flock stuff as well because we've been doing a lot of FOIA reporting there. But I assume that there'll be some time to to talk a little bit about that reporting as well.

Yeah. If we don't do it on this one, we should absolutely do a dedicated one. Like, we've spoken about Flock and FUSYS before, which is sort of another surveillance platform that we've done a lot of public records work around. The stuff Jason's referring to to is to public records that found immigration related lookups into FLOC license plate readers and abortion related ones as well. We'll we'll see if we have time.

But regardless, please become a paid subscriber if you're not already, and I will send a link out to the livestream probably the day before. Again, that's Wednesday, June 18 at 1PM EST. Alright, Jason. Do you want to take the headline of this story and ask me some questions? Because I wrote it.

Yeah. So this week, we are going to be talking during the the normal podcast all about the anti ICE protests in Los Angeles. This story is DHS black hawks and military aircraft surveil the LA protests. I guess to preface this a little bit, many of you know that I live in Los Angeles. I have actually been traveling this last week, though.

I'm not in Los Angeles right now, so I haven't been able to go to any of the protests, which I was hoping to do to do some reporting and talk to people about what they're protesting, sort of, like, get a vibe check. But I guess to set the stage here, I am only able to follow this the same way that everyone else has been following it, like, over social media, talking to friends who are there, and also sort of, like, watching some of the news coverage there. I mean, I I have a lot of the sort of geographical knowledge and neighborhood knowledge about what is happening. But, ideally, I would be there sort of, like, on the ground reporting. I just haven't been there.

But, basically, on Friday, in a city called Paramount, which is in Los Angeles County but is outside of sort of the the actual city, ICE did some raids at a Home Depot, and this spurred spontaneous protests in Paramount. And these protests have continued throughout the weekend and into early this week in Downtown Los Angeles. And, Joseph, you have sort of been tracking the airplanes and aircraft that are in the sky above these protests because in previous years, like, during the the George Floyd protest, for example, we knew that sort of, like, state, local, and also federal surveillance aircraft fly fly around to to sort of I know they fly around for all sorts of reasons. So let let's talk about it. So what did you find in the flight data Saturday and Sunday?

Yeah. So, I mean, basically, whenever there is a significant event or protest or something like that, I will log on to adsbexchange.com, which is a website where which collects flight data and makes it very easy for anybody to access and search. It's all donated or collected by volunteers. So you will get a little bit of gear, cost about $400, or you make your own, I believe I believe for a lot cheaper. That scans for aircraft traffic and then adds it to this database.

It's similar to, you know, FlightRadar or one of these other websites as well. I just kind of prefer the UI and the data of ADS B. So I spent Saturday and Sunday looking at Paramount where you said the protests started and then later downtown LA. And immediately, there was, like, some interesting things. There was the California Highway Patrol, right, which is a state law enforcement agency, and they were flying a small aircraft over the area.

That's not unusual, at all, really, but that's sort of where it starts. Then it goes up to I saw DHS flying multiple Blackhawk helicopters, and we actually saw videos of some of those Blackhawks landing and delivering, I don't know, items, boxes. Some people speculated it was ammunition. I don't know if we actually saw reporting that verified that, but they were landing and then moving items into the area. Then there were some more unusual flights as well.

Yeah. So you saw these flights from the March Air Reserve Base, which is in Southern California, I believe, and then also these hexagon shaped flight patterns. So, basically, like, you were you were able to look at the map and you saw I mean, they're hexagons. They fly basically, like, you know, six sides, but they're circling directly above the protest. Correct?

Yeah. So there there there's two things. There was I saw these circular flights, which I think were at about nine to 10,000 feet, something like that. And the UI of ADS B is really good in that it color codes the craft depending on their altitude. So you can very quickly see, oh, it's orange or yellow.

That means it's lower altitude. That's gonna be like an LAPD chopper or something like that. And then sort of in the midrange, you have green, and that's sort of more than nine to 10,000. And I kept seeing these repeating circles above Paramount and then above Downtown LA. And I followed back.

Well, where did these aircraft come from? And they actually came from, as you say, the March Air Reserve Base, which is to the East of Los Angeles. I mean, that's very, very interesting when even though the craft didn't have a call sign, which is ordinarily how you determine, oh, well, that's that type of aircraft. I can Google the call sign. I can look up FAA registration information like you would with the California Highway Patrol or anything like that.

And then you you can then go, oh, that's owned by that agency, and that's that type of aircraft. That was kind of a mystery that I left, and I got battered around between so many agencies. I pinged the National Guard because, of course, Trump has deployed thousands of National Guard troops into Los Angeles and now the marines at the time where we're recording this as well or at least there are plans to. I pinged the National Guard. I got, I think, battered over to the main Pentagon inbox.

The main Pentagon said go to air force. I went to air force. They said go go to DHS. And, basically, nobody was taking responsibility for flying those craft that took off from an air reserve base. And I've actually got some tips and photos of the craft that I'll have a look at probably after we record this.

That was sort of the very interesting thing. The is what you mentioned with the hexagons. And, I mean, there are you're you're kinda looking for two things when you dig through flight data. I think you're looking for planes without a call sign because it's like, Why why don't they have a call sign? That's pretty weird.

And then if there's very distinctive flight patterns. And sometimes that's just, you know, a plane, maybe a small aircraft going round and round and round in a circle above a particular area, well, that's probably surveilling that particular location. Right? That's a very obvious one to point out. But as you say, there were some really distinctive flight patterns which were in a hexagon.

And maybe that's the way they're flying. Maybe that's just the way that the tech data is being translated or collected. But as soon as I saw that, it made me think, oh, I've seen these hex hexagons before during the twenty twenty George Floyd protests

when Right. And you did a a big story then that sort of showed that these were customs and border patrol predator drones that were flying over Minneapolis in in this same pattern. Correct?

Yeah. So other people who were looking at flight data saw that at the time in 2020. They posted it to Twitter. I think that's the site we were using in 2020. I then verified that.

I think got confirmation from customs and border protection. And CPP has a fleet of drones, you know, and they look I mean, they are. Predator drones. They are literally the same drones that are flown in war zones. It's just these aren't carrying hellfire missiles, you know, as far as I know.

I'm pretty pretty sure.

No. They're not. They're not. So back at motherboard a long time ago, I actually went to Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota North Dakota, I believe, because there was sort of, like, this opportunity, this press junket to see how drones were being flown internationally. They were flying Global Hawk drones, which are surveillance drones, really big ones that were piloted out of Grand Forks, air force base.

But while I was there, I also learned that customs and border patrol was starting to fly predator drones along the Canada US border. And these are, you know, DHS drones, which are not armed, but they are the same drones. It's like the the company that makes it is called General Atomics. And for the CIA and the Air Force, they have Hellfire missiles on them. Don't quote me on what the name of the missiles are, but they they have missiles on them.

But then when they're flown in The United States, they don't. But they they're, like, incredibly sophisticated surveillance technology on it. And this has been, like, quite controversial over the years because they've only been flown within The United States, like, not that often. And

More than people would expect, though.

More more than you'd expect, but they're primarily flown along the borders. They're primarily flown along the Mexico US border and the Canada US border. And then only in these, like, really like, these moments of protests have they been flown kind of, like, over other things. And then there was one story, one of my stories that I ever did as a journalist. There was this guy named Rodney Brossart, also in North Dakota, and he was a cattle farmer.

And the local police he he was like a sovereign citizen type, and he holed up in this ranch. And the Department of Homeland Security flew a predator drone over his house and or over the ranch that he was, like, barricaded up in. I think that this was in, like, 2010. Maybe it was a long time ago. And he was arrested.

Like, they they raided him using the surveillance footage from that drone to basically determine, like, oh, it's safe to go in now. And and they arrested him, and it became this, like, huge, huge deal. It was the like, real big tech story that I actually followed ever in my career. But still, like, to this day, it is pretty controversial that predator drones fly in The United States. So I know that was the aggression, but we're gonna hop into your story, which is DHS flew predator drones over LA protests audio shows.

So, basically, this is a story about how you took those hexagons and attributed them to DHS predator drones. So so this starts out with someone else analyzing and seeing the exact same thing that you saw, and I believe they reached out to you or or maybe you saw saw it, but who is this person and and sort of what happened next?

Yeah. I think the friend pinged me on blue sky, I got in touch with them. Just to wrap up the previous story, so I see these hexagons, and what I do see is the aircraft, whatever it is, without a cool sign, the shore looks like a predator drone, but we're not exactly sure yet. It flies to The US Mexico border. So, like, I'm pretty damn sure this is a DHS drone, but it's not enough to publish at this point.

So this aviation tracking enthusiast called Aeroscout, they also saw these hexagons, and they decided to dig into this a little bit deeper. And what they noticed was that the flight path of this drone or this potential drone and actually another one coming towards LA, they sort of cross paths. One's heading east, one is heading west. They're crossing paths in this particular sector of airspace below Los Angeles called Sector 9. And this is just gonna get straight up to it.

This is, like, really smart investigation work, and I'm really kind of impressed by what they did and the work they involved. But they then went to liveatc.com, which is a website again where the data is contributed by volunteers, but allows you to listen to air traffic control audio. Right? Jason, correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like you did a story on ATC

audio recently. I've done a couple stories about live ATC. I did one many years ago in New York City where, basically, the NYPD claimed that a hobby drone had flown at one of their helicopters and, like, not attacked them, but but kind of was, like, flying menacingly at them. But the air traffic control audio, which was captured on live ATC, caught the NYPD basically, like, fabricating that because they were, like, joking about it. They were like, oh, let's fly at this drone.

Like, they were the aggressor, more or less, and that was captured by this air traffic control. And then I did one more recently about the drones in New Jersey

where UFOs. Yeah.

The the, like, quote, unquote, UFOs. And, basically, what was happening was because there were so many drone sightings, people took their hobby drones, their, like, DJI Phantoms and stuff like that. They're they're small drones and start flying them at blinking lights in the sky, which were passenger aircraft. And so it was air traffic control. Like, pilots basically being like, oh my god.

These idiots are flying at us. It's very dangerous. But, like, long story short, this is an incredible resource, live ATC. It's a it's basically a forum that has, as you said, it captures live air traffic control tower audio from all over the country. Yeah.

Yeah.

I really need to look into it more. It's absolutely a haystack. And what error scout excuse me. What error scout found here was a needle in a haystack, but it's definitely an area that we and others should look more into. But anyway, so the flight path goes through Sector 9 and then it goes into another area to the east.

Aeroscout goes to the relevant audio on liveatc.com, and here's people talking with this cool sign called Troy, t r o y. And that's very interesting because Troy is a cool sign used by DHS, one of the Blackhawk helicopters I tracked over the weekend. That was DHS helicopter publicly registered. You can look it up, and that used the cool sign Troy something something something. So that's already very interesting.

Clearly, these are linked to DHS in some capacity. Then what happens when one of the craft goes east into another section? Aeroscout pulls up that audio. And here's an absolutely key vital part, which sort of solves the puzzle. I'm just gonna play a tiny bit of that now.

So at the end, the air traffic controller says Troy q nine. Troy again being DHS, but q nine is what seals this as very, very likely being predator drones because the sort of official name or title of these drones is m q nine. Q nine is sort of ATC shorthand for these drones, it seems. So, I mean, that kinda seals a deal for me. Right?

What what did you think of that, Jason?

Yeah. I mean, to be real with you, I think that just the hexagon patterns at the incorrect like like, we sort of knew from the get go, but it's like, we can't be wrong about this. And so you you want some additional level of confirmation and air traffic control saying, like, hey. Watch out for the q nine, you know, brackets because they didn't say it. But, like, watch out for the predator drone is, like, basically what they're saying.

That's very, very good confirmation.

Yeah. And there was another piece of audio that they found where an Alaska Airlines flight was told to watch out for drone traffic as well. So that again confirms it's some sort of unmanned aircraft rather than, you know, an ordinary plane in the sky. Yeah.

Yeah. So has CBP said anything about this yet?

Not really. I contacted Customs and Border Protection either on Saturday or Sunday, certainly over the weekend, for initial comment when I found the hexagons. They appear to be very, very busy at the moment, which I maybe this is too behind the scenes for most people, but, like, I used to, and I still do occasionally, get pretty quick reliable information from customs and border protection. That has changed in this administration, especially over the last few months as well. It can be quite difficult.

I get the impression they're swamped. That's not them saying that. That's just my interpretation. I then followed up with the audio that Aeriscount found as well, and they still haven't commented. They haven't denied that this is their predator drone, but we're we're waiting to see.

You know? And, of course, we'll update or we'll do another article if they do provide a statement. But the audio and the flight data is amazing in my opinion.

Yeah. And, I mean, I guess it's an extremely volatile time right now in Los Angeles. We're gonna keep talking about it in the half of this show, but there's a lot of stuff in the sky right now. And I imagine that you're going to continue looking at ADS B and and just sort of trying to figure out, like, what is in the sky. Like, what is it equipped with?

I know that you are trying to learn more information about, like, what types of surveillance technologies some of these planes have, I I would imagine. But, yeah, what do what do you think happens next?

Yeah. I mean, there are plenty more events coming up. On Saturday, there is the military parade in Washington DC where it would be insane if there weren't surveillance craft flying in the air at that time. President Trump has already said that any people protesting this parade, even those doing so peacefully, will be met with force, essentially. I'll be surprised if surveillance craft aren't in the air as well.

So I guess I'm gonna be spending my weekend looking at that as well again. And then, of course, you know, I'll be very curious how Customs and Border Protection continues to use its drones. Is that something I don't know. Maybe they use it in conjunction with ICE or raids. I don't really know how that would work.

Because the key thing is CPP sometimes deploys these drones at the request of other agencies. I believe the EFF found that several years ago, where it's not just CPP going, oh, let's go fly a drone. There'll be a request from local cops or another agency or something like that. So, yeah, we'll keep an eye on that. As It

should be noted that, I think of the three of us, Sam is the only one who, has spoken to air traffic control.

Not me. Not personally. I've been in in the the cockpit of a small plane and heard ATC. They talk really fast.

They talk so fast. It's incredibly hard to yeah. How do they do this?

I don't know. I don't know. It's it's a real I don't know. It takes a real strong mind to do ATC work, I think. So yeah.

Let alone

Maybe we'll do more reporting, yeah, about that at some point because there's an ATC crisis in this country. So if you know more about that, please please let us know. Yeah. Joseph, you look surprised. Did you not hear about Newark?

No. No. No. I'm just really enthusiastic about it because, like, I've been reading all the coverage about ATC being a shit show out of that airport, and I feel I feel like there's way more to tell there. You know?

Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Let's leave that there. When we come back after the break, more on the LA protests, but this time on the ground and on fire.

We'll be right back after this. Alright. And we are back. This is one that Jason wrote. Waymo pauses service in Downtown LA neighborhood where they're getting lit on fire.

Well, the end of that headline kinda says what happened, but what happened to Waymo in LA, Jason?

Yeah. I believe it's now been confirmed that five Waymo driverless cars were lit on fire, in Downtown LA. You know, I don't know who did it. I I believe it was the protesters. I don't think that the the cops did this.

But, basically, like, they have been defaced and lit on fire, and it it's become some of the, like, most enduring imagery thus far of these protests. And, yeah, for people who are, like, unaware, Waymos are driverless taxis. They're they're essentially driverless Ubers that, are owned by Google or rather, like, Waymo is a Google company. And they're operating in San Francisco where notoriously they a few of them have been vandalized and attacked. And then they've been operating in Los Angeles for maybe the last, like, six or eight months, something like that.

And well, it's a little longer than that because they were definitely here last year. But they become really popular. Like, I see them all the time. And so

Is it is it not just the tech people taking them? Like, what's your read about?

I mean, a lot of my friends take them for, like, you know, all sorts of reasons. It it's become a truly, like, a competitor to Uber. And, you know, frankly, it's, like, it's cheaper than Uber because there's no driver. And it's just, like, every day, it seems like there's more and more and more of them. You know, at they were just kinda, like, testing on my neighborhood.

Then it was like, okay. It's open, but it was invite only. Like, you'd be invited to the app. Now it's open to everyone, and I took one to a basketball game. Like, I've taken them a few times now.

Like, watch the basketball game? Sorry. That's just the way you said it. I imagined the way back.

I took them I took them to an LA Clippers game. So I went I took them to an arena, and there was a line of, like, 15 of them, which is to say, like, they're everywhere. They're absolutely everywhere in the city now, and they're normalized, which is just to say that, I don't know. Like, you hear I don't know. If you're if you don't live in Los Angeles and you hear, like, robotaxis are set on fire, you're like, there's robotaxis?

Like like, okay. Right. So they get set on fire. Our friend, Brian Merchant, her blood in the machine went and spoke to people on the ground, I think the day after. And according to his reporting, people deliberately ordered the vehicles there to then set on fire, and especially because they're in a a nice little neat row.

But I guess that's how Waymo's move anyway. Anyway, they get set on fire, basically destroyed, as you say, very visual imagery. How does Waymo respond to, these vehicles being torched?

Yeah. I mean, I I guess I'll highlight, Brian's reporting because it wasn't clear why the Waymos were there, like, at As in, it could have been protesters taking a Waymo to the protest. It could have been people at the protest ordering Waymos in order to just like like, frankly, Waymos are sort of known for, like, having infinite patience in a way that a a a person in a like, a driver would not. So, you know, just as, like, an obstruction. It's also you could imagine them trying to just, like, traverse the area because someone ordered one and and the protest was in the way.

And so they were like, oh, we're stuck now. Because Waymo's very much like they're they're pretty good at driving, but when there's, like, construction or weird stuff happening, they don't always know what to do. There's, like, lots of stories of Waymo's getting stuck. And so it was, like, unclear kind of, like, why they were there. And Brian's reporting shows that, like, some of the protesters called them in, which is is pretty interesting.

But, yeah, basically, I had written a story about Waymo recently that, we'll get into in a So I hit up their press, person and was like, what are you doing about these Waymos that are on fire? And they were like, well, we're continuing to operate in the city of Los Angeles, but we're not gonna go downtown anymore. And then they also said that they were coordinating with the cops, which I felt was not great language to use at this moment, but they said they were working with the cops to learn when it would be safe to remove the charred way most from downtown. Notably, they did not say that they're working with the cops to, like, share video footage and stuff with them. I mean, whether that's happening, we don't know, but they didn't I asked them, and they didn't answer that question.

Mhmm. And they didn't, yeah, they didn't answer that question, basically.

Yeah. We'll get to the data stuff in a I I think Waymo didn't give information on this, but did they specify how they were suspending service in Downtown LA or not? Like, is there, like, a geofence where they draw it on the map and, like, no Waymo go here? I guess they didn't get that graph.

That that's how Waymo works already is that they're not, they're not everywhere in Los Angeles. They can only go to certain neighborhoods, and that geographic area is expanding all the time. But there are certain places where, for whatever reason, you can't order a Waymo too at this moment. So I assume that they just, like, took that like, they probably geo fenced it, just removed it off of the the map. And interestingly, like, they kind of only recently expanded to Downtown LA in the place, so it's entirely possible that they just, like, reverted to an older map or or something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I think they also suspended service briefly in San Francisco as well just, according to something that Brian mentioned, in his report, as well. So that happens, as you say, Waymo didn't say we're working with the cops to identify the people who burned the vehicles, but at least potentially, they could because Waymo has been used by the police as basically an extension of surveillance or, I guess, as a criminal investigative tool. What was this story you covered, a few months ago at this point around that?

Yeah. I mean, I think this is really the biggest concern with driverless vehicles at the moment is, they work with cameras. Like, Waymo uses LIDAR detectors as well, but there's a bunch of cameras on them as well because they need to see to, you know, not run things over. And so they are necessarily recording all the time, and cops have learned that that this is happening. And so, like, I don't think I really don't think that Waymo itself sees itself as a surveillance company in the same way that, like, Ring, the doorbell camera, sort of does see itself as a we're here to prevent crime sort of company by having cameras.

And they certainly don't see themselves as, like, a flock, which is a specific surveillance technology. But because of the way that the product works, they are filming all the time, and cops have realized that that's the case. And so in April, there was a hit and run-in Koreatown, which is not that far from Downtown LA. But it it wasn't the Waymo that hit a pedestrian. It was a another driver that hit a pedestrian, but it happened in front of a Waymo.

And the Los Angeles Police Department requested footage from that Waymo, obtained it, and then published it on its own YouTube and said, like, does anyone in the public know whose car this is?

Like and subscribe. Yeah. That's

Yeah. And we knew it was Waymo footage because the footage said Waymo proprietary and confidential, like, more or less, like, on it. And so that that just means that the cops have, have realized that these are a potential source of surveillance footage. And I I honestly think that, like, once the cops understand that, it's like it it's gonna become routine because we actually have seen in the past, like, these potential, like, technologies that could be used for surveillance that, like, the cops just weren't creative enough to think of to to request footage from or request data from. And then it's like, one cop will do it, and then it becomes a really popular surveillance tool.

And and I guess, like, an example of that would be, like, Google Maps geofencing or, like, YouTube search histories and things like that. Like, these are things that you have written about before, Joseph, where this data has existed for a really long time, but only recently cops realized that it could be used, like, as a tool of surveillance.

Yeah. Or as we wrote about recently, push notification data, which was only really sort of revealed in 2023 by senator Ron Wyden's office, and then we found court documents mentioning it. But, yeah, there's there's ring, there's reverse location data warrants, there's DNA companies, there's push notifications. And I think the the broader thing is if law enforcement have a legal mechanism to access data, And in many cases, they will have a completely legitimate use case for accessing that data, and it will be legal. If they can get a legal mechanism to request that data, they will absolutely do that, if they can, they want, or they need.

The thing that stops that sort of thing is technical solutions such as end to end encryption. You know, like, law enforcement literally cannot get the content of end to end encrypted messages because it's just technically impossible. Technically, they have legal right to signal messages if they get a search warrant, and there's probable cause and searched by a judge, but they literally can't get that, obviously. And this is just an extension of that. And as you say, it's not just as police learn about Waymo and you can get data from it.

It's, of course, Waymo becoming way more popular across The US and, I mean, potentially other countries as well. Right?

Yeah. So there's a few things I I wanna highlight here because I published this article, and then a few people said, well, don't Teslas have cameras on them? And the answer is yes. And cops have cops subpoena that as well. So so that's also bad.

They also say, like, a lot of people have dashcams. So can't they, you know, get footage from dashcams? And the answer to that also is yes. But but the difference here is that Waymo is a centralized company. And so as you say, Joseph, like, as these become more popular, a cop will probably be able to think, well, like, surely a Waymo was nearby.

And, you know, because of the way that Waymo works, the company knows where all of its vehicles are at any given moment. And so, theoretically, the cops can say, well, did you have any vehicles at this intersection at this time? And, you know, Waymo may need to give that up versus trying to get dashcam footage from a private owner. They're not gonna know to ask for that except for in very specific circumstances. So there's that.

And then the other thing is I said, I don't think that Waymo sees itself as a surveillance company. However, we have seen in the past, like, with delivery robots, which I've written about, These companies are very invested in protecting their own assets, and so a lot of them have, like, either training manuals or, like, informal situations with cops where it's like, here's what you should do if you happen upon a Waymo that has been vandalized or attacked. Here's what you should do if you see a delivery robot that's, like, stuck somewhere, these sorts of things. And so Waymo does have, like, a system for if a Waymo gets stuck somewhere and the cops show up, like, how to contact Waymo and and interact with them in some way. And so it's just like there is a relationship between police and Waymo because Waymo doesn't really have a driver.

It doesn't have a driver in the car, and there's only so much that you can do remotely. And if the car gets into an accident or gets stuck or whatever, the cops might need to know, like, what to do with it. And so that is like a a wrinkle here where there, like, already is kind of a relationship between the company and the cops for this, like, business purpose, more or less.

Yeah. And I guess just the last thing is, what are your thoughts on Waymo a little bit more broadly, not even necessarily about the surveillance or the data stuff, but this company is getting much more popular. I believe you've used it as well. Like, what do you think of some of the the trade offs there and, you know, are people gonna be okay with this? Do think people are not gonna be okay with Waymo's?

Like, what do you think?

Yeah. This is the question to that's designed to get me in trouble, I believe. And you

have to write very very careful Blue Sky posts about because it's it's nuance. Yeah.

Let's ask let's ask Sam Sam, please go You've written in a Waymo as well.

Yeah. I don't know. I I rode in a Waymo out of desperation because the Ubers could not figure out how to get to the specific alleyway that I was in in LA. And the Waymo couldn't either, but the Uber drivers kept canceling on me because they couldn't figure it out. They were like, fuck it.

I don't know. And the way I was like, I'm gonna wait here, and, you can find me. And that's what I did. It's total skill issue. Yeah.

I don't know. I mean, Jason wrote this in the story that he wrote about Waymo's in the protest. Maybe you said this on Blue Sky. I don't remember where you said this, but it was basically, like, Waymo's are more careful than most drivers. I'm an atrocious driver, so guilty as charged there.

Verified. So yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. So the times I've ridden them, I was kinda surprised that it felt pretty safe. There are definitely moments where you're, like, crossing three lanes of traffic, making a left turn, and you're like, oh god. Is it gonna see the cars coming?

And it does. But, you know, again, it's because it's absolutely coded in cameras, which we've talked about on this podcast before. I fucking hate, that every car now has cameras all over it because of the, partial, like, assisted driving, self driving technologies that they all have in them now, including Teslas, but also just like normal normal ass car brands now have all of this stuff on them too increasingly. I don't think it's great. I wish I I wish more of these companies would stand up and say, we're not gonna comply with, you know, requests from the police about our users, but maybe that's not something that's, like, legally feasible.

Become a real problem for them, like, an actual real problem for them. And so, yeah, I think that they do need to push back a little bit more. Yeah. Okay. My thoughts is we're a technology website.

We're extremely skeptical of a lot of different technologies. We try to talk about how technology is impacting culture and humanity, and we talk a lot of shit. But I think that we all need to pick one technology that we are gonna say is good and then explain why. And I I think mine is gonna be robotaxis. And I think that's because I I was really, really, really skeptical of driverless cars, and I'm really skeptical of Teslas in particular because of the ways that they're being rolled out, like, really dangerously just with, like, turn on autopilot.

Do whatever you want. Like, it doesn't have LIDAR. It it relies on cameras only. Whereas, Waymo has been working on this technology for a really, really long time. They've rolled it out super slowly.

Like, self driving cars from Waymo have go back to, like, a Google project that is over a decade old. Only recently, they've sort of, like, started a commercial service. And if you have driven in Los Angeles or anywhere in The United States, human drivers are often on their phones. A lot of people drive drunk, like, more than you would want, which you you would want zero to. You know, people get distracted.

People are eating. People are fighting. They're singing songs, whatever. And I've experienced this, like, as a passenger. I've experienced this as a driver.

I've experienced this as a pedestrian, as a biker, as someone who walks my dog, and it's really, really scary. It's, like, scary to cross the road in Los Angeles. It's scary to drive on the highways in Los Angeles, so on and so And I just don't I think that, like, longer term, like, robotaxis are going to be good. I think that they solve a lot of these problems. I think that the big things are we really, really need to solve the labor issue of, like, displaced people who make their money by driving.

You know, like, AI and automation is is displacing a lot of jobs. That's something that we really need to figure out. And we really, really need to figure out the surveillance aspect because without the sort of, like, surveillance aspect and and if we can figure out what to do with the drivers, then, like, I'm all for it. I'm extremely all for public transit, way, way, way more of it. But I'm I'm really, like, in favor of just, like, more and different, like, transportation solutions.

And I think that like, I've taken a Waymo to the train Was great. Like, had a good time. I do think that it drives really safe. It follows all rules. One thing that is very interesting is that if you are a pedestrian, like, people have realized that a Waymo is not gonna run you over.

Like, it's just not. It's not gonna run you over unless something, like, crazy happens where, like, you know, you jump out from behind a bus and it can't detect you. But, like, on in normal circumstances, if you walk out in front of a Waymo and you just stand there, it will sit there forever. And, like, people in LA have, like, noticed that. And so, like, if if you're stuck at a busy intersection, like, you might never get to turn.

That Waymo may might not ever get to turn because people will just, like, walk out in front of it, which is funny, in a way that you would, like, never step out in front of a a human car, because it might be speeding. You might, make eye contact with them. You might be jaywalking. Like, I I've noticed bikers will, like, get in front of a Waymo, and they will go very slowly and, like, fuck with it. And that is it's kinda funny.

Yeah. But I I wonder what will happen there. Anyways, I'm, like, pro robotaxi with, like, various asterisks.

Sure. I mean, guess that kinda brings us to the story again, which is people fucking with it. Kinda brings us to the protests and potentially people calling them over there. Alright. We will leave that there.

If you're listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play us out. But if you are a paying $4.00 4 media subscriber, not only will you get access to the upcoming four year forum, but right now, we're gonna talk about a pretty big guilty plea in the case that Sam has been following for years at this point. You can subscribe and gain access to that content at 04:04 media dot c o. We'll be right back after this. Alright.

We're back in the subscribers only section. Sam, this one has been a long time coming. I guess there's still a little bit more to come. There's the sentencing and that sort of thing. But the headline is girls do porn ringleader pleads guilty faces life in prison.

We've talked in we've we've spoken sorry. Wow. I'm exhausted. We've spoken about girls do porn on the podcast before, but this felt like a good opportunity just to run through the timeline. So to get started, what was girls do porn when it was up and running?

Like, what was it presenting as, and then what was it actually?

Yeah. Every time I write an update, a news blog about girls do porn, because at this point, we have, like, rolling, confessions slash, guilty pleas from everyone involved. I'm like, god. Well, the timeline, I just never keep it all straight, so let me try. So it started in 02/2009.

It was a porn site. So it was a porn production studio, but what it actually was was a front for a pretty elaborate, criminal, now we know federally indicted sex trafficking ring. So in 02/2009, it was and up until probably 2019, I would say, 2018, when or maybe it was a little bit earlier. Maybe it was, like, 2016. But, women started coming forward who were, who were part of who were taken advantage of and, victims of this criminal operation did we realize that that's what was going on.

So what was going on was, these guys running girls do porn would post ads to Craigslist and different, like, listing like, job listing sites, but mostly Craigslist, saying that they were looking for models. And it sent it seemed like a lingerie shoot situation, and they were looking for young women, specifically targeting college channels. So we're looking for young college women, college aged women, to do lingerie shoots. And then the women would reach out and say, hey. I'm interested.

I you know, a lot of the times the women that I've talked to who've spoken about this on the record, have talked about how they were in college. They needed to support themselves, their families in a lot of cases. It was it seemed like easy money that would be, like, in and out quick, you know, no harm, no foul type of thing. So they would reach out and say, hey. I'm interested.

The guys would say, cool. We need you to come to our studio in San Diego, and we'll fly you here. We'll pay for your ticket. We'll make sure you get transportation from the airport. We got you covered.

We'll take care of you. They get there, and this is these are the broad strokes of the scheme, but everyone had a slightly different experience. But they would get there. Someone would pick them up who was part of the girls do porn operation would pick them up at the airport. And sometimes it was a woman named Valerie Moser who was administrative assistant who was luring these women in as, you know, the kind of trusted older older sister type figure in this whole thing.

Take them to a hotel in San Diego. If we get to the hotel, all of a sudden, tone of everything changes. This is no longer a lingerie shoot. It's not even a nude modeling shoot. It's a porn shoot.

And here are a bunch of contracts. Here's a bunch of paperwork. Here's some shots. Here's some weed. Here's a camera on your face, and here's the guy who you're gonna have sex with on camera.

Ready? Okay. Let's go. And, again, these women are, you know, in a lot of cases, 18, 19 years old. There was one of them that was celebrating her eighteenth birthday as part of this.

Like, that it was, like, know, happy birthday to you type thing on camera. So those are the the broad strokes of it. They would get there, be there for hours, horrible situation, locked into the room, barricaded in some cases. The women don't frequently call it rape, which I guess we should put a trigger warning at the top of this. Remind me to record that.

But they don't call it, typically rape on all the cases, but that's if you're describing this to someone that's sounds a lot like it. And they would leave after being sexually assaulted. And then thinking that because these guys had promised them that these tapes would go nowhere and be seen by no one, only, like, private collectors in New Zealand or Australia, depending on the story. And then a couple months later, a couple weeks later, the the tapes would end up on Pornhub, obviously, one of the most popular porn sites in the world. They would end up on social media.

People would be finding them, tagging them, you know, discovering them through porn WikiLeaks, which is a site made to docs women in porn. And they're in college again. So it's like that network is very, like, tightly knit. And if something if you do something that people find scandalous, everyone's gonna know about it, and it's gonna affect your life very, very heavily in this very, like, closed ecosystem environment. So it ruined their lives in a lot of cases.

They had to change their names. They had to move. Their families disowned them in some cases. Mean, it's just, like, worse worse than that happened without going into too much detail. It's just really, really horrific stuff came as a result of their being coerced into this sex trafficking operation.

So that's the girl's important.

Very, very succinct summary. So you mentioned Pornhub, which is obviously, as you say, where these videos were uploaded. Just briefly, what was Pornhub's involvement? Because it wasn't just, oh, user generated content that's been uploaded. Pornhub was more strongly linked.

I'll I'll use that phrase, and you correct me if I'm wrong. Like, what was Pornhub's involvement here?

So Pornhub was acting as a partner with Girls Do Porn for their site for those purposes of the site. So Pornhub called and, you know, worked with Girls Do Porn as a what we knew of as a porn production studio, as a premium partner. I forget the actual like, specific wording. I think it was something like that. So if you paid for a Pornhub premium subscription, which got you, like, exclusive content, got you extra stuff as part of, like, the the the bigger free Pornhub experience, you got bonus stuff.

And some of that was con like, access to these channels. And Girls Do Porn was one of the channels that you get when you're a partner. So girls like, Pornhub gets a kickback from that. When people pay for Girls Do Porn, they're obviously they're paying for partially for girls do porn content, paying them, but Pornhub gets a cut of that. So and, also, it's just I mean, it was a massive moderation issue because these women were finding out over the years that their content was on Pornhub and getting spread around everywhere, all over their campus and things like that, and emailing Pornhub and saying, please take this stuff down.

Like, this is this I was not okay with them putting this here. I didn't want this to happen. Just, like, detailing the horrible shit that happened to them in the course of this interaction. And Pornhub, they say, didn't, act on a lot of these cases. And part of that is because they signed as far as Pornhub saw, they signed contracts, and Girls Departments was like, well, here's the contract that she signed showing that we own her content.

And Pornhub is like, okay. You know? So it's just a really broken system that was going on, where these women could not get their content taken down content of them taken down from pretty much anywhere. And Pornhub was probably the biggest because they also had, you know, all of the, Pornhub sister sites. So, like, Red Tube and, like, all the other tube sites that Pornhub is part of the network of.

So Pornhub has been sued a bunch for this. The the women have various women have sued Pornhub over the damages that they feel Pornhub has inflicted on their lives.

Have they have those been successful at all? They ongoing?

Or I think a few of them are ongoing. I don't wanna say for sure whether any of them are, like, finalized yet. I do know they might have been, and I need to look into it. But I do know there was a investigation into like, a government investigation into Pornhub from US attorney general's office Mhmm. Or the the attorney's office, into what went on there.

And that went on for thirty months, and it resolved in 2023 with ALO, which is parent company, used to be MindGeek at the time, saying that it would reach an agreement, essentially. And it didn't admit to any kind of, like, criminal criminality, any kind of, like, criminal charges. It didn't say that it had actually done anything wrong, but it did say it deeply regrets hosting any of the content that Girls Do Porn and Girls Do Toys, which is one of the other affiliate sites of this operation, put on the platform, which no kidding. Like, I bet they regret it. You know?

It's like they they should regret it. And, also, it's been nothing but a huge, huge pain in the ass for them for years, having sat on this content for so long when women were saying, please take it down. Yeah. And they took it. They didn't really take down the channel until after the federal, charges started coming down against against the the guys running it.

So Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned that that that investigation to pawn her, but the the the really significant one and the one that we're talking about with this guilty plea is that the FBI, right, and, of course, attorneys of the DOJ, they investigate the owner of girls do porn. I think the performer and the cameraman as well. And is that everybody who who was sort of investigated?

Let's see. Let me look at the list. Okay. So there was Michael Pratt, which is the ringleader guy. My Matthew Wolf, who is, like, his bestie.

Ruben Andre Garcia, who is the actor, Teddy Gee, who is the cameraman, and Valerie Moser, who is the administrative assistant. And they've all, at this point

Today you mean?

As of, yeah, as of the as of frat last week saying he would now enter a guilty plea plea guilty to these to these charges for federal sex trafficking. They're all having pled guilty to various levels of what they were indicted for. And let's see. Garcia, the actor, was sentenced to twenty years in prison. Matthew Wolf was sentenced to fourteen.

These guys are in their thirties and forties, so they're gonna be old when they get out if they stay the whole time. And then the cameraman was sentenced to four years, and then Valerie Moser and Pratt are still gonna be sentenced in September.

Well, I I guess that actually kinda brings me to the last question I was gonna ask just because you bring up sentencing. But but but before that, there is like, Pratt goes on the run, basically, and there's this really, really good piece you've written about this family who tracked Pratt down to Spain in part because of his love of, sneakers. Right? And he's going to these sneaker stores, and and the investigators are talking to various people and all of that sort of thing. They help track him down.

I guess we we don't need to do that whole story because people should go read the article. But is there any indication how, like, important that hunt was? Because it sounds like the FBI didn't have a full grasp of where this person was, who was actually most wanted. Right? Like, how significant was the family of these PIs?

They may not sorry. I agree with that term. I'm just speaking generally. What was the significance of them tracking down Pratt and giving that information to the FBI? Like, was it useful, you think?

Yeah. I mean, they, so it's the FBI. So it's hard to get the FBI to, to cop to anything for lack of a better word. It's like, would they admit if it was useful? I don't know.

They don't they couldn't send this team of and you're right. It's it's private investigators. They couldn't send this team of private investigators and lawyers to Spain themselves because you can't just send, like, essentially, like, random people to another country to do the FBI's bidding. So they went on their own. They said, you know what?

Fuck it. We're gonna go. It's the the main lawyer for the women, who who have sued girls through porn, and a few of them have sued porn in the past. And then a couple ex literal spies for The UK, for the British government, and and their daughter, a translator. So they went, and they just said, we're gonna track him down.

He was wanted for over a year at that point. Think it was maybe a couple years. He's on the most wanted list. He had a bounty on his head of, like, $10,000. And he just he was hard to find, which is weird because all the descriptions of him are, like, he's annoying, and everyone wishes he would get out of the club and, like, he smells bad.

It's like you would think it's a this just, like, bumbling criminal in the middle of Barcelona. Barcelona is not huge. So, anyway, he was hiding out in various countries over the course of these years after he fled the country. When the the indictments came down, he got out of The US and had been on the run since. And these investigators went went over there and said, we're gonna try to find as much as we can about him.

They got really, really close to actually, like, putting a hand on his shoulder. Like, they got so, so, so close. And then a couple months later, Spanish authorities actually got him, which they can like, the Spanish authorities can can get him

Yeah. They're allowed to

be. Directive of yeah. It's like, FBI can say, we think he's here. You know? I'd like to tip him off.

Yeah. But, you know, they were they were giving this information to the FBI as much as they could. And it certainly seems like it helped considering the timing. He was gone he was on the run for so long, and then they found him within a couple months and arrested him and then extradited him extradited him back to The States, about a year after.

Yeah. And that brings us to the last question I was gonna ask, which is you mentioned that one person was sentenced to twenty years, another one had four, and then, know, various other sentences as well. Now that Pratt has pleaded guilty, what does his potential sentence look like?

So it's he's got two charges of sex trafficking sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy are the two two charges. At minimum, it's fifteen years. Maximum is life and a quarter million dollar fine. I do not imagine he will be getting off lightly in this considering his what his coconspirators have gone down for. But, yeah, I guess we'll find out in September.

Yeah. Alright. We'll leave that there. I'm sure we'll revisit it in September as well. But with that, I will play us out.

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