David speaks with career public defender Eliza Orlins about the growing scope of ICE-enabled surveillance and why it should concern everyone, not just non-citizens. Orlins outlines a sprawling, largely unaccountable dragnet powered by commercial data brokers, license-plate readers, toll and DMV records, app-based location tracking, and an emerging push for real-time social-media monitoring—often sidestepping warrants and eroding Fourth Amendment protections. The pair discuss how these tools can be repurposed beyond immigration to target journalists, dissenters, and protest movements, and how legal guardrails like Posse Comitatus or voting-rights protections are being weakened in practice, even when they still exist on paper.

They also focus on practical safety for this weekend’s protests: consider leaving your phone at home, don’t post identifiable photos of others, avoid engaging with agitators, and if approached by police, assert your right to remain silent and ask if you’re free to leave. Despite the dark backdrop, Orlins emphasizes “joy as resistance” and points to the research suggesting that sustained, nonviolent participation at scale—the 3.5% threshold—can still check authoritarian drift.

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