The Washington Examiner reports:
Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will make all surveillance footage of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot available for the public to access online starting “immediately,” the House leader announced Friday.
The tapes will be posted on a public website and contain more than 44,000 hours of security footage taken during the Jan. 6 riot, barring any video that contains sensitive security information or “information that would lead to retaliation of private citizens,” according to the speaker’s office.
The footage is expected to be released in tranches beginning Friday and will continue being posted over the next several months. The videos will blur the faces of private citizens to ensure no one is “targeted for retaliation of any kind,” the speaker said.
Read the full article.
Today, I am keeping my promise to the American people and making all the January 6th tapes available to ALL Americans.
— Speaker Mike Johnson (@SpeakerJohnson) November 17, 2023
JUST IN: Speaker Johnosn announces “rolling” release of Jan. 6 surveillance video, with faces of individuals blurred.
By the sound of it, it would take many many years to review and release the entire tranche so this may not be what it appears. pic.twitter.com/OczuyxNYfP
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 17, 2023
Johnson’s office suggests it will release 40,000 of the 44,000 hours in “waves” over the next few months The rest will be withheld for security reasons. Johnson says the face blurring is to prevent “doxxing” of private citizens (i.e. use by sedition hunters)
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 17, 2023
First tranche of 90 hours will be posted imminently, per Johnson’s office. But if that’s the size of every batch, even 90 hours every single day would take 15-16 months to release.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 17, 2023
Bottom line, a lot of people cheering the release of the tapes don’t seem to yet realize that that vast majority will remain secret for months, if not years, and the updated process is basically the old process of viewing small bursts of footage at Capitol terminals.
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 17, 2023
