House Speaker Mike Johnson said that the release of Jan. 6 security footage has been delayed in order to blur the faces of rioters.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has promised to release more than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from Jan. 6 to the public, with one major caveat: The faces of some individuals who participated in the storming of the Capitol, a violent attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election, will be blurred out.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson said that “the release of the January 6 tapes is a critical and important exercise, we want transparency … we trust — House Republicans trust — the American people to draw their own conclusions.”

Johnson added that the party is going “through a methodical process of releasing them as quickly as we can” and that they “have to blur some of the faces of the persons who participated in the events of that day because we don’t want them to be retaliated against, and to be charged by the DOJ and to have other, you know, concerns and problems.”

  • @[email protected]English
    78•7 months ago

    His office later noted that DOJ already has the raw footage.

    and later in the article:

    Johnson’s spokesman suggested that the speaker was trying to keep the raw footage away from online sleuths who have helped identify hundreds of Capitol rioters and aided in the FBI’s investigation.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/speaker-mike-johnson-says-blurring-jan-6-footage-rioters-dont-get-char-rcna128181

    i.e. Let’s not let the taxpayers aid law enforcement. Let’s make the government spend taxpayer dollars when the public could help out.

    • The Pantser
      -16•7 months ago

      Well I agree the public could help let’s not forget the Boston Marathon witch hunt. Maybe we don’t let reddit get their hands on that footage.

      • @[email protected]English
        38•7 months ago

        Eh, witch hunts are a big risk in the immediate aftermath when crowd tension is the highest. It has been three years, at this point I expect the sleuth work on suspect identification would be all upside.

        The bigger security concern is sleuths figuring out all the camera locations and, by deduction, the blind spots. Johnson is setting up the next Congress to be much more vulnerable to violent attack.

        • Unaware7013
          14•7 months ago

          The bigger security concern is sleuths figuring out all the camera locations and, by deduction, the blind spots. Johnson is setting up the next Congress to be much more vulnerable to violent attack.

          If there’s anyone with a lick of sense in the Congressional security team, they’ve added or moved cameras specifically for this reason. If I was on that team, January 7th I’d be pushing to add more cameras/defenses, given how close it was as is.