John Oliver on police surveillance: ‘Big Brother on steroids’

The host tore into ‘wildly invasive’ cameras, microphones and license plate readers that police use to track Americans John Oliver discussed the tools that police are using to keep track of Americans on the latest episode of Last Week Tonight. In recent years, the use of surveillance technology has exploded among local police forces due to decreasing prices and federal funding, with one local mayor comparing modern systems to “Big Brother on steroids”. “I’m not sure that’s quite the sell he thinks it is,” said Oliver with a laugh. “Big Brother is pretty famously not the hero of [George Orwell’s] 1984 … “But the truth is, a lot of the technologies that feed into those [local surveillance] centers have significant problems, and some civil liberties issues to the way they’ve been weaponized recently to target immigrants. “There needs to be much more awareness of what’s actually out there.” Local police forces use a combination of cameras, license plate readers, microphones and cell-site simulators in “predictive policing” that “combines all of them to make that Big Brother on steroids line true”, Oliver said. In New Orleans, where there are more