Why Are Federal Agents Using GoPros, Smart Glasses, and Phones to Record Us?

The ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, identified as 43-year-old Jonathan Ross, appeared to be recording people with his phone before those fatal shots on Wednesday. It’s unclear whether the public will ever get to see that footage, but the visual—a masked federal agent using a phone rather than a bodycam to record the scene for some reason—does raise questions about the role of devices like phones, GoPros, and Meta smart glasses during President Donald Trump’s escalating campaign of fascist terror across the country.

Police body cameras have been mainstream for over a decade now. But Trump’s second term has seen the rise of police and federal agents in viral videos seeming to use atypical recording technologies, sometimes for their perceived ability to intimidate—head-mounted GoPros and phones thrust into faces are much more confronting and a stark reminder that you’re being recorded. Other times, these devices seem to be used for their ability to do just the opposite, clandestinely recording while providing more information to the officer, as in the case of smart glasses.

Ross used his phone as he walked around Good’s vehicle, right up to the second before he drew his weapon and started firing. In the images below, annotated by Gizmodo, you can see Ross holding the phone in his right hand while he’s behind the car, and then holding the phone with his left hand by the time he’s seen on the front of the driver’s side.

Screenshots from bystander video showing an ICE agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, recording the scene with his phone on Jan. 7, 2026 shortly before the killing of Renee Good. Screenshots: Bluesky

Border Patrol GoPro

An Instagram video uploaded by an Uber driver in Minnesota on Wednesday, not long after the killing of Renee Good, showed masked Border Patrol agents surrounding his vehicle and asking if he was a citizen. The driver pushed back and said he didn’t have to answer questions like that, and said that if the officers were Border Patrol, they should go to America’s border with Canada or Mexico.

“Are you doing this to everybody or just Black people?” the driver asks in the video.

The Uber driver also asked why the agent who first questioned him, a woman who was also seen with Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino earlier in the day after Renee Good was killed in Minneapolis, was wearing a GoPro strapped to her head. The driver speculated that perhaps she used the GoPro because it allowed her more control of the footage, a valid question in an age where bodycam footage is more normal and police have a routine for uploading to servers.

“And you got a GoPro. Is that work issued?” the driver asks, to which the agent responds that it is.

“What happened to the police body cameras? It’s so that you can delete the video and make your own stuff, you know that right?”

Another angle on the same encounter showed the Border Patrol agents trying to be even more aggressive and questioning his accent. It’s illegal for immigration agents to harass people on the street simply for their accents.

The Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of both ICE and Border Patrol, didn’t address Gizmodo’s questions about the Instagram video on Thursday. When we asked about the identity of the ICE agent who shot Renee Good, they sent a long and meandering response about how they weren’t going to doxx an agent: “The Star Tribune should be absolutely ashamed of themselves for their reckless behavior, and they should delete their story immediately.”

Gizmodo asked whether the GoPro seen in the Instagram video was issued by DHS, and didn’t address how the footage is stored.

Protesters hold signs calling for justice for Renee Good in downtown San Diego, California, on Jan. 8, 2026. © Gizmodo / Matt Novak

Who controls the footage?

Jake Laperruque, the Deputy Director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Security and Surveillance Project, pointed to a recent report from The Daily Northwestern, which found that federal agents operating in Chicagoland have been using Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses and other recording devices to monitor protesters.

“DHS has policies and rules governing officers’ use of body cameras, which are crucial given the sensitive nature of recordings (for example, filming protesters or an interview with a crime victim) as well as to ensure they provide desired accountability,” said Laperruque.

Gizmodo asked Laperruque about the issues with officers using their own devices, especially when they’re filming protesters or just people in a given neighborhood where ICE has deployed.

“The concerns you raise are exactly right—if officers are running their own personal body cameras they could use any footage that’s useful to them, potentially store sensitive footage (such as a raid inside a home or recordings of protesters), and also delete any footage that might show the type of misconduct or improper use of force that formal body camera programs were designed to track,” he continued.

Laperruque says that personal body cameras aren’t allowed by DHS and that if officers are using body cameras at their own discretion, it “creates serious risks.”

Smart glasses and police overreach

404 Media was the first to report back in August that a Customs and Border Patrol agent was using Meta smart glasses during an immigration raid in Los Angeles. We generally don’t know if agents who do this sort of thing are acting on their own outside of established protocols, but that’s part of the problem.

It would be great to have DHS comment on what is and isn’t official government policy, given the perceived rise in rogue recording. But DHS also has a history of extremely blatant lying since President Trump was inaugurated for a second time, so it may not matter whether the agency answers.

Policies on recording the public vary when it comes to local police departments, according to Jay Stanley, a Senior Policy Analyst at the ACLU. And some of the better departments do have policies not to record people at protest marches.

“The government generally shouldn’t be recording members of the public,” said Stanley. “People experience chilling effects in terms of exercising their right to exercise their First Amendment rights of expression and assembly.”

Stanley said that bodycam tech’s potential as a check on police overreach, the original stated purpose, hasn’t been fulfilled.

“If you have officers wildcatting it and just recording on their own personal devices, you’re losing any say that public policy has on how video is stored, shared, how long it’s retained, access by the public where there is a keen public interest in exactly what that video captured,” Stanley said.

“The video that appears to have been taken in Minnesota by the officer should be released publicly. It’s highly irregular for officers to be compiling their own databases of law enforcement video. And it’s in line with the lawless smash and grab approach to this anti-immigration drive that we’ve been seeing around the country.”