Return to Transcripts main page

Smerconish

Luigi Mangione: "I Shot Mr. Thompson In Manhattan And He Died"; Hard Foul And Social Media Post Ignite Debate Over Race In WNBA. University Of Michigan To Cover Some Freshmen's Letter Grades; Surveillance Concerns Grow Over Nationwide Network Of Cameras. Aired 9-10a ET

Aired August 15, 2026 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:00:28]

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN ANCHOR: Genuflecting on 54th Street. I'm Michael Smerconish in the Philly burbs. I had at least one thing in common with Brian Thompson. We stayed at the same hotel.

For a decade, my hotel of choice in New York City was on 54th street in Midtown Manhattan between sixth and seventh. I picked it for the most boring of reasons. It sits about equal distance between the old CNN location a few blocks north on Columbus Circle and Sirius XM a few blocks to the south and it's where Brian Thompson spent the last night of his life. On the morning of December 4, 2024, in the 6:00 hour, he walked out that hotel door, crossed 54th street and headed about 75 yards toward an investor's conference at the neighboring Hilton. He never made it through that door.

Waiting for the 50 year old father of two was Luigi Mangione, who had stalked him across state lines. Yesterday in federal court, Mangione told us the rest of the story himself, quote, "I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan and he died." And this, "I knew what I was doing was illegal."

One week after the murder to the day, in the same 6:00 hour, I walked that sidewalk where it happened enroute to work. The only evidence left was a piece of police tape flickering from a road barrier that had yet to be removed. Missing any flowers, candles, photographs of the decedent. All the usual markers that we're accustomed to seeing where there's been an innocent loss of life. But a few feet away was a poster on a pole depicting the killer as a saint.

Free Luigi, it said. And that was just the beginning. For 20 months, a corner of this country has treated this young man as a hero. The merchandise, the fan mail, the crowdfunding, the crowds cheering outside the courthouse. I'd like to think that some of that reverence was propped up on the fiction that maybe he didn't do it, that he was a scapegoat, that the evidence was just too tidy.

I'd like to think that, but I don't believe it. Because the approval came first. Before a trial, before a defense, before any of the doubt was manufactured. Emerson College polled a thousand registered voters the week of the murder nationally, 68 percent called the killing unacceptable. But among voters 18 to 29, 41 percent called it acceptable.

They weren't endorsing a man. They were endorsing an act. The man came later. The posters, the T-shirts, the fan mail, first came the permission. Yesterday should have settled it under oath in open court. In his own voice, he took away the last excuse anybody had for doubting.

Instead, look closely at what he actually said. Because he wasn't repenting. He was pitching. He began with his back. After years of enduring severe pain from a broken back, he told the judge, I learned UnitedHealthcare would be holding its annual investor conference in New York City.

He described researching the event. He described the company's stated mission to make healthcare better for everyone. And then, quote, "My travel to New York and e-mail to UnitedHealthcare was with the intent to shoot Brian Thompson.

Sit with that middle part. He e-mailed the company posing as an investor, claiming to represent more than 50 billion in capital in order to find out where the executives would be standing. That's not a cry of pain. That's reconnaissance. He used the very corporate machinery he professed to despise as a targeting system.

He expressed no remorse. He returned again and again to his complaints about American healthcare. And when it was over, his attorney went straight to the same well, saying that, quote, "Like the thousands of people who have reached out since this tragedy to share their experiences, he believed that the system had failed him and destroyed his life." His lawyer says he accepts responsibility.

Then why mention the back? What does a broken back have to do with whether you may shoot a stranger from behind on a public sidewalk? Nothing. It isn't a defense. It isn't an element of anything.

And no judge needed to hear it. And why, in the same breath, raise the thousands of people who've written to him?

Think about what that argument actually says. Those thousands of people got the same denial letters. They sat on the same hold music, they fought the same appeals and lost the same nights of sleep. And then they got up and they went to work. They are not the evidence for him.

They are the evidence against him. His own lawyer just told us that thousands of Americans shared his grievance exactly. And exactly one of them went to 54th street with a gun. That doesn't explain the murder. It isolates it.

[09:05:15]

So, no, you don't get both. You don't get to say, I killed Mr. Thompson and I knew what I was doing was illegal to the judge and you'd understand if you knew what they did to me to everybody else.

Here's the test. Real responsibility doesn't come with a because. What we heard yesterday wasn't addressed to Judge Garnett. It was addressed to the people outside the courthouse. It was written for the posters.

Two things are true at the same time, and this country is having an enormously hard time holding both. The first is our healthcare system is broken. People are denied care they paid for. They spend their worst days on hold. Prior authorization is a bureaucratic torture device.

I said so on this, the week that Brian Thompson was killed, and I'll say it again today. The second, none of that, none of it moves the needle one millimeter on the morality of what happened on that sidewalk. A grievance being legitimate says nothing about whether the response to it is justified. Those are two entirely separate questions. And the whole architecture of a civilized society rests on keeping them separate, which is where the sainthood business collapses.

A martyr dies for a cause. Luigi Mangione killed for one. Those aren't variations on a theme, they're opposites. The man on the poster didn't sacrifice himself for anybody. He sacrificed somebody else's husband, somebody else's father.

And the moment you accept that a sufficiently deep injury licenses a bullet, you haven't made an argument about health insurance, you've written a rule, and you don't get to choose who picks it up next. If your standard for when a killing is acceptable turns on who got killed, that you don't have a standard, you have a preference. And a country where everybody has a preference instead of a standard is a country where the only question left is who shoots first.

The U.S. attorney for the Southern District, Jamie McDonald, put it better than I can, he said that Mangione committed this murder in an attempt to draw public attention to his dislike of certain businesses. And then he said this, no grievance, political belief, or ideological cause can ever justify murder. And he also said this, we live in a civilized society governed by the rule of law. We debate, we disagree, we protest, we do not commit murder. There can be no celebrity, he said, in assassination.

Mangione will be sentenced on December 18, he faces up to life. In my opinion, he deserves nothing less. But I'm less interested in his fate than in ours. Because look at what we've managed to do with this story, we've inverted it. The killer is a person.

He is a first name that we all know. A face on a T-shirt, a back injury we've all heard about, a fandom. And the victim, he's a job title. Twenty months later, most people still can't tell you his name. They can tell you his employer.

So let me fix that, at least for the next 30 seconds. Brian Thompson was raised in the same Iowa farmhouse as his mother. His father spent 40 years unloading trucks at grain elevators. He fished at a gravel pit with his brother. He has two sons who will never see him again. A nation that can hold two thoughts at once. That the insurance industry has failed millions of people and that the man who shot Brian Thompson in the back is a murderer and nothing else, that nation can fix things. A nation that can only hold one thought at a time picks a saint and moves on. Twenty months on, there's still nothing on 54th Street. No plaque, no flowers, nothing with this name on it.

The only thing anybody ever taped up nearby was a picture of the man who killed him drawn as a saint. And that's the part that I can't walk past.

I want to know what you think. Go to my website at smerconish.com. Answer today's poll question, do Luigi Mangione's grievances with the healthcare system mitigate his crime in any way? Hell no.

Here with me now is CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig.

Elie, nice to see you. What is it about New York law that made this a wise move, legally speaking?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Michael, I do not recommend to anybody getting criminally charged twice, once by the feds and once by the state, but if you have to, do it in New York. Because New York state has exceptionally broad double jeopardy laws that protect someone in an -- in a scenario precisely like what Luigi Mangione found himself in here. Now, yesterday we saw a two-step maneuver by Mangione's legal defense team, which I think was probably his best play. It was definitely a savvy play.

[09:10:12]

First they walked into federal court and he pled guilty in a way that will allow him at sentencing to ask the judge to give him less than a life sentence. I don't know how good a chance he has at that, but he can ask. And then within minutes of doing that, you, his legal team walked across Center Street into the New York State Courtroom and said, OK, Judge, now you have to dismiss this state case because he was just convicted across the street in the federal case and now he's got double jeopardy protections. And I think he's actually got quite a strong double jeopardy argument under New York law as it exists.

SMERCONISH: As a courtroom veteran, let me ask you, in which of those venues did he have a better chance of pulling one of the nuts, and that's what they are, who have been out there protesting in support of Mangione?

HONIG: Well, first of all, as a prosecutor, I would have been very worried about trying this case. Not because the evidence, the evidence is more than overwhelming, but because all it takes is one nut, to use your term, Michael, to hang a jury. If you get an 11 to one jury, that's a hung jury, that's a mistrial. That's a bad outcome for prosecutors. And you talked about it.

The level of support and dedication to this guy is mind boggling. And I'd be terrified about pulling any juror who falls into that category would hang a jury. If I had to choose between the two, I suppose I would choose the Southern District of New York, the federal court, to try the case only because you draw from a broader jurisdiction. The Manhattan case would have only drawn from Manhattan. The Southern District of New York can also draw from the Bronx and Westchester.

And I think maybe you get a slightly better jury pull that way.

SMERCONISH: Elie, tell us about the judge.

HONIG: So Margaret Garnett is the federal judge here. She was put on the bench in 2024 by Joe Biden. When I was at the Southern District of New York, Margaret -- Judge Garnett was a contemporary of mine, a colleague of mine. She was the chief of the organ -- of the Violent Crime and Gangs Unit. And if you have a picture in your head of what kind of prosecutor would be in charge of the Violent Crimes and Gangs Unit, she must be tough.

She's tougher than that. I'm telling you right now, Michael, Judge Garnett is going to have less sympathy for Luigi Mangione than you just expressed in your monologue. She's going to have no interest --

SMERCONISH: That's hard to do.

HONIG: -- in his back.

SMERCONISH: That would be hard, Elie. That would be hard.

HONIG: She -- she's going to have no interest in his back pain. She is going to have utter disdain for any suggestion that he might have done this for any justified reason relating to healthcare or anything else. Don't get me wrong, she does not rule based on passion or emotion. She's a very careful, very fair judge. In fact, she threw out one of the charges against Luigi Mangione on a technical basis.

But that's a really tough draw for him. I'd be shocked if she gave him less than life.

SMERCONISH: Elie Honig, we appreciate you. Thank you so much.

What are your thoughts at home? Hit me up on social media. Follow me on X, YouTube, Facebook, everywhere.

Mitigate? No, but insurance companies should be taking notice. I'm sure they have. Profiteering off of illness and disease is immoral and unjustifiable. Medical tragedy and greedy capital -- OK, can't we hold both those thoughts at once? That the insurance industry needs reform and this guy's a cold blooded murderer.

I want to know what you think. Go to my website. It's going to be very interesting. I may -- I may be really distraught at the end of the hour when I see this poll result. Do Luigi Mangione's grievances with the healthcare system mitigate his crime in any way?

You know how I'm voting.

A bad first semester can follow a student for years. Now the University of Michigan plans to cover those early letter grades. Will that encourage students to take risks or give them less reason to excel?

And next, a hard foul, a two word post, and now a fight over race, politics and the WNBA itself. But does the controversy reflect what's happening inside the league or what outsiders have made of it? Make sure you sign up for the newsletter when you're voting on the poll question. You'll get the work of illustrators like Eric Allie.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:18:05]

SMERCONISH: It took only a few seconds on a basketball court for a hard foul to become a much bigger fight over race, politics and the WNBA itself. It happened during the first quarter of Saturday's game between the Chicago Sky and the Indiana Fever. Indiana's Sophie Cunningham was on a fast break when Chicago's DiJonai Carrington came from behind, hit her in the head and the neck. Cunningham went down, then got up and charged toward Carrington before a teammate restrained her. After reviewing the play, officials assessed Carrington a flagrant two foul, that meant automatic ejection.

Minutes later, Carrington posted two words on social media, "white privilege." She also tagged the Fever. And that's when one hard foul became something much bigger. Cunningham said that she believed the foul was intentional, but the, quote, "This has nothing to do with race." Carrington later said that she never claimed the foul call itself was white privilege.

Fever coach Stephanie White initially said that the officials made the right call, but that she didn't believe Carrington intentionally hit Cunningham across the neck. Indiana's lieutenant governor then got involved and called for the Fever to fire White, accusing her of siding with an opposing player. After watching the replay, White called the foul egregious. Then, before Tuesday's game, she condemned what she called the hate, the fear mongering, the divisiveness trying to hijack the league.

But how much of that division comes from what happens on the court and how much comes from the way those moments are presented? A peer reviewed study published this year examined ESPN's coverage of the 2024 WNBA playoffs. It found that the network's coverage amplified racial controversy involving Caitlin Clark and Black players, including Carrington and Angel Reese. But the study did not measure how often audiences were shown those confrontations. And early in Clark's rookie season, the Washington Post reported that she was drawing 4.4 fouls per game and Aaliyah Edwards was drawing 3.8 despite playing nearly 10 fewer minutes per game.

[09:20:02]

So there's some research about how the racial conflict has been framed, and data showing that Clark was not the only rookie absorbing significant contact. But there's no reputable count of how often the public is shown Black players in confrontations with White players or whether those selected images reflect the league as a whole. We reached out to the WNBA for thoughts on this. Have not received a response. We'll be hearing from two experts, Jason Whitlock and Cari Champion.

Let's begin with columnist and host of "Fearless with Jason Whitlock." This is Jason Whitlock.

Jason, nice to see you. Is the controversy driven by race, by politics, or just competition?

JASON WHITLOCK, HOST OF "FEARLESS WITH JASON WHITLOCK": Well, I think it's all three, but I would probably add a fourth, sexuality, and, you know, sexual identity. The WNBA, if you listen to a lot of their players, they consider themselves a Black queer league. And Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham aren't Black and queer. And particularly as it relates to Caitlin Clark, she's come in and had a huge impact on the league, huge impact on who actually watches the league. And in competition, there is a natural jealousy.

And so some of this is just natural, but some of it is driven by who's going to define the league, who's going to represent the league. There's this whole big controversy about who's going to be the face of the league. It is Caitlin Clark. I think the Black queers in the league who feel like they built this league and it's their league, are in objection to that. And so, you know, it's up high (ph).

And I would probably put sexuality at the top of the list and then race second, and then probably just competition and the natural jealousy that comes along with competition as third.

SMERCONISH: For what it's -- for what it's worth, I went looking, we cited peer reviewed data. I went looking for any data, any analysis as to whether there was racial animus driving any of those moments that we constantly see on a loop, especially on some networks. And by the way, then I asked Claude to do it for me, Fable 5, very interesting analysis which I published today and it comes back saying, it's all proportional. There's no evidence that it's being driven by race. So let me ask you, what's your evidence that it's driven by sexuality?

WHITLOCK: What the ladies actually say in the league. Take a woman, Syd Colson, that played in the league for 12 years, she was Caitlin Clark's teammate last year. If you actually listen to what the ladies in the league say, like a Syd Colson, who just last week on her podcast said, hey, look, this is a Black queer league. We get to define what is appropriate in this league. That this is about the whole transgender issue, whether or not transitioning men into womanhood should be allowed to play in the league.

And someone like Syd Colson says loudly and proudly, as a Black queer person, as Black queers that dominate the league, we get to decide that. No one else. You know, I think --

SMERCONISH: But Jason, Jason --

WHITLOCK: -- I'm very --

SMERCONISH: -- the foul --

WHITLOCK: Yes. SMERCONISH: Can I just ask this? The foul -- the foul --

WHITLOCK: Yes.

SMERCONISH: -- heard and seen round the world, are you telling me that you think that there's actual intention in committing a foul like that, as to the gender identity, the sexuality of the particular players? Like that's entering the thought process?

WHITLOCK: Yes. Yes. If -- look --

SMERCONISH: You are.

WHITLOCK: -- competition -- yes. DiJonai Carrington has a history. Sophie Cunningham is not the first player and or White player. This woman in 2024 took a shot at trying to gouge out Caitlin Clark's eyes. There's plenty of tape on DiJonai Carrington.

And there's plenty of commentary from DiJonai Carrington. DiJonai Carrington's in a relationship or was in a relationship with one of her teammates, NaLyssa Smith. Everybody -- they were teammates, I believe, at Baylor. They started the relationship there. It's carried over into the WNBA.

DiJonai Carrington has a well-documented history for people that actually watch the league, listen to what these ladies have to say, what they post. This -- no one is shocked that DiJonai Carrington --

SMERCONISH: OK. In a word -- in a word, here's your charge. In a word, it's about sisterhood as you define it --

WHITLOCK: Yes.

SMERCONISH: -- more than any of the -- than any of the other factors. OK. I got to get a different opinion.

WHITLOCK: Michael -- hold on.

SMERCONISH: Thank you -- finish your thought. Go ahead. Finish quickly.

WHITLOCK: Michael, if you could -- yes. Go look up Monica McNutt on ESPN saying, hey, Caitlin needs to decide if she wants to join the sisterhood. They're not hiding this.

[09:25:06]

SMERCONISH: It sounds like I went down a rabbit hole with Claude last night on the wrong issue, according to Jason Whitlock. Thank you, Jason.

Let me now bring in CNN contributor Cari Champion, host of "Flagrant and Funny with Cari Champion and the Jamel Hill" Podcast.

Well, I'm switching gears and throwing out my notes. What do you make of what he just had to say? CARI CHAMPION, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: I think it's ridiculous, this. It's not about joining our sisterhood.

SMERCONISH: Ridiculous. Tell me why.

CHAMPION: Because of course he'd go with sexuality. That's such low hanging fruit. The idea that these women are mad at, and what I was able to surmise from that, whatever he said was the women are mad at Caitlin and Sophie because they are straight and these other women are queer. That's his first issue. That is not the issue here at all.

The issue here is that I think the league hasn't really been proactive in handling an issue, an issue that has to do with race. Yes, I'm absolutely here to say there is a race issue happening in the league, but only because this is one of these opportunities for others to co- op the league and use all of their hatred and all of their dislike and use the league as their avatar to say these are the issues we're concerned with.

What happened between Sophie and what happened with DiJonai Carrington speaks to what's going on. It's a microcosm of what's going on in our society. And it's easy to target a group of women who are queer and yes, Black. Sixty-eight percent of the league is made of Black women and yes, a huge proportion of them LGBTQ Plus. That's easy.

That's an easy target. That's low hanging fruit. That has nothing to do with why these women don't like Caitlin Clark or Sophie Cunningham. In fact, I think they enjoy Caitlin Clark for that matter. I've seen them.

I was just at the WNBA All Star Weekend in Chicago. There is a sisterhood that has nothing to do with sexuality and it's really, really disturbing to hear him say so.

SMERCONISH: So my initial premise, I confess, have not been following the WNBA, but Cari, I'm interested now because I'm getting to know the personalities and I'm following some -- maybe for all the wrong reasons, I'm interested now. But what interested me in this was that play, the Carrington, Cunningham play, and me wondering, does this all get shown on a loop when it's a Black and White player and create --

CHAMPION: Absolutely.

SMERCONISH: -- an artificial impression -- an artificial impression of what a typical game is like. Speak to that.

CHAMPION: Yes, it's not what a typical game is like, but when you have a league as majority Black players and there are less White players, it's a contact sport. They're going to touch each other. It happens in the NBA, it's going to happen in the WNBA.

SMERCONISH: Yes.

CHAMPION: But because of where we are in society right now, because we're so divided, everyone thinks that this is an issue about Black versus White. Oh, my God. Caitlin Clark just got fouled 4.4 times a game. What are you talking about? She's the point guard.

She's going to have the ball in her hands and people are going to try to take the ball from her. I just don't believe that it's just as simply as someone saying they don't like Caitlin Clark or Sophie Cunningham because they're White. They definitely don't like the way in which other people are portraying them. These players. Jason Whitlock hit on one thing when he said, these women who built the league, if you will, who have been here for 30 years when the league wasn't getting any attention or making that much money, these women built this league and they deserve the respect of someone who says, guess what, I've now put this product together.

It's always been great. It's just now that the mainstream society has decided to pay attention to the characters and the storylines. And what drives characters and storylines? Conflict. And so that's what's going on a loop --

SMERCONISH: Right.

CHAMPION: -- and that's what you're paying attention to.

SMERCONISH: I mean, it's a tale as old as time, right? Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, whoever the great White hope might be in the Tyson era. Oh, Gerry Cooney, let's -- you know, let's put -- so I guess we're seeing that version of it. Thank you. Appreciate your expertise as well, Cari Champion.

Let's see what you're thinking at home. Make sure you're following on X and YouTube and all the usual places.

I don't think there is racial tension among the players. The tension is coming from what the new fans of the two White women on the Fever teams are bringing to the sport. These Black and white Women have been playing together since high school or earlier.

You just heard, Angela, the opinion of my two guests, who are far more knowledgeable than I am on this. But I did -- I did last night spend a lot of time and entrust Claude with the task of trying to tell me, is this -- is this racially directed? Looked at three seasons, 792 games, 26,000 different fouls, and what was the conclusion? That it's proportional. Meaning nothing to see here.

It's a media creation. Take that for what it's worth. I'm telling you this source, it was artificial intelligence.

I want to remind you. Go to my website at smerconish.com. Answer today's poll questions, do Luigi Mangione's grievances with the healthcare system mitigate his crime in any way?

Still to come, your social media reaction to today's program so far. And then professors will still assign letter grades, but for some, the University of Michigan freshmen, those grades will not appear on their transcripts. A smarter start to college or a lowering of expectations? I've got thoughts.

When you're voting on the poll question, sign up for the newsletter. It's free and it's worthy, and you get the work of editorial cartoonists like Steve Breen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SMERCONISH: I used to poke fun at Brown University. And frankly, Brown makes it easy.

[09:35:01]

In 1984, students approved a referendum asking the school's health service to stop suicide pills in the event of a nuclear war. It was a symbolic Cold War protest, the university said no. And then there are traditions like the naked donut run and a dance called sex power god.

Brown had -- they still have a reputation as the Ivy where almost anything goes. And my reaction was, ridiculous. And then I took one of our sons there for a campus tour. And in the basement of one of the buildings, I listened to a student explain Brown's open curriculum.

Brown has no required core or distribution courses outside a student's major. Students build their own course of study and may take courses on a satisfactory no credit basis. Brown does not calculate grade point averages.

And as I listened, I began to wonder whether I'd been looking at it all wrong. The students who get into Brown, they've already spent years competing. They've taken the hard classes. They've earned the grades. They've built their resumes. They've cleared the extraordinarily high bar just to get through the door.

Maybe they don't need to make every moment of college another race to the next credential. Which brings me to the University of Michigan. Because beginning in the fall of 2027, incoming freshmen in Michigan's College of Literature, Science and the Arts will receive pass or no credit marks during their first semester instead of A through F.

The pilot will cover about 3,500 students across more than 80 majors. It will not apply to freshmen in Michigan's other schools, including business and engineering. Professors will still assign letter grades, students will still see them, and the university will keep them internally. But external transcripts will show pass or no credit, and those letter grades will not count toward a student's GPA.

Michigan says the goal is to help freshmen adjust, ease academic pressure and encourage them to try subjects that may not come easily. The university also says it wants to foster connection and collaboration rather than competition.

Old me would have called that coddling. Old me would have said the real word -- world grades you every day. So, toughen up. And part of me still thinks that.

Then I think about my own college experience. I loved Lehigh. I had a wonderful experience. I double majored in government and journalism, took a number of urban studies courses because I liked a particular professor. And I took very little else. I was always working toward the grade, the degree, and most notably, getting into the law school of my choice. Had I been given more freedom, maybe I would have taken a science course that intimidated me. Maybe art history. Maybe I would have been more willing to try something at which I might not immediately excel. And maybe I would have spent more time mingling.

That means meeting people from different places, sitting around a table with people who see the world differently, having the conversation after class that teaches you as much as the course itself. None of that appears on a transcript, but it may be among the most valuable parts of a college education.

Michigan is not eliminating the work, the grades, or the feedback. It's covering the letters for one semester. MIT has used a similar first semester system for decades, so maybe this is not about shielding accomplished students from the real world. Maybe it's about giving them one more semester to stop and smell the roses, to explore, to mingle, to discover something they were not already chasing.

They've already proven that they know how to compete. College should also teach them about how to be curious. And on balance, I think it's an experiment worth trying. Let's see some of your reaction to today's program thus far.

A 30-year-old teacher -- as a 30-year-old teacher, yes, grades matter. There's a difference between a student who understands 60 percent of the material versus one who understands 95 percent of the material. It matters.

Elizabeth, I agree it matters. There's got to be a -- there's got to be a way to assess the talent, the students, in this case, when all is said and done. But this is only for one semester.

And by the way, when I learned this week went down a different rabbit hole to figure out where did grades come from and why? Originally, there were no grades. It was the Oxford, Cambridge model, a lecturer who was able to judge whether students had a proficient knowledge of the subject matter being taught. It's only when public high schools opened and now scale necessitated that there be some way to differentiate the students. I thought that was interesting.

Don't forget to vote on today's poll question at Smerconish.com. Do Luigi Mangione's grievances with the health care system mitigate his crime in any way? Go vote. I'll give you the results in a couple of minutes.

Still to come, they can help police find a missing child in minutes, but some officers are accused of using them to track exes, friends, and even a woman who got an abortion. Are license plate cameras fighting crime or creating a mass surveillance network?

When you vote on the poll question, sign up for the newsletter that you'll get every day. It includes some of the work of our editorial cartoonists like Jack Ohman.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:44:07]

SMERCONISH: The game of I spy just got a lot more technical. That's thanks to Flock cameras, a nationwide network of license plate readers used by thousands of law enforcement agencies. The cameras scan license plates and they record vehicles as they pass.

The company has contracts with 7,000 law enforcement agencies. That means 40 percent of departments in the United States. Police say the technology has helped find missing people, stolen cars and violent crime suspects. In Georgia recently, Flock was credited with helping in the rescue of a two-year-old child in 15 minutes after the mother's car was stolen with the child in the back seat.

But critics see something else, something far more troubling. Mass surveillance, a system capable of tracking the movements of ordinary Americans. And things took a creepy turn when police officers were accused of using Flock cameras to track exes, family members, and friends and other people who had nothing to do with the criminal investigation.

[09:45:03]

One woman lamented that she did not understand how law enforcement, her ex-boyfriend, seemed to know where she was all the time, whether she was out with friends or out on an errand. She said that she felt she was being watched, and when she pressed her ex about it, he admitted to using Flock to track her.

In another instance, a Texas cop is accused of searching license plate cameras nationwide for a woman who got an abortion. These are just a few of the growing number of documented abuses.

Flock safety is changing the rules governing who can search the network and just this week rolled out new police auditing and accountability controls. The company said that the new tools are designed to intervene before misuse becomes recurring and or widespread, rather than simply documenting misuse after the fact.

Flock's CEO says the guardrails can also help address surveillance worries. But some people have been mapping that network. My next guest is Will Freeman. He's the founder of DeFlock. He created a crowdsourced map so that people can see just how many of these cameras are watching from the roads around them.

Take a look. I looked at my own area. You can see Flock cameras all around in my neighborhood. You could find your own as well.

This to me raised a pretty basic question. How much surveillance are we actually living with without even realizing it?

Joining me now is Will Freeman. He's a software engineer and privacy advocate who founded DeFlock in 2024 after noticing cameras in almost every town he passed through on a road trip across the United States. OK. Will, thank you for being here. I know that you live in Boulder, Colorado. I read this in the "Times" coverage. It says 31 cameras cut motor vehicle theft by 34.5 percent. So my question to you, is there any amount of crime reduction that would cause you to say the tradeoff is worth it?

WILL FREEMAN, CREATOR OF DEFLOCK: Well, so I don't believe a lot of the claims about crime reduction because crime has been trending down nationwide in cities that have Flock cameras, in cities that don't have Flock cameras. So, I would need to see more evidence of that to actually trust that it works.

SMERCONISH: OK. How about the other well-publicized instances like the Florida man who threatened a mass killing event or the would be assassin of President Trump and the role that Flock played in tracking? I'm talking about the guy on the golf course.

I mean, there have been a number of instances. I just referenced one of them, the kid, thank God, who was brought back to his mother. Your thought on those is what?

FREEMAN: Yes. Well, I mean, it's good that they're able to capture criminals. What I'm mostly worried about is the side effects because the cameras mostly capture innocent people and occasionally capture criminals.

SMERCONISH: OK. Side effects, be specific.

FREEMAN: OK. Side effects. Yes. So, in the process of putting these ALPRs up and setting up the system in order to search it, you have to record everyone who drives by. So, yes, that's mostly innocent people because not tons of criminals are driving down the streets. Some of them are, and most of them are not criminals.

So it creates a database of where everyone has been for, generally, the last 30 days. A searchable database. You can search by license plate, by make, model, color, if you have any dents or roof racks or bumper stickers. So, it creates like a -- yes, like a searchable database of where you've been and where you are approximately. The more cameras there are, the more dangerous it is. Those are the side effects.

SMERCONISH: OK. I guess -- I guess it's time for me to play the card of, well, don't abduct kids and don't steal cars and you've got nothing to worry about.

FREEMAN: Yes, well, that's a -- that's a question that would take a long time to answer like the, if I don't have anything to hide argument. But, no, there are instances, quite a few instances like you mentioned earlier of stalking by users of the Flock system and also people being falsely implicated in crimes.

It happened here in Denver. It wasn't too serious. It was a package theft, but they relied entirely on Flock evidence and not any of the other evidence. And that ended up with a woman having to prove her own innocence. And there have been more serious incidents where people were held at gunpoint on the ground because they thought it was a stolen car.

So, yes. You see law enforcement rely very heavily on Flock and similar vendors rather than doing like a full investigation.

SMERCONISH: Will, a quick answer, if you can. Would guardrails suffice? I mean, does it need to be reined in and then you could be satisfied or you just don't want this type of surveillance?

FREEMAN: The current guardrails aren't enough. Changing the architecture of the system would have the biggest effect. Yes, I can leave it at that.

SMERCONISH: OK. Will Freeman, thank you for being here. Sounds like a future poll question for Smerconish.com.

[09:50:01]

Speaking of which, you still have time to vote on today's poll question which asks this, do Luigi Mangione's grievances with the health care system mitigate his crime in any way?

I am going to be bummed if that is anything but 99 to one. While you're voting, sign up for my newsletter. You'll get exclusive editorial cartoons like this from Rob Rogers.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SMERCONISH: OK. There's the poll results so far, 35,002. Do Luigi Mangione's grievances with the health care system mitigate his crime in any way? A little scary to me that 12 percent say yes, but a hell of a lot better than that Emerson survey the week of the murder, where among 18 to 29 year olds, 41 percent said that it was acceptable. Not a martyr, not a hero, just a murderer, "The New York Post" getting it right.

[09:55:03]

Social media. What do we have?

Who is voting yes? We need to revamp education in this country if even one person thinks murder is acceptable because you have an issue with the company.

Paul, I have the same concern that you do. I was alarmed when I saw that data from Emerson back at the time. These protests in support of him, they turn my stomach. One more social media real quick.

Mangione says that he knew what he did was illegal, not that it was wrong. That is chilling.

Well, and as I said at the outset of the program today, what was most concerning to me -- look, I'm happy that he pled guilty. I get the legal maneuver. I think that in the end, he still does life. OK.

I understand why he did what he did, but the reference to his back and then what really was too far over the line for me was the lawyer saying he's just like, you know, thousands of others. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

The thousands of others who have a problem with their insurance company, who've waited too long on hold, who have to fight, you know, to make sure that there's coverage, all of those day to day nightmares they didn't kill a health care executive. He did. So, you can't wrap yourself in the legitimate grievance against insurance companies. That's what I most wanted to say.

If you haven't voted yet on the poll question, go vote. If you missed any of today's program, you can always listen anywhere you get your podcasts. We thank you for watching and we'll see you next week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)