Let Justin Timberlake and Tiger Woods be a warning: The body cam footage industry could come for any of us

One need not be a sadist to enjoy the deeply unflattering body cam footage of Tiger Woods’ recent drunk driving arrest. Even before factoring in anyone’s personal feelings about the peerlessly accomplished but past-his-prime athlete, or their feelings about drunk drivers in general, the photos are internet-gold that lend themselves easily to memes and jokes.

Still, there’s an unsavory aftertaste to this schadenfreude fiesta. It’s the same gamey flavor baked into the release last month of body cam footage from Justin Timberlake’s 2024 arrest, also for drunk driving. While there may be a cheap dopamine hit in watching famous people with highly managed public images in a situation where they have no control—especially if it’s a famous person one doesn’t particularly approve of, for whatever reason—this lurid form of entertainment has a steeper price than many observers might realize or admit. What the viral phenomenon costs us is the implicit agreement that, on a really bad day, anyone could be next.  

It’s surreal to witness a tool of police accountability become a weapon for shaming the people being policed. The tabloidification of arrest footage is not a recent development, though—dash cam video of Reese Witherspoon’s DUI arrest back in 2013, for instance, was such an overcooked spectacle, even a headline from then-reputable CBS News offered the non-commentary that the video “does not disappoint.”

The dynamics at play in body cam footage released for our amusement go back way further—and point toward a future where privacy is a fragile privilege 

The original rotten tomatoes

The powerful have been using public humiliation to dissuade would-be law-breakers for hundreds of years. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, criminals in England convicted of crimes such as “swearing” and “drunkenness” were made to sit in stocks or stand in pillories in the town square, so their neighbors could jeer at them and throw rotten produce. This result fused the offenders’ punishment with the townspeople’s entertainment. The message was clear: Much better to be the one throwing the tomatoes than the one getting hit.

A few hundred years later, public shaming became part of the process for arresting high-profile criminals. The FBI introduced the perp walk in the 1930s, parading a suspect before a gauntlet of news cameras on the way to the courthouse. This ritual served the dual purpose of showing off the police’s heroic efficiency—what’s now known as ‘copaganda’—while also telegraphing the undignified infamy waiting for criminals when they inevitably got caught.

Toward the end of the 20th century, the reality-based show Cops emerged, transforming the perp walk into stocks-and-pillories style entertainment for a much larger town square. The long-running show primed Americans to appreciate the high voyeuristic value of arrest footage, well before society found a more important, urgent and useful reason to regularly capture it.

Smile, you’re on extremely candid camera

A handful of U.S. police departments were piloting body camera programs as early as 2012. Each officer’s POV would be recorded in real time for posterity and, ideally, the facts of how each arrest went down would remain beyond dispute. Voila: Police accountability.

These programs flew largely under public radar for the first couple of years, until an officer in Ferguson, Missouri shot and killed teenager Michael Brown in 2014 for the alleged crime of shoplifting a bag of candy and giving chase. Once that tragic shooting captured national attention, the push for body cameras reached a fever pitch. By the following summer, a YouGov/Economist poll claimed that 92% of Democrats and 84% of Republicans were reportedly in favor of them.

Although it’s impossible to tell how many incidents of excessive police force the proliferation of body cameras has prevented, some studies indicate that complaints against officers have decreased significantly in tandem with their usage in the field. Whatever amount they’ve improved the lives of citizens, though, is complicated by the secondary purpose the cameras now serve. Widespread use of body cams has created a system where anyone with enough time and gumption can file a Freedom of Information Act request for footage of an arrest and, depending on state laws, receive a copy to use however they see fit.  

Because obtaining such footage is relatively easy, it’s not just celebrities whose arrest videos are seeing daylight anymore.

In recent years, YouTube channels like Police Activity (6.88 million subscribers) have been fishing for arrest footage they can turn into content. Because of their efforts, people like the woman who shoplifted from Target last summer have become unwitting stars of viral videos. A slew of accounts on X are similarly devoted to capturing people in their most vulnerable moments, sometimes while clearly in the depths of a substance-use disorder.

Not only does the town-square humiliation of an arrest now carry the permanence of living online, mercenary third parties are able to monetize it.

We were warned

Public demand for police body cams may have started with the best intentions, but there were always warning signs about their misuse.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sounded the alarm early on, publishing a policy paper on body cams in October 2013. In reference to the widely circulated dash cam footage of Reese Witherspoon earlier that year, ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley wrote, “The potential for such merely embarrassing and titillating releases of video is significantly increased by body cams. Therefore, it is vital that any deployment of these cameras be accompanied by good privacy policies so the benefits of the technology are not outweighed by invasions of privacy.”

It was foreseeable, even at the dawn of the body cam era, that the footage these devices captured could have a utility beyond accountability; that without redaction rules, retention limits, and release standards, ordinary citizens and celebrities alike could see their worst moments turned into clickbait. What only seems obvious with the benefit of hindsight, though, is that the detriments of body cam footage would flourish under an administration that publicly shames those protesting it by releasing their names and arrest photos online.

It might not just be a coincidence. Perhaps Americans’ voyeuristic appetite for scandalous arrest footage has hit a higher level recently as a result of everyone being transfixed by the most famous person in the world constantly evading accountability. If it’s not possible to see Donald The President in an embarrassing perp walk, after all, at least you can watch it happen to Tiger Woods.

Of course, on a bad enough day, it’s just as likely Tiger Woods will be watching your arrest video.

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