tonight", tomorrow. >> this is al jazeera america. i'm thomas dreton. a scrap of paper might have caused the wildlife burning in los angeles. thousands have been evacuated and schools closed. fire tore through more than 1700 acres. british media reports that the nsa has been collecting text messages and cdc details. the mill tri is investigating its third fatal chopper incident in the past eight days.

one soldier was killed and two other injured at a hard landing in a georgia air field. elite unit that's trained to fly behind enemy lines in the dark. one of the longest executions in the state of ohio's history taking 15 minutes. senator tom coburn says he won't fill out his term, nearly two years before the term was scheduled to end. coburn was diagnosed with cancer but he said the decision was not about his health. those are the headlines, "consider this" is next. >> horrifying pictures emerge of marines, apparently burning bodies of iraqi insurgents

during the battle of fallujah. joining us to tell his stories. plus, could terrorists disrupt gps and how damaging would that be? and was the biggest oscar snub diversity? i'm antonio mora, welcome to "consider this". here's more on what's ahead. >> the marine corps is launching an investigation. >> tabloid tmz obtained 41 photos. >> these photos were apparently taken in 2004 in fallujah. >> collecting 200 million texts a day shows the extent of its ability to watch and listen. >> this is the first time that an accredited american correspondent has been expelled from the country. >> the observatio oscars tells n and who's out of the club. >> the biggest snub is tom hanks

and oprah winfrey. >> we begin with pictures from iraq showing insurgents burning american bodies. apparently shot in 2004 in fallujah, which showed the worst fighting of the war. tmz has posted nine from a group of 41 on the site. many others are described as too gruesome to show. tmz said they all were sent to the pentagon, the pentagon set, we are discussing the ver veracity of the photographs, the identity of the service members involved, the findings from this investigation will are determine if we are raibl to move forward with any investigation of wrongdoing.

dr. manuel superville, and with me from washington, d.c. is pran brandon freedman. who served in afghanistan and iraq in 2002 and 2003. author of the war i always wanted. colonel. what is your response to these pictures? >> i saw the pictures. they reminded me of my time in afghanistan. as the senior judge advocate or lawyer for u.s. and coalition forces. one of my many duties there was to look at and investigate any kind of allegations of wrongdoing of war crimes by u.s. or coalition forces. and so it brought back a lot of memories. >> you had to investigate somewhat similar situations? >> in one case, in particular, it was in fact a situation involving the burning of taliban bodies.

>> brandon, you were a platoon leader in afghanistan and iraq. what did you think when youst s? >> obviously it's not something you want to see. my first reaction was that we need to get to the bottom of it and find out what exactly was happening when those photos were taken and see if indeed war crimes were being committed. you know, without a lot of context around those photos it is hard to know the exact circumstances but they certainly don't look good. >> now mutilating or mistreating the dead violates the laws of war according to the uniform code of military justice, the u.s. field guide, the u.s. handbook not to mention the u.s. convention. colonel are our troops warned this is not something they can and should do? >> yes, they are, as far as the

uniform code of military justice, i want to clarify that the manual or field book of operations, those are interpretations and serve as guidance and instructional manuals for our troops but are not the source of law per se. >> brandon we always recall the disgusting photos of soldiers mistreating prisoners in abu ghraib. what would you say about this? >> well, a lot of people are not going to be pleased with it. but what these et cetera photos show is how important discipline is and how you try to instill that. as you can imagine, it's very difficult under those sorts of circumstances. but as far as the iraqis we'll just have to see. i think on the one hand they've

got a lot of other issues to worry about right now and i'm not sure how in impact this is going to have in iraq with everybody else going on there. >> colonel, i know there's no statute of limitations of these kind of doings. >> military code of justice as well as penal code provide for a five year statute of limitations. i don't believe the united states is a party to that treaty. that aside though, you have to basically get to the decision as to whether or not there is personal and subject matter jurisdiction over the situation.

with regard to personal jurisdiction, and let's address that one first, if -- we don't know if once identified who these people are are who are in the pictures. if they are still on active duty and it's possible, considering this is ten years ago they still might be on active duty, then the uniform code of military justice could have jurisdiction over these individuals, if they are retired and receiving retired pay they would be also subject to ucmj, otherwise they uniform form of military justice. >> you believe that the stawpt of limitations has expired there? >> in the federal courts it is the same as the uniform code of military justice. unless it is a capital offense

meaning this is something they could be put to death for, and this would be not one of those offenses, but other crimes, crimes against children and fraud against banks and things like that, congress has specifically extended the five years to eight, ten years something along those lines. but again, i don't believe% would be one of those crimes where the statute of limitations would be extended. >> brandon, in 2012 there was an incident there was a photograph that, taking unofficial pictures, they were punished but not very severely, three troopers were also punished not very severely. after one of the sergeants said he had no regrets, he would do

it again as an act of revenge for americans killed in afghanistan. you talked about the reality of war, this battle of fallujah was the worst since the vietnam war. is that what these pictures show, the anger over the dets ds over their fellow fighters? >> they could. i don't know what exactly the pictures show, we don't know the exact circumstances there. but it is very difficult. when you are in very intense combat it is very easy to let your emotions get the best of you. and that's why leadership is too important. when you get into these situations that training has to carry you through and you have to maintain your bearing and you cannot let your emotions get the best of you. unfortunately what you see in combat a lot is that you know after a while people's emotions do start to get the best of them

and they get angry and you start to see stuff like this happen. ultimate reply this is what war is all about. n discipline your soldiers. but ultimately what i think americans see quite a bit is a very sanitized version of war. and what we see every once in a while when photos like this come out is war is vee ugly thing and we have to be very careful about when we send people to war. once you open that pandoraa box, ugly things start to happening. we can do what we can as leaders to prevent that from happening on the battlet the end of the day, war is wrar, it hasn't -- war, it has for thousands of years. it doesn't excuse it from happening but it is the reality of war. >> it is difficult to understand the stress that our service men and women are under in those

circumstances. thank you for joining us >> thanks for having us. >> now to an american correspondent that's been barred from russia. first time that that has happened since 1982. david sader was banned from entering russia for five years. russian officials said he committed various gross violations of the law. i'm joined by sader, and correspondent for radio liberty, for the financial times and the wrawltwall street journal. david great to have you with us. would you walk us through what

exactly happened here? >> i called the russian embassy in kiev. and i was told by the diplomat that i spoke to that he had a statement to read to me. and he are read that statement. it was that the competent organs had decide he that i was undesirable and i was banned from entering russia. the phrase competent organs is meant to refer to the security all the years eiffel been writing and traveling to russia, i don't recall a single instance where that phrase was used to expel a writer or journalist. that is usually used in espionage cases and that indicates for whatever reason

the russian authorities considered that i represented a threat. >> let's go through what's been happening in russia recently. russian president vladimir putin has been on a charm lately, reed pussy riot members, and given what putin was doing were you surprised that they went after you? >> yes, i was a little bit surprised because of the timing it's not very convenient for them. after all, as you point out, they were trying to improve their image and then they do something which actually damages it. the only thing i can surmise is that, for whatever reasons, they considered getting rid of me, to be a very high priority. >> now, is there anything in your work with radio liberty

that might have been frightening or disturbing to the russian authorities? >> i was only there for three months. but they're very familiar with me because i have been writing about russia for years, for decades, actually. and they read attentively what i write. and my books have been translated into russian. in fact, just recently, one of my books, entitled darkness at dawn, the rise of the russian criminal state, was reissued in russia under a what differently title. how putin became president. and in that book i talk about the 1999 apartment bombings which took place in moscow and a couple of other russian cities. those bombings created the atmosphere of mass hysteria which made it possible to justify a second chechen war.

made it possible for putin who had been otherwise unknown, to become president. evidence was that the chechen bombings were taken place by the russian army. >> do you think this is personal that you age ertd putin and -- angered putin and that's why he came after you? >> angered putin, angered someone, of course it is perm. >> quote, i don't expect this to be an isolated case, maybe they're doing this to see if they can get away with it." do you think that barring you

from the country is an attempt to bar hard evident of the abuses going on in russia? >> there are very few american jowrnts whamericanjournalists w. most of the reporting out of russia is fairly from official. it is true that western journalists refer to the corruption there and they give a portrait that is not favorable, but that is the reality of the russian life. there is not much deep thought or the deep reporting from russia and as a result the number of people who are actually engaged in something that the authorities would find threatening is relatively small. >> now should the u.s. take action to push for the riggss to allow your return, conceivably taking action against a russian

journalist in the u.s? >> that would be one possibility. they certainly should do it. it's very important that they do it for the simple reason that action taken against me is intended to intimidate everyone. and it will have that effect. journalists can't proceed free reply and pursue stories where they lead, if they feel the consequence could be destruction of their careers. and if the u.s. feels it's important to have reliable information about russia, realistic information, then it should be a relatively high priority for the u.s., to take those measures that will impress on the russians that the action that they took against me, for

example, is unacceptable and has to be reversed. >> i know you continue to write about russia. david sadder, thank you for joining us tonight. >> thank you. >> coming up, pulling in all sorts of personal details including contacts and credit card information. who is in the cross-hairs and why? and what would happen from terrorists targeted our gps system? best selling author and delta force author will weigh in. >> hermella aregawi is checking social media. what's trending hermella. >> unfair advantage? i'll tell you more coming up. join the conversation@age "consideconversation, at atage r

@ajconsiderthis.

>> new revelations today that the national security agency collects almost 200 million text messages every day from around the globe, using them, for gathering people's credit card information and contacts. this comes from edward snowden, as president obama is recommending guarding the nsa. james great to have you back. first i want to ask you a question about timing. president obama i to announce these recommendations on how to curb the nsa tomorrow, already critics are saying that he's not going to go far enough. is there a connection between the timing of this new information and that? >> well, these stories are

complicated, they take a lot of reporting. we worked with other u.k. media on this and we probably stores when they're long enough with nsa, but this story in particular serves as a good reminder firstly of the nsa's approach to a lot of their collection, holding and storing billions and billions of text messages of people that most people would never be of interest to them. >> let's talk about exactly what this is all about. it is a program called dish fire that goes out and collects all these 200 million text messages every single day, gaiting all sorts of other information about the people who are texting. who are the targets and what is it being used for? >> well, it's almost creepy about some people, it ss untargetted collection, the line in the document says they collect pretty much everything they can so they're pulling in this sort of huge volume of

international text messages to kind of see the needles in the haystacks, and see if somebody turns out to be a suspect today they can read their text from two or three years ago. but they also do this very clever automated analysis, if ed call text it automatically pulls up the phone number from it. if someone texts you their like business card, they can take all the information from that, the name, address, male, phone number, and take the information from that. >> they have this dish fire and then a separate program called prefer that analyzes the text messages to see if there's anything they might use? >> the text we send one another as normal written ones that can be read by an analyst. or anything else, saying you're

out of state out of country, this is what it costs you, they can analyze that and see they build up huge a of information on millions of people around the world. >> it's so massive, you wonder how they can use it in any positive way? >> that's an interesting question that the obama panel has asked. the nsa has really struggled to show a single plot that's been stopped by it. they're complecting so much it's hard -- they're collected so much it's lard to make it useful. if it were useful the conversation would be different and they could prove a good case for having it. >> how does it mean for americans, who actually live in the united states? >> this looks like dish fire they say they try oslip out

american numbers. but even the spokes woman we spoke to on the issue, there is an issue of america standing with its allies, its friends, if it is pulling in hundreds of thousands of pieces of information, many people are f fetting worried about this. >> whatever comes in comes in. >> exactly. that's one of the main recommendations of obama's review panel that he's going to address tomorrow, scaig shouldn't the nsa and the government, even other friendly companies may stop paying attention to you as privacy rights, that's a threat to people over here, there's a bit of give and take going on. >> id want to talk about what the nsa told you are about.

they said that any obligation that the agency's collection was arbitrary and, false. subjt to stringent legal safeguards. now your reporting seems to indicate that's not 100% true. >> well, it gets quite difficult reconciling documents that says it's undo 200 million texts a day against this description. to be generous to them, they of in saying when they searched this database they only did it for a good reason. we the try to ask them are you saying there collection, this unscheduled collection, does that target more what you're saying? we tried to get more answers to them but they just didn't quite,

reconcile with what they actually do. >> which goes back to the question, why should americans care from this is targeted at foreign nationals and even in a long stop question, stop some burglaries? >> if we as a nation say it's okay to spy on plots of millions of people in our allied nations, then your allied are going to start having the same attitude towards your country's communication. this also doesn't help that. but america has this huge role in policing the internet and other devices like this. if they're not concerned, who else will take over? >> that we have let out too much information about the sources and methods of our intelligence

community? >> i think everyone concerned and the guardian's one of dozens of outlets now that have reported this stuff. every time we talked to the u.s.a, to u.k. spying agency, any agent out there, we have a long conversation to make sure we look at it carefully. we don't report the stuff because it's interesting or funny, we release the information about mass surveillance on ordinary americans or mass sphains to others around the world. you've really not read anything in the guardian or anywhere else about, this is the method for tracking the particular suspect.

snowden chose what he did to put it in the public interest. i think everyone out there is the doing something about this. >> james bawl thank you for being with us. speaking of this, james far far, has come opportunity cross hairs of al franken. they all rely on gps data and in a new book called the polaris protocol, author brad harris joins us, polaris protocol is in bookstores. glad to have you back on the show. >> thank you. >> in this book, you have a

cyberthreat. how vulnerable are we? >> originally i tell you that i was actually allowed on the constellation, that's one of the most secure areas i've ever been to, and that place is super-secure. i would say there's no way for a state system to attack it. so in the book i made a character that is an independent contractor which they have there, a computer technician who also works for anonymous occupy wall street doesn't like the drone strikes and he nsks the cons 38 with thraitionconconst.

i thought it couldn't happy but it dr.. >> the system has been in place since the mid '90s. we need it for all sorts of things. would we be able to cope without it? >> we would eventually recover, obviously it wouldn't be the apocalypse. where is the next gas station, where is my fedex, that kind of thing. the positioning system works off a timing feature, because of that the timing signal has got to be super, superprecise. so anything that needs a timing system uses gps so it's a free utility in space, every trade on wall street is stamped with a gps. conversations are packets timed by the gps. when you run yourcredit card,

the gps is controlling it. you don't need a license to use it, you don't have to buy something from the government to use it, the government has no idea. it is definitely inside our siting much more than people are aware. >> you have airplanes that could crash if they didn't know what was happening. military operations, drones so important in the fight against terrorism that could be disrupted? >> oh yeah, anything -- you would have to have a pretty catastrophic fault, they have enormous backups, the second operations out at shriver are really intelligent how they use it. next jen architect for th architecture -- architecture they have for the system. you could have a catastrophic

loss if you are not careful. >> there are machines that could jam gps devices in a small area and north korea used them against south korea, and off the coast airplanes were lost, gps fishing boats and other boats lost it too. is there a danger? >> there is but i think that the -- i did a -- the first threat i looked at actually was how to affect our drones. i was in iraq and we had our down link taken by some insurgent. 22 ways of avoiding american drones, that's a threat i'll look into. actually you could do it localized or affect an individual drone but it's very hard to wipe out the ability for it to do anything. when it loses a link, it goes into a glide path and goes back down, as soon as it picks up a link it goes back to where it's supposed to do.

>> a task force, extra-legal counterterrorism group, tom clancy had rainbow 6 and the campus. do these groups that exist, special forces groups that exist out of official channels? >> no, they don't. the primary reason i made that was i didn't want people to think i was writing about real units i've served in.seen the tf special services. having said that i used what i knew. there's tension between the cia and other organizations and there's a lot of brokdz you have to go through. -- bureaucracy you have to -thr. we don't have anything like it no matter what some people report about assassination rings running around. >> at the time role of special forces getting more important? we saw special forces going into somalia, and tried to overtake

an al shabaab group. >> we have a terrorist threat which is basically about a single individual man, you're doing man-hunting, and in the cold war, you did tank battalions. now you're doing strike missions because you are trying to find a single man and special forces is the been way to do that. >> the one thing that really struck me is there are reports that u.s. special forces might be deployed in over 100 countries around the world. >> yes. >> what type of operations do they engage anden are they there permanently? >> it is a continuing engagement. you've got the navy seals, air force pjs, army special forces. most of it is not sexy, most

people would like to hear the al shabaab hit or the al liby in libya. fight the lord's resistance army and that kind of stuff and it's not something that makes the news, not very sexy doesn't look great put it's all over the world we're doing that. >> brad thank you for being on the show, pol polaris protocol, thank you for joining us. finding out what's trending on our website. hermella. >> technology and sports equipment may change the way athletes practice, connected tennis balls, assess the arc in your shot or where the ball is hitting the racquet. instant analysis.

at the price tags of $300 to $400, the company that makes them say it's cheaper than a private coach. unfair advantage over those who can only afford traditional equipment. when you're the only one who has the technology, it's cheating. you can read more at the websi website, a at.

>> is tourism destroying the planet or saving it? a new documentary entitled "gringo trails", for more on the director, we're joined by the director ef gring of gringo tra. peggy. a beach in thailand, the man who discovered that beach, a backpacker, in the film.

listen what he has to say. >> this incredible beach, nobody knew about, i said, whatever you do, don't tell people. the beach that i had been at where thousands and thousands of people, it was staggering. after three, four days you start really seeing the complete lack of respect. >> look at those pictures. he said back when he discovered it, don't tell people, as we heard him saying but of course, it got out. what has it done to the environment. it's such a beautiful place. >> we wanted to show this as a cautionary tale. kind of in the worst way that tourism can go if gone, if left on its own devices, a fire can

burn a house down but it can also be a wonderful way to keep your hands warm. those types of things. we show in 1979, costas gratify, we have food an from are every decade, steps along the process in tourism globalization and where along the way it might have taken a different turn. now the environmental impact is very clear. they have four parties a month, full moon parties, half moon quarter moon every moon possible there is a party. it trashes the beach and when the tide comes in, it's like that when the tide comes in, in the morning. so you know, you have trash that's being put into hills and tburied up in the -- buried up

in the island. think about it happening so many times per month. it is the extreme, new years and 50,000 people per month. >> this is an extreme case but you see different levels of it throughout the world, not just gringo trails. ecotourism and things like that, a lot of it is backpackers looking for adventure. >> we look at the whole process of tourism -- >> the backpackers first are the ones who find this process and begin the process. >> you have the intrepid backpacker and the keys to the kingdom. >> sad way to describe it. >> and then many people follow you know through the stories that are being told and all the way to future films made about the beach. >> and it brought more people. >> yes, yes, exactly. >> the film starts with this man in bolivia, yasse ginsburg.

he got lost and incredibly, it brought more people to the jungle, that wanted to replicate the reality that yasse had. >> the question was why do people want to do that? and there's an israeli traveler in her film. that said i just want to have a little touch that's in the book. >> a flavor. >> yeah, i am really not sure if all these travelers want survival, but a swedish traveler said i've got to get in the jungle and her boyfriend said, i don't want to do that. >> this impacts people, people who have not been exposed to western society or modern society the way people in new

york city are. >> the party type travelers, certainly that's a minority among travelers, but there are other places in laos, experiencing the same way, and drugs introduced in larger scale that it wasn't a larger part of the culture. certainly other things as well. >> changes places in all different sorts of ways. >> grappling with those sorts of issues. >> can it be managed properly? obviously, people do want to see the word world and in some ways it does help economies. can it be gulfed that way? >> it can be a made a force for good. i love traveling, you love traveling. communities that are lower economics, maybe want to have outside resources, maybe they have visions for how they have tours in their economy, getting

everybody to the table, regulating in some places. so i think it's definitely like one example in our film, is the chalalon eco-lodge. >> you have to be careful not to love these places to death. peggy, the movie, gringo lodge.

>> today's data dive picks up a slice of the pizza business. total u.s. sales totaled $37 billion for a year long period ending last september and that represents only about a third of the $131 billion in retail sales around the world. eastern europe is the fastest growing place for pizza but people in western europe pay

more on the pies than anywhere else, according to pizza magazine, we're not kidding, there is a peelt today magazine. -- pizza magazine. you can see the dominance of pizza hut in the dark red and dominoes in dark blue. but smaller chains including kentucky based papa john's and little ce caesars in orange. coca-cola just signed a new multiyear deal with domino's and there's an app on the x box 360, lets you order your pie right on the game console, if you are going to play, might as well make it a pizza party.

the chain says a third of its sales is done digital. chipothe, is getting on the band wagon. seemingly the company must think it's not a huge jump from quesadillas to pizzas. coming up, noprrah? rts editor a,

we're joined by ben mankewitz, a turner classic movies, are host. and author of what the flick? the biggest snubs surprised you the most? >> i question snubs, the people who got nominated, they didn't think they were snubbed. saving mr. banks, tom hanks didn't get nominated.

the cohen brothers, oscar loves the cohen brothers but it didn't come through for him then. >> what about you ben what about the snubs? >> i tend to agree with bill and the term snubs is flawed. there were things i was spreezed for. two weeks ago the favorite for best actor was two man race between cheevital and robert redford. i'm very surprised that redford, and oprah winfrey not getting a nomination surprised me too. >> bill are laughed. what was that for? >> oprah doesn't get to win everything. she didn't get the nobel prize either this year. >> who do you think is the

favorites? >> what i like is a horserace. gravity, american hustle and 12 years a slave. i tend to favor the gravity and 12 years ago a slave, i think they have a substance to them that american hustle rather lacks. but they are across the board, the technical importance of gravity and 12 years a slave. >> i'll bet you didn't put your money on redford. >> browbruce dern is 40 to one. i think matthew mcconaughey is another one. it wouldn't surprise me if they don't pick the old guy.

and it is within the really of possibility. i think biggest snub, i want to say, i think it's worth mentioning, as the academy has expanded to ten nominations, in a year i think both bill and i would agree, in this given year it's crazy that they didn't get to ten. whatever the process, if there are eight or nine or ten great movies. this year there ought to be ten. >> imix therbill, there has neva best picture nominee that doesn't have a white director. but this year, a black director from england steve mcqueen. that could make history. why such a bad record on

diversity on what's arguably such an important category? >> people call races amongst management all across the movie life. not many black directors or black movie makers. you've seen danish people, henekke for amor and al mcdovar, there is a lot more diversity. one thing, more diversity -- one thing i will say, there have been a lot of black acting categories in the past years. there are actually four major nominees, they are not actually african american. they are british, somali and

kenyan. >> major racial issues, 12 years a slave, the butler, we had fruitdale station. and the only one that's nominated for best picture is 12 years a slave. >> the jackie ro robinson biopi, are if you have that list that you can get to 12 men, actors, who gave oscar worthy performances, i would definitely include michael jordan and edris elba. i like the butler better than mandela, but the academy looked at that and thought that wasn't

an oscar-worthy movie. some people loved it, and it's not cloarl worthy of a nomination. that's what the academy said. granted there is yet to be a movie that won best picture that didn't have a white director. ang lee has also won two osks. but his picture didn't win. >> box office, what influence has that? >> they expanded the best picture race, movies were get pg nominated that weren't making any money. they expanded it to 10 and they wanted some big budget moirs. let me tell you the average take of the movies that were nominated was very low. if gravity wasn't in there, it certainly would have been a lot lower than that. in the past year we've heard the

lowest grossing pictures of all time, if 12 years a slave wins, that's going to be another one. there is evidence that the academy is taking movies more an more seriously. this debate 12 years a slave thematically, it is odds-on the win the major awards, fruitdale station wasn't nominated. >> it's interesting, thanks for joining us. shothe show may be over but the conversation continues. @ajconsiderthis.

>> dry weather and stiff winds are fueling a wildfire in californi san gabriel mountains. firefighters may be getting the upper hand on the blaze that has burnef thousands of acres. a new report that says the nsa collects nearly 200,000 texts a day. the execution of a death row inmate in ohio goes horribly wrong. now the focus is on untested drugs that were used in his lethal injection. one of