>> the government is prepared to carry out mass array... >> if you want free press in the new democracy, let the journalists live. >> mixed messages from the obama administration on the islamicama state group as new mass graves are found in iraq with hundreds of soldiers executed 50 terrorists. hello i'm antonio mora, welcome to "consider this," that story and much more straight ahead. >> those who have murdered james foley and steven sotloff in syria need to know. >> we will follow them into the gates of hell until they are brought to justice. >> reports of a ceasefire. >> putin outlined a seven point plan.

>> to end the conflict. >> nato must send an unmistakable message. >> president obama has really been getting an earful of his on going strategy. >> ebola has become a global threat. >> one of two americans spoke up for the very first time. >> our doctor's comments were nancy we're is sorry. >> cvs says no to cigarettes. >> we're delivering health care and at the same time selling tobacco, that conflict was growing for us. >> 30 years after they were locked up for a crime they did not commit, hack brothers, were cleared by dna evidence. >> we begin with president obama's vow to punish islamic state terrorists for the beheadings of two american journalists.

>> our objective is to degrade and destroy islamic state so it's not a threat to the united states. >> unclear how far the u.s. is willing to go in fighting the terrorists. the u.s. is trying to build a coalition in the region, and the united arab emirates became the first arab country to sign on calling islamic extremism, the most dangerous force since since fascism. vice president joe biden had an equally strict message. >> hell is where they will reside. >> meanwhile a number of atrocities perpetrated by i.s. continues to grow. new mass graves of hundreds of

you iraqi soldiers executed when the terrorists overran a military base in the town of tikrit in june. joins us is fault lines correspondent josh rushing. josh, good to see you. let's begin with the troops deployed to baghdad, that means that more than 1100 american troops will be in baghdad now. i know they are mostly to protect the u.s. embassy. we've heard all along that there would be no mission creep in iraq. isn't that what we're seeing? >> it certainly seems like a larger mission but two important things came out of washington, it seems to me, that is statement by obama that says the u.s. will prioritize degrading and destroying the islamic state and then the announcement of more troops for diplomatic security. the kind of troops we're talking that is not sufficient to do the first part of degrading or destroying the islamic state and

troops were sent here for diplomatic security are clearly you know not going to be out on the offensive and on the front lines. it seems like perhaps this is politics, perhaps this is seeing what happens when he puts more troops on the ground. but the idea that they need more troops for diplomatic security seems a bit odd right now. the consulate, they have an enormous consulate up here in erbil and they have if em-- the embassy in baghdad. they are more safe than they were two weeks ago. the islamic state is being pushed back to the border of syria further and further from where these two installations are. so it doesn't make a lot of sense with the extra troops that are on the ground unless it is somehow perhaps testing the political waters. >> after saying he intends to degrade and destroy i.s. he then seemed to back off and said that he wants to get to the point where i.s. is a manageable problem. so not very clear on what the

plan is to destroy or contain. what was the reaction there? >> well, the obama administration has been very consistent in not -- in being unclear about what they want to do with this islamic state. i mean it was a week ago that they said they had no clear strategy about it. i also thought that biden's comments today, that they would chase the islamic state to the gates of hell in order to get justice for two beheadings. it is more about chasing them through gates of syria than gates of hell. but it sets up a bit of a false binary, the good and evil, much of what happens in iraq you saw 1 but at least ten other once. if you do push the islamic state out of iraq they still have their home base in syria in which to boil over and perhaps turn their attacks abroad to the west. with all their members that have those british and american passports.

and then what happens in the vacuum? they'll be left behind in iraq, because six to ten different competing forces out there fighting the islamic state and they're doing it because of the threat of the islamic state but they're also doing it to serve their own interests. so those irani advisors are here to fight iran's interests as well as the islamic state. so this just isn'tal truism, everyone has their own plate. the sunni tribes, the shia militias, everyone is using this for their next step and the kurdish state is a perfect example of that how can they move towards independence. they're looking for what this means for their own future as well. so it's hard to say what happens with the strategy and how far forward-reaching the u.s. strategy will be. >> so many interests, competing interests there and in the

meantime, these butchers continue to kill people. josh rushing, pleasure to have you with us always, thanks. >> joining us in new york is general anthony zinni. special envoy to the middle east who retired as a four star general. co-author of the book before the first shots are fired. how america can win on and off the battlefield. general great to have you with us. >> pleasure to be here. >> put more thought into before we use force around the world, we haven't had sound analysis and move too quickly. what's happening in iraq and syria are we moving too slowly? >> i do believe we are moving too slowly. time and space is working against you. the time now is we have seen the beheadings and some of the atrocities, near genocide taking place, the gaining of ground.

my big concern is i.s.i.s. may get into baghdad, i don't think they can take bafgd but they can certainly -- baghdad but they can certainly infiltrate and cause chaos, need to push them back quickly, iraqi military build back up and restructure in a way that's more positive. and give space for the new iraqi government which has to demonstrate they're more inclusive than last one because basically it's hearts and minds in the sunni region now, you want them to reject the form of extremism that -- >> we need sunni tribes to rise up against the islamic state. >> that's exactly right. >> you said the battle is ongoing and you said you could put a couple of brigades into the area and push them back into syria. >> yes. >> you know the american people are not willing to have people in iraq or anyplace else in the area.

you raise the concern about american isolationism. where do we find the right balance, to use the force to get rid of the group called i.s? >> that's the power of the bully pulpit. i'll take you back to ronald reagan, they had the beirut disaster, his aides were telling him not to go to granada, but medical students in there could be in possible danger then he said there's no question he wasn't going to play into the politics or the sensitivity, made the case to the american people. we know about the fdr fire side chats, it was a difficult war, obviously we had been attacked. that was the job of the president you have to explain it and make these hard choices. >> you mention the fire side chats, you talk about franklin roosevelt and you say barack obama has often seemed too detached and cool.

bush seemed to act out of bravado what kind of emotion do we want to see in our presidents? we want them to reflect the passion we feel. we've got ukraine, china, israel, iraq, is that perceived lark of passion one of the problems that has led to the multiple international crises? >> the president who makes the point simply, who tells the american people where our interests lie. but what's more important is to express the strategy, president hw bush, james baker we get a agreement authorizing the use of force, working

with general schwart schwartz kopf. you saw the whole of government involved, not just the military piece of this. you saw a strategy that brought into diplomacy, cooperation, the ability to get international legitimacy, that's what i don't see now. >> that we're not getting the partners, the saudis, the qataris,. >> standing up and being part of a coalition, it is our job we are the natural leaders to structure this. again i go back to the time of desert storm desert shield where we helped structure it. they need international support and legitimacy. they need to know the world is with them. they need to understand what the plan is what the strategy is what we're trying to do.

these countries have seen us stand up to iran, they join us and they see us back off. draw a red line in syria and back off. they're confused as to where we stand. >> clarity one of the big issues here, we just heard our correspondent josh rushing, say the only consistency is the inconsistency. secretary of state, vice president joe biden very forcefully talk about i.s. on wednesday but then the president says degrade and destroy but oh well manageable problem, we're not sure what we're talking about here. >> we're talking about manageable problems. this is enemy. i honestly believe you're not going to totally destroy i.s.i.s. as a movement. you can damage them significantly, degrade them if you will but we watch two americans be beheaded. the threat to take other americans, tourists or embassies around the world there needs to

be a sense of outrage, you need to see the plight of america applied pretty forcefully and pretty soon. >> a topic you address in the book, you're not happy to the pivot in the pacific, you think that's a mistake, we need to operate in other parts of the world. what about the chinese? you have seen what happened with a couple of exchanges with american air force planes. the chinese are playing a pretty dangerous game. >> first of all my objection is, you can't think regionally anymore. we're globalized. you can't look at china and say china exists within its borders. china's trade influence, areas of influence, ability to stretch it out around the world if you map that out geographically, would you see its tentacles around the world. we are now in a world that's shrunk significantly. it is a smaller world. we're interconnected. cyber

space, the sea lanes that are significant to us, the borders are not significant anymore. my complaint is we need a global strategy not a regional one. how does this pacific work anymore? i see europe, i see the middle east, our own southern hemisphere of greater importance now. >> great points you raise tonight. the book again before the first shots are fired how america can win or lose off the battlefield. us. >> thank you i appreciate it. urge to president obama committing the united states to another mission wednesday, defending visible nato nations from russia. he condemned russia in ukraine as a threat to peace in europe. >> ukraine needs more than words. nato needs to make concrete commitments to help ukraine modernize and strengthen its security forces. >> nato leaders who begin

meeting in wales on thursday are expected to ambassadors the creation of a rapid reaction force of about 4,000 troops capable of deploying to eastern europe on about eight hours notice. but russian president vladimir putin outlined a seven point plan to end the conflict in eastern ukraine on russia's terms. curtis volker served as deputy assistant secretary of state for european and eurasian affairs. part of arizona state university. ambassador always good to have you on the show. >> great to be here. >> waging war on the baltic nations would be like waging war on the u.s., president obama said. writing in the atlantic monthly,

former george w. bush speech writer, david from, said has never used such forceful rhetoric, does it matter? >> both president clinton and george w. bush spoke in similar terms about their commitments. this is a long standing treaty commitment to defend nato allies should they come under attack. the reason president obama had to come out so forcefully on this is there had been skepticism in eastern europe that he was serious about this. change in missile defense plans, reset policy with russia which fell apart and a slowness to get started with anything in ukraine and we can talk about that. that left our central and east european allies feeling very vulnerable and

unsure the u.s. commitments. president obama is working hard to put those fears at rest. >> ukraine, let's turn to that and this confusion about a ceasefire. president petro poroshenko's office, then vladimir putin's spokesman says it couldn't be involved, that russia couldn't be involved in a ceasefire because russia wasn't a party to the conflict. what meunt supposedly outlined were points where pro-russian separatists would pull back, there would need to be international monitoring and an end to the air strikes. after all that ukrainian prime minister yatsenyuk yuck, what's going on? >> i think you start with what the ukrainian prime minister

said, i think he's right. the timing and content of this is designed to take some air out of the balloon so that naict nato is less likely to make hard decisions about ukraine. there are plenty of allies that would not want to do anything difficult and would believe there is some kind of negotiated solution here. putin throws them a bone just a day before the summit, so if a decision was made to decision was made to help defend ukraine in some way, the argument would be that we can't disrupt the 9 nascent process that has just begun. russia has used its forces inside ukraine. last week he was talking about recognizing these areas as independent states. he is going to pursue this, this is not going away. >> why is the u.s. not saying

that russia has invaded ukraine? defense secretary hagel dodged it on an interview on wednesday arch. the president referred to it as an incursion. is this all because they would have to walk back earlier threats as to what would happen if russia invaded ukraine? >> it is a mystery why they don't want to make it plain and in black and white. the president in his statement in estonia today talked about the components that make up an invasion, russian equipment, russian finances, russian troops and russian support. we know they're doing this. why can't we say it more bluntly? i'm not sure. the fact is that we are basically in a military conflict right now. ukraine and russia. rather than saying there's no military solution to this, i think the better analysis is, there is going to be a military solution. we need to decide whether we care about that, and if we want to help the ukrainians defend

their territory or not. >> but that would be the military solution you're talking about is the ukrainian forces armed by -- >> either russia wins or ukraine wins. >> the president says it has to be by nato not by the united states. and that actually confused me because united states pays for much of nato's budgets. what realistically will happen with nato now and will this rapid reaction force mean anything? >> right. what you're seeing right now is u.s. european countries being upsaid about russia's invasion of ukraine, reassuring the baltic states, recommitting to nato, we talked about why this is important, creating this response force so there is a bit of military capability that can be moved around. but when you think about it if the problem is russia invading ukraine the answers that we're talking about don't have anything to do with russia invading ukraine.

what we really do need to start getting to is nato taking direct steps to push back on russia's invasion of ukraine and that would be providing intelligence support, advisors and possibly reinforcement to help ukraine win against russia inside their country right now. >> well, certainly it is a terrible fight. ambassador kurt volker, thank you for joining us. >> thank you, antonio. >> now for more stories around the world. we begin here in the u.s. where the national drugstore chain cvs said on wednesday that cigarettes and tobacco products are no longer available for sale in any of their stores. the announcements uh announcement comes a month ahead of the schedule set when the company decided to stop selling tobacco products earlier this year. cvs said it made the decision in order to have a broader commitment to health care and

according to the ceo it will cost around $2 billion. next detroit where theodore wafer has been sentenced to a minimum of 17 years for shooting of ranisha mcbride. his attorney had asked the judge for a reduced sentence of four to seven years, that would be in line with manslaughter sentencing. but the judge decided to follow the guidelines for second degree murder. and we end in new york city where organizers have lifted their ban on gay groups participating in the march celebration. the parade more than 250 years old, draws hundreds of thousands of spectators and participants. but it was bo boycotted this yer by

mayor bill gloiz who threatened to -- deblasio who threatened to boycott again. timothy dolan archbishop of new york said the paraders have his confidence and support. two months before the crucial mid term elections, we'll look at the politics of foreign policy. and we finally hear from one of the american aid workers who's recovered from ebola. plus our social media producer, hermela aregawi is tracking the top stories on the web. >> a unique lawsuit filed against south carolina's dmv, the teen who filed it set he was discriminated against, the dmv says they're just following policy. i'll tell you more coming up.

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the x1 entertainment operating system. preloaded with the latest episodes of the top 100 shows. only from xfinity. >> it's been a long summer for the president from ukraine, iraq, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

as the poll numbers continue to fall, his current trip to europe might show the opportunity of leadership. to discuss the politics of the policy, michael shore, michael as always good to see you. let's start with some words from today, first from president obama speaking in estonia and then vice president biden in new hampshire. >> our objective is to make sure i.s.i.l. is not an ongoing threat to the region. and we can accomplish that. it's going to take some time and it's going to take some effort. >> we can follow them to the gates of hell until they are brought to justice because hell is where they will reside. hell is where they will reside. >> michael a conflict in styles. not just from the president, but other members of the

administration and the chorus that the president is really too conservative. >> i don't think they're falling in en masse, they are not picking on the president people are getting impatient. you do have contrast of styles. you have to known your estonian estonian audience, you can't go in and say those things. there's a contrast in their styles alsdz ha always has been. obama is a conservative man when it comes to foreign policy. you have positions and you know, situations, where you cannot be decisive right away for you know for not knowing what the consequences are. also the president and this is one thing that we have to underscore is having a very difficult time building a coalition. and when you can't build a

coalition over there, it becomes a little problem take at -- problematic at home. he's going to try to win frens and influence people in nato. >> at that point, general zinni told us he doesn't feel he's using the bully pulpit or the whole of government. the military are diplomats our allies to create some sort of international legitimacy for a plan that should deal with the islamic state terrorists in iraq and in syria. is that not a fair criticism? >> would i say it's an absolutely fair criticism. i think he lost a little bit of currency as well, when he earlier said he was going to go into syria got their backing and decided not to. i think there aren't people out there saying exactly and precisely what the president should do.

he ask saying he's 40in formulating his policy. >> you're a political analyst when you bring up demeanor, isn't demeanor important? isn't the way you say things important? he went off to estonia without expressing outrage over the beheading of steven sotloff. isn't demeanor important? >> yes, dmoorn is important. the -- the demeanor is important. the president isn't running for anything now. as your previous guest said, we mean business and know what to do. the vice president's demeanor would be offputting too, to talk about we're going to take them to the gates of hell, former president bush said that, following them to the gates of hell. you did bring up a good point antonio, when you talk about the politics of this you have a whole series of candidates who are running and need some foreign policy to run on.

they are in states throughout the country where the president is not polling well. he's not polling well in the entire nation but states they need to hold onto in the senate race. they want to be able to latch onto something, the president is not giving theming in to latch -- anything to latch onto. in some people's circles is important. >> his approval rating is at near all time lows and the latest gallup poll, 39%. not to let congress off the hook the british you know david cameron came back from vacation, so did part of the u.k.'s parliament while our congress people are out there still playing golf. >> yeah, you know i think we can compare ourselves to other countries all the time. there are certainly problems with the way we have our legislative sessions but when you look at the record of congress antonio, i don't see a big difference when they're in or when they're out certainly the past year or two years.

>> i hate to laugh because it's a serious situation but you maim a very valid point. al jazeera political contributor michael shore, good to have you. >> thanks antonio. turning to west africa, the ebola outbreak has killed 1900 people and sickened more than 3,000. the world is losing the battle to contain the decease and now another american doctor in liberia is suffering from ebola. there is hope. two american workers who fell ill with the advisor have recovered and nancy writebol recounted per sherns on wednesday. >> he said nancy, dr. brantly, kent last ebola. i have to tell you, my heart sank. he also said, nancy, i have to tell you, that you have ebola. i said david, it's going to be okay. it's really going to be okay.

>> joining us now from dallas is dr. sema yazmin, a former advisor detector, a staff writer for the dallas morning news. doctor great to have you back. on tuesday the international president of doctors without borders described the situation in west africa to a u.n. panel like this. >> in west africa, cases and death continue to surge. riots are breaking out. isolation centers are overwhelmed. health workers on the front lines are becoming infected and are dying in shocking numbers. entire health system have crumbled. ebola treatment center are reduced to places where people go to die alone. >> at one point the main hospital in monrovia was turning away ebola victims because they were swamped. how dangerous is this situation? is the health care structure in

west africa facing a total collapse? >> well, antonio, some would say that the health care system in this region was already crumbling. and that's why we're seeing the spread of the disease at this speed and at this scale that we've never ever seen before. we're hearing from doctors at the organization, doctors without borders that they have a 160 bed facility in the liberian capital. they are turning people away. they are saying to paramedics please give us a call if you bring a patient here, i'm sorry there's no room for them here. what's happening in those situations, people are infected with ebola are caring for them at home. that's why we're seeing the spread of the disease at such an alarming speed. >> the world health organization predicted the virus would spread to other countries. now we've got nigeria which had a small outbreak in lagos, is

seeing an outbreak in port hartcourt. other people, senegal has also confirmed its first cases, there is an unrelated outbreak in the democratic republic of congo. how concerned are you that the international health care agencies will be able to get this under control? >> there is great concern antonio. the world health organization is convening an emergency meeting. they're saying it's going to take upwards of $490 million to bring the ebola outbreak under control. they're saying it could take as long as six to nine months and in fact some reports from other public health experts declared we might see more cases of ebola and we may not see the outbreak end until mid-2015. so it's really alarming statistics and a sad situation. >> there's not that kind of

money in those west african nations that can deal with this, so it's going to have to come from international help. a third health care worker from america, rick sakra, wasn't even treating ebola patients. nancy writebol and kent brantly didn't think they could be infected in the isolation units. is there concern that ebola could be spreading more easily than we thought? >> that's a real concern and when i spoke to ali last week i said we had seen about 250 health care workers at the front lines who had become infected with ebola another alarming statistic in this situation and the second american doctor who has become infected wasn't working in ebola ward. he was caring for women who were pregnant. it's unclear when or how he became infected but the same is

true of kent brant li and his colleague nancy writebol. we find they are following protocol but they are overwhelmed with patients dealing with ebola so it's much easier for disease to spread and for the staff to become very tired and for morale to fall. >> let's help these efforts to ramp up production of zmapp serum which may help and studies and vaccines can move forward and find a way to help these people, doctor's nice to see you, thank you. hermella. >> the south carolina teen is suing the state's dmv over what he and his mother are calling discrimination. chase culpepper regularly wears makeup. the

dmv said he had to remove his makeup. >> they said i needed to look more like a boy. >> the state denied request saying at no time will an applicant be photographed when it appears that he or she is purposefully altering his or her appearance so the photo would misrepresent his or her identity. chase says it doesn't apply to him because he wears makeup every day. in fact not wearing makeup would be purposefully altering his image. he was discriminated against stereotypes. >> it is not the role of the dmv or any government agency or employee to decide how men and women ought to look. chase should be able to get a driver's license without being subjected to sex discrimination.

>> the cullpeppers, say, what gender nonconformists can and cannot wear for their driver license picture. lets us know what you think. >> along with his brother, an inmate goes free after they served 30 years for a murder they didn't commit. also surprising news for cancer treatment. how double mastectomies may be less effective than more

>> north carolina's longest serving death row inmate and his brother went free after being exonerated from a crime they didn't commit. we get more from coal carr wtvd, north carolina. >> 30 years in prison. at one point both these brothers facing death row but dna evidence has freed them. they're innocent something their family has always stood by. >> i know it was a travesty of justice. >> henry and his brother. signed confessions to the rape and murder of this young girl. a day after they had already told investigators they didn't do it.

at the time the teenagers had the i.q.s of fourth graders. >> being mentally challenged with no legal representation and no parent there and they're going to tell me they asked you to sign something. >> verbal innocence was always maintained. they were retried in the '90s. only murder charges against brown would be dropped. in the early 2000s he reached out to the innocence are foundation. tying the death to a 76-year-old inmate who are confessed to murder another woman. freedom for two men but an incredible jarring time for sabrina bouy's family. >> 30 years, they made that kid think that those two boys had killed her sister. >> let's bring in sharon

staleto, from raleigh, north carolina, she spent years on the case. her work and testimony helped exonerate the men. sharon good of you to join us. this is really an infuriating story when you hear about the coerced confessions of the disabled teenagers. how and why do you think people drop the ball, at so many different points, for 30 years? >> well, the commission is a neutral fact finding agency so our role in it was more to investigate what the new evidence is as opposed to kind of pointing fingers at who dropped the ball and who didn't. it was really to come forward and look into what the new evidence was. >> now you testified that this other man, roscoe artist whose dna was found on physical evidence from the scene repeatedly told you that the two men were innocent. there was also a fingerti finget that could have convicted him of the crime.

what happens to him now? >> that depends on the district attorney's office. the district attorney's office has been working with the commission since the beginning of the summer. we told them about the investigation and i believe he was interviewed today and he is looking into taking out charges and he has to evaluate all the evidence and we are turning over our file to him to let him know all the information. and he can review it for himself and make a determination whether or not it's appropriate for him to take charges. >> now this case speaks to a larger issue with many cases around the country in terms of access to evidence. mccomb had attorneys for the past few years but they couldn't access some of the evidence you were able to, as a government sag, how, for defendants who feel the evidence is stacked against them? >> the commission is an independent state agency and we're the only kind in the country that that is statutory authority that we have to go in

and uncover evidence like this. as you said the defense attorneys had worked on the case many years and they just weren't able to get the information that we were able to uncover. >> this news comes just after the 25th anniversary of the first dna exoneration. why is it taking so long to exonerate the innocent if the dna is available? >> well, in a lot of cases it isn't. a lot of these cases are really old cases before dna existed in the 1980s they weren't looking into it. in addition the evidence that has been collected whether or not it was stored properly, whether it was kept at all, where it was kept, how it was kept. in a lot of cases a lot of agencies don't even know that they have the evidence any longer. and so going back finding the evidence getting the appropriate type of testing looking into it is a lot of work. and it's also very costly. the commission is lucky enough that we had a grant, a federal grant from the national institute of justice to test all of this evidence.

but in this particular case especially you're talking about expensive testing that costs thousands and thousands of dollars. >> and there are thousands of cases around the country like this, the national academy of science found that nearly 1 in 25 capital punishment cases are wrongfullics requests. as someone who works in the universitjustice system, how dok we can fix that problem, close that gap? >> i think commissions such as our agency who are independent, i know that a lot of other states are looking into having an agency such as ours an independent state agency that can come in and be neutral and not represent either party but just look for the truth is really important. >> sharon really a pleasure to have you with us. >> thank you. >> congratulations on your efforts to free these innocent men. >> thank you very much. >> coming up, just because

you're paranoid doesn't mean staghts are not tracking your every move. first an angelina jolie got big on the stream, >> some workers with disabilities are paid less than minimum wage. is this practice taking advantage of the system, or providing a chance of meaningful employment? >> the stream, on al jazeera america

primetime news. >> welcome to al jazeera america. >> stories that impact the world, affect the nation and touch your life. >> i'm back. i'm not going anywhere this time. >> only on al jazeera ...

news... >> there's a time when only the most sophisticated government agencies could track someone in the ways we see in the movies. >> got vertical movement here.

he's in an elevator. we're losing our tracking. anybody got a visual? we need to move location, get a better signal. >> is anybody there yet? >> negative. >> but new surveillance systems that use your cell phone are making that scene from enemy of the state easy to replicates. so easy that virtually anyone who has enough money can buy a system to track people anywhere in the world. that has security experts and privacy experts very worried. joining us now from washington, d.c, is john piha, who served as chief technologist for the fc. john thanks for joining us to talk about this. let's start with how these new surveillance systems work. my understanding is they exploit the basic system that allows cell phone carriers to connect with other carriers, basically what allows me or you to call anyone else, that requires

knowing where a cell phone is at all times. so my question is why should anyone other than the carriers have access to that information? >> well, they shouldn't. this is a system, your cell phone carrier needs to know where you are at any given time. but under these systems, somebody can make a request to your cell phone carrier and say you know, where is that phone right now? and even though the person making that request has no right whatsoever to have that information, your cell phone carrier may provide the information. >> why? >> well, that's a good question. the system should not work that way. and it's being exploited, for -- there were features built in for perfectly good reasons. but they're being exploited now for inappropriate reasons. and for some reason the carriers are not able to distinguish, or not doing enough to distinguish, a legitimate request from one that should be denied. >> so when you are talking about

a request, you're basically talking about, correct me if i'm wrong, some sort of communication, that is as if i were calling you and that my phone, in order to connect to you, has to go through this system. and so that is basically asking that system to let me know where you are? >> this request is -- it is not a human involved. this request is a message being sent from a computer perhaps anywhere in the world and going to your cell phone company. and your cell phone companies, a computer there is responding to that request. >> so how do you protect against that then? because you think cell phone companies have the obligation to protect their customers. but if someone is illegally trying to get that information what can they really do? >> that's a very good question as well. cell phone carriers do have a legal obligation to protect that information.

and in fact, if i were to call up my cell carrier and say where was my phone this morning and they didn't verify i was me, they didn't ask for a password they would be violating fc regulations. but yes, the question is, did the cellular carrier know that this was a request they shouldn't answer? what did they do to find out? we don't actually know the answers to those questions or at least there's no public information that would let us know what carriers did to protect themselves and how effective they were. >> and the extent of what they can figure out is incredible. they can use this system to find you in a car and even figure out what speed you're going at. so what is the fcc doing? >> well, this particular system wouldn't give you that level of accuracy. ut it can tell you where you are say within a few hundred yards. in a rural area it would be further.

i can't say i've heard the fcc is doing anything. this has just come forward now. i'm hoping that the federal communications commission is going to step forward and look at what the companies are doing, look at why the vulnerability is there, what the carriers have done to protect themselves, what they can do to fix it in the future and whether or not they have followed the regulations, which require them to protect this information. >> now do we -- >> so far -- >> do we have any idea who's using the systems how much they cost and you know also what it means to the average person? >> we don't know who is using the system. or at least again for publicly available information. i have seen some marketing information from some of the companies that provide this. and they seem to be marketing to government agencies. but you never know who else they're marketing to and there can be these companies all around the world so we really don't know who's using this. >> it really is 1984, 30 years

later, isn't it john? unfortunately. thanks very much for joining us. appreciate you bringing your perspective on it and trying to explain it. >> thank you. >> how america outsourced security to invisible soldiers fighting our wars and protecting's protectingamerica's interests. the conversation continues on our website , aljazeera.com/considerthis. tweet me @amoratv. we'll see you next time.

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