of it, if you don't have any money, you're finished. i'm ali velshi. "on target" tonight digital divide. the battle to bring high speed internet to those who want it and the laws that got in the way. plus, data crack down. the european ruling that could force american tech companies to make some changes. 19 years ago this month president bill clinton and vice president al gore announced a $100 million program to help create what they called the next generation internet. in their remarks, both men used a term that is unfortunately

still a major cause or the concern in our current information age. the digital divide. president clinton said, if we didn't broadly share the knowledge we are, it would provide anxieties among people. remember this was 1996. president clinton had recently signed a major telecommunications act designed to promote competition among telecommunications companies. that was supposed to bring better, cheaper service to more americans. well, flash forward to today, and the inequality that president clinton warned about has not disappeared. the federal communications commission says that quote a significant digital divide remains between urban and rural america. specifically, more than half of americans who live in rural areas, 22 million people, don't have access to high speed broadband.

that compares to just 8% of americans who live in imawrn areas. imawrn -- urban areas. now the reason for this divide is that telecom companies don't find it financially viable to make the huge investments necessary to bring broadband to rural america. but here is the really big problem: those same ceans, com, comcast at&t and time-warner, are fighting utilities that want to bring broadband to areas and helped by laws in 19 different states that restrict or prohibit cities, municipalities from building broadband networks. as i told you recently, president obama is on the record as pos opposing these laws. tonight i am taking you back the otoone city that fought and won, chattanooga. now chattanooga wants to expand its high speed broadband service

to rural areas outside the city. areas where some residents don't have access to high speed internet. and that has sparked another legal fight that you've got to hear to believe. jake ward has our story. >> reporter: bradley county, tens is just 30 miles east of chattanooga. country roads lead to a picturesque landscape of grazing cows and corn fields. but its internet landscape that's odifferent story. >> currently our internet landscape looks like nothing. >> penny coltran is a middle school teacher, a mother of two with no access to broadband. her family has two choices, dialup or satellite internet which coltran ian says is not reliable. >> using our data on our cell phones. >> takes a while to load doesn't it? >> my son was expected to go to

several different websites and do homework each night on skill practice and none of those websites would open up on a mobile device. >> she says she's been waiting for years for broadband to open up in her area, she's not alone. 56% of americans don't have access to basic broadband. >> the reason comcast isn't there or the reason other providers aren't there is because it cost a lot of money and the revenue is not very high. >> but one company does want to bring the internet to bradley county. epb, that's chattanooga's local utility which provides ultimateh speed gigabit service. and provides it just half a mile from the coltran live. >> we make a financial model out of serving some of those areas and can do ill fairly quickly. >> david wade is the chief financial a officer at epb.

can't do it because of an existing state law that prohibits local utilities from expanding past their service area. wade says local telecoms don't want to compete with a local utility. >> reducing competition to be honest. >> i understand that any company is in it for a profit. the problem is: if they aren't willing to provide it for us, why not let somebody that is come in? >> so epb and the city of chattanooga filed a petition last summer asking the fcc fcc to challenge the law, major incumbents like comcast and at&t. wilson filed a similar request. >> the laws that we challenged were the product of lobbying by

industry and persuasion of members of the legislature. >> jim bailor is lead council remitting epb and chattanooga. >> the laws are sometimes said to be for purpose of creating a level playing field, for the purpose of creating fair competition. but the way that the laws actually operate are to create barriers that the established carriers don't and can't comply with in most cases. >> and in february the fcc agreed with chattanooga and overturned tennessee state law. >> we have a situation where the federal government is preempting a state from preempting cities. >> tennessee's attorney general's office filed an appeal in september saying that the decision violates state sovereignty. we requested an interview and the ag's office declined pointing us to their appeal sain

saying quote, it goes against the united states. the fcc fcc calls the decision unlawful. >> because of that there's no competition, no choice, no service. >> republican state senator janice bowling is a supporter of broadband. >> they hold tremendous power and there have been cobbled together efforts in parts of tennessee at a time. dollars have gone to lobbyists to defeat it. very few things have been able to get past it. >> senator bowling will propose legislation in 2016 that will strike the clause from tennessee law which prohibits epb from expanding into rural areas. she tried to produce the law this year but at the last minute there was aing amendment fair

and reasonable it was not fair it was not reasonable it was a poison pill. they could have taken over the bill in a matter of seconds. >> we reached out to at&t president joelle phillips. her spokesperson said quote, they should be limited to locations where no precise sector services are available and not likely to be available in a reasonable time frame. government money should not be used to compete with the private sector which has a proven history of funding, building, operating and upgrading broadband networks. policies that discourage private sector investment put at risk the world class broadband infrastructure american consumers deserve around enjoy today. >> it is an infrastructure problem that has been exacerbated by a political problem. if you have a government-protected entity that

has a virtual monopoly, the last time i looked that up, that is called phony capitalism and that is not what government is about. >> jake ward is here. she doesn't want state laws interfering with decisions she said should be up to cities to make, particularly when it comes to high speed internet. so if city run broadband can't help these folks in rural areas that you featured in the story and the cable and telecom heavy weights aren't helping them who can? >> that is the greatly question here. sort of the lesson from history to look at ali is the history of 911 service. the united states has had to create a system under the fcc in which everybody gets access to that essential service. a similar model is following here. those telecom companies are not finding there's enough for them

out in the rural areas so the fcc is again trying to step in. they are coming one a connect america fund, a $9 billion fund that is supposed to be paid out of the next six years, to move their stuff out into these regions that are so underserved. for instance in tennessee the center of our report there at&t is supposed to receive $26 million from the fcc's fund in order to get out into the -- in there. they say using that money they will create a system that will create a 10 megabit download speed, a one megabit upload speed, that is very slow, disappointing speed as you know. as nart bowling says there there are -- as senator bowling says there, there are utilities that want to step in want to make it happen and they simply can't get it done. >> this shouldn't be partisan, she is a republican. is this partisan or is this the fight between states and the fcc which is an agency of the federal government?

>> it's really a great question. it really is a place where you're seeing this almost sort of i mean it is kind of a socialist idea right? the government having to step in and sort of even things out for people that the market simply will not serve equally. so you're really seeing across party lines. also it's important to understand that the fcc's fund that is supposed to incentivize these companies, $26 million for tennessee for at&t tennessee to provide service, sounds like a lot of money. that is not a lot of money. monmonticello mngz mnlz wante mo lay their own fiber line. guess how much it cost them, that was also $26 million that's for one tiny town. it's really not enough money anyway. we're talking about barely enough to get online. as you saw young parents need

their kids to be able to do that just to get a basic education in this day and age. >> jacob ward joining us from sasan francisco. i'm going to talk with a sitting members of congress who accuses the fcc of a power grab.

>> across the united states, cities are weighing the risks and benefits of building their

own high speed internet networks. the goal is to bring faster speeds at a cheaper price. that is something cities believe the telecom giants aren't doing for them. but the telecoms don't think it's fair to be competing against a company that is funded by taxpayer dollars. starting their own broadband services, this year the fc the federal communications commission, fcc, overturned in north carolina, i spoke with marsha blackman, who proposed legislation in congress this year to block the fcc from ever doing that again. she says it's a matter of state sovereignty. >> we think it's a state's rights issue and the fcc should not have the ability to come in and override state and local rights.

it's important for the state to retain that ability to make these decisions within their borders. so it is a bill, house bill 1106. senator 'tillis tillis and i ouf north carolina and i, the chattanooga tfns situation it woultennessee situationit would. whether you are talking about chattanooga or utopia which is the utah situation you would see olot of public debt accrue to the citizens when they try and do these. chattanooga they each have about a half billion of debt now tied to these systems. >> right now except that chattanooga had calculated a return on investment and i understand that this doesn't apply to everything and that return started showing up much earlier than they had planned. so while the concept of not

incurring public debt something the public sector can do, what happens in the case where it's actually profitable? >> it should be a decision that is made by those localities and abiding by state laws. it shouldn't be the fcc coming in and preementing thos preemene laws. >> the cable companies said not for a long time. they've seen the benefit of doing it. i guess when you say it's a state's rights issue and you don't want the federal government about, what about the rights of the municipality to do right by its citizens? >> the municipalities have the ability to make those decisions. what they should not have the ability to do is do that and then try expand that beyond their footprint. that is something that chattanooga is trying to do north t --in order to be able ta cushion if you will. other counties subsidizing what is there with chattanooga.

i think jury is still out on chattanooga as to whether or not this is going to be a profitable situation or not. the assumption of that much public debt is a tremendous concern for an application of the technology and you don't know the life of that technology. and ali, i think that it is best left to the private sector and the providers who, by the way, have invested billions of dollars in broadband expansion in this country. >> right, we've done this story on the people just outside of chattanooga's boundaries that can't get the service and again, the cablers aren't going in there. so people are not getting this high speed internet that they need. your constituents. >> well, it is -- chattanooga is not in my district. that's the opposite side of the state that i live inon but broadband expansion is something that we're all concerned. and i have counties that, in and of themselves, are saying okay,

we're going to try to find a provider to work with us. >> right. >> whether it is something that is a laid cable or a fixed base wireless system, which is the technology that is replacing a lot of that very cable concept, so there again, the technologies change. i think this is where you say look: fcc, you can't go in and preempt these states. and then you can't put this burden of debt. >> right. >> on here. and then begin to say well, but we need to let chattanooga and their board of mayor andal and alderman and everybody be able to dictate, what their speed and rate and cost is going to be. >> i know chattanooga is not in your area, but these rural areas these cable companies don't get to enough time. i guess i need to understand

philosophically, the federal agency shouldn't be imposing rules on the state but in a country that is based on home rule, i'm not sure why the municipality the locality shouldn't decide when the state doesn't protect their interests. >> the municipality is going to decide. >> in chattanooga. >> and working the within the state and within those laws. i think it's inappropriate for federal government to come in and say we're going to trump state law and pick winners and losers. i think that's inproblematic way to go about it. >> one of the things we've researched is that those that oppose the fcc being involved there happens to be some correlation between those members of congress who oppose it and those who receive campaign donations from the lobbyists of those you are one. >> i have it as a states rights issue i came out of the state

legislature and for me, one of the problems we always had was, the federal government would come in, they would make a mandate or they would offer a grant. there's a short lifetime on that grant and then the locality is left with the long term maintenance and expense. and that gets to be the concern, because as you run that out over a period of 30 years, with a utility investment, road investments, things of that nature, and the maintenance is not considered in that, then that becomes the burden for the local government and the local taxpayer. so tomorrow's taxpayers are paying for decisions that were made today. and it's something that you got to be judicious and carefully cd very watchful of. >> look, i know you have well formed opinions of these but in your case you have taken more than $200,000 from that lobby,

97,000 in the last year alone and one has to think whether it informs your opinions. >> my opinions are strongly formed and going back in the state senate when i was hard at work in this and looking at allowing electric companies come in and provide cable service since that point in time you have had the converges of convef local video and data. local power groups that wanted to get into serving these entities and it's very difficult for them to compete when government gets involved. >> what do you say when the people of chattanooga and the peoplgovernment of chattanooga s you're wrong, if the city of new york had decided to be competitive with time-warner and offer me lower rates than

time-warner i wouldn't mind where it came from. >> that's a very good thing that's one of the pofs that you're going to -- positives that you're going to see with having competition from providers. so when you bring that in maybe even the satellite provider comes in. and you look at the way the marketplace is changing and more things are streaming. so that's what consumers want. they want portability. they want to be able to take their programming with them. they want plenty of options that are going to be there. and those are the important -- the important components that i think weigh into the decision making. >> that is u.s. representative marsha blackburn of tennessee. coming up the court ruling overseas that could weigh in to facebook and other tech companies here in america.

>> major american tech companies like facebook amazon and google are trying to figure out how they can keep doing business in europe without breaking the law. a court ruling struck down a transatlantic deal that basically told these companies they had to protect the private

information of their european customers. the case stems from a lawsuit inspired by edward snowden's nsa spying. paul brennan reports. >> every day, business is conducted between the united states and europe. all supposedly protected by a transthrarntransatlantic privact called safe harbor. but now it's been decided that safe harbor can't be trusted. >> penl data anything in which a living individual can be identified. so that ranges from something as simple as an e-mail signature block to details in a life read database for example. >> in 2013 former cia contractor edward snowden leaked classified documents of covert snooping of u.s. intelligence agencies.

it was those revelations that brought max shrem to bring these cases to court. transfers uses data to service outside the eu. whether it's a digital photograph, or a credit card details or indeed multimillion dollar business deals all that data has to be stored on servers such as this. more often than not they are not in the european union, they are cited in the united states. the european union promised to match the u.s. privacy rules. safe harbor is worthless. facebook insists its doing in wrong and operating within privacy laws. it is imperative that eu and u.s. governments ensure that they continue to provide

reliable methods for reliable data transfers relating to national security. alternatives osafe harbor include such thing as model contracts, bindings corporate rules or our own consent for data to be transmitted. of course another solution would be to make the u.s. spy agencies more accountable. >> if i get spied on by the nsa there's no way for me to go to the u.s. and bring a private action against the nsa, there just isn't an avenue in the u.s. that is fundamentally embalanced. so if the u.s. can perform the privacy act of the 1970s that i as a european union te europet would be one way. that's going to be enormously controversy in the u.s. >> and the current eu rules, companies face financial penalties relating to seven figure sums. and news rules are underway, that could amount to 5% of a

company's global turnover. this european ruling will spark a scramble to find new ways of doing business. paul dre dren brennan. al jazeera. >> that's our show for the day. thank you for joi joining us. . >> anger and anguish in turkey. saturday's deadly twin bombings are raising sharp questions. >> is me daughter dead or alive. if she's dead show me her body, show me her flesh and blood. >> proxy war in syria, how competing strategies in the u.s. are creating compari