you know, afghanistan, the taliban is renowned for its violent repression. and now a new deal with the u.s. could see the group return to power one, a warning still this to gates of afghan women who paid the price for peace on al jazeera. hello, i'm maryam namazie and london. a quick look at the headlines now. a scientist at the center of iran's nuclear program has been assassinated near the capital tehran gunman ambushed a vehicle carrying a loss. in fact, as are there on his bodyguards in the city of upside, they later died in hospital. iranian officials, including a fondness and raef suspect israel was behind the attack. they've not provided any evidence. a military commander has promised to retaliate. iran previously expressed concern that u.s. president donald trump would try to punish the country before he leaves office in january. it to go first the car carrying him was shot and

about 15 seconds later i missed an pickup truck that was mowed to be explosives blasted about 15 to 20 meters away from his car. all together inflicted wounds on him that led to his martyrdom bag has more from tire on the defense minister to me has been speaking and now he has shed some more light. on the incident, he said the gunman opened fire around 10 to 15 seconds later, a bomb exploded, which was on back on the back of a truck. then the gunfire continued. there was an exchange of gunfire. now 2 of these gods were injured. he was also injured. he was taken to hospital but died a short while later. now we're also hearing from falls news agency, which is a 74 official news agency here that one of the gods was also killed in all the headlines. if the o.p.'s government denies it, the prime minister has rejected talks with to grain leaders as international negotiators push for a resolution to the weeks on conflict. 3 african union,

special envoys met with that in august. but he told them, you know, only speak to representatives for it's operating illegally in the region. a day ago, the army was ordered to carry out the final phase of its offensive and move in on to graze the capital kelly. meanwhile, the ethiopia prime minister spokesperson delaine, say, i'm spot challenges there earlier describing where the government's position stands . i think of widely misunderstood concept with regard to these strong words with rejection, particularly because they have not rejected talking to anybody from the grey region . in fact, the provisional administration, there has been that for constitutionally by the half a federation is an amalgamation or a composition of the various political parties that are active in the program region. at this point, one of the key for by the rule of law adventures been undertaken is because, according to the laws of the land and the constitution and the criminal code of the federal democratic republic or people are copying your own national different

courses of the crime is a criminal act from the considered a true one. thousands of farmers in india have marched on the capital, new delhi, after 3 days of breaking through police barricades on state borders. they want government to repeal laws that could end guaranteed prices for that project. french president emanuel macron says a video showing police in paris, beating up a black music producer is on acceptable and shameful. the incident has resulted in an investigation and this is bench in of 4 offices. the world health organization says more information is needed to review the efficacy of oxford university and astra zeneca. as coronavirus vaccine says that it's likely to run another global trial after the job was found to be 90 percent effective among a subgroup by ara. what we've seen is a press release. and what is really the next most important step is that the data

really needs to be evaluated based on more than a press release. there's only a 1st of all limited amount that can be said in a press release. and secondly, it really needs to be reviewed in terms of the data and questions asked about the data that may come up in the course of the review. and a mass rally has been held in iraq's capital baghdad in a show of support following shia current tide or else others bid to run in parliamentary elections. next june, thousands of people gathered in tahrir square, which was once the focus of anti-government protest. sather is frequently showing his support for the demonstrations and often made calls for political reform studio . be unscripted is the program program coming up next? focusing on how social media is affecting truth globally.

why are journalists under attack? because democracy is under attack. and i realized i was working for something that was evil, and i had been a part of actually creating it. when mark zuckerberg essentially said that it is ok for politicians to lie, that spells doom my name is maria ressa and i'm a journalist and author, the message that the government is sending is very clear. be silent or your next. i've received thousands of death threats on line. thank you. i'm christopher wiley. i'm a data scientist, but most people know me as the cambridge analytical whistleblower. thanks but knew about cambridge analytical scheme since 2015. before the story broke,

facebook threatened to sue the guardian and then banned me for whistleblowing. are revealed hard data is being manipulated for political gain without our consent. thanks. thanks. since rappers started reporting the president protect us that he drugged her, i believe that she did leave charged and arrested. it makes you feel vulnerable, but i think it's quite right. i'm inspired by how maria continues to stand up for the truth in the face of real danger. chrysis revelations led to the largest data crime investigation in history if we allow cheating in our democratic her thighs and we allow this amount. what about next time? what about the time after that, we know firsthand what happens when social media is weaponize and the danger it now poses to our democracies around the world. this is an existential moment. and it's time for us all to act

it's so good to talk to you. you figured out and then you created a system, you taught yourself how to code, you learned the data. and then you built this whole system that was very efficient, modify behavior, and then you decided to take it down. when did you decide it was wrong? when i 1st joined the company that later became cambridge analytic, a c l group. i joined a company that at the time was working on projects that were geared towards countered stream ism encounter radicalization. looking at how extremism spreads online and we got discovered by

a guy by the name of steve bannon, who won 3 short got a billionaire to acquire the company. and what i saw was that i had worked on a system that got essentially inverted to radicalize young men in the united states. and it's, you know, witnessing the inception of an insurgency the all right campaign. and so when i started seeing videos of people in focus groups who were so angry with things that were frankly untrue. you know, i realized i was working for something that was evil. and i had, you know, been a part of actually creating it. and i couldn't keep doing that. it's interesting when you said you were looking at it for counter radicalization at 1st. i came to it because i was looking at how social network analysis spread the ideology of

terrorism. and we created rappler because if you can convince people to blow themselves up with this radical ideology, why couldn't you have some things that are for a good, right? that's why we created rappler. but then when you started seeing the negative parts, it's hard to pull yourself out. how to be a whistleblower. what gave you the courage to do that? yeah, i think it was for me, you know, growing up kind of as an outsider, i was partly in a wheelchair when i was growing up because of a invisible disability. and then i live on top of that sort of being queer. i came out as a, with the war, but i've been coming out for my entire life. and you know, for me it's that sense of otherness that and comfortable with being uncomfortable. that i think gave me a little bit of a notch to help me become, become a whistleblower. but with setting up rappler and, you know, being on the outside,

i think you're going out there every single day. pissing off a lot of people trying to do you find that you know, your life's journey sort of influences that oh gosh. so i was born in the philippines and then moved to the united states when martial law was declared in 1972. but when i was with americans, i never felt completely american. and when i'm filled with for the peano's, i don't feel completely filipino either. so i guess it's that it's that otherness part of it, right. and that, that's good training for journalists or whistle blowing or whistle blowing. but i mean, i do find that there's a bit of an overlap because not that i would ever call myself a journalist. but in some senses i feel similar. there's something similar about that. you know, shoving uncomfortable information into people's faces, thank you. knowing you have to pay attention to this and then be viewing the

consequences of that. so i was going say, that's the mission of journalism, right? you speak truth to power and you'll know power doesn't like that in your and i think you been speaking truth. i mean there's a cost to yourself, but you also seem to learn something more from each instance that you've done that . has this been a good experience or a bad experience? it's a mixed bag, i guess. i mean, i think it's been on the whore. a good experience for i have learned a lot. so how, you know, you know, after watching 2016 happen and knowing so many things about what was going on. you know, i learned that i do feel compelled to speak uncomfortable truths. but at the same time, you know, you know, getting called to testify, our congress,

you know, as a 20 something game or living in london, it's not something that you really expects to be part of your life journey. it was pretty intimidating. is pretty intimidating to have, you know, the department of justice and f.b.i. sitting behind me and giving me a subpoena after that. but i think, i think on the whole, it's been a good experience. because if you think back before 28, seen the idea of privacy or data protection, you know, the internet would be a mainstream political issue in the 2020 election and the primary ways would kind of be laughable. so i feel like at least in that sense, exposing wrongdoing and exposing the structures that facilitate and support that wrongdoing. with companies like facebook yet have at least opened up an awareness into a conversation in our mainstream political discourse that i think is productive. how easy is it to manipulate mass and a mass scale?

i get frustrated a lot by the current sort of discussion about the election manipulation because it so focuses on the united states and to a slightly lesser extent, britain. because britain and the united states, and i'm sure coming from the philippines, you know, this full well have been manipulating elections and democracy around the world for hundreds of years. britain was a empire, a speck. and, you know, the reason why, you know, the national drink in britain is tea and you know, national animal is a lion and, you know, these are not natural things here. and so i think the reason why people are so upset in the united states or in britain or other parts of europe is an american voter now understands what it feels like to be an african voter. because, you know, living in a country where you've got a gradually eroding information system where lies are everywhere,

where you don't know what to trust. you've got foreign countries left right and center, trying to manipulate you trick you deceive you and corruption rife in the administration . looking at the philippines and something that i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on coming from an x. u.s. colony. where you had a large country dictating the terms of how government works if you know, to becoming independent. and now having a large american corporation run by a bunch of straight white dudes in america, starting to influence at least what information is allowed or not allowed to exist, or what gets amplified and promoted. or what does thing in the philippines do you, do you feel like there is a sort of neocolonialism happening online? so you're the 1st person. i heard say the colonialism never died. it just moved on

line. right. and i think we talked about facebook as the 1st level, which, i mean, frankly, the collapse that roshan of our institutions began on facebook. what the description of the philippines stanley karnow wrote in our image and he described the philippines as a country that spent 450 years in a convent and 50 years in hollywood. we were colonized by spain and then the united states. and i think it's ironic that the country that gave democracy is also the, the place where silicon valley then has given someone like to tear down a bull scenario. he's types of authoritarian leaders who work, who are killing democracy, the power to do it, to manipulate people. but i think we all know that the, our countries in the global south bear the brunt of all the tech, this issue that have been made. right. i mean, how do we get power,

how we've never really had a seat at the table in these things, and we've, they're the worst. do you think you should go as the other 3 people? sure, that's part. i mean, part of the reason i can speak about it is because i can articulate it in a way that the west can understand. you currently are, you know, challenging an allegedly and arguably corrupt regime. what does it mean for you to say give us a seat at the table? do you give a corrupt regime a theater table to talk about now? so i think one of the things this time show us is exactly how human behavior is universal regardless of culture in many ways. because a very same things that manipulate americans and europeans are the very same things that manipulate us in the global south. we just don't have the institutions to fight back and look how weak your institutions have gotten here. behavioral

modification system. how do we fix it? i think i've been a journalist for this is almost 35 years. it's never been as hard to work as a journalist, as it is today. i have to post bail 8 times. my government filed 11 cases and invested 11 cases and investigations that year and then began arresting me and 21001st arrests was valentine's day. those over the valentine, 00, and my government seems to work very well in february this february. you know, they've, they've gone and filed a similar case against the largest broadcaster in the philippines. what would you say? you know, to, to your critics in the philippines about the charges that you know, the government has lodged against you. did you break the law? oh my lord. no,

i am challenging power, right? we continue to do our jobs and we will continue the line. i always use this, we are going to hold the line because the philippine constitution like the united states constitution has a bill of rights where patterned after the united states constitution. and then let me ask you this, what the cambridge talladega do in the philippines. the company operated in many places around the world. this is something that also i learned spending time there . they say, you know, it's really profitable to go in corrupt governments because governments have, like really monetised that you've got sovereignty. it's something that's really hard for you for a company to replicate. and you know, with you, karen, you can dictate, you know, mineral rights, resource rights, passports, all kinds of things in the philippines. you know, they are not as there are, you know, the story of the philippines. you guys kind of got trumped before everybody else.

ok. yes. but you're facing prison in quite serious charges, least 80 years. why do you care so much? because then when it be easier to just go somewhere else, i mean i could toss in question at you why you became a whistleblower right? because this is the time that matters. because if i didn't stand up for the standards and ethics, the mission of journalism, when it matters, then everything else i did beforehand doesn't matter. and then i'm not who i am. defining who you are. i hate this time period. i hate that the baton was passed to me now, but that's why it matters. how do we get civic engagement when people don't know the facts?

i don't think we can. it's kind of like what we're doing right now. we're sitting on a stage. we're having a discussion, there is an audience they know that we're talking. and if i say something that's not true or somebody can call it, or a journalist can call it. what we have now is a situation where i can become invisible. and i can go and whisper in, so everybody's ear and they all hear something different. and i can do that now with the benefit of having followed everybody in the audience around for years and years and years reading through their text messages, listening to their phones, looking at everything that they look at, even when they don't realize that they're being watched. and i don't think that we can have a functioning democracy when there is no longer public discourse, because everything has become privatized. and oftentimes people can't, don't even know if they're receiving something that is targeted or not, which again goes back to if you get rid of transparency,

you get rid of accountability. you get rid of democracy. we can take questions from the audience. maria julie posetti from the international center for journalists. i've spent time with you and with your news organization, and i know that you have learned a lot as a result of the orchestrated disinflation campaigns, the deliberate targeting of journalists and rappler. in particular. given that we're talking particularly about what kristof has referred to as pushing, if these problems, you know, from the global south to the west. can you tell us sitting here in london? what journalists in particular, dealing with these problems now can do to prepare themselves. so if i think this is an excess tensional moment for democracy, globally journalism, the death of journalism,

i want to say the death of journalist, but the death of journalism is only the 1st signal for the death of democracy. our dystopian president is your dystopian future. if we don't do anything right now, and of course, with the elections coming up in the united states, it's a huge problem. but what are the danger signals the fact that we don't know the facts on the fact that you don't know whom to trust. because in the philippines, the 1st targets of attacks and these are exponential attacks, right? i was getting an average of 9890 hate messages per hour in the philippines. in 2016, our data show that women were attacked at least 10 times more than men. so myside, ginny, sexists, i'm the kind of gender sexualized gendered attacks on women. what's the end goal? you pound someone to silence so that

a whole narrative collapses. and then the voice with the loudest megaphone is amplified, bottom up, and then top down our president, for example, the attacks against me and rappler. we were attacked for a year on facebook on social media. and then after that, a year later, president, due to the said the same exact thing, which is like astroturfing it is, it lays the groundwork for what the government does. you are all living through something similar is just our institutions crumbled within 6 months . your institutions are a little bit stronger than ours, but human beings behave the same way. and the lack of trust is ushering in a whole new 193-0940 s. . right. all of a sudden we're looking at fascism and i guess this is why i am so scared and i want

silicon valley. i want the west who have stronger institutions to do something more about it. because if we don't, instead of a year or 2 years of this, or going to look at decades of fascism. my question to you, christopher, i am from kenya. you work for cambridge analytical, you know, robey over 70 people died may be directly or indirectly related to the role of cambridge in the data. my question then is, is it legal or moral for british or american firms to work in countries like what they take advantage of local regulations and yet continue to operate. this is something that i found most shocking. when you've got a, a company in country, a safe in britain engaging with multiple firms and contractors each in their own jurisdiction. creating this information or

a propaganda that were entirely in britain would be wholly illegal. and then disseminating that in another country. because you've got so many different players involved and so many different components of wrongdoing, it's actually really difficult to figure out where technically did a crime occur. in tax law, we're just starting to, you know, create principles and rules that prevent people from just hopping from one jurisdiction to another. but with data and the internet, we are what we know where tax law was in 1950, not realizing that the internet is global. that data is global, that this information can be global. we lack, you know, not only the actual institutions to, to police, but we actually lack like principles in saw, a lawmaker start to understand,

actually how the internet works. i don't mean that sarcastically, as in that it is actually global and that we need to create principles that if that him embrace that global ness, lots of wrongdoing can happen. maria, you have been tricked and, and yet continue your fight. and more recently from turkey and living in discount tree for the last 20 years in my country, many journalists are in jail now, and many others are free of writing speaking. and so what do you see of journalism and fear? we've never been as vulnerable as we are today because power in countries like yours and mine has taken what the internet, what social media, what companies like cambridge analytical and it is,

it isn't only thing which analytical, we now have filipino companies like cambridge analytic are right they are the ones taking advantage of it. why is it that the bad guys are the ones who are taking these tack? these tools of manipulation and using them against us for us, for someone like chandan dar, for example, he had to flee his country and he made the decision to do that. for fear of his life, others are dying. we see this and every single report that comes out about journalism . why are journalists under attack? because democracy is under attack because you attack the truth tellers because the integrity of facts is gone. right? we're not agreeing on the facts and the internet. the way social media is set up. this one concept of growing it by having you choose friends of friends to grow has polarized our societies. so we have far more polarized societies and then we

have no understanding of what the facts are. and then you attack institutions. and when you have someone like your leader and my leader, they become stronger in this environment. they hijack. and this is why democracy has dying in our areas of influence. we need to protect the facts because if you don't have the facts, you can't have integrity of elections. you can't have integrity of markets. how can we have a working society if we don't know how a public sphere where we agree on what the facts are? i we've always had the devil and the angel on our shoulders,

right. but the way those social media platforms have been formulated. fans the devil in your ear. why is it that you're allowed to experiment on societies and when real people like get killed, there are no actual consequences. december on al-jazeera, it's 10 years since the vet, aleutian in tunisia, ignited the arab spring. al-jazeera looks back at the uprising and asks what really changed across the middle east. this stream is where al jazeera is global audience becomes a global community. a year after the 1st coronavirus case in china will examine the devastation caused by the virus and the efforts made to eliminate covert 90 people in power is back with more investigative documentaries and in-depth stories. climate leaders will gather online to press ahead with a new stage of the paris climate agreement and examine the possible likely

solutions december on al-jazeera. the way i know i'm maryam namazie in london, our main story this hour. a scientist at the center of iran's nuclear program has been assassinated near the capital tehran, a vehicle carrying the result. there was ambushed by gunmen in the city of outside . he died later in hospital iranian officials, including the foreign minister mohammad javad, zarif suspect israel was behind the attack. they have not provided evidence. a military commander has promised to retaliate. to go home at 1st, the car carrying him was shot at about 15 seconds later. i mistimed pickup truck that was loaded with explosives blasted about 15 to 20 meters away from his car,

inflicting wounds on him that led to his death. as a vague as more from ron, the defense minister had to me has been speaking and now he has shed some more light. on the incident he said the gunman opened fire around 10 to 15 seconds later . a bomb exploded, which was on back on the back of a truck, and then the gunfire continued. there was an exchange of gunfire, not 2 of these guards were injured. he was also injured. he was taken to hospital but died a short while later. now we're also hearing from fars news agency, which is a 74 official news agency here that one of the gods was also killed. ethiopia's government has denied the prime minister rejected talks with to grain leaders. 3 african union, special envoys met in addis ababa. he told them he'd only speak to representatives operating legally in the region. a day ago, the army was ordered to move in on to graze regional capital. thousands of indian

farmers of marched on the capital, new delhi, after 3 days of breaking through police barricades on state, or does it want the government to repeal laws that could end guaranteed prices for their produce? in france, the president emanuel says a video showing police in paris, beating up a black music producer is unacceptable and shameful incident has resulted in an investigation and the suspension of 4 offices and a mass rally has been held in iraq's capital baghdad. in a show of support following shiite cleric, others bid to run in parliamentary elections next june, thousands of people gathered in tahrir square, which was once the focus of anti-government protests. studio be unscripted continues now, and then i'll be back with the news hour at 2100 g.m.t. . see them bye for now. thank you. i'm sure a lot of people in the audience, you know,

have heard bits and pieces about what's going on in the philippines. but from your perspective, like, what's the big deal, why should we care about? not only way you and your organization are experiencing, but what's more broadly happening in the philippines. i think that our organization, rappler, has been fighting impunity on 2 fronts that are relevant to everyone around the world. the 1st is these information operations, the manipulation on facebook, on social media. because when you say a lie, a 1000000 times, it becomes the fact. and then if you don't have facts, you then can create whatever narrative you want, including journalists are criminals, right? the 2nd is still connected to that, which is the impunity in the drug war president to tear down our president was elected with the power of social media and 2016 may of 2016. actually this was the beginning of the dominoes tumbling down may of 2016. they were before the all right,

guard corps, but they're all connected now, i think, right. i mean, our drug war,, if you look at the numbers, the u.n., our own commission on human rights says in a little less than 3 years, at least 27000 people have died. these are huge numbers in 21 years of ferdinand marcos. you, you're talking about a death toll of a little over 3200, so impunity in the drug war. impunity in information operations. our institutions collapsed within 6 months because we didn't have facts and journalists like me are under attack and it's not just little rappler, which is a start up. although i guess i could go to jail for 80 some odd years because of the cases that have been filed, they are politically motivated. i am not doing anything different than i used to do when i was working 20 years ago. what is different tech?

and i think part of one of the recent, you're fascinating to me is because you came into this, you looked at the code, you looked at the data and you later realized its impact on society and waiting for silicon valley to realize that as well. do you think silicon valley which is predominantly run by white privileged men? a large large number of whom are american? do you know, do you think that that plays a role with like if more people from the philippines or other countries were in leadership roles in tact? do you think that that would make a difference? i'd like to say if journalists were the ones making some of the tech decisions, it would be a little bit easier. it would be better. so when mark zuckerberg essentially said that it is ok for politicians to lie. that spells doom

in this tech in the bold world right? that spells the end of democracy. because you cannot tell fact from fiction. the old, before you can create a marketplace, you have to have rules of the marketplace and the rules that we have in social media don't work. you also talked about values. what are the values? what are the values of tech optimization? monetizing? thank you. i right now, i think one of the things, lots of journalists, even celebrated by phone talk was quare was, you know, the mantra, facebook move fast and break things. and you know, the hubris of not really thinking about, you know, what you could be doing is breaking democracy and not just in your own country, but around the world and even with the evidence they're right. so it's interesting that, you know, you bring up the death toll of the current regime in the philippines. i think to,

you know, myanmar yet there facebook was actually warned by, you know, journalists, the united nations about what was happening, where, you know, facebook's systems were being deliberately exploited to propagate hate messaging, which contribution. and this is not me telling is united nations our own contribution to you know, ethnic violence and ethnic cleansing, you know, i would, would have thought that would be quite a big deal for any c.e.o. to sort of be told by when you look at facebook's response about where well, the world's complicated will try harder. meanwhile, thousands of people get murdered. do you think that there are parallels between what happened in myanmar and what either is happening or could even progress to happen in the philippines? it's in every country, right. the ethnic violence is still continuing in myanmar. the information operations that's led by the military is still continuing in myanmar on facebook.

the guy who led that u.n. that u.n. fact finding was marginally there were some moneys and indonesian who used to head the commission on human rights. that report is standing. facebook has a tone independent report and they say the same things. i'm shocked. not a thing yet. is moving, and that's part of the reason. so here we go, like, what do we do? i mean, i'm not completely against facebook. other right now i am, i am, i, we were, you know, we're fact checking part years here against our behavior. i'm against impunity. you're right, if you look at it every time facebook trice do the right thing. the market incentives actually punish is that, you know, i provided a lot of information to american regulators. facebook received the largest, find that a technology company had received in history. you know, 5000000000 from the f.t.c. and 100000000 from the f.c.c.

and the share value. and i, we're in a weird situation now where you can be at the helm of a company that has received the largest financial penalty of a company in your industry, in all of history and shareholders. go to great lengths, buy more stock because the worst that can happen is that much money, you know, when you do something really bad, sure is going to take a ding off of this year's profit margin. but hey, ho, that's there. what do you think? you know, can be done or should be done using the regulatory action can even work if one country has this regulation, another country doesn't. i think some of the states in the u.s. are now talking about data portability. i think that's a potential solution. so if you own your own data, you can take your data out of facebook and put it into another social media platform. do you think that people would actually move or do you think it would

start to create potentially a 2 tiered system where truth and privacy become what triggered in a marketplace sting? interesting. that could be, but i'll tell you the behavior of filipinos given the, the police, and that's been injected into facebook. right. if you think of license poison for the, from the time rappler was set up in 2012 all the way until 2016. facebook was number one in alexa ranking, right? this is a ranking of all websites. now it's back to like number 7. we know something is wrong, but there's no other option. i don't think data or information are moral, morally wrong or morally good. i think that there's sort of these rules that, yeah, you know, i think about it in kind of like electricity. you can, you know, power a studio. we can sit comfortably in a warm environment with lots of light,

even though it's night time. you can also electric, you can kill someone, you know, i remember when my, when i was little, my grandmother would always freak out if there was cutlery anywhere near the toaster because you could die making toast. so yes, electricity is dangerous. but would you want to live without electricity? yeah, and the way i sort of think about it is, well, what do we do about electricity to try to amplify the good things that it does and minimise the bad things that it does. and we have safety standards, we've got building codes like this part in your book. yeah. imagine a facebook was a building, right? you know, where the building has been designed deliberately to make it really hard to leave the building the maze. and you know, the building powers itself every time you open a door. so there's lots of doors that go nowhere and you can't really leave. and at the front of that building, there are some terms and conditions in a book. you know, 20000 words, you know, a short novella exciting,

read outside and then the door size. by the way, you agree that you've read this like work outside and that you agree to everything that you, you know, and we wouldn't tolerate by. right? and we also wouldn't say the onus should be on people to avoid the weird and wonky and perhaps dangerous building. we would be going, why are these buildings being designed the same way and why aren't there rules to prevent people from designing these buildings in the 1st place? for me, oh, i find so frustrating about silicon valley is that they will continue to win as long as they keep up the narrative, that the onus and burden of safety in our democracy is on regular people rather than the people who designs the therms. this is the 1st thing i said, because i was like, when i was getting attacked, i was, they kept saying, you know,

you're a public figure and you know, it really, we can't do anything about it. then i just thought, you know, hello. i'm protected by the constitution of the journalist. you've taken away that protection and why is it the users fault? if you design it this way and who gets to let you choose? what is allowable and knowledgeable on this part form. this is the thing that i find, you know, really scary is that, you know, we, we have kind of relegated our democracy to mark zuckerberg. and i find that very terrifying but short, medium long term. and of course, my in infested interests is in the short term because i could go to jail if we don't find the right solutions. right? yeah, i mean, i think unfortunately, i don't, i don't think there's a solution because we have, it's a, it's a, it's an infrastructure. yeah. yeah. yeah. imagine if you had a pharmaceutical company regulated like

a tech company where you don't actually have to do any kind of trials, you don't have to prove safety of your systems. you can just like experiment. and when something goes wrong, you can say, oh, sorry, like farmers. pharmaceutical business is complicated. you know, biology is complicated or an airline going, you know, sorrier plane crash, it's hard to make things fly that are like really having happened. but when it, when you look at it like the reaction that facebook has, you know, whether it was in me, jamar in the philippines in new zealand. but the list goes on. the internet during a press release is like a pro forma standard. the world is really complicated, we've got it wrong. this time we're going to work to do better. and i question, why is it that you're allowed to experiment on societies and when real people get killed, there are no actual consequences. and you know, i feel safe mostly when i go onto a plane or take a drug from iraq, there are. so i, you know, i think that people should feel safe going on online as well. yes. agree. the

gotten away with impunity so far also because old power looked away, they abdicated responsibility to the young guys who know what they're doing. do you think that mark zuckerberg is in his about the, the a new editor, a new publisher? are they not publishing? right, and are they not allowing it? it's like they invited people to their house and they gave everyone guns and said it's the wild, wild west. so yes, i think the wow, i can tell you as they do you think that information is a weapon or isn't it, isn't the weaponization of information, isn't that what's coming out of art? i think if you look at donald trump, he has eroded the american constitution has, you know, gotten away with impeachment and is at the same time, you know, putting children in cages at the american border and undermining, you know,

civic cohesion in the united states. and i look at by and i just think that there is destruction that is happening and it is the product of information or rather this information. absolutely. and that is dangerous. and so in that sense i, i think that information can be a weapon. but at the same time, you know, journalists also use information, you know, for goods, the gate keeper in this public sphere, the world's largest distributor of news is facebook. you tube comes in a very close 2nd, right in terms of and the designs of both of these platforms are optimized to manipulate, to sell us and our data at our weakest possible moment to the person or company that will pay for an intended result. it's like these are platforms now that are designed there behavioral modification systems, and we are pavlov's dogs going in there. oh, it well known that no,

i did not. perhaps let's open it up to pavlov's dogs for some questions. a lot of these challenges were confronting right now, like, for example, epidemics, we've had a terrible measles epidemic in the philippines. go coronavirus right now, which is being significantly complicated by misinformation. do you see any hope that those kind of real world costs are going to start being recognized by even some of the more authoritarian activists? so in the philippines, i'll say yes, the government has now talked about how they're going to run after the, the fake news that's being said about the coronavirus, right? but then again, the government's own machinery is the one pumping out news because it is

pumping out lies because if it takes the attention, it refocuses attention from things going wrong. i guess i'm curious why the west always calls it misinformation. it's disinformation. it is meant to manipulate you, the dissent from aishah networks go bottom up from each of our countries in the global south and connect to this kind of nervous system that in my country now is combining russia and china. it is scary as all heck. but this is how information is weaponized for power and who can control this right now? silicon valley. the immediate solution. this is to christopher. so in 2013 while you're still with s.c.l. group, you had set up a similar company called us. and according to bust, a few do you had told an acquaintance of yours that you wanted to build the n.s.a.

as a wet dream? and you also claimed that evil pays more. so that's not true. one of the things that i've learned is that you know, when you go up against a company that specializes in this information and it also uses that increase narratives about people who criticize. so i do, i don't take your assertion as valid and if they're simply it's not true. i did not set up that company. i do not remember. and i have not seen any actual state of evidence to, you know, to substantiate this, this flippant comment. ok, well it seems to me that you helped create these tools which you admitted to building and you know, eventually these tools were misappropriated and you know,

day we used to hijack elections and undermine democracy. so do you understand why some people would question your motives today? of course i understand that, and i think it's healthy for people to, you know, have skepticism about anybody who talks about anything. you know, i understand i was involved in creating a company that, you know, ended up doing some really terrible things, not just in the united states,, but in many countries around the world. when i joined a c.r., i was, you know, 2324. i recognize that i did not know enough about what i was doing and you know, i have learned a lot in that process and if there were regulations in place at the time when i 1st started, that for example, required me as a data scientist or as an engineer to make a proper assessment of risk where there would be consequences if that the not

happen, not to say that came originally. there are other countries like it would never have existed or not exist in the future, but it would have made a lot of people think about what they're doing. considering the earth and the political situation in the philippines. what advice would you do? a potential filipino weasel blower this 1st bear i will say one thing, lawyers, lawyers, lawyers, lawyers talk to lawyers it's boyer's, have saved my life in so many occasions that's, that's all i would say. whistleblowers in the philippines have a horrendous track record. and part of the reason we have so few and the reason why fear now works is precisely because it is the whistleblower who suffers

versus who ever they blow the whistle against. i've submitted myself to the men and women inside the judiciary, who i hope will abide by the spirit of the constitution, but i am very cognizant that they have families to protect. they have reputations and ambitions, and this makes our justice system extremely flawed. but i submit myself to that. this is the christopher. you've recently been banned from facebook and there's been a study to show that when people deactivate their facebook accounts, they generally become happy. so i was wondering if this is affected your major school. so yeah, i'm ban on facebook and also ban on instagram because it's owned by facebook. so my life no longer has well curated pictures of other kind of toast and 1st try

my happier without using facebook. not really and here's why. it's really hard to stay in touch with people without using the 2 main systems that everybody else uses. facebook didn't just sort of deactivate my account and sort of a normal way. i got like completely or a stuff of facebook like i don't exist anymore. and my photos, you know, my memories, my friend groups all went away. and when you look at other examples in history of where the sort of collective memory of a person is a race to die in. for example, the soviet union, where if you spoke out against the regime, you would be disappeared,

not just physically, but like literally your photos would go away, mentions of you would go away and it felt really weird to look at, you know, 10 years of my life disappearing, they didn't just ban me, they deleted me, and it felt really weird to be deleted. i am more broadly happier, i feel lighter. it has a sort of gone through this somewhat on the scale in that sense. but i do miss being able to be in touch with people. i think for me, my final thought is diet. we've got a really serious problem. to me, it feels like the kinds of excess dental crisis that we have in some ways, like climate change. you don't notice the incremental changes and democracy and tell you no longer have that. but i hope that people take that to heart and you know that if, if you think that's worrying, then you know, make your voice heard and be angry about it. the 2 biggest battles and you mention

them both is climate because we will die and you can't fix climate if you don't have the information. the battle for world the battle for truth, these are the 2 battles that is pivotal this year is pivotal. if we don't do the right things, we will lose both. it is death by a 1000 cuts and we must do more. i don't think it's being a debbie downer because obviously we have hope we must have hope with this. we have to fix it. i think human values haven't changed. we've always had the devil and the angel on our shoulders, right. but the way that social media platforms have been formulated. fans the devil in your ear and encourages us against them, splintering our public sphere part so each of us can take

a role. we get rid of the lies in our immediate areas of influence. we look for what binds us together rather than what pulls us apart. we act a little bit like outsiders so that we can understand and analyze a little bit better. and i think for the journalists and the audience, there is no time that requires the mission of journalism of truth tellers no time. like now, we need to do this and we need to do it. now. when you play for england, i was never really going to be as accepted is my strike, a counterpart whose name is and why if you raise fact historically great facts

about the empire, people become hysterical. they say, if you don't like it here, leave. if you're not upsetting people, you're not saying and you know, i do. oh oh hello, melbourne has been released. the weather is gorgeous and apparently coronavirus has also gone so you can celebrate a bit on the beach. the weather will not keep. i'm afraid. we've got clouds stretch

across the bite. it's representing a frontal system, a trough which is a line of weather. sundry top from the south of australia down towards victoria and tasmania, where the court is good. but the real story probably happens further north. just watch the temperatures that in adelaide 33 in sydney on saturday on sunday 39 in sydney. there's a huge area of extreme heat, existing and forming, getting worse if you like in the outback of both queensland and to use aswell as on the sydney forecast shows that for the city itself, you lose it because proper seabreeze on monday, that's a 24 rising into 30 by choose day. obviously the opposite is happening in the station as side of the equator. winter is showing itself. you will feel it. in the north of japan snows likely in her car and a star on the mountains of holland. sure. otherwise it's fine though cold. haven't monocytes over like frost engine alan will have quite possibly just about,

but by day the sun is out brilliantly. on counting the past president xi extends his grip across china and hong kong. could taiwan be next? a failed decades old policy of unfettered free market. it all makes and people of chill, a redefined careful ism taxing the rich to pay for the and demi canal to t.v., covering the cost of al-jazeera. these explosions were not an act of war. these nuclear bombs were experiments by the soviet union to the kazakh. people lived in the vicinity, the motives make little difference. rewind, silent on al-jazeera,

play an important role in technique when. ringback this is al-jazeera. hello, i'm marianne demise the all watching the news hour live from london coming up in the next 60 minutes. iran's top nuclear scientist is killed in an attack by gunmen in the attack. iran. one official calls it an act of state tara, a new drive to resolve the week's long conflict in northern ethiopia, but hopes fade after prime minister abu ahmed needs african envoys is growing anger in india. tens of thousands of farmers did.