you can follow their dreams. president elect joe biden has promised to end the m.p.p. program on his 1st day in office now his incoming administration has signaled it will take more time and there are questions about what will then happen to those spending this christmas in show john holmes out zita. hello again the headlines on al-jazeera 3 u.n. peacekeepers have been killed by unknown attackers in the central african republic u.n. secretary general on talking about terrorists has condemned the killings and the koan is demanding an investigation police in the u.s. city of nashville say they found what could be human remains near the site of an explosion that happened early on christmas morning when a mobile home blew up the vehicle had been playing a bomb warning beforehand 3 people have minor injuries. this morning's attack on our community was intended to create chaos and fear in this season of peace and

hope but nish billions have proven time and time again that the spirit of our city cannot be broken but we're not going to rest until those responsible for this outrageous and currently attack are brought to justice. and the full force of the metro police and our partners at the f.b.i. and they are working together to make sure that we will get back to being safe city that we. are. millions of americans have ignored advice to stay home for the holidays as corona virus infections their sore more than a 1000000 people pass through airports on wednesday the busiest travel day since march and the pandemic has led to a quiet christmas celebrations across europe several governments ordered their people to stay home a new and potentially more contagious variants of the virus 1st detected in britain added to the urgency to impose new lock downs another 800 british military

personnel have been deployed to help clear the thousands of truck drivers waiting to get into france more than a 1000 troops are now involved in the operation at the port of dover testing drivers for corona virus and distributing food and water new coronavirus travel restrictions were imposed by france last sunday drivers are now allowed to cross the border if they are negative for. these main opposition leaders has died after contracting covert 1971 year old is being treated in throngs was kidnapped in march by an armed group in northern mali while campaigning for elections he was eventually freed after 6 months was a former finance minister and a 3 time presidential candidate. more news on al-jazeera and less than 30 minutes time for now it's up front. we bring you stories and developments that. congress is debating

a bill seeking to raise millions of dollars for the super rich families. that come to. are the rich doing enough to combat climate change i'll ask award winning environmental activist neemo bassy but 1st we debate whether their surveillance and history is out of control and how it can be kept in check. authoritarian regimes and even democracies that want to spy on citizens and clamp down on activist movements can now tap into a murky largely unregulated global surveillance market even criminal organizations are suspected of having gotten their hands on cyber weapons the surveillance industry has grown basically unchecked the u.n.

has even called for a moratorium on the global sale and transfer of private surveillance technology until new regulations are put in place to protect civil liberties and has good reason to worry the number of cameras shoes for surveillance globally it's expected to reach more than 1000000000 next year joining me to discuss this are ron deeper director of the citizen lab an academic group based in canada the documents state surveillance and the ways fernando garcia the director of red that work in defense of digital rights a human rights organization in mexico thank you both for joining me in the arena ron i want to start with you so in a report published this month your lab found that a surveillance firm affiliated with the israeli cyber arms manufacture and so group likely sold spying technology to at least 20 countries yes that includes authoritarian governments like the united arab emirates but also democratic ones like belgium so what does that say about the reach of massive surveillance. well i

think we've been going through a really profound shift in how we communicate over the last couple of decades at the heart of which is the proliferation of sensors and the acumen accumulation of data in the ands of a number of private companies and so you have effectively our personal lives turned inside out and that leaves digital trails and breadcrumbs everywhere and of course governments are going to seek to exploit that to take advantage of it for whatever reason whether it's law enforcement investigations national security investigations or in the case of corrupt actors or autocratic actors to go after a political opposition and in the in the same period of time especially within the last 5 years we've seen a proliferation of this industry that services their needs so these are a wide range of companies most of which are based in the west but that's changing as well the technologies are sold to governments without really anyone checking to

make sure there is proper due diligence in place to prevent harms and not surprisingly we're seeing widespread abuses as a result so governments are repeatedly using these technologies to go after journalist to go after human rights defenders to go after lawyers sometimes even with lethal consequences as we saw in the case most prominently the murdered washington post columnist jamal shoji we found out citizen. showed you these inner circle of confidence had their phones hacked by saudi operatives using very sophisticated israeli surveillance technology i want to bring you into this now in 2017 you work with with citizen lab to reveal something really startling about the mexican government ramos is talking about things that governments to write you reveal that the mexico. government had and checked at the phones of

members of civil society with spyware supplied to them by the israeli tech company n.s.o. group which we mentioned and according to an investigation by a group of global journalists called the cartel project police forces in mexico have even sold similar tools to drug cartels they were supposed to be tracking down so i'm curious what concerns you the most the obvious corruption and bad governance or the fact that companies like n.s.o. group are able to do business with countries that have a dismal track record on human rights exactly i think sometimes peace the narrative that comes from technology companies that sell these phone surveillance software is that is a really black and white world with good bison good guys and bad guys but the reality in places like mexico is that for example the line between organized crime and the government itself it's blurry or nonexistent most of the time so you end up

with situations in which mouth over there is bought using as an excuse the securities utilization of our country is in the i don't you think you can really use against society for example one of the cases you said about a human rights group that represents the families of more than 43 students disappeared in mexico in 2014 and their mouths were instead of being used to find those responsible for disappearance of these. young students west used to target the lawyers representing the family some of the students you see also that these tools that are marketed as being sold to combat crime are actually used by criminals either directly or through the corruption and lucian that excuse between many authorities. organized crime members so let me ask you about that given that the chance the potential for abuse that you just talked about

a survey. capabilities why haven't these technologies come under tight international legal control the same way there are protocols and conventions restricting the use of conventional weapons well i guess because it's the same reason because the drug war is not ending is because it's a big business for a lot of people it's a big business for governments that get to give these contract these really huge contracts very with a lot of discretion they can choose who they purchase these 2 tools from because the companies also become barry very. well reach selling these people's tools and all these contracts are on there are a lot of secrecy there is not transparency of them and there's a little impunity also even though we have uncovered things that were not asked me yes more than $25.00 cases in mexico there's total impunity no one's in jail you know if you can it be tried for surveilling journalists and you most offend so

exclusive let me bring iran into this ron how can we expect there to be any accountability on surveillance abuses when the european union has supplied drones and wiretapping equipment to share for example that's a country his government has has cracked down on activists so there are worldwide organizations that seem to be complicit in this yeah louie's are absolutely right here the financial incentives are huge this is a big and growing marketplace it's an industry that makes a lot of people money i would just add to it that traditionally the type of activities we're talking about here happen to be the most secretive of governments so so most governments especially the well resourced ones have within their security apparatus signals intelligence agencies some of whom go back decades most of whom operated entirely in the shadows without. any accountability so it's very

hard to clean this up for both of those reasons you have state secrecy you have a very lucrative industry it's going to take a lot of work to turn this around and start mitigating would a really horrific hormones that are proliferating yes i do want to ask you about china some of the most egregious uses of surveillance technologies happen and china the party state employs facial recognition systems to subjugate millions of muslims and the region and china has also exported its monitoring systems to at least 18 countries including ecuador and germany so what does that mean for freedom and privacy standards globally. well we do really have to worry about china because you know it's quite daunting to think about the progression china has gone

through over the last 10 years especially where they've proven. you know how being information controls and and a largely one party state authoritarian system can co-exist can actually be very profitable when it's come by and with this type of surveillance so it suits both the government and it suits the private sector and so a lot of chinese companies are innovating around facial recognition artificial intelligence empowered surveillance and you're right they're beginning to exploit this which is why there's an urgency to what we're talking about here if western countries let's let's just start with don't get their own houses in order don't bring about some degree of accountability over there security agencies and over the companies that are export ing these type of technologies we won't be able to address the looming threat of chinese technology which is already creeping into the marketplace as you mention ok so let's talk more about using safeguards on on these

tools that actually could be beneficial if you have the safeguards there are some countries that were really praise for the way they handled the cove in 1000 pandemic they curb the spread of the virus in part because of really invasive surveillance tactics specifically in taiwan the government tracked quarantine residence g.p.s. locations using their phone numbers and then we get a notification that somebody had left an area that they were supposed to stay and so is it that proof some way louise that surveillance can benefit societies well i wouldn't go that far i think there is a lot of uncertainty and not reluctant rico maybe this oh why certain countries that be more successful than others he come back into. 19 and then week in week out the same way as you mentioned they want we have a lot of examples with very basic tools that have not been producing those type of assaults or i would temper the conclusions on whether massive surveillance it's

really important by the way that's a really. it's. supposed the emergency situation that it's not going to last forever so it's important to not draw the conclusion that total surveillance it's good for society definition you're saying you don't believe it's getting too much credit and situations like this you think they have been at least part of the marketing strategy of the companies that want to sell these type of tools and so group rebranded it but it's pegasus to all to try to sell it to governments to combat 19 it's really more of a marketing gimmick that actually something that actually based on on on on an editor's secrets are important but there are also things that we even we shouldn't be allowed in the democratic society or at least we should how are these question of whether we want to allow them a private society to exist. i believe for example if i were it's it's something

that it's very difficult to do to control even more now because for example it's of mexico we were able to document those cases because there britain effect it had to click on a link sent on an s.m.s. message but now we know that group and other vendors are have the capability of infecting phones without even leaving any trace without leaving any evidence of that surveillance happening so that makes it even more difficult to control so we really need to put 2 to have a really meaningful discussion on where to put red lines on which they are just we shouldn't allow to be used and which ones we can allow where we really strong robust safeguards that really keep meaningful accountability and allow society to accept control over the use of these technologies so ron do you think there are instances where or using surveillance technology is justified. absolutely i mean

you know we live in a very dangerous world we live in a risk society we need governments to protect us and to enforce the law if if for nothing else than to protect and preserve human rights and you want governments to be well equipped to have the technologies they need to be able to do their jobs the confusion arises when people think there is some kind of tradeoff between surveillance and privacy what we need are robust restraint mechanisms safeguards exactly what you're talking about there's no in compatibility here governments and private companies for that matter need to be subjected to independent oversight by appropriate agencies that are established with significant capabilities themselves and authorities to be able to examine cross-check independently to make sure that a technology that is extremely invasive as louise describes the latest versions of these type of spyware require no interaction on the part of

a target you can simply ring up a phone and take it over track that person turn on their camera this is like atomic level surveillance capabilities in the hands of governments that are going to abuse them obviously we need to buckle down on restraint mechanisms which currently do not exist that will be the final word randeep are the ways for nanak i see it thank you both for joining me in the arena. thank you very much. bob a coronavirus crisis grabbed headlines worldwide this year scientists and activists have been ringing the alarm on another crisis threatening our way of life climate change earlier i spoke to a pioneer in linking human rights to the environment whether of the right livelihood award widely known as the alternative nobel prize him abassi is found in multiple environmental groups in his native nigeria a decade ago he said the richest one percent of the world had decided it was ok to

sacrifice the 99 percent i started by asking him if anything has changed since then oh she would have. showed he was because at the time there was an element of seriousness about redeployment the mission. which she. alleges ready for missions to action but rather it was. all governments looking for ways to of action. what it was all about britain should be a good balance where nobody will be doing that by. going to the beautiful national league to me contributions i mean what is suitable for them to do what is going to be good for them to do. is nothing nothing to respond to it should.

remember who get it through these communities and individuals are being exposed so to actually get worse let's talk about giving up responsibility leaders in the global south will say we are just trying to grow we are trying to keep our heads above water it's not expected it's not fair rather to expect them to cut back so much on grain else gas emissions when there are other fully industrialized countries that should be taking the lead on this what do you think about that. they do. is right for the countries in africa and the pacific. lasted that never really got to make that a significant need to global warming is not right to get money from them to cut it me shows that didn't create it in the short space business right in the current dynamics you find that countries were proposing to do shop more than they need to do a desk should not bishan the culture that nima contributed to the climate problem

should have much more of a mission to do than the rich countries the industrialized countries are not serious about short term measures but rather pushing everything to be looked at rates so that dickon of foyt do it and it immediately but will well if needed melanie's it needed action. is abandoning fossil fuels at a realistic target. it is realistic that turner is the kind of another it is a little bit about the years human beings our history our lives by a combination of politics that were driven by stories that we tell ourselves about so many years people out always said we can do without forcing choices so it was said was or will be made and they just saw us into the foreseeable future but no size is say now we just have a few more years coupled to the atmosphere that we have to ship so if we

want humans and other living beings on the planet that's all right we have no option but to ship to fulfill so we both wish there were that we like you know not something that just has to be done so or something that happens in the us it is what seen as a market based solution a very capitalistic term will get to that in a minute but subsequent things like cap and trade. i don't think you're a fan of that why not why do you think that that is not the way to go to make sure doesn't work at it metrics nature doesn't look on human economy may shows major major at least not. cut and trade carbon offsetting. market mechanism so marketed barmen time is of. begun to take place and just base. to nettie said the cure to in the cure to

prescribe was initiated i believe anybody remember correctly most contagious wouldn't it but you might get it. call it using market forces or market mechanisms to talk about when we got the time but there was a lot of pressure off was that that was the way to go and to do we had to get it these lead net 0 or the couple of isolation the colonization sounds of a beautiful doesn't it but net 0 simply means it's another way of taking it some steps forward it means you've got to keep on polluting in europe and then you probably see if you trace enough to shore up and keep on polluting the atmosphere because the trees are weighed africa countering what i'm doing in europe that is. diction business climates tradition it doesn't address the real issue which is to stop the pollution plan that will make it more national crisis make its money from

other people's misery so you can you can so you have the space you have all those who come. and said that really needs to happen is the pollution needs to stop and as a result of this horrible pandemic we've been living in and a lot of ways some pollution has stopped when when cities stopped with endless streams stopped right at the core of this and that people say it's a return to nature there with some blue water blue skies in places that we have not seen before how does it make you feel that it took something like a deadly pandemic for us to see what can actually happen. what will really will depend big us dollar john much in that sense because it should be 2 months kind of change we are not it's not impossible for us to change. so the prime minister was cautious to 2nd place a restricted our movement is restricted. to breaches of pollution

signature greet a little bit. was just for a moment. we didn't have enough time to lead the lesson that ought to be lent. the climate would not could not solve the problems of global warming couldn't give us clean water for the little time i'm speaking to you should be not. there with oil spills on google during the lockdown because the oil corporations were pretty they were considered to be a shot 7 cisco you might think that so to keep her on drilling. even well through a locked up in their homes so we give not with mischa quit unity or let it on the. that think rather than wait for the pandemic or you now know you should judge the sub the problems we have this problem we have to change the situation by ourselves we have to mobilize we have to work easily diety we have to join forces to make

sure that we see the change that is needed so let's pivot to boko haram for a moment and i know that some people may not understand how that gets this conversation but it does because whenever you talk about boko haram we often talk about it and a religious or security context but there is very much an environmental and also to look at when you talk about boko haram and what is happening and night area why don't we see more of the connection between the 2 well you know generally the environment is no dust does not to get doug rich in news in politico compositions. is much more is talk about religion as a job out of balance and of course there is a question of balance also arced religion as a reason for the balance but is vision also that a lot of responsibly established it is not is that part of nigeria is caused by the

government of the tips. which is it didn't begin as fresh what the electorate what the licking west africa shed by nigeria. and the. mother 90 percent the size it was in the nets in sixty's this us made this mess middle she shows the spacemen a pastor and his displacement of well off thomas of course when they're moved they moved to the streets where they moved to this people were displaced of choice easily we did lose their misapply because they can easily be recruited into this kind of militia groups just migrants on will create more cultural so we have a sinister motive ometer tradition madura with a trip. as well as. greeted by global warming i want to end on a personal note what you do is dangerous our am mentioning that when you started

your activism the country was under military rule would you have been incarcerated detained harassed some activists of and paid with their lives and specifically one study found that killings of environmental defenders had doubled over the last 15 years to reach levels usually associated with war zones do you ever personally fear for your safety for your life. when you take on the kind of work that we do it is driven by commitment and passion and it is. a good lunch for some shit down on the show. i just heard much said that europe is not. we when we. do it's kind of situations we just don't know. what do people critical just that'll be the final word mr neavitt passing thank you very much for joining us here but you probably

agree. that as our show up front i'll be back next year. yes. and the disease because 50 percent of all the deaths of children and. stuff. likely to seek a child at least. the last people to decide to leave us is to. try. to. assess.

the resolution and classical music known for his extravagant productions and had insisted. that his success hasn't come without controversy andre rieu discusses the impact is what has happened in the classical music industry. just hear. the silence has been disturbed. beneath his speed. is one of scandinavia some largest iron ore deposits. and it's driving a wedge between those seeking wealth. and those defending their way of life.

a witness documentary on a. ready . 3 u.n. peacekeepers are killed in central african republic as rebels call off a cease fire and resume fighting ahead of sunday's elections. there i missed this al jazeera life and are also coming. emotional home explodes in the u.s. city of nashville after playing a record of bomb mourning. but we're not going to rest until those responsible for this outrageous a cowardly attack or stricter.