this is "piers morgan live." welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. tonight, breaking news. the government is watching you. it's not just phones. now google, facebook, apple and more, giving your photos and e-mails to the government according to the "washington post" and "guardian." i'll talk to the reporter who broke the story plus the senator that has been against the patriot act from the beginning. on the grill, christine quinn, a woman who wants to be the first female openly gay mayor of new york. quite a comeback. can anthony weiner get in her way. also, the valedictorian that you tore up his speech and said the lord's prayer. his proud father is here to talk about it. we're digging deep into the stories making the headlines,

including a truly unbelievable story of a texas man who shot dead an escort for not having sex with him and literally got away with murder. we begin with our breaking news. u.s. intelligence agencies have been secretly operating a broad data mining program that collected e-mail, photos and just about everything else from private communications from most americans. that's according to the "washington post" and "the guardian." the post says microsoft, yahoo! google, facebook, aol, skype, youtube and apple were all involved. cnn's attempting to confirm the reports but it's clearly a stunning development, particularly for a president who said this on his first full day in office. >> i will also hold myself as president to a new standard of openness, transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency. >> what happened to that, mr. president? how things have changed. today the "new york times" editorial board said the administration has now lost all credibility on this issue.

quite damning remarks. now the huffington post, take a look at this, a new president, george w. obama. joining me is a reporter who was first with the verizon story last night, glenn greenwald of "the guardian." first of all, congratulations on two terrific days of scoops from you and the "guardian." in terms of what happened tonight, tell me briefly what the latest development is. it seems on the face of it to be even more serious than yesterday. >> i think you could definitely make the argument that it is, because what this program enables the national security agency to do is to reach directly into the servers of the largest internet companies in the world, things that virtually every human being in the western world now uses, to communicate with one another, and take whatever it is that they want without any checks of any kind. there's no courts looking over their shoulder to see what they're taking and they don't even have the check that they have to go to the internet companies and ask for it any longer. they have been given or have taken depending on who you talk

to, direct access into the pipes where all of these conversations take place, and can suck up whatever it is that they want at any given moment. >> what this means in a nutshell is that the nsa on behalf of the obama administration had been secretly looking at just about any kind of communication they see fit from any american. >> yeah. i think this is really the important point, piers, is that there is a massive apparatus within the united states government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity not just in the united states but around the world. that is not hyperbole. that is their objective. to make so that any single form of communication, behavior, interaction, with not be beyond their reach. they have developed extraordinarily sophisticated technologies and expensive mechanisms in order to make that happen. it's well past time we have a debate about whether or not

that's the kind of country and world in which we want to live. we haven't had that debate because it's all done in secrecy and the obama administration has been bullying and threatening anybody who talks about writing it or doing journalism about it. it's well past time that come to an end. >> absolutely. this new bombshell involves a setup called prism. sounds like something out of "star wars" but prism is now responsible, i read either in your report or the "washington post," we've got martin gelman coming up, who wrote that, prism is responsible for one in seven of all the intelligence reports by the nsa and is likely to be an even bigger percentage going forward. that's quite a staggering thing to discover when no one even knows what prism is. >> precisely. no one has ever heard of it before. yet it has extraordinary consequences for what our government does, for how the world is impacted. if you look at the pages of

reports that the prism program talks about and the nsa boasts about, they pride themselves on discovering all sorts of political conversations in places like turkey and israel. they use facebook and google and skype to invade conversations about a whole variety of things in south america, in asia, and many times, people who are involved in these conversations and where they originate are people in the united states. it's all done without warrants and without accountability and the entire world is impacted. >> now, i've got to ask you this, because we've seen what's happened to a.p. journalists and to mr. rosen at fox news. are you worried now that they're going to come after you, big brother style, and try and come after your sources? >> well, i think the sources behind this are incredibly courageous people who could have sold this information for extraordinary amounts of money to foreign governments or handed it over, had that been their objective to harm the united states to enemies of the united states. they didn't. they came forward with immense amounts of courage because they

believe that their fellow citizens should be aware of what their government is doing. so when i look at their courage, i get inspired by that and i know that the constitution right in the first amendment says that as a citizen and as a journalist, i'm guaranteed the right to engage in freedom of the press and to report on what my government is doing in the dark. that's not just my right but my obligation. so whatever the justice department wants to do, they can beat their chest all they want. people like dianne feinstein and saxby chambliss can have press conferences threatening people for bringing out -- bringing light to what it is that they're doing but the only people who are going to be investigated are them. it's well past time that these threats start to be treated with the contempt that they deserve. that's certainly how i intend to treat them moving forward with more investigation and disclosures. >> the response from the people who think this is not a bad idea can be summed up by congressman mike rogers. listen to what he had to say today. >> i can tell you why this program is important. within the last few years, this program was used to stop a program -- excuse me, stop a terrorist attack in the united states. we know that.

>> we don't know what that is. it's the kind of thing you would expect him to trot out, i guess. what is your reaction to that? >> well, it's fascinating that the most right wing members of the congress like mike rogers and lindsey graham have become the administration's most vocal defenders. the obama administration's most vocal defenders because it's a right wing mentality that says we should just trust the government to know everything about us in the name of security. the tactic you are seeing there which is increasingly being exposed as frivolous and manipulative is that every time the u.s. government gets caught doing anything that they shouldn't be doing or that people are stunned to learn that they're doing, the playbook they use over and over and that they have used over and over for the last decade is to simply scream terrorist or terrorism over and over in the hope that they will put americans into enough fear that they'll simply acquiesce to whatever the government is doing. i think it's critically important that americans understand that this quote unquote threat is one that is less likely to kill them than things like a lightning strike or bathtub accident.

and that it's time to stop allowing the u.s. government to get more and more power for itself and destroy more and more of our rights simply by invoking this terrorist canard over and over and over again. we see with the phone records, they weren't targeting terrorists. they were targeting all americans indiscriminately. the same with this prism program as well. that's why the light is so vital because it exposes how false their justifications continuously are. >> just finally, try and clarify what their purpose was here. was their primary purpose to root out americans who may be up to no good, or foreigners who are up to no good? >> well, under the surveillance law that passed in 2008, the bipartisan congress passed, they eliminated the warrant requirement for all conversations except ones that take place by and among americans exclusively on american soil. so they don't need warrants now for people who are foreigners outside of the u.s., but they also don't need warrants for americans who are in the united states communicating with people reasonably believed to be

outside of the u.s. so these programs almost certainly, except for the prism one, are sweeping up conversations of american citizens on u.s. soil as long as the nsa decides the person they're talking to probably is outside the u.s., but again, the fact that there are no checks, no oversight about who's looking over the nsa's shoulder means they can take whatever they want. the fact that it's all behind a wall of secrecy and they threaten people who want to expose it means that whatever they're doing, even violating the law, is something that we're unlikely to know until we start having real investigations and real transparency into what it is that the government is doing. that's what we need first and foremost. >> glenn greenwald, congratulations again on exposing what is a true scandal. i appreciate you joining me. >> thank you. >> the "the washington post's" martin gelman joins me from the nation's capital with late-breaking scandal that has exploded over the last 24 hours. you've got this extraordinary report tonight involving this new thing, prism, which ju seems to be a license for the

government through the nsa to get into almost any internet server and find and retrieve anything they like. >> well, they certainly have the technical capability. once you have your hooks into the server, then you take what you like and they are not interested in asking yahoo! or google or facebook either to do it for them, because they want to do it in realtime, and they're not interested in telling yahoo! or facebook or google this is who we're targeting, that is what we want to get. that's not the way security people think if they can help it. glenn broke an important story about the order to verizon for bulk call records. the complete records of who called who and when and where their calls went and that sort of thing. that is entirely indiscriminate. that is so they can data mine the entire universe. that's what it's for. that is not what i believe prism is doing. they want access to prism so that it can get this

unbelievably rich never before existed in history, didn't exist ten years ago, cache of online material that people collaboratively hand over and that their friends hand over. there are jokes about google or facebook as the world's greatest intelligence agency. i don't know why i didn't think of it sooner, the nsa would -- >> right. here's the thing. the power points we have been showing while you've been talking, these are from the prism power points. quite extraordinary they put them into power point form, when you think about it, but they did. what do they tell us, because the key thing to me is the suggestion from them that they have worked hand in hand with these internet companies but many of these companies have come out strongly tonight saying absolutely, we did not work hand in hand with them. >> there are a couple things to know about that. one is that it's very clear from the fine print of the document and not just the fine print.

there is something in the speaker's notes but also in the slides themselves. the government is clear that the most sensitive secret in this top secret/si/orcon/no foreign document is the identity of the companies. it puts the company in awkward position that it could have legal consequences for the company and they really, really don't want the companies to stop cooperating. i'm not shocked that the companies are denying it. i don't assume -- >> you believe them? >> there may be some technical basis on which they can say that we are not actively collaborating or that they don't have what we consider in our own definition to be direct access to our servers but what i do know is i have talked to more than one person who has sat at a desk at a web portal and typed out commands and reached into those servers from a distance.

whatever they want to call that, that's what's happening. >> it depends entirely how they're using it and it depends on the -- you have the administration saying congress passed this, two different presidents of two parties think it's a great idea. the judges all thing it's a great idea and the problem is that the public never got even a peak at what is happening. the actual law that was passed in 2008 and repassed in 2012 says nothing about what they can do with this power. they have a secret highly classified legal interpretation of their own powers which they then bring to a secret court which hears only from them and says yeah, that's okay with us, you can do that with your powers, then they do it. and companies are not allowed to say what they're doing, either. so the public which is in fact

paying some price or other in terms of privacy, we don't know how much, never gets to say that's not quite how i would draw the boundary between security and liberty here. >> thank you very much indeed for joining me. >> thank you. i want to bring in a man who has been against the patriot act from the very beginning, senator bernie sanders. says the government has far too much power to spy on americans. senator, this is just unbelievable, isn't it? >> it is. i voted against the patriot act time and time again because i worried about giving the government incredible powers and i'm afraid that all of the fears that i have turned out to be justified. look, the bottom line is that the united states government now has phone records and other records of tens and tens and tens of millions of americans who have nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with terrorism. i happen to believe terrorism is a serious issue. i want our law enforcement people to be vigorous and aggressive in going after terrorists. but we can do that without undermining the basic constitutional rights that have made this a great and free

country. so i hope that we revisit this issue of the usa patriot act and we constrain what the government can do. i want kids out there, i want every american to know when you get on the telephone, the government is not going to have records of who you were talking to and what time you were talking. i don't want that kind of feeling to inculcate americans. >> it's not just phone calls, though. it's e-mails, photos, video, audio, documents, connection logs, everything. what has been going on here in the name of terrorism investigation is so all-encompassing, it almost embraces every single aspect of every american's life online. >> bottom line is if we believe in freedom, if we believe that you and i have the right to live our lives without the government knowing what we are doing, then we have got to have a serious debate on this issue and in fact, we have got to change the

law. >> how can you believe in freedom, try and play devil's advocate for me. how can you believe in freedom and boast about fighting for freedom when you have secret courts, secret operations like prism, secret investigations which go into every spit and cough of every american's life without any member of the public knowing about it. that's not freedom, is it? >> not to my mind it's not. that's why i voted against the patriot act. i think what the american people have got to rise up and say look, yes, we want protection from terrorism. i happen to believe that's a serious issue. there are people who want to do us harm. but i am absolutely convinced that we can do it in a way without accumulating the records of tens and tens and tens of millions of innocent americans. that's what we have got to do. >> senator, you're an independent. the "new york times" editorial board says tonight the administration has now lost all credibility. has what barack obama been doing, and his administration, not just with all these

revelations in the last 24 hours but also the irs and going after a.p. and fox news and so on, when you put it all together, is what he's doing worse than anything george w. bush did? >> i think bush started the process and what i had hoped and i think millions of americans had hoped, that barack obama, who knew something about constitutional law, would not only change bush's policies in a number of ways, but certainly with regard to civil liberties. i think it's fair to say that many of us are deeply disappointed that he did not end many of those programs and provide a lot more transparency than he has. >> you could argue he's right to say he would be different. he's worse. anyway, senator, thank you very much indeed for joining me. >> thank you. when we come back, how far do you want your government to go to protect you? how much of your privacy are you willing to give up? a heated debate on the big questions of the night. çñ

i'm a verizon customer. it doesn't bother me one bit for the national security administration to have my phone number, because what they're trying to do is find out what terrorist groups we know about and individuals and who the hell they're calling. >> senator lindsey graham today defending the nsa. he's a frequent critic of the obama white house. this time he's on the president's side. the country grappling with the question how far should a government go to protect its citizens. joining me for that debate is attorney alan dershowitz. welcome. alan, let me start with you. that was the same senator lindsey graham who refuses to countenance universal background checks or any kind of gun register because of the terrible invasion into privacy of american lives, and there he is basically endorsing the single greatest invasion into privacy of american lives you could possibly imagine. >> there's hypocrisy on both sides. the man on the top of your show,

glenn greenwald, does a terrible disservice. i'm also opposed to this intrusion but he makes it sound like the obama administration is doing it in order to go after people like you and me and ordinary americans. >> how do we know they're not? >> we know they're not. >> do we? >> yes. >> given the fact they were targeting tea party members through the irs and we were shocked by that. we didn't know they were secretly targeting journalists at a.p. and fox news. >> remember there is room for secrets and journalists who deliberately publish classified information are in fact violating the law. the road to hell may well be paved with good intentions but let's at least recognize good intentions when they're there. i do not believe the obama administration has set out to try to find out what its political opponents are trying to do the way the nixon administration did during watergate. >> very trusting, alan. >> i'm not trusting. i strongly oppose this system. i think it should be stopped. and the big problem is we don't know what we don't know. but to overstate it the way

greenwald overstates it and overstates everything, he has a long history of exaggeration because he represents a radical ideology, doesn't help the problem. we have to resolve it by nuanced debate, by giving appropriate weight to the need to have some secrets, the need to do some investigation and let's balance. >> let me bring in tom. there is obviously an argument, of course there is, a government has to do what it can to try and thwart future terror attacks. they have already indicated today that they thwarted one through this process, maybe they thwarted others. we don't know about that. but at what point do you draw the line, do you think? >> well, i think, piers, one of the big problems here has been that our society, the american people, and the congress, and the media, have basically said to the authorities, to the fbi, to the cia, and other intelligence services, we will not tolerate one single terrorist death and that's the

problem we've had, is that we had the terrible events of 9/11 and 12 years later, you know, if one or two or four or five people get killed in a terrorist attack, people are outraged, the fbi dropped the ball, why didn't they know about this, how come they can't read the bad guys' minds. so we've created a situation for the authorities to basically know they will not be excused or there's no explanation if a terrorist act occurred, it had to be because the government dropped the ball. >> you see, i think that's a very good point. what it comes down to, it comes down to trust. i think obama's big problem is that this comes so soon after first benghazi and then particularly the irs scandal, because there you have information being collated in an apparently normal trustworthy manner, then being abused, and the fear here is that they've done it once, they'll do it again. >> it's an absolutely legitimate fear. absolutely legitimate.

but what we have to do is take a deep breath. we have to examine what's going on. we don't know what we don't know. if it turns out that in order to focus on a particular individual, you have to go and get a specific warrant, that gives a level of protection. i don't like the secret court. >> here's the thing. once you have that information and they can get anything they want by the look of it, imagine come the next election, imagine chris christie is the candidate and they suddenly one person lower down the food chain as with the irs thinks i wonder what chris christie has been up to on the internet and finds something damaging. once it's there, it's there to be abused. >> we need to have firewalls. we need to create balances. the supreme court the other day said you can get dna from people who are arrested for crime. if the only dna you could get is that which is like a fingerprint, that's one thing but if you can then use it to go and find medical records, we need firewalls. we need safety. we shouldn't ever trust. but we need to think hard about this and strike the appropriate balance.

we shouldn't overreact by taking away from our government essential technological powers that do in fact protect us. >> tom fuentes, is the biggest problem here new technology in the sense this wouldn't have been even an issue 15 years ago, because even if he wanted to, there wouldn't have been an internet or any of that kind of stuff available to invade. so it's kind of a symptom, really, of modern times, isn't it? >> well, that's absolutely true, you would not have had this capability. i know during my career with the fbi, we didn't have this ability to get such huge quantities of data so quickly. but don't forget also, piers, these companies have the data so whether or not it ends up in an nsa data base somewhere so that it can be reviewed at a future time if an issue comes up, all of these companies have that. >> good point. >> they're tracking your spending every day. they're tracking everything, where you go, what you do now. when you get on your computer tonight, when you get home on your personal computer, those popup ads come up for you.

they're geared toward the way you've spent money on the internet, the way you've shopped, the sites that you've visited. these companies already have that. >> now you're freaking me out, tom. >> there's a big difference between 15 different companies trying to use the data for their own personal use, and the government having it in one place, having it in a bank. that gives too much power to the government. >> it's a fascinating debate. i'm sure there will be more revelations and more debate to come. thank you both very much indeed. coming up, a protest and a prayer. valedictorian whose defiant show of faith is going viral tonight. i speak to his father next.

a display of faith stuns a crowd at a graduation in south carolina this weekend. liberty high school banned prayers during the ceremony but the valedictorian took the issue into his own hands, ripping up his prepared speech and using the big moment to deliver the lord's prayer. watch this. >> our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. thy kingdom come. thy will be done. [ applause ] >> as we forgive those who trespass against us. lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever, amen. >> the young man's father, roy costa iii, joins me now live. so roy, what was your feeling? did you know your son was going to do this? >> actually, i did know that he was going to do it.

he and i talked about a couple days before and he wanted me to look over his speech, and i did, and as a parent, my first thought was you really need to think about this, i want you to be responsible in how you're doing it. >> explain to me why the school district had said there can't be any prayers in the school. >> originally, the freedom from religion organization contacted the school district and they wanted to remove prayer from the school board meetings. originally, the student would come and would lead prayer there. then because of that, they took a different look at the policy and changed everything. so my son and i were in a school improvement council meeting and the principal said we're not going to have any prayer at all. matter of fact, we'll move the service away from the school and there will be two minutes of silence at the beginning. my son came to me with his speech that had the lord's

prayer in it. i said look, if you're doing this for political reasons, don't. but if you're doing it because you feel led to do it and you feel this is a part of your speech, then i want you to do it and i'll stand by you. he said good. good enough for me. that's all i needed to hear. >> we heard the reaction from the audience there, obviously very supportive. let me ask you, if it had been a muslim student who stood up and read a passage from the koran, say, would you have been as supportive, would the audience have been as supportive? >> well, i would have absolutely been as supportive. to me at that point it was a freedom of speech -- >> right. about any religion. >> it doesn't matter. >> but how do you think it would have played out? >> i don't think something like that would have had that kind of a reaction. but it may, because my son has been inundated with phone calls and well wishers, including messages from atheists who say you know what, don't agree with you, but good for you for standing up for what you believe in.

>> this is all about the separation of church and state, obviously, but there's also a wider issue that religion is slowly going out of fashion in america. there are far less church goers today than there were 25 years ago, say. what do you make of that? how important is it for people like your son maybe to stand up on behalf of the young and say what he did? >> i think it's incredibly important. i'm overwhelmed with pride. in today's world, i think there are a lot of christians who are part-time christians, who just kind of say they are but they aren't, really. i think there are a lot of folks that are out there that really want something to hold on to for hope, and i think that's why this speech had such an impact, because all of a sudden, you know what, he's speaking for me, too, because i want to be able to do that. >> he's a gutsy guy. i shouldn't be surprised, because your name is roy costner, as is his, and you are related. to kevin costner. >> my grandfather, his

grandfather are brothers. >> you're his cousin. >> i'm a cousin. >> which makes your son also a cousin. one of my favorite movies, "tin cup" and kevin costner showed incredible courage to beat don johnson. >> and his name was roy. >> exactly. exactly my punch line. great to see you. do send your son my very best. it's a gutsy thing to do. right behind him. completely ridiculous banning the lord's prayer from school. what the hell is going on. nice to see you. coming up next, will christine quinn be the first female mayor of new york? talking about her historic campaign, struggles with alcohol and bulimia and more importantly, how is she going to stop the weiner?

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the nsa has been reading the

private messages of millions of americans, raising questions about how far the government should go to protect americans. on the grill tonight, christine quinn, speaker of the new york city council. we'll come to your memoir in a minute but let's talk about this issue of the nsa because to me, this looks like the single greatest attack on civil liberties and privacy of americans i have ever seen. >> look, i understand how it could look that way. >> you agree? >> well, i think mr. dershowitz got it right. we don't know what this is because we don't know what we don't know and it is really incumbent upon the senate and the congress to answer the questions about what exactly has happened here and what the breadth and depth of it is. now, i also understand as someone who is an elected official in new york and wants to be mayor that in the world we live in, we have to do monitoring. we have to do surveillance. it's important for us to be

doing that to see -- >> where do you draw the line? >> that's the question. >> where would you draw the line? >> well, i don't know exactly what they've done here. so i can't tell you where i would draw the line and what the nsa has done. >> what we do know is they have been going in, they've got all the phone records, we think of almost every american that uses a cell phone. they've also gone to nine different internet servers, gone in and helped themselves to people's e-mails, pictures, social facebook posts and so on and so on, internet history, of whoever they want. now, the argument is of course that some of these people may well be legitimate bad people. when they take out their in box, they will get all sorts of people who might be completely innocent, nothing to do with it. >> look, if you believe somebody is a legitimate criminal, terrorist bad guy, as you've said, then we want -- we need law enforcement to be looking at their information. we need to be doing it in a way that if they find something out about someone else who happens to be corresponding with that person, that that's separate.

>> if you become mayor, i live in new york, if you become mayor, you going to start snooping on my e-mails? >> look, the city of new york i don't believe has that power or will ever have that power. >> would you like it to? >> no. i don't think that's appropriate for the city of new york. but it is appropriate with the right balance for the federal government. but i do want the city of new york to be doing the type of monitoring and surveillance that is within the power of a municipal government at times working with the federal government. because the biggest job i'll have as mayor is to keep new yorkers safe and alive. >> let's move to the big question for you in the mayoral campaign. how do you stop the weiner? >> i think i'm doing okay in that regard. >> you're still ahead of him but he's creeping up, isn't he? the weiner's coming. it's not my fault he's called weiner. that's his name. >> this race, all joking aside, in my opinion, isn't about who is or isn't in the race. it's about the needs of new

yorkers and making sure the next mayor is somebody who has a real record of experience dealing with those needs, education, housing, job creation and a vision to keep delivering on those problems. >> is it appropriate for new yorkers to vote as their mayor somebody who sent naked piures of himself over the internet to random women? >> that's for new yorkers to decide. >> what do you think as a new yorker? >> i know new yorkers are going to vote for the candidate, me, who has the longest record of delivering for them. because what they care about is that they've gotten and are going to get more housing. that is tenants which is three-quarters of new yorkers, they have more rights as tenants now because i have been speaker than they ever did before. people who care about reproductive choice want a mayor who is the toughest defender of that and the laws in new york now are the toughest they can be, because of what i've done as speaker. that's what new yorkers care about. they want a mayor who can deliver for them. i'm the only one. i don't care who gets in. that has that record. >> they also want a mayor with

patience and fortitude. this is a terrific memoir. very poignant because you talk a lot about your relationship with your mother. she died obviously when i think you were 16. >> 16, of breast cancer. >> in the early '90s. it propelled you into a downward spiral of bulimia and alcoholism which you eventually came through. pretty startling to read all that. how did you come through it? >> well, it's very tough when you lose a parent when you're young and she was sick for about ten years so most of my time with her, she was sick and it's hard because you feel as a child that somehow you're responsible, even though you know you're not. and i came out of it and got through it because of what she taught me. we weren't together all that long but she made it clear to me that my job was to persevere, to make the world a better place and eventually, i did what she always did, asked for help, got help and kept moving forward. >> do you still have an issue with food? >> i don't -- i mean, everybody in the world has issues with food, right? >> you look fantastic to me.

>> thank you very much. >> i'm just curious. do you ever recover fully from bulimia? >> you know, i'm not bulimic now. anybody who has any kind of addiction challenge will tell you it's always part of them just like a diabetic, whether they're needing insulin or not. and that's good because it makes you focused on who you are and how to be a better person and it makes you realize that every new yorker out there with a challenge is always dealing with it, but in that struggle, we're better, stronger, more focused people and i hope folks read this book and see that somebody who is successful had challenges and got through them and that they know that if they're in those really bad dark moments, there's light at the end of the tunnel. that's not just a phrase. it's the truth. >> you are the light at the end of the tunnel. lovely to see you again. >> thank you. good to see you. >> christine quinn. cracking memoir. good to see you. coming up next, a texas man kills an escort girl for

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a texas man is free tonight

after a jury found not guilty of saying he's justified in shooting and killing an escort who took his money and then refuse today have sex with him. the jury says ezekiel gilbert is okay to use deadly force in that situation. contributor and author margaret hover. i read this story. i want to talk about this with you guys. i was so outraged, just outraged that in modern america, anywhere in america, this kind of nonsense can happen. >> yeah, this is ridiculous. this speaks, again, to why gun -- people who approach second amendment are so marginal in this country at this point. i support gun rights, but when you can't yield on the most common sense laws that says you can use a gun to retrieve stolen property -- if your property is involved in a theft, you can get a gun and go shoot the person. that is ridiculous.

you can hurt somebody to use deadly force even when your life is not threatened. >> you're pro-gun, you've been berating me for the past two weeks about guns. what's happened here? >> look, the case -- under texas law, this is perfectly legal. and a jury acquitted the guy. i mean, they deliberated for 1 11 hours and the guy served four years. >> he paralyzed her first and then she died. my apologize. let's clarify that. >> this guy paid her $150 for sex, whatever went down, he didn't get it, he then used that as a justification to shoot her dead. >> it sounds like to me you have a problem with texas state law. >> i have a problem with both. this is exactly the problem with american gun laws. this should not be permissible in any civilized society.

you shoot a woman dead because she may or may not have taken $150? and a jury, in a courtroom in america, allows him to walk out and go home to do it again. >> i can't say i agree with the texas law, either. i don't agree with the texas law. but what went down is an entirely consistent ruling of texas law. >> it's also about the spirit in the law. she says i'm an escort, not a prostitute. the implicit narrative was i'm going to have sex and i want my money back or i'm going to shoot you if you don't give it to me. it's a whole different principle. all of it is bad here. places like standing your ground. places like texas are making our country a war zone.

let's turn to sarah who got the adult transplant addition to the list last night. >> i'm glad the final judgment ruled the way it said. the way these rules are written in britain, there's more child organs available. yes, it's a good fix. i'm glad she's on top of the list. i found that there are seven people, only seven children on the list nationally. >> it's a complicated thing. for her to be put on this list when the law doesn't allow it, somebody else has to come off of

that in terms of priority. every other form of medicine i know, young people would always get a priority. here, they seem to get the opposite. and is that's why i feel quiet strongly that they should make this law more permanent. >> i think you're right. i think this law wasn't intended to punish small children. the idea was that we needed to create separate pools so that everyone would have equal access to saving their own lives and having their lives saved. but, in this case, obviously the right, i'm so excited to make

sure this child has the chance. one final point. the high school valedictorian speech, are you in favor of it? >> absolutely. 100%. what you have here is a group called freedom from religion who is sending out legal threats, basically, to school districts across the country. this is a valedictorian and his graduation speech absolutely capitalizing on freedom of speech and, by the way, being one of the most religiously observant places in the united states. >> look, there's nothing wrong with practicing your own religion at a ceremony. it's not just religion, it's christian religion. i'm pretty sure -- i'm sorry? >> subjected to the lord's prayer. >> yes yes, subjected to the lord's prayer.

>> i happen to like the lord's prayer. i'm fine with it. but if you're not you shouldn't have to sit through a ceremony for it. >> all right. i'm through with you there. come back soon. god bless you. >> god bless you, too. we'll be right back after the break with a weather update from chad myers.

tropical storm andrea made landfall this evening in florida. that's all for us tonight. "anderson cooper" starts right now. good evening, everyone. breaking news tonight. it's not just the government grabbing your cell phone records. they are online with you as well. new and frankly stunning reports on just how much they know about your life online. also tonight, a remarkable story. she was a warrior beyond compare. as a navy s.e.a.l. commander kristen beck. now she's showing no less courage in her new life, tonight, kristen beck talks about her new life as a woman. plus, the first hurricane of the season comes ashore. tens of millions of people in its path. a lot to get to tonight. we begin with breaking news. it goes far beyond the government just accessing your cell phone records. that was the first shoe to drop. the second shoe fell late today. they're looking at your internet access as well. pluggingir