captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: u.s. lawmakers called today for edward snowden, the man behind the leak of classified government surveillance programs, to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. good evening. i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. on the newshour tonight, we get two takes on the n.s.a. story. first, we examine how the intelligence community's reliance on contractors may put top-secret information at risk. >> woodruff: then, google is the first tech giant to respond on- camera about its role in the prism program.

jeffrey brown talks to the company's chief counsel. >> we do not participate in any kind of agr gives the government any access to our servers, direct or otherwise, nor do we allow the government to place any kind of equipment on our systems. >> ifill: we update the fight over contraception, as the justice department reverses its position, and allows the morning after pill to be sold over the counter to women and girls. >> woodruff: we continue our series on food security with a report from qatar on innovative ways to combat a lack of water with a booming population. >> the technologies can be applied anywhere. but in the desert is a hot and relatively dry climate, where you have access to filthy water. >> ifill: and ray suarez has the story of two terminally ill children, and the battle between doctors and judges over whether they should be eligible to receive adult lungs. >> woodruff: that's all ahead on

tonight's newshour. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by: moving our economy for 160 years. bnsf, the engine that connects us. >> by b.p. >> and by at&t.

>> and the william and flora hewlett foundation, working to solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. >> and with the ongoing support of these institutions and foundations. and... >> this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting. and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. >> ifill: defenders of expansive surveillance by the government stepped up demands today to go after an intelligence contractor who exposed the secret programs. the target of their ire remained out of sight, as investigations of the leak gained momentum. >> he's a traitor. >> house speaker john boehner's strong words this morning were targeted at elusive former cea employee edward snowden. >> the disclosure of this information puts americans at risk. it shows our adversaries what our capabilities are. and it is a giant violation of the law. >> ifill: bainer's senate

counterpart minority leader mitch mcconnell went even further. >> what's difficult to understand is the motivation of someone without would intentionally seek to warn our nation's enemies of the lawful programs created to protect the american people. and i hope that he is prosecuted to the full extent of the law. >> ifill: snowden briefly worked as a contractor at the national security agency where he learned of sweeping efforts to mine phone data and monitor e-mails and other digital records. today his employer, defense consultant booze allen hamilton announced that after three months on a job for which he was paid $122,000 a year, he's been fired for ethics violations. snowden's last known location was hong kong. but he checked out of his hotel there yesterday. he could face criminal charges in the u.s. once the justice department finishes its investigation. at the white house today press secretary jay carney

said one thing is clear. >> it is important to note that when it comes to contractors, they swear an oath to protect classified secrets just as government workers do. and that is important to remember. >> ifill: carney also confirmed the nsa is doing a damage assessment of any harm done by the diclosures. but not every member of congress sees snowden as the problem. democratic senator ron widen of oregon wants harrings on the nsa's activities. he suggested that director of national intelligence james clapper did not tell the truth last march when he denied massive monitoring was taking place. lawmakers were briefed by nsa officials on capitol hill today. many still appear to support the agency. senate majority leader harry reid says congressional oversight has been robust. >> that's why the american people, two polls i saw today, support what is

happening with trying to stop terrorists from doing bad things to us. >> ifill: ide adding to the debate the person civil liberties union announced it has filed suit charging that the phone data collection violates the right to free speech and privacy. but the upremember also extends overseas. in brussels the european union parliament met in emergency session to cuss what the u.s. surveillance has violated a civil liberties of europeans. snowden's revelations have some wondering that if a 29-year-old dropout got access to classified documents, who else outside government does? to help us find answers, i'm joined by "washington post" investigative reporter dana priest, author of "top secret america: the rise of the new american security state." and irving lachow, director of the program on technology and u.s. national security at the center for a new american security. dana priest, you worked on an investigation of this kind of top secret activity for two years. how extensive would you say it is? >> well, after 9/11 the

government decided to vastly increase what it could do, and the size of its intelligence agencies without hiring more federal employees. and the only way that it could do that was to hire more contractors. and we reported and then the government followed up and reported that there were nearly400,0 contractors with top secret clearance. three times that many with secret clearance. so we're talking about an increased pool of people without do swear an oath who understand that they are not allowed to share classified information, who go through at the top secret level pretty intrusive background checks. but nonetheless, you open up yourself to more risk-- risk when you bring on people especially in a quick man their happened after 9/11, when people wanted to increase the capabilities that the government had, and they hired people quickly. and then they got a bottleneck in those reviews

of their background and the gao of the government agency that looks at how the government works did find that there was some shortcuts in the way that security clearances were documented and given out. so i think that, you know, this is an increased risk when you hire contractors. on the other hand, i think really what it shows, is that the government still is coming to grips with its own computer systems. one of the largest number of contractors are in the field that mr. snowden says that he was in, which is the it field. >> ifill: let me ask irving lachow about people like edward snowden and even bradley manning. how do they get access to these documents? how do you get a secret security clearance so high that you can do this much damage? >> well, so they go through a process, a background investigation. and if they are vetted successfully than then they are granted access to a given level>xd and once you have access to

that information, there are computer networks that are available that have a lot of information at that level of classification, where you can just go and do a search and find much of that information. and so if you are bradley manning, you can do a search and find all this kind of information. in his case, download it to a disk and potentially walk out the door with it. >> ifill: are protections sufficient. for instance, we heard early on in this set, even before edward snowden's story had come out, the leaks it actually been published that the government was on to him. is that always what happens? or do we know that there are moles working in the government who we never find? >> well, so the government is aware that there are people who are going to be trying to do this kind of thing. and so there are a lot of controls in place, and there's a lot of activity in place to try to catch any kind of activities but it can be very difficult. as dana pointed out, there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people who have access to the highest, the most

sensitive information that our country has. and it can be very difficult to control who should have access to what information at what time. because everyone is working on different projects, different programs. they might be doing research, so it can become very difficult to understand who is doing something legitimate and who is d do something they shouldn't be doing. >> ifill: so how do they manage this, what kind of controls can they impose? >> well, there are two things right off the bat. one is that people are regularly polygraphed, maybe once a year to make sure that they still pass, that nothing has changed in their background that would indicate a risk. the other thing really is that they do rely on other employees to notice differences and to report them. and they do have counterintelligence people who are employed to do just that, to follow people into the watering holes that they frequent, and into the social settings that they frequent, especially if there is a suspicion about somebody. because they are trying to catch something like this before it happens. but in the manning case, for example, even though he technically had access to

what he downloaded, in the after-action review that they did, he shouldn't have. the state department's computer system should not have allowed, they determined later, someone who was studying one particular type of terrorist to have access to state department cables from around the world. so they're still really trying to adjust their computer systems to give access to people who have a need to know about particular programs. >> ifill: last night we had the former director of intelligence on this program. and he actually in an interesting interview with dana for her series, said, you know, sure we've expanded. sure we're doing more. but it's worth>dc/ overdoing. is it worth overdoing in your opinion? >> i think that is what-- . >> rooney: i --. >> ifill: i should ask irving that and i will come back to you, dana. >> well, i think it depends. so there are always trade-offs. there are trade-offs between security and liberty there are trade-offs with relying on contractors.

so the benefit of using contractors is they're easy to hire and fire or at least much easier than government personnel. so it gives you a lot more flexibility to bring people in with special expertise. people that are hard to bring into the government on a regular basis. but there are risks. so you are relying on people, there needs to be oversight and oftentimes the government personnel who are overseeing the contractors may not understand, especially on some technical issues. they may not have the knowledge that the contractors do. so maybe they don't have a detailed understanding what is going on underneath them. there are some risks that you potentially introduce into the system. >> ifill: you were going to say? >> you can see from the reactions that have followed this, that some people think it's worth overdoing and some people don't. and some people would just like more information. the senate intelligence committee, for example, today got briefed by government officials on the program again. and immediately came out and said they would like some of the it declassified. the same sort of information

that's now being touted as treasonist, they would like to declassify so that we could learn more about it. so obviously there are people that think some of that information doesn't damage national security. it probably belies some of the myths that are growing up now as we speak around these programs. so the debate is what mr. snowden says he was all about. and obviously has some concerns about the program. i don't feel anybody can really make a decision on whether it's too much without knowing what it is. >> ifill: irving lachow s it possible that we as citizens are giving away as much information as they are getting from us when we talk about, especially, the social media sites? >> absolutely. so i think without knowing it, we all as we do our daily business, use social media, go on the internet. we are giving away so much information. i think most americans don't have any idea how much, what companies do just by tracking our behavior. they don't need to see the content of what we do, but

just by being able to track where we go, what we do, our geo location, they can put together a picture of who we are, how old we are, how much money we make, who our friends are. it's remarkable what you can do with that kind of mehta does data which is exactly the kind of information that was being collected from the phone records. and so i think without knowing it, many of us are giving away a tremendous amount of information. >> ifill: is there a difference between giving it away to government and giving it away to private industry? >> absolutely. because what privacy advocates are most worried about the the storage of this data. so i may not be under suspicion right now, ten years from now, you know, they're looking at three different sets of my digital exhaust. and they may decide something suspicious. so they can go back and mine the data that they have from ten years ago and that's what cautions-- causes privacy advocates most concern. is that you will have this giant database of

information about americans in the ver identifieson verizon phone records. >> ifill: dana priest of the "washington post", irving lachow of the center for new american security. thank you both very much. >> thanks. >> thank you. >> woodruff: we'll have more on the n.s.a. surveillance programs with a response from google's top lawyer later in the broadcast. also ahead on the newshour, the morning after pill for women and girls; how to make the most of water in the desert; and the fight over giving adult lungs to children in need of a transplant. but first, the other news of the day. here's kwame holman. >> holman: the immigration reform bill in the u.s. senate cleared a key hurdle today. it garnered well more than the 60 votes needed to begin formal debate. but possible final passage still is many days off. at the risk of stating the obvious the bill has serious flaws. >> there are 11 million reasons to have common sense immigration reforms. >> that is how things in the senate began, an indicator

of the bumpy road the bill still has to travel despite taking its first steps today. the senate measure would boost border security, create a 13 year path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants currently in the country illegally. and allow tens of thousands of new workers into the country. new york democrat chuck schumer is part of the bipartisan gang of eight who crafted the bill. he said today the status quo sun acceptable. >> our bill is based on one simple principles. that the american people will accept and embrace common sense solutions to future legal immigration and to the 11 million now living here in the shadows, if and only if they are convinced that there will not be future waves of illegal immigration. >> other gang of eight member republican marco rubio of florida said helping improve the work force is key. >> but issue number one, the

fundamental reason why we have to do immigration reform, is because we do not have a 21st century immigration system. our immigration system today is largely built on the idea that if you have a relative living here it is easier for you to come than if you have a special skill or talent that you are offering to the contribute country to contribute. >> at the white house president obama urged lawmakers to get the job done soon. >> now's the time to get it done. there's no good reason

>> holman: the lower house of parliament in russia voted overwhelmingly today for a bill that targets gays. the vote was 436 to nothing for regulations against what the bill calls the "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations." it directly bans discussing homosexuality with children. police detained more than two dozen gay rights demonstrators outside the state duma in moscow after they were attacked by hundreds in an anti-gay crowd. the measure still requires approval of the upper house of parliament. in turkey, authorities demanded an end to ten days of antigovernment protests, and riot police targeted crowds in central istanbul with water cannon and tear gas. the trouble came in spasms throughout the day, and flared again after nightfall. we have a report from inigo gilmore of independent television news. de -- >> they move in to textan

square en masse. the gloves come off. a group of protestors try to block their path. they raise their hands imploring the police to go no further, all to no avail. suddenly the tear gas comes pouring in, and it keeps oncoming. we watched as the police water canons went to work. clear intent on prevents the square of protestors. to many t was a severe provocation. while there were calls for restraint, some fought with the police. rocks were hurled. molotov cocktails too. some protestors later claimed that those throwing petro bombs were police pro cac-- provacateurs insisting they believe in peaceful process-- protests. many-- to engage in dialogue with the protestors but to them he's now showing his true colors. the patience of turkey's top man has snapped.

the operation in the square was full swing. the turkish prime minister, bullish and defiant received a raptureous welcome from his loyal supporters in parliament. >> to those who want to continue with these incidents, i say it's over. be warned. we will not tolerate it any. >> the protestors in the park determined to stand their ground, as they marched around they chanted this is just the beginning of the struggle. i came across a music teacher. >> it has been always tough, you know, that is law, that is what he has been playing. that is i think his role in this whole game. but this is the ugliest. >> reporter: as clashes continue this evening, this is a battle which put as side not only the face of the past but the future direction of this country. with secular middle class

protestors lining up against a conservative islamist prime minister and his followers, both sides feel they represent the true soul of turkey. >> holman: the clashes continued well after dark, as tens of thousands of protesters returned to the park, and police attacked with more tear gas. the governor of istanbul announced the police operations will continue around the clock. at least 17 people died in afghanistan today, when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the supreme court in kabul. it was the second attack in as many days in the afghan capital, and wounded nearly 40 people. taliban militants said they carried out the bombing to eliminate judges who work for the western-backed government. >> its u.s. fish and wildlife service is asking that all chimpanzees be listed endangers including the roughly 2,000 chimp nous captivity in the u.s., unlike those in the wild, they now are listed only as threatened, changing their status would make it harder to use captive chimps in

medical research or to sell them across statelines. a final decision is expected next year. in economic news, wall street could not hold its ground today in the face of worries that central banks around the world aren't doing more to boost growth. the dow jones industrial average lost 116 points to close at 15,122. the nasdaq fell nearly 37 points to close under 3437. those are some of the day's major stories. now, back to judy. >> woodruff: and we return to the surveillance programs and the questions surrounding them. beyond the government itself, there are many concerns about the role of companies like google, facebook, and yahoo that provide data when requested. today google sent a letter to the department of justice and the f.b.i. saying it wants to be allowed to be more transparent about the government's requests "in terms of both the number we receive and their scope." jeffrey brown spoke with google's chief legal officer,

david drummond, from amsterdam this afternoon. it was google's first u.s. broadcast interview since the news broke. >> brown: david drummond, welcome. in your letter to the attorney general you appear to acknowledge that google does comply with government requests for user data, so that is in fact the case? >> yes, yes, that's the case. we sent that letter because there's been a serious misimpression that's been created in the wake of the store he-- stories that came out in the last few days, stories that we were as shocked by as everyone else. and the misimpression is that we're doing some kind of large scale or participating in a program that does large scale surveillance on our users. and that's just not the case. and we want to be able to be more transparent about what we do do which is occasionally comply with national security orders as were required to do. what we would like the

government to do is to allow us to say more. >> brown: there seems to be a distinction between direct and indirect access to data. what exactly is the government allowed to look at? >> let me be very clear about this. we do not participate in any kind of a program that gives the government any access to-- access to our servers, direct or otherwise, nor do we allow the government to place any kind of equipment on our systems. what we do do and what we have been transparent about as much as we can is that we comply from time to time with these government orders. we take them very seriously. we review them very carefully, we push back if they are overbroad. and here's the important thing. we serve hundreds of millions of users. the only a tiny, very tiny fraction of our users have ever been subject to one of these requests, national security requests. so this idea that we are sort of participating in a broad program here is simply

false. we want to make that clear and we want to make that categorically clear. >> brown: how do these requests work do you get a court order, without sees it on your end, who approves it? >> these are the court orders that you've heard about. and we have a team that handle these directly. we have experience with those. as i said we review them very, very carefully. and when we determine that we need to comply, then we deliver the information to the government. and it's very clear. we deliver it to them. we push it out to them. they don't come access it through any machines at google. >> brown: are there specific cases where google has said no to a request for access? >> well, we're on record in other context of having pushback. so we are willing to pushback if something is overly broad. >> brown: so people who are wondering where are the limits when you do comply,

is that a broad-brush for data or very targeted and specific with what the government is looking for? >> look, one of the things we're asking here, what we wrote in the letter is that we would like to be able to say more about the number of these requests that we get, what they cover, and be more transparent about it. we have pioneered this concept of being transparent about the government requests that we get. we think it's really important to check on our behavior, as a check on the government's behavior. and we are asking the attorney general and the fbi director to allow us to provide more of that information. but what i can tell you is that these are targeted requests, as i said, of the hundreds and hundreds of millions of users. we're talking about a tiny fraction that's affected. and we would like to say more about that. >> brown: and what about sharing with other governments. we're talking about the u.s. government here. do you get these kinds of requests from other

governments, the u.k. or other ? >> we have received requests from other governments. from time to time. i think it's important to understand that google is a u.s. company, the data is based here in the u.s. we typically ask those countries to go through the treaty-based process-- process, law enforcement to get access to that material. >> brown: you sound very frustrated just listening to you talk about what you can and cannot say and about what you see as misperceptions about howe this works? >> it's a little bit frustrating. but that's why we want to say more. because we want it to be clear that what the actual facts are. and there have been a lot of things being said about our participation in the program that just aren't true. and so we really would like to set the record straight. as i said, we were surprised one, by the verizon national security order involving phone records. we've never received

anything so broad. we were surprised by the allegations made about the so-called pris-- so-called prism program. and i said we don't participate in anything that's described there. so we really wanted to get the record straight and we wanted to make the request of the government, to help us make, set the record straight by allowing us to provide more detail in our transparency report about these kinds of national security orders. >> brown: david drummond of google, thanks for joining us. >> thank you for having me >> ifill: you can read google's letter to the department of justice on our web site. >> woodruff: now, what's behind the decision to make the morning after pill more widely available? the battle over access dates back years, but has been fought in court most recently by the obama administration. in 2011, the food and drug administration decided the most popular form of the drug, plan b

one-step, should be available to all girls and women without prescription. but health and human services secretary kathleen sebelius overruled the agency, keeping the age limit at 17 and above. this spring, a federal judge ordered that restriction be lifted. after the justice department indicated it would continue to battle in court, the administration said for the first time monday it will not fight that decision. julie rovner of npr joins us again. welcome back to the newshour. >> nice to be here. >> woodruff: why is the obama administration changing its position on this? >> basically it ran out of legal options. there was an appeals court ruling last week that said that the administration could not have a stay of that judge's order from april on all forms of this medication. so basically while this appeal was being heard, which was going last several months, at least one form of this medication, the two pill version, which is the original version of plan b

as it's called, would have to be available immediately on the shelves with no age limit. and the administration found that sort of untenable. so they basically have gone back and said to the judge, the original judge, that if it's okay with him, that plan b1, the original pill, they would make that available without age restrictions but they will not make the two pill version available without age restrictions. >> woodruff: but the pill that will be, one step, one pill, and that's it. that's all a person would need to do. so what does that mean? what's going to be available and how soon will it be available? >> well, that's not entirely clear. that is the question everybody is asking today. there are a couple of this ing-- coup ef of things that have to happen first. the judge will have to say that is okay with him that is not his original order. originally he wanted all versions of this medication made available without restrictions on the pharmacy counter, on the pharmacy shelves, excuse me. so the judge will have to say that that is all right with him. if it is, then the company that makes that drug will

have to apply to the fda for a new label to say that it's available to women regardless of age. the fda will have to approve that, which they said they will do almost immediately, that's what they've said, without delay, were their exact words, and then it would have to be approved. and then it would become available. the speculation is that that might take perhaps a month but no one knows for sure exactly how long that would be. >> woodruff: so over-the-counter, julie, and how much is it expected to cost? >> well, and this is the rub. plan b one step is the one brand-name drug of this class of drugs t costs between $40 and $50 which is-- . >> woodruff: for one dose. >> for one dose. it's important if you have had unprotected sex, worried about getting pregnant. that's not so much to spend to prevent an unwanted pregnancy. the generic version kases considerably less, perhaps 10, 20, as much as 30 dollars less. according what the administration has proposed those will not be available on the pharmacy shelves without age restrictions.

so women health groups are not very happy about that. >> woodruff: so what reaction are you hearing. you talked to women's health groups. you have talked to folks on the other side what are they saying. >> women's health groups are not that happy that the generics will not be included in this, or at least it seems they will not be. >> woodruff: because that means it will be less expensive. >> exactly, more competition. some of the conservative groups that didn't want it available without prescription:are not happy. they are not happy the administration gave up the fight is so basically it's not clear who is happy with dhchlt i think the justice department isn't very happy because they wanted to appeal, but as i mentioned, they kind of ran out much legal rope there. it looks like from what the appeals court did that they were going to lose so i think they basically had to go back and kind of-- . >> woodruff: which women is it believed will take advantage of this, age group, i mean have there been studies done. is there informed speculation about what the reaction to this is going to be? >> there has been all this talk about teenagers, particularly young teenagers. one of the reason there is so little data on young

teenagers is it is not thought that it will be use tad that much by young taken ager-- teenagers. shoot where it is split where it is available for teenagers with prescription and it has been behind the counter so they have had to ask for it. it is difficult for women to get it only when pharmacies are open, they have to show i.d., a lot of women, low income women, immigrant women, some women don't have i.d. so evif obviously not teenagers, they have had difficulty getting, that is one of the ideas of getting it on the shelves to not showing i.d. for women to get it, not necessarily teenagers. >> woodruff: meaning women of age. >> women of age. >> woodruff: child bearing age. >> child bearing age, but it is these young teenagers that everyone is concerned about. >> woodruff: it is interesting you bring that up. because we happen to know that teen birth rates have been dropping dramatically over the last couple of decades, but you're saying that that really isn't the focus here. >> that isn't. although i will say that the american academy of pediatrics, congress of

obstetrician and gynecologists have all said that everything they nie from the studies, teenagers and some young teenagers to the extent we have data, do understand how to use it and understand that it is not to be used in place of regular birth control. so it is not a matter that they can't use it, it is just they are not expected to be the focus of who will use it with the lifted restrictions. >> woodruff: finally, you were showing me, this has been an issue for well over a decade. scientists have been saying, you said from the beginning, almost, that this is a safe medication. >> yes, in 2003, two advisory committees for the fda voted overwhelmingly that this was when there was only the two pill product that it was safe to be used and that it was safe enough for women of all ages, for this to be sold over-the-counter without age restrictions. so it's really been a political fight through two administrations now. >> woodruff: politics, hmmmm. isn't that a surprise. julie ravner of npr, thank you very much. >> thank you.

>> ifill: next, we continue our week-long look at food security, and how climate change is affecting what we produce and how we eat. tonight, special correspondent jon miller reports from the tiny middle eastern nation of qatar on inventive ways to get the most out of water in the desert. it's part of our series, "food 9 with public radio international's "the world," homeland productions, american public media's "marketplace" and the center for investigative reporting. >> reporter: every day, hundreds of tanker trucks line up at the mazrouah pumping station outside doha, in the tiny persian gulf nation of qatar. they start rolling in at 6:30 in the morning and keep filling up until 10:00 at night. their cargo is not oil or gas-- the resources that have given qatar the highest per capita income in the world-- but water from an underground aquifer that's quickly drying up.

>> we've got about two years left of an adequate supply, a usable supply of high-quality fresh water in this particular aquifer. >> reporter: jonathan smith has been thinking about water since he was a kid. he grew up on a farm in oklahoma, where his grandparents lived through the dust bowl. he came to qatar in 2012 after making documentaries about water problems in the american southwest. now he's a spokesman for qatar's national food security program. >> it's a very exciting time to be in a place that is struggling with food security and water security and really trying to rethink what it means to have a long-term and durable prosperity. >> reporter: qatar is growing incredibly fast. but the growth masks some troubling numbers. the population-- just under two million-- has more than doubled in the last ten years. the country imports 93% of its food. it gets less than three inches of rain a year. temperatures top 120 degrees in

the summer. climate change is just going to make things harder. >> reporter: qatar is in many ways ground zero for many of the challenges we're going to see in the next century. >> reporter: already, 99% of the water people use for farming, drinking, or swimming comes from the sea. it takes a huge amount of energy to remove the salt-- and a huge amount of money. for now, qatar has both. but the country's leaders know the oil and gas won't last forever. so they're taking a radical step: planning ahead. and not just for themselves. worldwide, more than two billion people live in dry areas, where climate change poses an urgent threat to food, water, and energy supplies. qatar's leaders say they want their country to be a laboratory for solving those problems before it's too late.

joakim hauge is happy to take up the challenge. hauge was a biologist working for a norwegian environmental group when he heard about a plan to green up the deserts of north africa and the middle east. now he's the c.e.o. of a company called the sahara forest project. he says it was founded not on a specific product or technology, but on an idea. >> and that was, well, let's take what we have enough of, like seawater, like sunlight, like sand, like co2, to produce what we need more of-- food, water, energy-- in an environmentally friendly way. >> reporter: in 2012, with backing from two big fertilizer companies, the group built a $7.5 million pilot site next to a giant ammonia plant in an industrial zone outside doha.

the design is meant to mimic a natural ecosystem, where the waste product from one component provides the food or fuel for another. the raw materials are sunlight and salt water. these curved mirrors intensify the suns heat to power a thermal desalination unit. soon algae will be growing in these ponds, to be harvested for biofuel and, possibly, to feed fish or shrimp. seawater runs through cardboard panels, cooling the air in this greenhouse, where cucumbers grow in coconut fiber. and co2 is pumped in from the factory next door, making the plants grow dramatically faster. >> these plants, i was here three weeks ago, and the plants were this big. >> reporter: virginia corless had gotten her ph.d in astrophysics, and was working at the u.s. senate when she first heard about the sahara forest

project. >> i gave the first brochure to all of my science friends in d.c. and said, tell me what's wrong with this? because it sounds great. is there anything im missing? and our consensus was, no, it actually... it all holds together. >> reporter: today corless is the project's research director. >> the core innovation in the sahara forest project is the integration of technologies. so while many of the individual technologies have been developed individually elsewhere in the world, they've never been brought together in this way. >> reporter: corless says she's most excited by an experiment to cool and moisten the air outside the greenhouses ever so slightly, so shrubs and trees and even food crops can take root and grow. >> and as they grow, they're adding organic material to the soil, to the sand. >> reporter: if it works-- and results have been good so far-- she can imagine vegetation spreading out into the surrounding desert, creating an ecosystem of its own. the goal?

a system to produce food and water and energy that actually reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. corless is quick to point out that this pilot site is for testing ideas, not for making money. once the kinks are worked out, the goal is to build much bigger commercial facilities around the world. >> the technologies that are being developed here can be applied anywhere that is a desert with a hot and relatively dry climate and where you have access to salty water. that's a lot of regions in the world. >> reporter: but it's a risky business. in a complex and expensive system like this one, if one thing goes wrong it can sink the whole enterprise. qatars jonathan smith says it's great to think big, but you need to spread your bets. >> the question of whether it's a responsible technology to bring up to scale, and whether it provides a resilient enough solution to call it the silver bullet for food security for a country, i think we're kidding

ourselves if we think that any single technology is going to do that. it's going to take a mix of things. >> reporter: and a lot of those things can happen with existing technology, right now. to illustrate the point, smith takes us to see nassir al-kuwari on his family's farm about an hour from doha. he's covered his crops with mesh to shade them from the blistering heat. and he's built hundreds of low- cost plastic greenhouses. plans are to build hundreds more. in the meantime, he's cut down on water and waste. with temperatures rising and groundwater falling, al-kuwari knows he's in a race against time. but he thinks he's winning. >> people think that qatar is nothing but desert. but when they come here, they see that we have fertile soil. if we protect our crops, i think agriculture will only get bigger

in the coming years. >> reporter: that's good. the next few years will bring enormous challenges for the world's driest areas, in energy, food, and water. there's no telling where the search for solutions will lead. but it will likely be fueled by renewable resources, like ingenuity, imagination, and perseverance. >> woodruff: you can find links to stories by our partners in the "food for 9 billion" series on our web site. and tomorrow, we'll look vertical farm fields that rise high into the skies over singapore. >> ifill: finally tonight, the pleas of two desperate families shift the ethical debate about organ transplant policies for children. ray suarez has the story.

>> suarez: the cases of ten-year-old sara murnaghan and 11-year-old javier acosta have put a national 1309 light on the issue, both have end-stage cystic fibrosis. but they are at the bottom of a waiting list for a adult lungs because they're under 12. u.s. senator pat toomey of pennsylvania, sara murnaghan's home state, says that has to change. >> sara is being treated by some of the best doctors in the world and they are convinced that she's an excellent candidate to have a successful transplants surgery. it seems to me a policy that systemically excludes her and other children in her circumstances is a flawed policy. >> suarez: last week federal district judge in philadelphia ordered a change in transplant policy for both cases, and said the children must be platesed higher on the waiting list. that prompted some doctors to say courts have no business deciding on medical matters. >> i don't think we want judges making medical decisions any more than we

want doctors deciding supreme court cases. >> suarez: now the organ procurement and transplantation network is setting up an appeal process for children under 12. for more on the case for more on the case, yesterday's decision and the issues involved, we turn to arthur caplan, director of the division of medical ethics at new york university's langone medical center. doctor, the new rules proposed in the vote last night, what would they do how would they change things? >> well, they don't really change the, if you will, under 12 rule, that is saying that children can't get organs from adults. what they do do is make a path for an exception, make a path for compassionate examination of a particular case so if you will, they created an appeals process. it will be in the hands of doctors to make an assessment case by case of whether a younger child could accept or whether organ was fit into a kid

under 12 when they come from an adult. we haven't had that appeals process before. so that is a significant change. >> suarez: why were the rules written the way they were in the first place? it wasn't an outright prohibition but it was a formula that discouraged the use of adult donor lungs in the chests of children. >> the main reason is because adult donor lungs are large and kids under 12 are small. and the lungs don't fit. so you wind up having to use a piece of the lung, if you will, taking out a lobe and putting it in. now unlike other organs like the liver, the lung doesn't grow back. so a lot of surgeons have felt if you are going to transplant a lobe of lung, that is riskier, more prone to trouble. others disagree. but the basis of the rule was partly due to the size problem. and then some of the challenges that younger kids pose in terms of i moneyo suppression. the drugs you have to take after you get a transplant. both of those factors were seen, if you will as

diminute uing the chance of success by many in the transplant field. >> suarez: now understandably-- ably the case of the murnaghan and acosta families you had families going public, heading into the court of public opinion to plead their case. is that a good place to make medical decisions about transplantation? >> i don't think so. it is perfectly understandable that a family would say i'm going to do everything i can for my child. hire a pr firm, get my congressman or senator to pay attention. but it's not the best way to allocate the scarce supply of organs that we have. we have a situation where if you really leave it up to who can mount the biggest publicity campaign, you're not necessarily going to see lungs or any other organs going to those who might benefit the most. so to me, it's partly, it's fully understandable that a parent would want to try and save their child. but you don't want to have a kind of bidding war where people can spend the most

money, are the most pr savvy, who can can wield the most influence with a congress person are going to win a shot at getting an organ. i think it's better left more or less inside the transplant community with the transplant experts to decide who is the best candidate. >> suarez: in this area, do medical decisions run on a kind of different tract from ethical ones? are there things that are ethically dodgy that would work medically or medically dodgy that are defensible ethically? >> that's a great question. and it would take more time than we've got. but the answer is yes. for example, a lot of programs don't admit people who smoke marijuana. it is seen as substance abuse. on the other hand we've got two states where it's been legalized. a lot of states where medical marijuana use is accepted. should marijuana use be an exclusion, is partly a medical question but now it's becoming partly an ethical and legal question in terms of seeing an accepted as part of, you know, ode behavior in many

parts of the country. shall whether prisoners should have access to organs, whether someone with a severe mental disability should be consider add long with others when they need a heart transplant, let's say. so the area is fraught about tough ethical choices but i don't mean to say that, you know, it's just up to doctors and just up to transplant surgeons. but primarily, what you want to know is what is going to work? what's going to succeed? and then let's argue about other behavioral, psychological, other factors that might impact without goes first. >> suarez: well, give us a thumbnail sketch of how the system routinely works. there are people who need various body parts. there are donors that become available. how does it normally work? >> so it's a two-step process. one step is how do you get into a particular france plant-- transplant center. each center makes decision approximates about the kind of patient that they think they could handle. sometimes it's money. if you don't have insurance,

you may not be up, accepted into a program that has a lung transplant or liver transplants. they're costly and people do get turned away because they can't pay. citizenship might count, are you an illegal alien. that might matter to different hospitals. and as i said, issues around drug abuse or do you have a criminal record, are you psychologically or psychiatically very disturbed, make it unlikely you could comply. that's the first test. once you get in, all the names of the people who get into a trance plant center are on a national list. and distribution from that national list is handled by the united network for organ sharing, a federallically chartered group that operates with these rules we keep hearing about. so think of it as two-steps. one, each individual transplant center makes the call. are we going to take you. we're not. and they may be different place to place. once on the list, the distribution of organs is handled by a national program with very clear-cut rules about who goes first.

>> suarez: we're just about at the end of our time. but i'm guessing all these problems are just made more difficult by a shortage of donors. >> they really are. and when you hear about a terrible might of these families looking for lungs, you have to keep in mind that people are dying every day for want of a heart, lung or liver. so it's crucial to sign your donor card. it's crucial to talk about that decision with your family so they know that's what you want. your friends and partners, they should know that's your wishes. and we might give a long hard look in this country against moving to a presumed consensus to meaning, instead of having a policy that says jump into the system, sign a card if you want to do this. let's go with what most people say they want to do which is to be an organ donor and ask those who don't want to to opt out that would get us more organs, help resolve some of these tensions about who should live and who should die. >> suarez: dr. kaplan, thanks for joining us. >> my pleasure.

>> woodruff: again, the major developments of the day. u.s. lawmakers called for edward snowden, the man behind the leak of classified government surveillance programs, to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. the immigration reform bill in the u.s. senate cleared a key hurdle. it garnered well more than the 60 votes needed to begin formal debate. and authorities in turkey demanded an end to ten days of antigovernment protests. riot police targeted thousands of people in central istanbul with water cannon and tear gas. >> ifill: online, a college professor inspires his students from the graveyard. kwame holman has the details. >> holman: in our latest in a series of older worker profiles, meet political science professor ronald stockton. with no plans to retire, the 72- year-old still leads energetic walks through cemeteries as part of his graveyards 101 class at the university of michigan, dearborn.

>> we spoke with author geron who thinks charging for our information is more effective than enacting privacy laws. >> and on and on art beat, the national mall in washington, d.c., disappeared for 48 hours under a sea of clay, plaster, and paper bones. it was a visual petition against ongoing genocide around the world. see the stunning images on our homepage. all that and more is on our web site, newshour.pbs.org. judy? >> woodruff: and again, to our honor roll of american service personnel killed in the afghanistan conflict. we add them as their deaths are made official and photographs become available. here, in silence, are eight more.

>> woodruff: and that's the newshour for tonight. on wednesday, we'll look at how older workers help social security's longevity. i'm judy woodruff. >> ifill: and i'm gwen ifill. we'll see you on-line, and again here tomorrow evening. thank you, and good night.

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