i know what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger no holds barred look at the global financial headlines. there's a report. can be a lot of show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mercy of a lot of washington d.c. now looks like more tough times are ahead for americans and president obama as unrest in the middle east is encouraging drilling here at home obama will have to deal with a lot of very anxious republicans so are the hurdles coming up in the near future when it comes to gas prices in the u.s. i'll speak with bill potter then at a time when the u.s. is practically pinching pennies to fight a budget deficit and americans are being asked to sacrifice a recent war unveils billions of dollars worth of wasteful spending in iraq

afghanistan all thanks to our reliance on contractors and they were also out there by this to be a major problem jordan's hanna will join us with his thoughts next we'll speak with author kevin cool said about his latest book kingpin last about max butler a hacker who once worked for the f.b.i. until he went over to the dark side and then there's an attack on prostitution going on in the u.s. harry reid has unexpectedly decided to take on the oldest profession which is all the legal in his own state and which he's never had a problem with before so is harry finally lost it was a brothel owner dennis hof and it's friday which means we'll be celebrating with happy hour discuss the hottest topics around the watercooler like charlie sheen's latest outrage the not only hurt him but also his wildly popular show now we're saving all that fun for the end of the program but now let's move on to our top story. so secret that many americans are still. suffering in this rough economy and

the threat of rising oil prices is one more cost of the people just can't afford experts warn the unrest in the middle east could result in food prices skyrocketing as well and where there's a crisis there's always room for exploitation artie's out of the sauce has more. oil three little letters. that could have dire consequences on any economy and here in the united states or oil is sometimes also accompanied by three big. guy and with those three words you've got yourself a political entrenched power house will drill new wells sure it will drill them drill baby drill baby drill. and the crisis in the middle east has only inflamed so what we have now are soaring gas prices and fears of a relapse in the already weak economic recovery we have a world away on market so when one place goes down and one place is in trouble we

should seems like it is today and it's actually oil prices around the world and on the heels of the unrest crude is heading for the biggest weekly increase in two years and when oil prices soar the price of food also skyrockets and so a vicious cycle begins for many americans a reality that is once again rallied the base and its spokespeople for perhaps for the wrong reasons and whenever there's a crisis either here at home or abroad it's usually exploited politically by the government or the media it loves to hate gadhafi is now threatening to burn up the oil fields experts are predicting a worst case scenario of two hundred twenty dollars a barrel if that happens i don't believe that this this particular interruption of oil supplies will last very long so if you're trying to tie drilling off shore with what's happening in libya i think it's a bit of a stretch

a stretch that some are all too willing to make the oil fields are on fire and we have no backup plan. well he has lifted the moratorium in the gulf for drilling oil thanks to cast sunstein know all new permits have been issued permits and backup plans aside what's really going to happen in an already ravaged economy where we see this in the middle east. and this in our very own midwest. so the last thing you need is the people who are. in the worst economic shape are the first ones to get hit by this process and this will cause a lot of discomfort to a lot of people who don't need this bad news bad news recently echoed by vladimir putin russia's prime minister said that the unrest in libya has driven crude prices beyond fair market levels and danger in the global economy but here concerns of violence spreading to other oil producing nations in the region have been

overshadowed and instead of asking how americans will cope with this are asking the question that never gets answered but at the same time seems to never get old who are our friends and who are our enemies for archie diena kosofsky. well the unrest in the middle east bringing out the drill baby drill cries here in the u.s. it's pretty easy to see which direction this is all headed republicans are in control of the house so despite announcing plans to cut oil tax breaks and subsidies obama is going to be in for a very tough fight and so far his track record looks more like one of someone who set off to answer that at the announcement by the american petroleum institute the largest oil and gas industry trade group of they're going to start donating to candidates this year as a result of obama's plans but then again could one documentary about the dangers of fracking running in it can reward change everything here to discuss it with me as

well potter founder of green is the new red well thanks so much for being here. so this seems kind of random but i thought. this is very interesting to look at the way that the oil and gas industry is responding to this documentary gas land you know we spoke about it before because we found out the pennsylvania department of security was monitoring people that just went to a screening and now it's nominated for an academy award and we have these trade groups a lobbying at the academy to get it taken out there saying it's factually incorrect but it sounds to me like they're kind of scared of it but if you get all speaks to how much of a threat we have is an educational effort so this could be i mean the fact that a film can get people to rethink their positions and actually inform them about the issues god forbid is really a threat to these corporate interests because once people know about it they move in act accordingly why hope it works i just wonder you know i've never heard of this happening before i wonder if you know wall street was a lobbying against michael moore something like that we've seen this before we're

talking mentoring is you know of any other example not to my knowledge but it would surprise me at all i mean through all of this and through the hole in security efforts in pennsylvania you see these repeated attempts to buy these industries to silence the critics so would be shocking we've got to find out there tonight in hollywood and hollywood itself is very political and we know that there's an entire lobbying process because i just to get you know the big actors out of the big movies that were academy awards but the thing that i find very interesting is i think it's almost that tiring for these trade groups because look how many people are now talking about it exactly and the same thing with the spine. you know to try to silence the critics and by doing so assuming this is actually gets exposed people are out bridge and we've talked about this before i really do think the more people learn about these how these corporations are trying to push their extremist agenda it can all be back and the thing is that they're not just you know going over to the academy they're also writing scathing critiques really and attacking and josh fox the director of cast land and also mark ruffle oh who just is an actor

who happens to feel like this issue is very near and dear to. hart but at the same time they get angry about two actors going it talk all street you know are saying this is absolutely uncontrollable how could this be happening this is a hollywood producer that scripted it but how big of a lobbyist is the oil and the natural gas industry in the u.s. clearly the oil and gas industry have been oppressed and silenced in washington for far too long i mean there's just there's so much an outrage that they're not having their voice heard even though they spent one hundred fifty million dollars last year. and now look what we're talking about with american petroleum institute starting a pac just to funnel more money to candidates before they even get into office and when they are into office to funnel more money into or so to be outraged it's just you know preposterous the american petroleum institute last year i believe about seven million dollars lobbying congress and the white house now that obama has

actually laid out these plans you know how much more money do you think of the throw at this because it sounds to me like they're really making an outward threat by announcing it and saying appear doing this because of obama absolutely or one among many i think that's really important remember too that six point seven million that's in addition to exxon mobil wallen chevron and b.p. and all these other companies and in addition to people like the koch brothers we've seen that kind of one sort of the number one campaign going when it comes to republicans and we've already seen the consequences of using their money to push their agenda in wisconsin funneling money into governor walker and the union busting efforts that were going on out here and there's more of that to come if we love people whose corporations to keep giving the money to politicians so recklessly like this you know how many pacs are out there for the oil and gas industry for the oil and gas and well over a hundred i guess so here comes another one of a decided needs to be created right now what else do we know about this we sure

they have the powers of persuasion because they have a lot of money behind them but i've also heard that the americans. institute has tried to plan fake grassroots campaigns to attack environmentalist in the past absolute greenpeace found out about this memo from a.p.i. . in advance of the climate summit you know this past summer finding out how they would engage the it's like who's group is called an astroturf movement to create this appearance of a grassroots movement across the country that was all bankrolled by the oil and gas industries to make it look like people cared about corporate interests as opposed to environmental interests and what you know what they really care about now how do you think of this is all going it and let's say you know i mean if republicans are in control of the house if we already have these and trade curbs announcing that they're going to start finally money now for an election that's in two thousand and twelve does it look like alternative energy is going to lose out to baby oil again unfortunately it looks like that's what's been happening for twite some time i mean

the oil and gas industry influence in washington is nothing new and it's been shaping u.s. domestic and foreign policy for quite some time and i don't think there's really an indication that's going to change but my silver lining in this is the more they overreach with things like the oscars the spine and pennsylvania the tax on people like mark ruffalo and more absurd biscuits i think it has to pay for as everyone is hurting and with the segment you showed people who are doing well with gas prices and with the economy and these people are getting filthy rich. and they're getting away with it thanks to the government well thanks so much for joining us from. now coming up next who is the best group to blame for your revolution all coming in a close second after four americans is you guessed it. i'll tell you the latest leader who claims that the terrorist group is behind the rest of their country and over you the story of master hacker max butler a.k.a. next patient and i went from working with the f.b.i. turning to the dark side. what drives the world the

fear monger. in use by politicians who makes decisions it's a good breakthrough that it's already been made who can you trust no one who is imbue it with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism in school session so when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. the same.

guys welcome the shell and sell the obama show we've heard our guests have to say on the topic now i want to hear audio just go on to this video response or the twitter profile of the questions that we've posted on you tube every monday and on the first day of the show the response is certainly your voice be heard.

the death toll continues to climb in libya as people continue to fight against their leader hurdle gadhafi but today iraq's iraqis also took to the streets in what's being called the day of rage and reports have said that there are eighty five casualties from civilian efforts to storm their government and now it seems as if there's one group out there that's being unfairly picked on because of this scapegoats of all of the sudden changes in the region and the cry for democracy seems to be contagious the leaders of both countries have blamed militants for the uprising specifically al-qaeda that's right both gadhafi and iraqi leader nuri al maliki are blaming al qaida for the unrest now could obvious even accuse the militants of supplying libyans with a loose the nation pills that will trick that into revolting and so give me wrong here it's not like i'm defending al qaida i don't think they're the good guys i don't feel sorry for them but come on right at least pick a scapegoat that has some ties even very loose ones to what's going on don't just

make it up out of thin air al qaeda hasn't been involved in these uprisings perhaps to their chagrin it's a little funny watching the young people of the middle east north africa unite and the way that they're responding clearly shows that they really have absolutely no idea what to do these jihadi story caught off guard they're sort of sending out mixed messages say things like wells could take down because he is an enemy of god then they turn around and they remind people not to ignore the koran because they may not like the duffy but that does not mean that they like the idea of democracy the secular evil of the world now sending out weird commentary like this just proves that al qaeda is way out of the loop when it comes to revolution so there is no call for major revolt from players and or any other militant organization not this time around we have to admit maybe for americans for zionists the two groups that are usually blamed for everything will thing that goes wrong anywhere in the world they're probably enjoying this although he has made statements about

a. evil america is to all kind of seems to have come out as its top pick so blame the terrorists they don't actually have to address the issues of your people so nice try. but it's al-qaeda and democracy just don't go hand in hand. now any time that we hear about the issue of money budget cuts come up the pentagon fights tooth and nail for every last dollar reminding us that it is a matter of national security something we cannot afford to sacrifice but according to a new report from the commission on wartime contracting they do think they can afford to waste so the report found the corruption and waste just cost the u.s. government billions of reconstruction dollars in both iraq and afghanistan wants us to fraud alone were estimated at twelve billion dollars and the rest well unfortunately they kind of have to guess because you see the reliance on contractors has grown so large that there is no central federal database for definitive accounting and the commission also found that the use of hired hands has

become a default option looked at by many federal officials as a resource of labor billions of dollars that doesn't sound free to me so why can't congress get a handle on it why do the same companies who are guilty of corruption and fraud keep getting pushy contracts without any accountability were discussed with me in starting tam assistant professor at american university and author of terrorism and national security reform how can missions can drive change during crises thanks so much for being here so much for having me let's start with the money and of this because there's one statement that the commission made in their report where they just say that war in itself entails waste and you know sure you can listen to that but then you know considering that we fight we see the pentagon and department of defense and the state department fight tooth and nail for every single dollar and like i was saying make this a matter of national security and tell us that our lives are at stake shouldn't we be a little bit angry when we hear that billions of dollars are being wasted we certainly

should be on that commission really makes the case very strongly that there's ways is not necessary that the reason why there is this waste is because the government has a socially fall down on the job in terms of how it deals with contractors and in particular in the long run contractors too much. i rely on contractors for jobs that could be done better by government employees and. to break that down in a couple respects. keep findings are really that one we don't need to use contractors for as many functions as they're being used for now and so some functions such as real core security functions should not be outsourced to contractors at all so for instance we've been using contractors to protect military convoys and protect military personnel in transit that's a military function that shouldn't be given to the families area but the ones that are supposed to be protecting people why do they need protection right right and we should have uniformed people doing those jobs and the commission also found that using contractors is not cost effective in many situations in some cases it is but

there's been a prevailing philosophy in washington for the last couple decades that it's cheaper to use contractors than to use government employees and in some cases that's true but in many cases it's not and in the long run our government would actually save money by restricting the use of contractors and managing it overseeing contractors more effective right out of this whole lives spread because this report also says these federal officials seem to think of these contractors are free hands they're free labor because they just know that congress you know will absolutely keep on trying to get no matter what has been kept well it got to that point in part because it's easy to use contractors easier than hiring government officials sometimes because the process of hiring a full time going play can be burdensome there's bureaucracy and hiring contractors can be quicker easier and there's more flexibility but the government shouldn't do things that way we should be hiring more full time employees to do some of these

jobs and in particular we should be hiring more government employees to oversee the contractors we now have many cases where contractors are overseeing contractors or governments contracting out the function of overseeing contractors and. that's that's a bad idea because contractors. they don't always have the best interests of the country at heart when they're doing their work although contractors for the most part are patriotic honest people. need to be overseen effectively by the government but at the end of being contractors this is a private business right so they're looking out for their bottom line not saying they're bad people but they're not necessarily being patriotic cares they're just trying to get paid and you have to look at the fact that you know you have some of these contractors that are really just dominate the scene look at companies like a p.r. like giant corp and we're so dependent on them for every single function because they provide so much that how do we get away from these companies you know who are you know the corruption well it's a long term process to reverse this. to a large extent but there are some things that. are important and can be done soon

and the commission makes recommendations along these lines one is to. hire more government personnel to carry out some of the functions that should be carried out by the government to is to hire more people in various government agencies to oversee these contractors to ensure they're doing their work correctly that they're not engaging in waste fraud and abuse they actually recommend one agency to look over all of the contractors and one agency for each the state department and the pentagon and you have both actually they recommend creating new offices in various agencies and also creating a permanent inspector general that would oversee contracting for military operations in general and this is really important because what happened with the iraq and afghanistan wars is that after those war started and there were reports of waste fraud abuse congress created inspector generals to investigate what was happening there but this was already once the wars were well underway so if we create a permanent inspector general that person will from the beginning of any military

deployment be monitoring what's happening and overseeing it and that can help eliminate some of these abuses by contractors but i'm just carry seedings and that's very important that we have these agencies in this inspector general but do you really think out of work i mean right that's just creating an. rather tragic mass on top of the bureaucratic mess that we already have well it's by itself it won't solve the problem i think hiring more government employees to carry out these functions is also essential because we can only use contractors last when we have people in the government who are doing those jobs and the myth that using contractors will always save the government money needs to really be just what is time that this report helps to do that and i think one other point i want to make about this commission of broader point about commissions is that a commission like this could actually be really important and people tend to be cynical about commissions when politicians appoint a commission and they say oh oh they're just trying to pass the buck avoid blame

and in this case the commission can provide really the definitive account of something that happened that's something that i've found in the research that i've done in my new book that are coming out and commissions can really drive me actually and listens to this site right fuller for it's coming out this summer and all the. responses are that thanks so much for me thank you for having me. now there are different kinds of hackers white hats who do good who find security loopholes and vulnerabilities in order to fix that there are the black hats those who find those vulnerabilities and exploit that share them with others make a profit maybe end up in jail and a new book kevin wilson details the story of max butler aka max vision a hacker who once worked as a consultant for the f.b.i. but then turn to the dark side and amongst other things fall credit card data for millions of consumers which he then sold and you might be thinking so what it's just some hacker that's now doing time but i think this story shows us how one man can affect millions and how it's all

a choice whether hackers use their power for good or for evil are joining me to discuss it is kevin paulson senior editor at wired dot com and author of kingpin how one hacker took over the billion dollar cyber crime underground kevin thanks so much for joining us i'm curious first of all because i know that you have a hacking background yourself or you served some time for it is that why this story and you you know you decided to to write about it if you somehow connect with max vision. you know i've been covering hackers for a long time twelve years now and i've seen a lot of interesting stories what i'd like to next story is that he kind of personified this whole shift that we've seen over the last ten years of hackers going for broke relationally traditions and exploratory intrusions into becoming for profit criminals and sometimes making a lot of money at it how do you i mean i'm sure you must have gone through this thought process to how do you decide whether you want to be

a hacker that actually does good things or whether you want to do bad and rake in the dough. well max always had a mischievous streak but he was he always wanted to be one of the good guys and for a long time he had a reputation in the computer security community of being a really solid white hat doing very good research and you could pay him to hack your network and tell you what the vulnerabilities were he'd make like a hundred dollars an hour doing that. where he got into trouble was one point he decided to hack the pentagon and close their security holes for them without permission he got caught doing it and it was while he was in jail that he wound up with more serious by collar criminals career criminals and it was a small tight disciplinary thing that led to him becoming a criminal himself after he got out but so then is it just the chase is it you know i hang out with these other guys that are also criminals and boasting about who have to live who have two or are there just really not enough incentives out there

i mean you mentioned he was making a hundred dollars an hour for the pentagon but is that enough are there enough options out there for other hackers who want to work you know with the government or help companies. in the u.s. there are a lot of options in eastern europe and some other parts of the world there are a few and that's why we're seeing them as real kind of centers of organized cyber crime. that's that's what made russia and ukraine kind of the center of the cyber crime universe for a long time and in many ways it still is in max's case when he got out of jail for this pentagon hack he he found that he was no longer a ploy able so you couldn't make better hundred dollars an hour and more he couldn't get a legitimate legitimate job but he did have these prison contacts and he went off from there but do you think there's anything that we can learn from max's story right i mean if we look back at it now as a normal person is my credit card any safer now that max is in jail and someone's found these loopholes that he decided to exploit or quite the opposite and lie in

more danger. well it's probably marginally safer every time a major cyber crime figure goes to jail and max was definitely on the big ones but overall the flaws that made his hacking possible are still out there so we're still seeing a lot of a lot of vulnerabilities a lot of a lot of bad guys making money off of it in max's case for example he was very into hacking restaurants he would break into your restaurant point of sale systems and he would steal credit card data at the moment practically a user made a purchase so you go to you go pick up your pizza you swipe your card at the cash register that's where max gets your card number and he passes it on. to a colleague or he sells and you under ground. even now years after his arrest we're seeing that this type of attack is are going to still in fact it's probably bigger than it was when max was through it in two thousand and seven oh about that why make me feel good about eating out at restaurants kevin i'm curious as to what your

take is on anonymous right we've seen this very loosely organized network of hackers lately be in the news and you know they're really making political statements they're defending wiki leaks and going after companies that attack making leaks they've also decided to leak a lot of documents on the web themselves you know what's your take on the. my view is that we're going to see more attacks of this nature in the future i think this kind of set up a model may out that that is inspiring to. to the hacker community. what we saw with this recent hack of the computer security company h.b. gary is an honest and honest didn't just launch a denial of service attack on their website or pull a prank like they might have done in the past they went in they stole all the company's e-mail and then they set up kind of an instance we keep leaks type website where you go on and you could conduct searches and go through and read

company e-mail based on the search results so that that i think was definitely a wiki leaks influenced type of attack. that that i expect we're going to see a lot more of a lot of wiki leaks imitators who. aren't just posted leaked material as wiki leaks does but actually going out and getting out some cells all of that will be interesting to watch kevin thank you so much for joining us and everyone go out and get his book about thanks so much thanks now coming up next it's told time and it goes to the congressmen who laughed at the thought of a bomb have been killed at a town hall let you know that is not a break and harry reid has finally come out and said that he wants to outlaw the bout of brothels allowed to do that now when his state is facing a budget shortfall. after the break. a telemarketer broadcast.