but can they learn a show when you look at the real headlines with none of the mercy if you live in washington d.c. now is the u.s. getting involved in libya or not as lawmakers in libya rebels ask or response from the u.s. the reports show that they could be looking to saudi arabia to play the middleman so we'll have details on what that would mean and who said anything about being transparent even though then president elect obama promised to run

a transparent open government his latest battle to bring down leakers seems to be promoting another message so should those leaders fear what the government might do that and a new update on the hacker who's taking on sony after a court ruling anybody who obtained information on how to hack the playstation three is now going to have their ip addresses sent directly to sony so we're going to bring you all the latest on this attack on your privacy and it's a new face to the american dream gone are the days of owning a home with a white picket fence now replaced by people forced to pay rent on after month year after year so we'll take a closer look at the new housing market and the dying roles of fannie mae and freddie mac. and some states are pushing for new regulations on voters details on what some voters are now going to have to show in the upcoming elections and i will ask if this is a sign of a republican war on voters in america we'll get to the bottom of that issue and a lot more tonight show but first let's move on to our top story. libya's future

remains up in the air as violence and unrest persist as pressure for some kind of u.s. reaction is ratcheted up rebel leaders continue to ask for assistance in the form of weapons or a no fly zone and just yesterday three u.s. senators voiced their support for a more aggressive action by obama as well but today the independent report at the washington has made a highly classified request for saudi arabia to supply weapons to the rebels in benghazi so the u.s. doesn't have to get directly involved so we have repeated calls. military intervention american weapons to potentially be sold by saudis were pacing their own shia protests and no clear sign that get off he can actually be defeated welcome possibly here to discuss it with me is michael green vice president of the truman national security project michael thanks so much for being here and so much for having me it's hard to figure out where to begin here there are so many variables but i want to start with this report came out from the independent they

were they said that supposedly there's a secret request from inside washington to have saudi arabia supply weapons to the libyans what do you think of anything there's truth to it i'm not really a position to know whether there's truth to that personally i'd be surprised to learn that there is i be surprised if we asked and i'd also be surprised if the saudis said yes but as you say the saudis are in delicate position of their own and becoming involved in the situation in libya may not be directly in their interest i also wonder whether it's in our interest to be using the regime or persona as an interlocutor in something like this but i usually work kind of comfortable with using the saudis for everything that isn't really stop this in the past and i think that the idea here would be that well if it happens then we don't have to intervene let's say that these arms do get into the hands of the rebels and they do bring down cut off either and then everyone's happy and no one can say you know we hate america at the end of it but i mean of course the world is a little bit more complicated than all that and so you know as i said the saudis iraqis on their own side have got to deal with. we have to use our side we don't

necessarily use the saudis for everything i don't think that's a fair characterization of how we do it but i don't think every paper said they were pretty comparable in dealing with them i think sure. what i want to ask you know of course there's all this talk. of what could happen and perhaps the no fly zone some other type of intervention and at this point it doesn't really seem like could offer even though you know we felt like we were watching the situation unfold in a in a matter of days and weeks and it looks like really the living forces were encroaching upon the he's still hanging on so one. happens if they don't get ready for what happens if gadhafi stays in power and now we have barack obama who's already come out and said you must step down right i mean i think one of the things that's really important number here is that it's not just barack obama who said gadhafi to step down i think the international community has been very clear it often is to stand down and that means that this is an issue in large part for the international community of course united states mislead but any military response that we might

even imagine including a no fly zone in libya involves you know becoming embroiled in a conflict that may lead to another to a long civil war may be over very quickly i hope it is but that's in some ways the easy part if gadhafi leaves by force of arms or voluntarily hopefully he still managed to leave his country in a state where it has no civil society he spent the last several decades eliminating all conceivable opposition and it will take some time for libya to stand up on its own feet and it will need help from the international community so if we're going to become involved on the front end of this thing i think we need to be very clear that it has to be an international effort we have to have commitments up front and that you know if the europeans if you know some international force commits to entering libya they're going to be there for some time in a capacity building way that's going to be expensive it's going to be a protracted commitment the last thing we need to do is go in and recklessly and then find ourselves stuck not having for seamless in advance of not having made the

kind of commitments that we need to make i get we have i think i think the obama administration is taking their time is thinking about it clearly we see the military and secretary defense robert gates saying the same things like you guys hold up no this is a military operation and then at the same time we have john kerry who was on t.v. yesterday saying no it's not a military operation is just a no fly zone and even senator john mccain went on the airwaves yesterday and he keeps calling for this to even have a clip of him. right. i want to focus just for a second i could on the no fly zone what that means is we want to prevent khadafi from using his helicopters and airplanes from killing libyans and i think we can do it and i think we should do it. now people like john mccain are saying that the obama administration isn't being aggressive enough but when it comes to john mccain pacific i mean is he still just better that he lost the election and wants to

criticize everything obama does or does this actually think that bombing everyone all over the world is a good idea and the last thing i want to do is question john mccain's motivations on this point i mean he certainly entitled to his view and as you know he's a highly decorated aviator himself. put on the point of the no fly zone i think unfortunately it's just not that simple that secretary gates is quite right that instituting a no fly zone means taking out libya's air defense capabilities in order to do it safely in order to fly or craft around over libya you have to make sure that the libyans are in a position to shoot those or craft down that involves an attack on libyan air defense system so it is an ordinary action the other more important question in some ways is what do we do then the primary. problem and the opposition has from a military standpoint is not opposing air power the libyan air force is not something that it's not a serious threat i mean granted be bombed is bad but the opposition is up against infantry heavy ground force their biggest problem is regime loyalists with a k

forty seven pts. so now if we do this no fly zone situation we find ourselves in a position where neither we're craft international community or craft american aircraft or we're getting over the battle scene and what happens if it goes badly for the rebels i also want to count as a go on top of that point also very quickly we've heard from coffee which of course there's no proof to it al qaeda is in the middle of this and they're feeding hallucinatory pills to the young people and that's what's making them protest but at the same time hillary clinton did express concern that i'm sure al qaeda would love to jump on top of this situation if gadhafi does get taken out you know we look at west point study and they say that when it comes to the militants the majority of them came from libya only second to saudi arabia especially if we look at iraq so how big of a threat is that it's hard to assess what's going on on the ground without good intelligence but i do think there's a legitimate concern there. opposing. any serial human rights abuse or like a darfur is a wonderful thing to do but there are a lot of motivations going i mean cut off use clearly nuts when he says that al

qaeda is sleeping pills into their nescafe you know whatever i like you. i mean it's good stuff. but drugs in the nescafe i don't think it's at the root of this thing but there are real questions asked about who exactly are the opposition i don't think we know that yet i am i going to thank you very much for joining us tonight thank you. ok so it's time for show and tell on tonight's program now last time we want to know if you thought that a no fly zone should be implemented in libya and we got quite a few responses from our audience so here's what some of you had to say sharon jones thinks it should be implemented saying it should have already been done gavin irvine reply cut off he will do what he wants with weapons that we sold him and

last thinks of the no fly zone wouldn't work he say he says i think a no fly zone would only aid the opposition and the people would suffer for their i don't want any intervention over there the people know what's good for them on twitter we heard from miles lacey he said a no fly zone will not stop gadhafi when he can slaughter his people with machine guns and artillery no fly zone equals that clinton asli tweeted robert gates has pointed out a no fly zone means declaring war we can't continue to interfere like we own the world a lastly we heard from it's a wrap on the night no fly zone he said not by us a nato and not without u.n. backing that are to crack morale version forces with nonviolent means like an information campaign etc now as always we thank you for your responses and here's our next question for you at home defense secretary robert gates made a surprise visit to afghanistan not only met with president hamid karzai and addressed the issue of civilian civilian casualties in recent weeks but he also

addressed the troop withdrawal saying that some troops are going to stay in the country after the original twenty fourteen deadline so with all these issues that the u.s. is facing in afghanistan we want to know what you think is the time for the u.s. to leave or should we stick it out and rebuild you can respond to us on facebook twitter and you to. just ahead targeting the leakers and i will take a look at the obama administration's record on filing criminal charges against those suspected of leaking national secrets because josh gerstein joins us in just a moment and so he verses of the s. three hacker the drama over the case takes another choice and for one that could set a dangerous precedent for the star citizen of the region. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions considered break through it through anything it may who can you trust no one who is imbue it with the noble mission received where are we heading state controlled capitalism is

called sessions when nobody dares to ask what we do our t. question more.

hey guys welcome to shelley tell me you're going to show we've heard our guests talk to say on the topic now i want to hear are you just going to you tube the video response or the twitter for part of the question that we post on you tube every monday and on the first day of the show and long responses like your book. now we've spoken in depth on this program about the effort to ban shari'a law here in the u.s. despite the fact that serialize already not recognized in the u.s. that it's a problem that doesn't exist but that hasn't stopped conservative lawmakers around the country from introducing bills to ban sharia law and the latest state to jump on this bandwagon as alabama the bill's sponsor says the ban is designated you are designed to protect future generations from the erosion of the constitution despite

the fact that there's no record of any muslims trying to have islamic law recognized alabama courts but who cares about the facts right certainly not state senator gerald allen who isn't buying it he is the solo sponsor of s.b. sixty two a bill that would ban alabama chords from using sharia law or international law making legal decisions but there's something very fishy about his bill and tonight we wanted to show you what doesn't seem to fit the in the bill it's a fine syria as a form of religious log derived from two primary sources of islamic law the divine revelation set forth in the koran and the example set by the islamic prophet muhammad and when reporters now begin looking at this bill they did a little bit of digging and what they found was pretty interesting if you google shari'a law you'll find nearly the exact same definition on one very popular website so here's their definition most muslims believe shari'a is derived from two primary sources of islamic law the divine revelation set forth in the koran and the

example set by the islamic prophet muhammad in the sooner i'll guess which popular website you can find this definition here's a clue the word. we highlighted also have a web page on this same site we get pedia that's why we're anybody can post just about anything so that states. really copy the definition of his bill legal language off of wikipedia when he says that the wording was drafted by legislative staff but a source on his staff told the aniston star the definition was in fact pulled from wikipedia and when asked to define shari'a law senator gerald allen couldn't because he said he didn't have his notes in front of him talk about incompetent sounds like senator george allen and his staff are really doing a bang up job for the people of alabama working on fighting threats that don't exist and basing legal language off of wiki pedia just with the taxpayers' knee.

now do you remember when the obama administration pledged to be the most transparent in american history and what a promise that was unfortunately if you look at the situation from a legal perspective it ministrations actions couldn't be more opposite from their stated promises at least when it comes to whistleblowers and will and a little more than two years that obama has been in office prosecutors have filed criminal charges in five separate cases involving unauthorized distribution of classified national security information to the media compare that to the fact that in the last forty years that only happened three times so three in forty years versus five in two years that's quite a difference and i doesn't include the criminal case of the u.s. government is so desperately trying to build against wiki leaks founder julian assange much so what's behind this hard line approach well joining me to discuss it is politico's josh gerstein josh thanks so much for joining us now not only did obama promised the most transparent administration but how much of

a factor would you say that these bush era offenses that were uncovered thanks to whistleblowers you know how much of a role did they play in getting obama elected in the first place. significant push in that direction in the biggest leak of the last decade or so was probably the new york times report on the warrantless wiretapping program here in the united states which really contributed to a perception in some quarters that president bush was acting outside the law or was willing to go around the wall. in pursuing what he saw as the fight against terrorism and you know those kinds of perceptions and that that sort of approach to that issue i think did help put some momentum behind president obama's presidential campaign now how much of this is the obama administration being perhaps overly zealous in the situation or you know how much of it is the fact that leaking has increased i guess you know with the. internet with web sites like we can leaks it's

perhaps a little easier to get information out there right i mean it's hard to put your finger on exactly what's causing this when you speak to experts about it bill talk about several different reasons why there might be so many cases and one is that the bush administration was really exercised as well about the issue of leaks but it takes a long time to build and prosecute these cases so some of the cases the obama administration is pursuing are actually left over from the bush era were actually indicted under president obama but stem from events that took place under president bush but you're also right that there are increasing concerns in the intelligence community about leaks going not just through the traditional media but through the new media and directly onto the internet you know it's much harder for officials to argue with somebody who's a random blogger or someone they don't even know or someone in another country that it is to argue with say a major newspaper like the new york times or the washington post so it's the kind of thing that really instills quite a bit of fear into the intelligence community as very clear general standard here

because we see leaks coming from top level officials all the time that they might feed directly to the newspapers they might feed it to people like bob woodward who writes an entire book based on a lot of classified material a lot of classified conversations and yet those people never seem to get punished either. right there been very very few cases of that sort the only one that even comes close to that is probably president bush is a lewis libby who was not charged with leaking but with lying in the investigation into the revelation of a cia officer valerie plame is identity so generally speaking that's a very very very unusual i can't even name another case other than that one that came close to the white house generally speaking you're talking about information that is disclosed by a lower level maybe up to the mid ranking employees and as you say in books like woodward's book you see hundreds and hundreds upon thousands of classified details that he got from somewhere and apparently the way he does work is largely from speaking to senior level officials we never hear about prosecution for things like

that now some of that and you mentioned this in your piece to use in the professor's there are other ways that the obama administration can go about that they don't necessarily have to bring it to to court to bring criminal charges against whistleblowers but what are the other options though the primary option would be to fire the person involved in most of these people are government employees and so if you tell them that they're fired or they've been stripped of their security clearances that can be a pretty significant sanction in and of itself sometimes it's enough to just tell the officials that investigators are on to them and figured out that they're leaking information that will generally shut things down as well but in the cases that been brought in the last two years the administration has felt in the justice department felt that it was critical to send a message that leaking classified information to top national security secrets even if you do it to the media is unattainable substantially by prison well they're

definitely sending a strong message if you look at case of bradley manning someone who's been held a quanah go for ten months he's been held in solitary confinement he's now being forced to strip naked every single day and yet you know not that he hasn't been convicted of any crime yet so how do you think that the general. population really looks at this scenario do they do they you know look at the obama administration or realize that they went back on their word when it comes to an open and transparent administration or has the obama administration really painted whistleblowers as this evil that puts our national security at risk. well you know the obama administration would argue there's no inconsistency with pursuing people who illegally release classified information that if you know of some wrongdoing inside the government there are plenty of things you can do other than release the information publicly you can go to congress you can report through inspectors general the various agencies so there are plenty of avenues open to you so they would argue that it's not inconsistent with their transparency but not every case of leaking is whistle blowing sometimes people are pursuing

a personal agenda or trying to advance some sort of a national security issue that they may consider important that perhaps the administration doesn't consider as a war so there are definitely two sets of perspectives here the administrations and those that advocate on behalf of. our josh want to thank you very much for joining us and that's definitely a topic that we'll keep on watching we'll see how many more of these criminal charges the obama administration might file in their next two years and beyond thanks thank you. now a few weeks back we interviewed george hotz on this program he's the now famous hacker who is in world in a legal battle with sony for jailbreaking the playstation three and then publishing a b. in christian key and the software tools on his website for anyone out there to access and whatever you think of hans and his hacking this next update on the case you should pay attention to a federal magistrate has granted sony the right to acquire the ip addresses of anybody who's visited was his website from january two thousand and nine to the

present that is you get i mean anybody out there who access this site whether they use his encryption key or not are now going to have their ip addresses other personal information given over to sony and i'd say that that's a privacy issue they're discussing with me as associate director of technology studies at the competitive enterprise institute thanks so much for joining us tonight what do you say do you think this is a troubling ruling i mean you know i was a journalist for a while and look at this in a very troubling way because that means that if i was doing research if i was out there looking at george hans's website before i wanted to interview him my ip address is now going to be handed over and what about anyone who is just generally curious now that's been criminalized as well. it looks based on the decision issued by the judge that there is a risk that anonymity which is a very important value in courts of long recognized to be played by the first amendment may heads increasingly in the digital age in the case of lawsuits such as

in this case a copyright for the lawsuit so i think it's a danger to our privacy it is a danger to our privacy when judges are issuing these subpoenas that involve identifiable user information we're talking about things like your ip address or even your username both of which can be fairly easily tied back to you in many cases the frustration here is that the judge didn't take seriously the are you advanced by the electronic frontier foundation which filed a brief in the case they argued that because the only real reason for the court to need the ip addresses was to establish jurisdiction that the subpoena of the core here was just too broad that a narrower subpoena focusing on non-identical have the information would be more appropriate and i think that's what the court should have done and how there were there other subpoenas issued also in this case and george hotz it wasn't just anybody who visited its website but also his twitter information you tube google also were given subpoenas correct you to google twitter and

a couple of other services all receive court orders looking for information and we're talking about biz guys information being handed over by for example twitter i think it's fair for there to be a court order george hotz while i think what he did probably should be illegal may well have violated the one thousand nine hundred eighty two digital millennium copyright act we need to be liable to for it to sony so i understand why they are seeking the records the fear here is when you start to go beyond just what he said and what people said to him but also who was looking at his videos who was commenting on his blog that's where the troubling aspect of privacy and free speech come into play now to saudi saying here as to why they need the information of anybody who looked at his blog they're saying that it's a matter of jurisdiction that's one of two reasons there are going. jurisdiction is that the case should be heard by a court a federal court in northern california whereas george hotz wants it to be heard in new jersey but the reason why so many things northern california is better is because that court has long been friendlier in copyright infringement cases like

this one whereas george hotz is based in new jersey that's where he lives so he wants to be heard there the reason why you want these ip addresses of is so we can demonstrate to a judge that folks who are accessing this allegedly illegal content were physically located in california the second reason they want it is because they don't figure out if george violated a temporary restraining order that a court issued back in january of this year they're trying to find out whether even after he was ordered to stop distributing the. the how to video on g.p.s. your job breaking whether or not he would still do it but to figure that out you don't need identifying information you could do that you could get access that information with a far less revealing subpoena that sounds like this is about her child it's not every single person that visited his site but you know you mentioned whether we're not sure whether what he did is really wrong or not in charge hans has now become famous because he was the first person to successfully jailbreak and i phone and that now by the courts has been proven to be legal so what makes it so different when you're jailbreaking

a video game console. under this law that i mentioned in ninety eight generally speaking unless there's a split special decision otherwise by the copyright office any device designed to circumvent copy protection is a lawful the thing with george hotz in his case is that he wasn't trying to facilitate piracy he was trying to make it easier for people to run pirate software he just wanted to run whole groups software things like the linux operating system on a sony p.s. three that he had lawfully purchased but i don't think that should be a crime if he's infringing on their rights if he's somehow stopping publishers from making money that's one thing but so far to my knowledge sony hasn't brought any evidence that he was doing something with you and of violating their copyrights which is why i think he shouldn't be. liable for any charges it's also why i think calder should revisit this and ensure that folks who are just trying to reverse engineer their own devices are going to be liable under these copyright suits for potentially huge damages now here is that you know we interviewed him

a couple weeks ago here on the program and he was telling me that he is in christian code and this is where you're going to have to help me out because he goes about my had also didn't allow for people to use pirated games or whatever on their p s three because that's not something that he believes it does so he actually having proof that someone did go ahead and do that we do know that people are using. the information the few choir and the tools that he scuppered to pirate games now others have been involved in this in general when piracy on a device is discovered it's the process of work by a lot of different folks so it wasn't just george hotz he built a work of others his work there's no doubt that what he did was very instrumental in this process but if people are tired of games that's not his fault unless he's selling this software to people with the intent of making it so they can pirate which is as far as i know he's up on breaking the law so he wants to go after the people who are using this for hiring games that's one thing for us to go after the people who are uploading pirated games to bittorrent but it's also i think

a legitimate case of going after these hackers were just trying to run their own devices is something that should not be illegal in the shouldn't be the basis for civil action or to sound like you started a chain of events and so here are you having they've also made statements like they want to take christian code off the internet entirely and wipe it clean which as you just can't do that is not how to get a network so i think they're being a little overreaching thank you so much for joining us thank you now still to come tonight a grumpy old senator makes a return to our to all time segments are not a moment and most americans dream of owning their own home but it's the american dream dying for the middle class and the last class question as soon as the rich. drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to create through and through the president made who can you trust no one who is you know if you.