aren't. the. welcome back to the big picture on john harbin coming up in this half hour two private data firms are called out for their involvement the u.s. chamber of commerce kind of work with these firms doing for the u.s.

government one democratic congressman wants to know and it is the right to bear arms. should it mean anyone should be able to carry a gun at any time later in the show all the bait this issue with the founder and c.e.o. of the guardian angels curtis lee well the first. armed services committee hearing last week democratic congressman hank johnson press defense department leaders and intelligence officers about their relationship with two private security firms take a look. go through and lou would you. be so kind as to provide my office with. deal d. contracts with pal interior technologies erico technology and for

h.b. gary federal and as soon as possible. sure i will i will. do everything possible to do so what i need what i'll need to do is frankly talk to our general counsel make sure that the provision of that type of information is allowed contractually. and any case will have to as quickly as possible. it's alleged that these two firms assisted the chamber of commerce and launching cyber attacks and sabotaging political opponents on the left and even the whistleblower website wiki leaks and the johnson now wants to see what type of work these companies do with the government and if they're indeed using the same tactics were first for counterterrorism to silence political opponents or at least economic and poem i guess would be political pawns so what's going on here to shed more light on this issue leaf reporter and bloggers grosvenor at think progress joins me now lee well nice to be here to have you with us first of all can you sum up

chambered eight share in october of last year as the u.s. chamber of commerce the world's largest big business lobby. ramped up their political spending campaign and face a lot of criticism from bloggers like myself from different media outlets they started seeing these attacks and reaching out to a set of private security firms palance here h.b. gary federal and barrack and they asked them to come up with a group proposal to go after their perceived critics the proposals outlined a number of strategies but basically they were looking to hack and sabotage. their their adversaries and in february of this year because of unrelated. hacking from a group called anonymous these e-mails from one of the security firms federal became public and we found out about this plot. and that brings us to today

where there hasn't been a great amount of media attention but now congressional democrats are demanding an investigation. is. this is this seems like the kind of thing the e.u. if you try to catch terrorists that's exactly. the job of these firms you know palin's here basically did a demonstration for the chamber and in their demonstration according to these e-mails they showed the chamber that they had worked for the defense department tracking. iran and iran the dummy companies because you know because of the sanctions against iran iran has a wide array of dummy companies. track these dummy companies and show how they could collect so much data using their their approach bad and press that chamber and that made them want to move forward and start working with these firms credible

and what kind of work do these companies do for the u.s. government beyond just that is there or is that pretty much i know all three of these firms have various contracts with the federal government particularly with the n.s.a. the f.b.i. and the d.o.t. one contract from earlier last year suggested creating what's called us persona management that's creating dummy identities the people you see commenting on blogs or if we're having a facebook account or a twitter sock puppet and some of them are they might not be real because it's one person orchestrating ten fifteen even thousands of identities having them interact with each other so they seem genuine but then entering networks gathering intelligence and basically social engineering anyone from a jihadi group by posing as a fake applicant to join the terrorist network or posing as a left wing activist and joining maybe greenpeace and gathering data surreptitiously. wasn't. there

a time when the government was forbidden from doing i mean they could gather information but they were forbidden from doing that in proactive like that and in this in this case these companies were actually suggesting planting phony data with people like you like think progress no money gets published pulling out the real data saying see these guys and why they don't know what they're doing we didn't that used to be illegal at least for the government to do it and shouldn't it be legal for illegal for a private corporation to do it well i've learned a lot about this industry in the past few months after i learned that i was one of the targets of this plot but apparently the private security of the cyber security industry is actually motivated and and incentivized to go after jihadi and other terrorist networks around the globe and that the federal government says you know these guys are america's enemies so we won't ever prosecute you or stop you from spying hacking as long as you're going after the bad guys

a problem happens when. a lot of you want to go after your good or another american citizen that i mean it's a felony it's a crime it is but it's a it's a problem when the. when the authorities are supposed to look at the lookout for these types of crimes are relying on the same cyber security firm that might be engaging in this sort of incredible so in the thirty seconds we have left any chance of prosecution of these companies or that they might lose their job or contrast look johnson the democrat from georgia who's asking. these committees to look into these companies and have investigations all of the republican chairman have said no because of the subcommittee hearing last week we're going to least receive additional information about what they're doing with the federal government and that's a step forward republicans are covering. so far they are closely ok we thought great having you on thank you so much for having me showing up this is the consequence of america's new addiction for the state security company. it's from

church off porno scanners at the airport and private firms now owning our internets for profit soon the measures that are supposed to be kept keeping america safe from terrorists will be used to say keep corporations safe from any real accountability to you me or our democratic institutions. it's been two and a half months since the tragic shooting in tucson that killed six people in love congresswoman gabby giffords fighting for her life that shooting rampage ignited a new debate over the need for stronger gun control laws in america yet here we are nearing the end of march and there's been no progress on a single legislative proposal to restrict access to guns. but the white house may soon be stepping up last week pro-gun officials pro-gun control official says me

met with the justice department to go over ways to reduce gun violence in america national rifle association was also invited to the meeting but the organization declined paul helmke the president of the brady campaign on gun violence said about the meeting the fact that they're spending this much time on the issues very partisan this investment i think shows that they're serious and looking for ideas so that the case is president obama ready to take the lead on gun control courteously while joins me again from our new york studios to offer his take is anti cramp activist and founder and c.e.o. of the guardian angels and host of the courteously washoe and i am going seventy the apple curtis welcome. doesn't get any better than broadcasting from the empire state building got a i want to get my hands on one of those tomahawk missiles you know at a flea market out of arizona new mexico that's that's a big. if the n.r.a. has its way a looks like it could be next week curtis the second amendment i'm sure you know

this came into being because so many of the founders didn't want us to have a standing army during times of peace but instead we thought we should have a national draft that produced local and state wide militias that every male from seventeen to forty seven should be a member of those militias and that in order to maintain a well regulated militia the right of the people to keep and bear arms should not be a bridge is the time to begin disbanding our standing army and move into a national militia system like switzerland has done. niceville moshe's system whoa keep putting you're giving everybody at x. like sit back here get all that my work in some states but in montana wyoming it in a rocky mountain states i don't know with all those guys i think i prefer just the structure we have now the problem is is that whereas we have the federal regulation we also have states that are sold diverse in the way they treat the only ship the sale of guns the distribution of guns and we're not all on the same page and

a lot of times it has to do with those who live in rule areas where they need guns there's suburban areas where they need them less the urban areas where i'd rather not have them strapped up with guns because they step on one another's feet middle of a sudden it's a shoot out at high noon but that's really the problem the regional disproportionate evaluation of where you need guns and where you don't need goods but if anything with regard to that the obama administration's been fairly consistent in staying away from local debates about you know whether or not vermont should have private carry laws for example they don't they're the most liberal of all the states or whether new york's gun laws are too restrictive but at the same time i mean this thirty three shot clip that killed gabby giffords this guy was stopped when he started when you know when he stopped to reload if he had to kill ten clip ten shot clip that was required up until the middle the bush administration he probably wouldn't killed anywhere near as many people isn't it time to a least look at at

a national level ad you know you started out with the surface to air missile analogy you know the right to bear arms doesn't give you the right to bear any arm there is some limit there's some rational limit there's not the right to bear cannons is the time to start rational looking at some of the stuff. you would think that as the congresswoman recovers from her wound i think it's incumbent upon her to become a spokesperson because if she continues to extol the value of having a thirty a thirty three shot clip or any kind of ammo that you can use hollow point bullets or all kinds of lethal weapons of destruction then i think you're going to have to have a hard sell to the american public and tom i speak as a person was been shot well how point bullets i don't carry guns but then again i'm very resistance to deny americans so right to carry weapons especially if they've been a crime victims where they live in really hard core areas where you don't get police response about nine one one and you'll be taking

a plane gay bath because you have arthritis and rheumatism before the sheriff comes in so i saw the split on this issue yeah i am too i am too back to the you know the second amendment came out of this desire to have a national militia and that everyone's should serve charlie rangle on the show a couple days ago said we need to bring back the draft if we had a draft we wouldn't enter stupid wars i lived in germany for a year everybody after they graduate from high school has to serve for a year if you don't want to go in the military you can we're going to hospital or something like that a school and then after that year you're entitled to free education most of the european countries do it this way isn't this a rational idea of curtis. it is unfortunate for a child he way to go i remember when he proposed reinstituting the draft and then when it came his time to vote he voted against it he said hey i proposed it it doesn't mean how i'm going to be stupid enough to vote for it so i think if you're going to have people who propose the reinstitution of the draft i have no problem at all in terms of spreading the suffering because right now it's

a few who actually do the fighting so that those who are rich or prosperous so or want to focus on the academic studies so i have to go off to afghanistan and iraq and now libya and who knows iran in the future so i would definitely impose a national draft for those who want to fight so be it for those who want to do volunteer service so be it so that you have to give a minimum of two hours of service to your country in some capacity and your college credits and you can come back another or maybe some money they don't help you in whatever studies you need whether it's vocational technical training or academic studies i'm in total already with you surprised we're actually in solidarity on this issue at the re the first time heard as the you and i haven't ended up shouting at each. just just. you know broadly i'm curious your thoughts on the situation in libya i don't know if you caught in the earlier parts of the show but but my take on it is that the

constitution clearly says only congress has the power to declare war the founders were very explicit they didn't want the president to have that power and and that's why you know it's and it's in article one of the constitution to you from places and and yet instead of declaring instead of even having hearings on whether cut off he was a threat to us john boehner instead decided that he was going to have hearings on national public radio and planned parenthood isn't this congress dropping the ball . yeah but it's also like trying to figure out who is moammar gadhafi sent a drug induced psychosis on a bad acid trip with. friends he saw enemy of the reagan then he saw from the drudge w. bush he's a friendly despotic great anti-semite now he's back to being the enemy if he survives this no fly zone and a tomahawk missiles coming in to his let's just call it is concubine prowess of the forty eight drop dead gorgeous libyan women with college because some president in

the future will wake them up to get this is like an up and down bipolar oh we they should ship we had with him and yet we have king abdullah abdullah in the house of saud in saudi arabia who helps of iranians kill their own people and then in yemen we have sharpshooters killing their own people and we're supporting the guy in charge but i'm totally confused about ratings or matter who you are or any of the bodies of ours which you guys yeah it's seems i agree it seems to me like we're getting into a huge mess here and so many of the rebels in so many of these countries are shia and so many governments are sunni and and and most americans don't know the difference in the two it seems that we're walking right into the middle of a civil war here in libya and i'm not sure that's wise but whether or not it's wise i sure as heck would like to have seen some debate and some experts testify before congress and know where my elected representatives to have a thought of a declaration of war i see this is no different when we went to war against slobodan milosevic remember in the balkans because we should have to work harder

with allies who are afraid of the flow of refugees into their countries and that's really what this is about the fear of tunisians egypt him saying now libyans just flooding into europe which is a serious recession and they just can't handle that refugee overload so we're doing exactly what we did with slobodan milosevic we're now doing to moammar gadhafi are you go curtis thanks a lot for being with us tonight. i can't believe we're in solidarity. ok. well as the judge will do it we'll talk again during president obama's first two years of his gun control laws have become we can get one after the other people can now carry guns on some university campuses on public lands and on trains meanwhile last week utah became the first state to name an official state and gun arizona is likely to follow suit we are the nation with the most gun deaths in the world including murder suicide and accidental deaths by guns it's time to seriously reconsider our insane gun policies.

crazy alert post-apocalyptic road trip if you're in north carolina driving down highway one sixteen year the south carolina border you may want to be extra alert an electronic road sign that's normally used to warn drivers of construction projects or traffic jams warned yesterday caution zombies ahead on the other side of the road the sign read below for tanks the highway patrol says that someone likely fiddled with the electronic sign in the middle the night customize the message and the driver shouldn't worry about the living dead or the tanks deployed to take them out let's hope so but in a state that's produced governors mark sanford's senator jim de mint and the mysterious alvin greene zombies may actually be a welcome alternative. after the break have republicans already overstepped their mandate a letter from

a lifelong republican who's decided to switch teams in today's. twenty four seven live streaming news towns what to do about the ongoing financial hardship unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you never find on mainstream news. that will sell me political. posts aren't. just. the.

time of the good the bad and the very very gladly stream away oddly first for good daniel ellsberg seventy nine year old whistleblower who uncovered the pentagon papers and shed light on u.s. involvement in vietnam forty years ago proved over the weekend that you're never too old to make a statement for a good cause ellsberg joined about thirty other people who were arrested outside political marine base in virginia for protesting the treatment treatment of bradley manning the man accused of were leaking classified documents from wiki leaks and the very next day ellsberg was arrested again for protesting the iraq war outside the white house to rest because it's well. mr ellsberg. the bet house republicans house the next item on the legislative agenda that will cut our deficit

put americans back to work and turn our economy around try legislation to affirm that in god we trust is the nation's official motto ability by republican randy forbes was passed out of the house judiciary committee last week and will likely be voted on this week in clearing in god we trust the official national motto and encouraging the slogan be plastered on government buildings and schools everywhere how many jobs have been created by the legislation in a few plasterers zero how much of that up will the deficit be caught by minus zero zero many people will this bill anger a lot but i guess that's the republican way told by the way in god we trust was already made the official nations motto back in nine hundred fifty six so the legislation isn't even necessary and a very very ugly georgia state representative body franklin franklin previously made this list for introducing legislation to force women to prove that

miscarriages happened due to natural causes today he's on our list because of some mind bogglingly ugly posts he made over the weekend on his facebook page reacting to u.s. intervention in libya franklin wrote letters are nothing but pure evil i would really like it if other countries launched attacks upon these united states because of our regimes war on the unborn baby lord have mercy on us. i really hope this is just a case of drunk facebook ing but sadly i think this guy really is that crazy and that's a very very a. less than three months into their two thousand and ten election mandate. we'll let the

american people are finding out what the republicans really are they're shills for transnational corporations and the millionaire and billionaire c.e.o.'s and it's just a matter of time before a lifelong republican voters start leaving the party in droves in fact the exodus has already begun i've received dozens of letters recently from lifelong republicans who are disavowing this new incarnation of the party that they supported in the past i want to share with you a few words from one of those converts by name michael a fellow who said he voted for reagan bush sr bush sr dole bush jr bush jr and mccain who whether it was in title from a conservative who's been mocked and michael wrote some thirty years of commitment to a traditionally conservative ideology as very recently given away to my realisation the political movement which again my loyalty in the seventy's has been hijacked or

likes talking about here is what i've been saying for a very long time the republican party of today is not the same as yesterday's it's not the same as my dad's nixon eisenhower republican party for decades republicans and democrats by and large wanted the same things both democrats and republicans wanted a strong middle class they wanted strong families they wanted to strong health care system they wanted a strong national defense now the two parties may have each had differing strategies on how to achieve these things but the goals are the same. act look at the one nine hundred fifty six republican party platform going to eisenhower was running for reelection it reads like something a fox news would call socialist propaganda champion champion organized labor unemployment insurance environmental protections and federal health care assistance

even republican richard nixon who less than forty years ago created the environmental protection agency fought for an employer health care mandate and kept the tax bracket for the wealthiest americans at seventy four percent it was by the way and dixon was vice president it was ninety one percent for eight for all the years that he was vice president and nixon was just fine with that so it was eisenhower anyhow those guys nixon. eisenhower they're far closer to the democratic party of today than the republicans absolutely michael in his letter to me went on to talk about what pushed him over the edge he wrote the one word stimulus for my opinion it was wisconsin what happened he was simply a retired teacher of the new york city high schools where qualls ronald reagan's eloquent characterization of the teacher as america's finest announced in august

one thousand nine hundred four his goal to put one on board and a shuttle mission he was talking of christa mcauliffe as for. what i observe now is a crusade against my profession by republican governors senators congressman and presidential wannabes egged on by the angry voices of radio and the poison pen writings of the internet and print media they see nothing less than a glorious opportunity to move in for the kill on all of organized labor. it's a pity that the tea party composed mostly of working folks as emerged as a group of useful idiots in support of policies that will ultimately be their own undoing conservative power elites must be rolling on the floor with laughter over heavy knees fools as their foot soldiers this illustrates by the way a great opportunity for the rest of us help wake up tea partiers we need to show up

had tea party rallies go home go make your sign you know the next tea party rally you know they're not going to hold a whole lot of i think now in the future because everybody's kind of onda guys putting on the rallies but anyhow if there's one make a sign this is get out of nafta or throw the banks there is in jail because largely you agree with most of the tea party guys will agree with you and it will slowly dawn on them that they're fighting for the wrong side by the way the people who run the tea party who put the thing on paper the speakers in the platform and the microphones and the busses there are a lot happier that i pick it and it's just a matter of time before their job those tea partiers or their pension or their health insurance falls on the chopping block to as a result of the pro billionaire class agenda being pushed by today's republican party think about it for a second how morally bankrupt as one party become it feels the need to steadfastly

protect banks toure's who committed fraud water economy to the brink of collapse and attack schoolteachers who make fifty thousand dollars a year and call them quote blood suckers who are tanking our economy and quote this is insanity. and michael who wrote me the letter finally saw it as he concluded that qadri of radio shock jocks led by the likes the limbaugh energy crowley levin back and gallagher constantly decry the viciousness of the liberals good grief did they ever listen of themselves so in three short weeks and in february early march of two thousand and eleven the right first lost my enthusiasm then my assistance and finally my vote you can take this to the bank tom he wrote if they lose me they will lose millions more mike is not an anomaly he's the start of a new trend in america the billionaires who thought they could take control of our

country and sell it off for profit right underneath their noses and are about to receive a rude awakening america is not perceivable it belongs to us and when more people like my step up and lead today's republican corporate republican party then we can officially put an end to this bad deal in america and put into place another new deal with the middle class that's the big picture for tonight for more information on our stories we covered tonight visit our web site at. on this entire show as available as a free podcast on i tunes also check out our youtube page at youtube dot com don't forget ted the democracy begins of you tag your it will see the.