welcome to the loner show where you'll get the real headlines with none of the mersey we're going to live out of washington d.c. now tonight if you're a twitter user how about following the taliban that's right it turns out the militants are trying to use social media to get their message across but do they even need it to win the propaganda war also take a closer look at solitary confinement many analysts say that it's a form of torture and if that's the case have americans been torturing their own people thousands of them for years then it's

a story we first told you about earlier this week that's tracking americans using g.p.s. devices on their cars we'll speak with wired about how the feds are pulling this off and we'll ask if this process is even legal then they call the big five the c.e.o.'s of the top five oil companies in america so as they came to capitol hill to testify over their unnecessary tax breaks today they can't help but wonder if anything is really going to change or if congress is just putting on a show to appease the american people will get to the bottom of those issues and we'll get a dose of happy hour in tonight's show but first let's move on to our top story. the taliban are now on twitter in what's becoming more of a war of information and propaganda by the day in the struggle for hearts and minds in afghanistan as well as the world over are for militant groups are embracing modern technology the taliban has an official web site they put out information through text messages e-mail they circulate songs they edit video clips of fights again. coalition forces and as you know al qaeda even puts out

a glossy magazine vichy month and a form of inspire and the majestic woman known as the cause no more jihadi women now it's a bizarre mix of zealous religious ideology and of modern p.r. but how successful is the separate especially in recruiting a western audience and is there any way for us to win this information war here to discuss that with me is lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer senior fellow at the center for advanced defense studies and who is also still serving as a reserve lieutenant colonel anthony thank you so much for being here thank you for having me so where do we begin here tony and let's look at what the taliban is already doing like i said they have a website they put signs out there they put videos out there now they're on twitter and starting today they started tweeting in english so does that mean that these people know what they're doing or they do and this is one of those very interesting valving stories as early as three they were videotaping their raids in afghanistan we actually captured some of these tapes and they were these were actually recruiting tools to bring others in so that even though this was located at the

time they were very effective now we're seeing them move into the well into the information age and let's remember two things about this tweeting thing first only the western audience really will understand the tweets now not say that they may have a commander here now that can understand one of the things we saw durable were to b.b.c. was able to transmit open text messages to have things happen i wouldn't put it past them try to do that with more educated guys but ninety five percent of the population don't read or write and the idea here that they would actually be doing something to effect be called relations thinking is lunacy this is all aimed at the west so obviously if they're aiming at the west an english speaking audience that means they're in direct competition with nato with the u.s. military why is that they were always seem to be one step behind because it takes longer to verify information and reports and this is not that nato or us wants to be deceptive i think there's a do want to be very very accurate the problem is this something called. that was

something your first of all it's called observe orient this act or they can do that in a matter of minutes why we would sometimes takes they take days to do it we have to be correct sometimes they want to be totally blunt sometimes our side wants to pick out what the high points they want to highlight those things they don't want to talk about so that makes it takes decision time and frankly the narrative has to be true. does not suffer from any sort of coordination issue of that they don't care if it's true or not if it serves their cause we're going to say it and also be have no need for slowing it down regarding let's make sure that we understand what the message is they know what the message is get put out there and that puts us often on the defensive we being nato in the us so of course we've seen examples here in the u.s. we have our jihadi james we've seen similar examples in the u.k. as well but is there any way to even now how much propaganda efforts this information war actually feeds into recruiting people or how much of it is just the simple fact that we're occupying muslim countries abroad and fighting

a war i think it's there clearly there's things like the video they used to recruit people but i think it's the latter i think really they're right now trying to put out a message to basically affect our decision makers here much like any other media war you want to fight people who actually control the budget and make the decisions so this is where there's a there's a clear issue here not to say that these jihadi this are looking at real technology let me diverge one quick second we know that groups are actually looking at some subversive has to technology could be used as weapons things like electromagnetic pulse which are the type our grids with that said as they develop the understanding of those higher technologies they're clearly understanding the war the narrative and this is where i think al qaida to zero is going with this you have the taliban as one aspect of learning about this and i think the whole effort that includes anyone who has a bone to pick with has as i understand understood has to learn how to use the narrative to their advantage and that's what this is all about do you think that we're going to lose i mean how do you think it's going to look let's say ten years from now as technologies continue to develop. as al qaeda and other offshoots

around the world also continue to learn how to use these new developing technologies there's a great scene in the movie dr brian or a jew is writing romans go home you know is graffiti on a wall that obviously the romans went home and not a good way i think this is were obvious a lot of folks here are talking about how long we should stay in our selves in that region and i'm a part of a much smaller footprint i'm talking about maybe twenty thousand folks in afghanistan to do just anti-terrorism and color but i would be like i think that's what we're looking at here we've got to be very realistic about why we're there and if people don't want to be there there's really no good reason to be there and i think that's why we have to do it how quickly can not be forgotten even if let's say we do pull out troops out of afghanistan by two thousand and fourteen it may be twenty fifteen thousand and sixteen it like they're saying you know our memories that shores no it's not especially this part of the world we're talking about so if you go back literally two three hundred years and plus i don't believe we've done much in the way of helping ourselves with some of their own programs you know we've

talked about this i'm not for the drone program i for every terrorist you kill you created three more if you kill three civilians so you've got to consider the person again here with that said the vietnamese didn't follow us home after vietnam so i'd like to believe that we played the right way we actually do create a peace process such as a northern ireland style peace process works inclusive that brings people back together to allow them to work politically together that may help mitigate some of these bad feelings but we just we just don't know what's going to happen over the next five years i also want to divert our attention for a second over a two week leave because if you look at the way that our government is waging a massive war against against whistleblowers against killing a science against bradley manning who is you know if i get any bill that will be held here at home to you yourself are a whistleblower as well does all of that become trivial you know we hear that this type of information that if it does get out it puts our national security at risk but our are there many mother things that are putting our national security at risk isn't there even taliban propaganda like we said it doesn't even have to be true.

videos that are out there that make all of that minuscule most whistleblowers come forward with for a very clear reason that they believe something's wrong they're trying to do the right thing that was my motivation i think it is war through as it was i mean bradley manning manning's basic motivation was to do good for a very very bad way he did it but clearly that was it so i think that part of the problem with our political process is that people talk good terms of wanting to have whistleblowers but they really don't and this is why we've not been able to successfully set up a process for bringing a whistleblower and letting him get his information out and let that information disclosure become the issue not a person is a saint who walks on water because that person always be able to really come up with a program like i mean how many whistleblowers he said have you heard say that they actually tried to come forward and present is everyone on earth to their superiors and you know they were brushed aside so i guess maybe there isn't a right way to do it he said the bradley manning didn't do it the right way but i don't know what i can only be forty percent of the d.o.d. report about my issues about me trying to discredit me so you know you've got to wonder what the issue is here the issue is always people don't want to be called on

the carpet much more and it is one of the ironies of the nine eleven issue the cover it's not about you know we doing it it's about the fact people are trying to cover their their butts so to speak this is where we've got to get a system in place which allows folks to come forward and say a mistake was made this is why it was made this is what we need to do to fix it until that happens we're going to continue to have problems with their government calling whistleblowers you know dangerous national security when they're really not and if they just understand that we're going to a process everybody is much better off and you can see the jackson position now and we reported yesterday on our show that australia in fact gave julian a fine gold medal peace prize from their country and meanwhile we have a grand jury convening here in alexandria trying to bring criminal charges against him here in the u.s. tony and i thank you very much for joining us thank you for having me now still to come tonight we focus at length about the case of bradley manning and how he was held in solitary confinement but did you know that there are also thousands of prisoners here in the u.s. placed in solitary confinement found decades. cloud morning not

a moment and then tracking the movement of u.s. citizens with g.p.s. and environmental activists says that she will stratigraphic find a device on her car so will speak to the wired a porter who is working without access to expose the current problem. we had in the first part. of. the. we haven't got the. safe get ready for freedom. hey guys welcome to shellings tell me about

a show we've heard large just stop the sale of topics now i want to hear our audience just go on to you tube video responses are the twitter profile of the questions that we've posted on you tube every monday and on thursday the show is gone the sponsors the local. for. fun to. get up sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then he lives something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you

knew you don't know i'm sorry for going to the big picture. the same. i think for most americans that you're still just old system it seems like a necessary measure to lock up the bad guys and for those who are really bad they've been placed in fallen terry confinement but when research shows that this method of punishment cannot serve beer of packs on a prisoner many can't help but wonder if this is really a necessity if it's even humane artie's person present all looks at the economic social and mental effects of solitary confinement six. by nine. by twelve the measurements of a box of a house and for more than twenty five thousand people in america the measurements of destiny. it is

a space reserved for the most dangerous criminals in the world but also. really terrible for many like robert king who were innocent locked up for a robbery he did not commit king spent thirty one years behind bars twenty nine of them in solitary after prison officials discovered he was a member of the black panthers and he says pinned a murder charge on him not to murder the group of course we're talking about. him. now cleared because he advocates against the use of solitary confinement. and so what is it about innocent or guilty the conditions are harsh many say even cruel and inhumane and often result in permanent psychological damage self mutilation and even suicide told us

one mendez the un special rapporteur tour on torture slams the widespread use of solitary confinement for prolonged periods of time it's not the same to put somebody in solitary confinement for one day to put him or her there for months it's common for those placed in solitary to be there for to. twenty three hours a day over the last two decades the number of supermax prisons in this country has grown to more than fifty david fati director of the a.c.l.u.'s national prison project says the boom was not a result of higher crime what happened in the mid one nine hundred ninety s. was there was really a wave of hysteria about super predators and predictions of a wave of violence far but never really materialized why did materialize hundreds of millions of dollars devoted to the business of building prisons if you look at how these places came to be built in many states it wasn't a corrections professionals it was the politicians politicians and prisons often

have close ties this prison is owned by the corrections corporation of america got more than sixty prisons like this around the country and spend millions of dollars lobbying for belmore politicians in turn bring jobs to their death rates and beef up their reputation as being tough on crime the still other politicians fight the system but i don't know really a place in the world where people are held in. solitary confinement for over three decades china russia. eastern block. dictatorships you know are america's most famous prisoner bradley manning spent more than eight months in isolation suspected not convicted of leaking military secrets to wiki leaks in a letter the former army private tells of being stripped of his clothes his prescription eyeglasses and on the rare occasions he was allowed out his hands and

feet were shackled this is not something anybody should be subjected to except in the most extreme circumstances there is no evidence and also poses not at all which is your computer fear that. it is yet another example of solitary being used. units of lee rather than for safety reasons for more than ten years kendall gibson has also been in solitary he refused to cut his dreadlocks because he says they represent his roster far in faith a decision that at the time violated virginia law it stated that inmates must not have beards or wear their hair below their collar maybe most disturbing are the hundreds of children in solitary cells kept there to protect them from adult prisoners with little concern for the consequences in the words of robert king you may leave solitary but solitary never leaves you christine for sound r.t. . we've covered the case of bradley manning extensively on this show but we failed

in giving out a good coverage to those who aren't high profile cases you know the world over so let us start making up for it today according to available data there are some twenty five thousand inmates and long term isolation in the country supermax prisons and as many of eighty thousand more in solitary confinement and other facilities if you look at international standards but consider solitary to be a form of torture that means we've been torturing long before this war on terror and it's not something to be proud of you and me to discuss this further is a need for a senior staff counsel at the a.c.l.u. national prison project and we thank you so much for being here tonight thanks for starters so these are the figures that i was getting from solitary washing organization also that you know really dedicate this time to this is all this true is it even worse yes actually twenty five thousand individuals in solitary confinement is a conservative estimate as you mentioned on your short little bit before this.

twenty five thousand folks in solitary confinement in supermax institutions but there are tens of thousands of others who are held in isolation in. typical prisons around this country so we are talking about a lot of americans behind bars being held in solitary but this is something that we always did right at some point it had to become acceptable trend in prisons across the country to start putting people in solitary confinement so where does that stem from you're exactly right so much terry confinement was very uncommon in american corrections about until about twenty years ago when under the political rubric of tough on crime states around the country started building supermax institutions and really embracing solitary confinement as a corrections management practice but it's actually very true that one hundred years ago our supreme court criticized it condemned this practice and said it was inhumane and it drove me crazy but it hasn't changed that's happening. male in this

country one hundred years later every day so do you believe you know from all of the studies the statistics that you've looked at here that solitary confinement is a form of torture we believe that it really can be a form of torture especially in the american context where you're not spending days or weeks or confinement you're spending months years even decades in conditions of extreme isolation where you don't leave yourself for twenty three twenty four hours a day you don't talk to or interact with another human being you're just left there with complete social isolation for such extended periods of time that it's almost inevitable that your average individual and especially those who have mental illness preexisting before they get to solitary confinement are going to break down who are in this way so to drive you mad literally now you know like i said we've been covering the case of bradley manning a lot and i think one of the things that really gets people riled up about his case is the fact that he hasn't been convicted of anything yet so this is pretrial

solitary confinement but he's in fact not the only one that this happens to be they didn't do this to juveniles in the u.s. absolutely it's a common practice around this country when juveniles are held in adult jails which they are with increasing frequency as we prosecute thirteen fourteen year olds as adults they can't be kept safe in the normal general population and so what institutions have done in order to keep them safe is to walk them up in isolation in the same disciplinary wins that they might get someone who is real you can buy that argument do you buy the this is this is good for you this is what's going to keep you safe is by locking you up in a room by yourself absolutely i don't i think that there should and must be other alternatives you don't need to lock someone up for twenty four seven to keep them safe you could take juveniles and let them interact with them out of their cells let them go to school it's just a matter of changing policy and practice and mindsets it's not impossible and it should be done because it causes real and lasting harm to these children you know and how so. this is acceptable let me please use the example of senator john mccain

we don't himself was at one point a prisoner of war who also you know had to suffer torture and here i'm going to be writing an op ed today and he's using the material and a lot of the statements being made these days surrounding the death of osama bin laden and you know a lot of people out there are trying to claim that torture is what eventually led us to us on bin ladin which is not true if you look at the facts and john mccain himself refutes that statement here as someone who has experience with this is know when you're tortured what you do is you say anything because people want to hear in order for them to stop physically torturing you but at the end of this opportunity comes to the basic point that it doesn't matter how we really define torture it's a moral argument it's about who we are and what we want to do as a country and so you know we here in making this case but only when it comes to getting osama bin laden the bad guy why is this not a moral imperative for our media and for our politicians to talk about all the time that you know as many as one hundred thousand people are facing this in the u.s.

i think it's high time that we practice what we preach we've got good laws on the books but we oftentimes don't follow them and embrace them especially for american prisoners be they have galt's kids this is a largely hidden population even though there are millions of them we don't want to pay attention to what happens to them behind bars because of that lock up lock them up and throw away the key mentality of the tough on crime mentality absolutely and it's a short sighted sighted mentality as we now know because our prisons are full of people who continually cycle you know it cost us millions of dollars a year we don't get good results and a perm people so that when they come out of places like solitary confinement they commit more crimes they act and this is actually a policy that is bad for public safety we know in the in the future stations that have actually taken a look at the hard data like in california for example the people who need solitary confinement come up to prison commit crimes and twenty percent higher. in those in

the general population it also costs a lot of money putting people in solitary confinement is two to three times more money than someone in the general population and any other and yet our other prisons in california are currently overcrowded as well and we have somehow room and money to put people into solitary confinement that's really it's horrible but it needs to be talked about more often if you want to thank you very much for joining us tonight thanks so much thanks. now on monday of this week we brought you more information about fads using g.p.s. trackers to spy on people the practice that's becoming more common and more contentiousness court cases have been popping up all over the country we interviewed on this program young california student who found a tracker on his car when going for a routine oil change and he's now suing and he believes that there's no other reason for to have been tracking him other than the fact that he was muslim now while district courts have ruled differently in a number of states it's an issue that many expect to go all the way up to the supreme court as the obama administration is now taking the stance that the feds

don't need a warrant before placing one of those trackers on someone's car without their knowledge now an environmental activist has handed over a tracking device that she found on her car to wired to help expose it more information on what they look like and how to find them so earlier i caught up with kim zetter senior reporter at wired and i first asked her how it was that wired in this activist decided to work together to expose this. who did the story learn to steer clear of american student put him on his horse and when she wrote the story she needed is very similar to the price that she can hold her for this was an environmental activist who is involved in you cannot just environmental activities for animal rights activists and she's going to listen to her six years ago and she just wanted to let me know that she had a similar to maurice and people in the senate and she did that's pretty unusual right because you know you get every american stringer talked about yes we interviewed him here on this program as well. and i know that the feds came

knocking on his door saying that they wanted their so-called property back so how did he actually get to keep their hands on this one. well they did want this one back from her as well six years ago when she found out she cheated on her cornish and then she got concerned that they would be knocking on her door asking for her back or something else and her attorney contacted the prosecutor small office and stick this good aunt's new federal government acknowledge that he did and said that they wanted it back. when she refused to do something it will suit it so they can have it and now i know that she found it think years ago so it might not be the most modern technology because there anything you can tell us about it when you did dismember it anything we found out. even though it's she from six years ago and it's using you know technology that's from that period it doesn't mean that there's not still being used. when people were to find out a lot a whole lot about it we do know that it's using pretty expensive lithium batteries

very cost about eight hundred dollars just for the batteries and the cells from the divines. appears meek and soldered suit it's like their custom made for a long or so which would make them more it's going to give them that you know a whole lot of than what appears to be operating like a four hundred megahertz chip and that's about it. now it's really crazy because you know law enforcement doesn't have to monitor or give out any information in terms of how often these are being used i guess that will never really know but how many cases are out there that you know of at least that have been reported of people that found these devices put on their cars are people that now are suing the government for it. we've only heard about about maybe a half a dozen that these over the last maybe six or seven years there were a couple that's missing already found among their cars as well those are also environmental activists and we've heard of a couple of other pair of american sold from them on their cars. and then we know

from court commissions where this is the battles drug dealers a problem on their cars a small. and let me count either i found on a particular becomes part of some kind of legal proceedings we don't really know how many coffee there yes we do know the government is using the quite quite often but there's no statistic kept over toward it and that's you know how would you suggest that people actually look for these trackers to see you know if they might be on our cars. will there are some crackers that will just be on the undercarriage of the car and so you can see those who actually they also have trackers that will go inside the engine compartment are there they're wired into the battery and so those are going to be more difficult to find they might also be in the dash of the car so those you're probably not going to find through just a nice search of us and the chemicals and it takes things apart i guess showing all the more you know how invasive some of the things some of these things can be at effect can just come right up your driveway get into your car and put that tracker on there now of course there have been a lot of cases here mostly in district courts and they've had very good decisions

or very rulings here but do you think that this might go all the way up and so the supreme court because the obama administration itself is now supporting the fact that the feds don't need a warrant to put these drivers on your car. right you have army administration announced the supreme court's look at this last month and so it will be up to the supreme court whether or not they'll tweak it i suspect they will because this is becoming a contentious issue and as you said there's a patchwork of moving some around the country so that in some states they can use it without a warrant in some states they can't and i really think that the court's going to want to have some kind of final settlement and i'm curious quickly to the obama administration the justice department what's their legal reasoning as to why they don't need a warrant why this isn't an invasion of our privacy. what they did they couldn't since it's similar to this surveillance they don't think that it's any different police officers handling a suspect in a car they don't see that it's a privacy violation in that sense and you don't you know warrant for an officer to tail. i want to tell since that so that's the way that they do it. came i want to

thank you very much for joining us today and well i'm with you and hoping that the supreme court does take this one on because that definitely makes me uncomfortable thanks. to you up and. coming up just the other day i saw you got a gold medal for his exceptional courage in human rights and is that all for transparency but is he being a bit of a hypocrite i'll explain in tonight's poll times that mitt and i with gas prices hitting four dollars here in the u.s. congress called big oil execs to washington but is congress really serious about ending it taps breaks for big oil or is this all a political stunt we're back in just a minute. let's not forget that we are in the far right brooke.