let's face it a lot of people out there have pieces of themselves in the online world that they would love to forget on twitter ashton kutcher is famous mr tweet about joe paterno and of his reign as the king of the twitter verse on facebook think that we all have some images on facebook showing us that keg or in college that we kind of wish would just cease to exist and miley cyrus well she's got pictures all over the internet that well not only do the rest of us not want to see but we assume one day she'll probably regret them too and all those are perfect examples of situations that we would like to forget but those images unfortunately live on the internet forever thanks to social media sites here in the u.s. it seems impossible to leave your past in the past but if you live in the e.u. that could very well change so they're now working on a bill called the data protection directive which calls for

a person's right to be forgotten in the online world article seventeen would give residents in ailie a bull right to decide what information stays on line and what gets deleted when that person per person personally post the information themselves or not now this also spans all publications so it's not just restricted to social media and the bill reads to strengthen the right to be forgotten in the online environment the right to eraser should also be extended in such a way that any publicly available copies or replications in websites and search engines should also be deleted by the controller who has made the information public now the bill also lay out fines against companies who violate this regulation but there will be limits on what a person can have a move so if any data is necessary for historical or scientific research purposes it can live online but let's admit that sounds like those can be brought in to extend to a lot of information but overall this kind of seems to make a lot of sense it's just that the current draft of the right to be forgotten is being met with a lot of criticism especially from those in the tech world that are calling for

several revisions to be made before anyone votes on it so it's still in the early stages but i have to admit i think it's kind of a good sign and we see somebody in the world working to protect the rights of us users rather than just the companies to prove that somebody in the. you take the right to privacy seriously and frankly i wish that we would see some of those same measures put in place right here in the u.s. just think of all the bills that run through congress we've spoken about the protecting children from internet pornographers act which actually just lets local law enforcement access their data for a longer period of time by forcing i s p's to keep it for longer we've also seen some moves to make privacy rights on social media more restrictive if anything the right to online privacy here in america seems to be going in the opposite direction to take your rights away yesterday we distilled you about google's latest plan to migrate all of your personal data. the new policy reflects our efforts to create one beautifully simple experience it means that if you're signed in will treat you as a single user across all of our products combining information you provided from one

service with information from the others so you have a better more intuitive experience from the moment you sign in to the second you log out. that cute little ad was the major search engines way of warning you that they're collecting all of your data across all their platforms and retaining it meaning your g. mail your google plus even your youtube accounts all go into the big google vault so my question is what is it going to take to see some form of the right to be forgotten at least discussed here in the u.s. i'm hoping sooner rather than later because like america internet and social media companies all want to hang on to every piece of information they learn about you and they want to keep it forever. well it seems like the web protests against sopa and pipa here in the u.s. are just beginning today thousands of people took to the streets in front of the european parliament office in warsaw to protect act to protest act at the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement anonymous also took on the polish government's websites there g.d.s. attacks as a topic we've discussed many times here on the show an international agreement that

loves piracy and counterfeiting into one which has been discussed behind closed doors for nearly six years and was only when wiki leaks published a discussion paper in two thousand and eight that it came to be public knowledge last year president obama signed an executive agreement to get the u.s. on board without asking for congressional approval and other signatories include australia new zealand canada morocco singapore and south korea but in a secret ceremony in japan today several european nations also signed on the protests in warsaw so now the public is more aware of this agreement and with the anti sopa and anti pipa momentum behind them could act as still be changed or stopped joining me from our studio in new york is adam clarke asked as blogger at the atlantic wire and i want to thank you for joining us tonight and if you can first give us a little refresher as to what exactly it is in act that should make us so worried now we know that of course there have been some drafts of it that have been leaked online we don't know the exact language of whatever the final bill is but you know

it's raised concerns for reasons. you know thanks for having me on the same kinds of concerns that people have about. their same as the one they had about so open about pippa about how the bill sort of holds internet service writers responsible for costs of that their hosting and the provisions in it that could publish those eyes piece for websites that begin. that is kind of a lot of people believe that that's the beginning of censorship online and closing down the open and that's the big thing that people are concerned about the second thing and i think the one that's a little more. pressure than maybe is the fact that this has been going on for a long time this bill is like you said happening behind closed doors obama had the agreement signed last year and when he he did it he did it without the need for congressional approval because he said was operating within existing u.s.

law and i think that what we find now especially once we saw what happened with the protest against open pippa is that the u.s. public does want to be more a part of these conversations because at the end of the day of yet another something that we all use it it's something that we're all part of. yeah i definitely think that you know the protests verses are against and. showed it that the u.s. want to become a part of it but you know at the same time when president obama signed at the last year we didn't see thousands of americans take to the streets the way that we're seeing in warsaw now so what do you think of that is it because we just didn't know enough about it and we see some more of the. type of momentum that's transferring over to europe or is it just kind of a different ballgame in europe where people actually go out and protest against you know a copyright agreement. i think what we're seeing now is sort of a watershed moment for american people realizing that. copyright law that was written a hundred years ago doesn't necessarily apply to the internet age you know there

are organizations that have been working hard to sort of. make sure that the laws keeping up with technology organizations like the electronic frontier foundation which is based out of san francisco that has been. writing about and criticizing act you know almost since the beginning back since i think about two thousand and eight and the fact of the matter is no one really understood that these issues what effect that money daily basis until so it became about and it became a major news story that the provisions in sopa could actually take down facebook because of what people were uploading to it or you know it could put justin bieber in jail for three years because he is playing a copyrighted song uploaded to video to you tube and so i think that once it kind of hits home people realize that the law really isn't keeping up with technology and as we've seen everyone is very concerned about it well is there anything that we can do it now at this point a way for the u.s.

to turn back i mean we know that for example senator ron wyden has written a preselector to the president telling him that hey you know you did this without congressional approval normally international treaties although i guess the president tried to change the language and just call it an agreement require congressional approval there's a white house petition out there that has at least six thousand signatures calling for president obama to do something about this so you know is there is there anything that can still be done. i mean it is sort of futuristic as we saw protests and with anonymous mobilizing and bringing down u.s. government websites i don't think that everybody has to go and jump on board and participate to that extent there's really just a classic way of doing it which is get in touch with your legislator let them know you're concerned about it and hopefully the american democratic machine will kick into effect and it may be congress will decide to act on this to decide that that really act is not something that totally exists within existing u.s.

law or maybe something that we need to discuss more publicly now do you think that this was you know while the public was completely left in the dark of a negotiation and what's going on with. supposedly the entertainment industry and the pharmaceutical industry was not kept in the dark so do you think this specially for the entertainment industry was this kind of a back up first sopa and pipa or was this the original you know i guess this one came first. yeah it's really hard to say and then again the digital millennium copyright act has been around for a long time and what we saw with the mega upload. was that u.s. lawmakers don't need to be able to take down a website and to be able to arrest people for copyright infringement even if that person lives in another country and i think we're about to see a long drawn out legal case with the megaupload founder kim dotcom. they need to extradite him from new zealand and. i think that a good part about this process is that these questions are starting to be asked and hopefully we'll get some answers but again the u.s.

government has the has the ability to take websites now you know passing so passing what sort of. further kind of set those abilities in stone in u.s. law and i think that. what we saw with. what we were starting to see with sopa and pipa is that the entertainment industry has a vested interest in sort of getting these bills through quickly and you know they want to have the most aggressive. legal combat against piracy that they can and it's in their best interest to kind of get the laws made and started forcing it before the public has a chance to weigh in on the government seems to be helping them there and let me just throw us in a different you really quickly we just found out that twitter is changing one of its policies and they're enabling the ability to read reactively withhold content

from users in a specific country so you know if something is if a tweet is illegal in a certain country they will actually censor the tweet in that country what do you think of them from twitter. you know i hate to say it but i think that it was probably bound to happen at some point in time. you know i been covering companies like twitter and facebook for a while and what i've seen with twitter is that they really do have sort of a unique emphasis on user rights and on free speech however as these small companies become big companies they have to start working with with governments not just the u.s. government but governments around the world and unfortunately not every country in the world has the sort of reverence for free speech that we do here in america and you know i covered a case last year where a super injunction that was filed by a footballer because people were kind of slandering him on twitter saying things that were not so true they tried to get those tweets taken down and twitter you know stood up for free speech at the time they didn't have the technology to

actually censor those tweets and now they do have the technology and i got it i got a lot of us because we got ahead a break but sure there are a lot of people that won't be happy about that thanks for joining us tonight. i was taking a break but we will be right. to the scene. of people calling like you said for free and fair elections. and they're still reporting from the clintons as you can hear behind me loud explosions.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so silly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you. are welcome is a big issue. by

guys it's time for show and tell on tonight's program the last time we spoke with colonel lawrence wilkerson that the g.o.p. presidential candidates and their views on the cuba are in favor of keeping sanctions and travel restrictions on the country with of course exception of ron paul so we want to know if you think that it's time to lift the decades old sanctions that a producer patrice in ascending to find out what you have to say. but most americans think of cuba they may see images of streets lined with brightly painted vintage american cars and beautiful weather and nice cuban cigar some rum and salsa or that's the only image they have one from before in one thousand nine hundred eighty one before americans were banned from traveling to the island nation now

currently the u.s. state department. elation still required that person subject to u.s. jurisdiction must have a license to engage in any travel to from and within cuba and if it has anything to do with tours travel or there is no license for that add that two years of crippling economic sanctions that has a levied on a cuban economy since sixty two and the gap between what american see as cuba and well cuba is really like today grows exponentially so what are our viewers think is it time for the us to drop saying sions and travel restrictions to cuba. jen said it's way overdue and cuba is being punished for the having a different political and economic system than impose sanctions against saudi arabia and dirty hippie said if the same sions against cuba hasn't worked yet i don't see what is going to change now cold war is over now christen told us is not only overdue but shameful and your added sanctions failed to dr joshua out of power but maybe another couple of years will do it. now everyone who replied agreed it's

enough already and while politicians in america debate this same really old story cuba is opening up a foreign investment to the rest of the world so the time is now for the us to drop the sanctions on cuba and allow us to visit the country just ninety miles off our shores. so as always we appreciate your responses and here's our next question for you earlier in the show we revisit an access international copyright and counterfeiting treaty which has been signed by the united states we saw thousands of people come out to the streets in poland to protest against it we want to hear from you do you think there's enough anti active momentum building to get president obama to allow congress to weigh in here on facebook twitter and you tube and you know as a response just like me. or earlier this month we shared some disappointing news with you but congress passed and the president signed off on the national defense authorization act of two thousand and twelve a bill that raised concerns of civil libertarians across the country even the president himself originally of expressed concern about the provisions of the

legislation but it was mostly because it would have taken away some powers from the executive branch in law enforcement and handed over to the military so in the end he gave his john hancock approving the measure with the promise not to use it against u.s. citizens but i think that ron paul stated on the house floor last week sums up the fears of most people who oppose the n.d.a. . this is precisely the kind of egregious distortion of justice that americans have always ridiculed in so many dictatorships overseas nothing in section two hundred twenty one explicitly mandates holding americans without trial but it employs vague language radically expanding the detention authority to include anyone who has substantially supported certain terrorist groups or associated forces is this really the coming of the united states we want to create a name of fighting terrorism. i couldn't agree with

a more but now the bill is a reality there is a call that change the language of the act and this one comes from senator al franken and representative jeff landry they're teaming up to change the provision that officially gives the government the power to detain suspected terrorists even if they're u.s. citizens so landry and frank and it want to take out the u.s. citizens part of landry's house proposal came with the following statement is that any saturate the could possibly be interpreted to allow the president to detain american citizens without charge or trial is incredibly alarming frank and express similar concerns saying to not give people a hearing to not give an american citizen the right to have his case heard in a court i think that's one of our basic rights once we start getting rid of our basic rights we're in trouble and frank and landry are the only ones that are trying to use their political powers to fight this broad sweeping bill senator dianne feinstein tried to change the contentious element of the bill to exempt american citizens but that was rejected by a majority of republican senators however she's trying to reintroduce that amendment and it seems to be gaining some support this time around let's not forget

that senator carl levin claim that it was the administration which pushed for u.s. citizens to be included in the language in the first place but first second here let's step back and look at the bigger picture here to know how i feel about this incredibly dangerous assault on our civil liberties so while i applaud this effort to change it there are a few things that need to be said about our political system as a whole. all in this entire fiasco when lawmakers have to go back and alter a bill after it's been signed i think there's a problem the whole point of the political system is to debate make adjustments compromise and then sign off on a full piece of legislation because lawmakers think that it's the right piece of legislation but what happens here is that these provisions get tacked on to huge military spending bills that will get passed no matter what crazy amounts they have because nobody's going to dare leave defense and fund it so the pressure to pass these bills on a timeline is clearly just too much for our elected representatives to resist so we have to remember that this adjustment all that good one also shines a light on much larger systemic problems.

well we've heard newt gingrich talk about lunar colonies many times before but he's getting a lot of new laughs after saying this in florida yesterday by the end of my short term term. thank you we are. the first permanent on the moon and it will be america. now while there are a lot of jokes being made about gingrich's lofty goals could be missing a more serious development on january twelfth of this month the obama administration chose not to sign onto an of conduct for operations in outer space aimed to both reduce space debris and keep it demilitarized days later secretary of state hillary clinton issued a formal statement saying that the u.s.

will not enter into a code of conduct in any way constrains our national security related activities in space so our is the government eyeing space as another potential war zone joining me to discuss this is dr phil plait astronomer and blogger for discover magazine phil thanks so much for joining us tonight and before we get into the fun stuff with newt gingrich let's get into this code of conduct at the united states chose not to sign on to what kind of rules would we have subscribed to if we had. well it's unclear exactly to me after reading some of this where the united states was having some problems with it i think this was more of just a generic statement that look you know we are military power we have the right to defend ourselves space is a place where the military can and should have a place so we don't want to sign any sort of agreements that are going to limit us and the same time it's not that they said they wouldn't sign something at all they said look we're just going to we're going to work with you guys but these are the

constraints we're under right now but those seem like pretty broad constraints which is that we don't want any constraints at all you know if it happens to be a military constraints and you know are we is there already something that we are planning for the future is already something that we're using you know a number of republican congress members that brought up missile defense. what the military has as far as assets in space of course is the cutting edge stuff is is secret i don't know exactly what they have in space there are treaties that say we're not supposed to have certain assets in space including for example detonating nuclear weapons that's forbidden however things like spy satellites things like that we know that those are up there recently the chinese in two thousand and seven tested some anti satellite technology they moved a satellite near another one and blew it up this is a clear demonstration there's there's only one reason to do this and this is to

show that you can do this and it was a it was a terrible thing to do they they literally near earth orbit with thousands of pieces of space debris but what this does show is that look there are military power since space and it's best if countries that have access to space also do this you know i'm i'm not what you would call you know rah rah military yea and all that stuff and i'm something of a pacifist however understand that not everybody is a good guy and some of these folks are going to see this as a place to put up the military and you know countries have the right to defend themselves but in that case if we choose not to sign on to a trading and they only need to write one ourselves because that could not set a dangerous precedent. well that's not what they were saying they said they wouldn't sign something that would limit the united states they they also said in the same time that they would look to negotiate with the europeans to work on these aspects of the treaty so that everybody can be satisfied with the way it goes ion

care if that's the you know what they might come up with in terms of a renegotiation but let's move on to newt gingrich and some of the republicans right now we've heard newt gingrich talk about faith for us for a long time he's always been a fan but him saying that if he's elected president with an eight years we're going to have a colony on the moon that really possible. in a word. you know i was raised on t.v. shows like star trek and space nine hundred ninety nine and robert heinlein isaac asimov i would love to put a base on the moon that would be terrific and i really think that's something that has a national goal for the united states it's a priority you should be a priority and certainly with international partners however to suddenly declare that we're going to do this in eight years without any real foundation for where this money's going to come from or where the engineering the technology is going to come from strikes me perhaps is being based more on the fact that it's

a political campaign and he was talking to a crowd in florida which has seen nasa cut off the space shuttle lose the rocket program the constellation rocket program and that sort of thing so it's strikes me as being a campaign promise more than a real life goal and you know we heard a lot about this at the last republican debate in florida there was of course a question about nasa about space exploration and it seems like all these republican candidates that are constantly calling for less government spending right they don't like government to get involved in particular industries that they're calling for more and there was a space race to continue so i mean i don't know if they have is a hypocritical of them or is this always kind of the one region where we see them calling for government involvement and let's not forget there really is a florida private industry right now with commercialization of space. yeah you caught that digit it's fascinating to me to watch all of the candidates talk about

privatization and we have to a small government and a and then you know they go to florida and what are they saying you know we have to do this now to be fair gingrich's plan did talk about having private space do this and perhaps setting up an extra eyes which is sort of a basically a very expensive prize to the first company that can do something for example if you go into space land it turn it around and get it back up to space a week later that was the x. prize from a few years back and that was done and it companies will step in take the seed money from the prize and spend much much more in order of magnitude more to be able to add to attain it so it sounds like a good idea but a moon base is really expensive you know we're not talking about something that's going to cost one hundred million dollars or even a billion dollars it's going to cost some estimates are thirty five billion or more and that's not even developing the rocket to get us there now space x. for example if it's an american private company that has launched three rockets to

orbit and has big plans and i'm actually a fan of theirs i think they're going to do it but this takes time they haven't actually done things like rendezvous with the space station yet or show that they can bring heavy equipment up into space and put it into orbit do what they need to do these are these are steps that they're taking they're doing a great job but we're talking about stuff that's going to take years to figure out now we could certainly get started on putting a moon base up by two thousand and twenty we if we really wanted to do it by then we should be well on our way but to say it's going to be done by two thousand and twenty not a permanent station by then doesn't strike me as being feasible either economically or technologically all right that may be a break in i think a hype that there in florida and i thought i want to thank you so much for joining us thank you. i still it comes and i think that america's working hard to keep anybody from prying into their books for the details as i still inside that have the art oklahoma lawmaker has proposed some very strange legislation and

a penguin makes a statement after the second kentucky state house over at that. same . people calling what you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the summit as you can hear behind me loud explosions. i mean. i get it gave me. a.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom hartman welcome to the big picture.