free. to. leave videos for your media to see the real guard. is down but not out the occupy wall street movement is making headlines across the country once again as demonstrators cross the six month mark boal look at how far the movement's comma and where it's heading. in the patriot act sounds like a law that supports liberty and justice for all but two u.s. senators are on a mission to show you exactly what this bill violence could be that we're born to give government agencies an open book to your life. and some call it an obligation others of love the best of sorts from afghanistan to

iraq to libya american military officials seem happy to send firepower to whichever region comes calling but given all the trouble still plaguing the middle east and a disagreement about how much is actually going to conflict is the u.s. experiencing intervention overlong. good evening it's monday march nineteenth it's seven pm here in washington d.c. my name is christine for us out there watching our team. well six months on where are we now this past saturday marked the six month anniversary of occupy wall street and hundreds of people gathered at zuccotti park in new york city to celebrate and to send a message that this movement is still alive and kicking but what's ahead for the movement and how will protesters deal with all challenges in a new year especially now that the sun is out again and several actions are planned

for the coming months let's bring in protester matthew sway who's in our studios in new york city. every month you tell us first what it was like over the weekend at zuccotti park well my understanding is that some eighty individuals were arrested on saturday night in what was quite obviously a siege. and so we're now we're now having that celebration everything for us is is a celebration so we go to the courts will celebrate there these are these are achievements these are people who are committing their bodies to to a cause and their safety and their futures and all these other things that are sort of leveraged against us. now along with along with the hundreds of protesters who came out once again you're saying there were there were just tons of police there what was the reasoning given for from us these arrests. the language that the police in the city oftentimes use is the language of cleanliness so that the park

needs to be cleaned we see this this is something that's the norm throughout the city for years and something called the clean halls policy and we see this most acutely in public housing where citizens really don't have first and fourth amendment rights they're not allowed in the hallways they're not allowed to hang out in the vestibules in the in the foyer in front of the building on the stoops is that there's just a system of prohibition. and so now we're starting to see that in occupy all the things that the city's been doing to communities of color and to to to marginalized communities in the city for years we're now seeing that we have so much to learn from these communities that have struggled with this kind of suppression and police terror for years and years we're talking this is eight hundred sixty five and slavery was. so hot abolished and that's the same year that the prison industrial complex rises up in this country and this is largely due to the thirteenth amendment which grants freedoms except if one is cruel convicted rather of

a crime but this is not just about this relationship with police because certainly you know we got video of it we've seen some of the brutality that happened not just over the weekend but over the last six months but talk to me about the movement itself a lot of people critics especially say you know there was a lack of organization in these first few months of occupy wall street on it because you have so many people people that complain about everything from labor laws to political spending do you see there being a more unified message coming out ahead now that it's springtime again well we're not a colt's you know we don't have much need for some sort of a singular message or mantra apart from the sort of general notion that we are the ninety nine percent that we control our own destinies they're the. for us to make it one simple thing is to is to destroy the beauty of what this is this is about giving everybody a chance to voice their ideas to have all the different sense of humor that exists

in all of us to come out and to be realize so know that the people who seem to not understand this are the same people who look at candy in scheme and go i don't get it or go to city opera go i don't understand it the question isn't what is the better looking out it's what are their preconceived notions about that thing so for people who are who are maybe boxed in by their notions of what a movement is or were a consciousness is a woman in white men is there maybe some complications they don't quite know what they're viewing yet that's not to sit with their viewing doesn't have cohesiveness what an hour and a us that i've seen and yeah i actually i talk about that chaos and sort of some of that half because i just the masses and masses of people who took part in occupy wall street especially where you are in new york city. do you think the numbers are going to grow again because i think i think a lot of people that argue that we can and they we're going to see even more people and wonder if sort of the momentum has been lost. you know i think

the winter i can speak only for myself and those who have been in close contact with over the winter we've been doing a lot of great thinking and i know that sounds a little touchy feely but the truth is in american culture you don't really have much time to think and so we took some time to really there's a lot of history we simply don't know because we're americans and it hasn't been sort of a readily available to us our own history i'm speaking of so we're thinking of what we're realizing essentially is that everything we're doing is quintessentially american all of our impulses as americans in terms of how we look at this problem ahead of us this problem of nine billion people on the planet in finite resources and you know this is this methodology that promotes growth to be have to agree. we're thinking we're doing some good learning to do some good thinking that's not that's not the stuff that was i think it was a good winter and we're going to emerge with it we are merging with something new i

think it's going to really make a lot of people smile a lot of people realize that there's a better option it's not. this isn't what we're necessarily locked into for our pockets and that i'm not sure if you start today are a lot of people especially on the cable networks the mainstream media seem to be making a big deal about sort of one story out of this weekend not to buy wall street itself but a tweet sent by someone who you know either sympathizes or associates with the occupy wall street movement it was a threat he made online against police the twitter user a snack on the line writes quote we won't make a difference if we don't kill a cop or two and quote i'm wondering i mean are you concerned about these type of online activities being mistaken as a face or a mantra of the movement. well it's a movement with no face so there's going to be a tendency i think on the part of people from a great many sectors for reasons that are legitimate or otherwise to want to put a face on it and that may be one of these news cycle sort of nonsense things that

tends to happen in american media and maybe media worldwide. but no i think the idea that some kind of violence needs to happen to spark something peaceful is it's not particularly well thought out and. you know we use volume we use satire we use a variety of different. noxious tactics from time to time. but that's that's more a product of our like i said misunderstanding of our place in the world we're americans we're still figuring this out on mentality is still very very nice that we're not we're not quite with the rest of the world is in terms of understanding globalism one apology or or a certain certainly a lot to learn about but we appreciate you sharing your experience with us it's a good marker and we have to keep us posted on what's ahead occupy wall street protester in our new york city as matthew says way. so i have are caught in the

patriot act two u.s. senators are trying to show the world that this law actually allows and the truth can be downright terrifying story. that just burns your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of pepper it's a food product essentially. this is much stronger than anything it's if i absolutely thousands of times i'm stronger than any one of the hospital you ever put you know. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions. who can you trust no one. is you know if you look at the local mission where we had

a state controlled capitalism it's called fascist when nobody dares to ask read q r t question more. people calling what you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from some outlets where you can hear behind me loud explosions.

archie is the state run in an english speaking russian channel it's kind of like al jazeera. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us and our. all right so we want to talk now about a couple things going on with the department of justice first a quick interesting story do you remember earlier this year when the founder of the website mega upload it was arrested and thrown into jail his website was promptly shut down and all of his property seized that man was kim dot com and he spent about a month in jail accused of running a criminal enterprise made upload that helped millions of people pirate music and

movies well guess what a court has now ruled that the restraining order obtained in part by the u.s. department of justice it allowed authorities in new zealand to seize his assets in the first place that was void essentially that means that those new zealand police illegally invaded dotcoms home and also illegally took all his things were talking jewelry cars electronics all without a valid court order to back them up needless to say. might be getting all his stuff back and the u.s. justice department is still trying to have him extradited to stand trial here and they say he made nearly two hundred million dollars illegally off of copyrighted materials uploaded by users of his website now again all of this happened in new zealand but much of it was in coordination with the u.s. department of justice and right now there are quite a few questions being raised about the way business is conducted at the department of justice a major complaint right now the constitutionality of the patriot act and how it's

been interpreted since it was signed into law more than ten years ago back in two thousand and one it's gone to the point where two u.s. senators oregon senator ron wyden and colorado senator mark udall have written a letter to attorney general eric holder asking him to reconsider some of the ways the patriot act has been used and interpreted throughout the years and how it is in the future as well they say there is a significant gap between what most americans think the law allows and what the government secretly claims the law allows so i want to talk more about this with trevor tim an activist for electronic frontier for. hey there tim excuse me. i know has been very active fighting to gain a better understanding about all this with court orders with freedom of information request to the department of justice what is it specifically that you are hoping to obtain. let's take a step back here for a second look at the actual part of the law that we're trying to challenge it's

called section two fifteen and what it does it essentially allows the g.o.g. to go to a. foreign intelligence surveillance court it's called which which will issue secret court orders that allows them to obtain basically any business records so it can be from an ice cream you could be your internet history or it could be your cell phone records let me just because we have a we have something we can show our viewers with this language on it that we want to put up on the screens are part of patriot act you're speaking of section two fifteen again helps officials get access to people's records. especially the f.b.i. giving them the power to require people to hand over papers and books and other items so we could be talking about e-mails. you know and this is under the guise of finding international terrorists but also clandestine intelligence activities so let you continue their terror sorry to interrupt we want to show is show it for our viewers this section two fifteen what's the biggest issue with. so like you said

it's supposed to be used for terrorism in test cases and you know it's already an expensive law as it is but the justice department seems to believe now that because of secret orders made by these courts that they now have an even more expansive interpretation of this law that doesn't involve terrorism or espionage act at all the new york times report about six months ago they could be getting personal information about ordinary americans and as you mentioned in the intro there are two senators mark udall and ron wyden who weren't on the senate floor the americans will be shocked to learn what the justice department's interpretation of this was unfortunately they're not allowed to say anything more because it's casa time so we have the facts along with us in separate lawsuits the a.c.l.u. in new york times have sued the government to ask them to release this secret interpretation of what is a public law and which every american shows the rights in a house being used it seems to me. one of the keys here really is and the youth of

language because on one hand it's specific but on the other hand it leaves room for interpretation and from what i understand you guys are you know the records that you have gotten access to are a little bit different than you think the other set of records are go into a little bit of detail about this. yes. so after they didn't respond to our freedom of information act request we sued them and they were ordered to release some documents to us we just got those documents last week ironically version such as we which is a sobering of open government in the u.s. but unfortunately the three hundred pages they gave us did not pertain to anything involving the secret for petition ologist gave us was the interpretation of the law we already know exists and you know obviously that's not what we want we want them to release what they are actually using this law for which has the senators have

more and could be unfettered access to innocence americans private data for example they could be taking cell phone company records in bulk form and it could be affecting countless americans so it's really important that they release this information so we can better understand how they're using this law without this information it's impossible to challenge the law on constitutional grounds and americans could be being affected and it would have no idea now you say the government could be getting these cell phone records they could be getting things but other than the you know concern the raised eyebrows from these two senators on is there other evidence out there to have or are there other things that are more tangible for people saying hey there's definitely something wrong here. well we know that the use of this section is increasing and we also know that over eighty percent of the requests are internet records requests and we just don't understand

the extent to which they're going home any people these requests are affecting because these they may be setting out on request but it may be affecting who knows how many people when they give these requests and as i said before it may not be involving terrorism or espionage cases at all it may be ordinary americans who are being affected like that you've seen this problem bunch of times in a patriot act with other sections to us national security letters where they go after similar information for people without a court order or a warrant where these people are sent i think there's hundreds of thousands that have been sent since two thousand and one yet barely one percent of them make up terrorism cases so it's just another example of the government using the patriot act which was passed under the guise of terrorism but using it to curtail people civil liberties and use it for ordinary crimes it was never meant to use force and it was passed however in two thousand and one and i think

a lot of people thought you know this is going to be temporary and it was and to some people surprise president obama sort of reacted signed on for another term are you surprised that this is still the law of the land here today. oh it's certainly disappointing especially the president obama after kind of campaigning on the uses of war was wiretapping and the patriot act decided to reopen for a few more years luckily we have another chance this coming year not necessarily on the patriot act but more on the warrantless wiretapping front where as you may well know the bush administration had been engaged in massive warrantless wiretapping where they're basically sucking up the country's e-mails into a huge database and potentially reading between occasions of innocent american citizens this this was later allegedly codified by the congress in two thousand and eight with eyes amendments act it's called and this is coming up for renewal later

this year we also have a couple court cases going on about this currently so two thousand and twelve could be a real watershed moment for both congress and the courts when it comes to war with wiretapping and inspire we can put a stop to it and just last question for you with these two senators you know in white and with this this letter that i know you as you say they can't exactly be very specific in terms of their greatest concerns do you think that it's going to raise an eyebrow that seems to me that a lot of people are still sort of unaware of all of the issues with the patriot act . yeah it's very commendable of the senators to speak out like this because obviously they're given they have security clearances they're only allowed to go so far and they've written the justice department as well trying to get this information and they say to them we actually know what we do know and so we were able to file suit based off of what they said so hopefully people in congress will continue to make a fuss about the patriot act as well as the size amendment amendments act that's coming up and the only way the u.s.

citizens will know that their constitutional rights are being infringed is if. the boy says our race loudly at congress and that there's some pushback against the administration and so hopefully we're going to see more of that it's in cycle not of little things are going on around us that just so many people have no idea about it we appreciate you bringing some of this to light trevor ten activists for the electronic frontier foundation thanks for having me. well it's kind of crazy to think about my today is an historic day and so many levels. after all it was march nineteenth one year ago that the u.s. and nato forces launched air strikes in libya and especially according to high ranking officials to save the libyan rebels those who fear for their lives under the iron fist of cole colonel moammar gadhafi it was nato's responsibility to protect and within a few months the gadhafi regime and gadhafi himself were gone it was also march

nineteenth nine years ago that the u.s. led an invasion into iraq under the guise of spreading democracy destroying al qaeda and removing saddam hussein from power saddam two is gone for good and as of a few months ago some of the u.s. troops but here's a question how is iraq really doing now in afghanistan on march nineteenth ten years ago the first large scale non special operations mission operation anaconda ended what else is going on there well some of the loddon is now dead but that war lives on so we want to talk a little bit about some of these historic events and how they've impacted the world today so earlier i spoke to david swanson and he told me what came out of all these interventions take a listen. it is remarkable indeed that we have so many wars that the universe restyle up on top of each other now i don't want the ten thousands of deaths in the war in iraq to go without trial meant by any rational calculation so over

a million deaths we have to include the iraqis along with the americans in libya we indeed saw a war launched without non-porous with it with an intense unavoidably any authorization from congress whatsoever although it would easily have been had a war launched on the basis of a un resolution that did not authorize regime change but it was used for regime change so that we now have a humanitarian warriors pushing for war in syria and elsewhere arguing that the un got nato in some libya for regime change when it did no such thing we have libya held up now along with kosovo and the first gulf war as a good war as a humanitarian war and no explanation of the we number of lives killed by nato and by the us in the process the lawlessness of the war the

lawlessness of murdering the the ruler of a country and the chaos that resulted so that there is no expectation in the forseeable future of a stable democracy with protection for human rights in libya as might have been predicted from the fact that we've never achieved such a thing with our bombs before and you were talking a little bit about how there are some people who are using libya as an example for why you know when we are protecting citizens that action is a good thing but there's another like a thing here as well that seems to be holding to russia and china of course abstained from voting with libya as opposed to what happened more recently with syria when they did vote and they vetoed i'm wondering if you think the libya legacy here is that mission from under there are two key doctrine one always be as trusted by other leaders in the future. well i think other countries beyond those you name saw what happened in libya and were bitterly resentful of having supported

a resolution for the supposed protection of civilians that was then immediately used for other purposes and a war extended and the rich and the fall turned into regime change and so there is less trust why there was ever any trust in the motivations to begin with i don't know but there is less trust now that they can mentor tyrian excuse is always just that we hear about the ruler in syria we hear about the use of uses we never hear word one about that in bahrain and is he uses it selective humanitarianism for other purposes but russia of course as military interests in syria and sells weapons to syria just as the u.s. as weapons for the rest of the region so there are complex motivations noble and otherwise from all worries here i want to turn now to iraq and set up another anniversary as we mentioned. for so many americans this is

a country that they have forgotten about how the troops are in the war is over i want to reinvent hearing david in terms of how that country is doing and what that legacy might entail on this anniversary. well i saw a story recently about ceroc refusing to buy crops from u.s. farmers and turning to other countries and the outrage here from these u.s. farmers quoted demanding that iraq show some gratitude for what we have done to their country and of course we don't molly their country we've destroyed what was one of the most advanced civilized countries with the highest standard of living in that region we've destroyed it for over twenty years we've had a pair of wars and endless bombing and sanctions and it's we lost a million six lives just in the past nine years we've killed over a million people and created four million refugees after refugees in the world or

now from iraq or afghanistan we ruined their infrastructure trillions of dollars worth of damage to infrastructure to the natural environment. as you know higher cancer than hiroshima every woman giving birth has the same first question is it normal any we have destroyed that country and to see gratitude rather than to be insisting on paying reparations is just reprehensible and finally david our a lot of people talking today about an executive order issued by president barack obama on friday basically giving the white house absolute control over all the country's national resource that natural resources and in the case of a natural disaster or during a time of war now the president used the defense production act of one nine hundred fifty and some people in the mainstream media today are saying add this is peacetime martial law and then other people saying you know this is an old law all the time what do you make of us. well how it will be used will depend on what

congress has to say for itself you'll recall back in may of zero seven bush put out an executive order with giving themselves the rights you declare emergencies and to take over the entire government with a new government in time of emergencies and we think you know house full of securities requests to see the secrets but then don't sue that order so we don't even know what was in there and obama of course he says is that everything that we fought for and as well back in the day that related some of these things are very true it was nearly three seasons still there it is almost inconceivable that this congress or any congress and we're future would impeach a president for such a thing presidents have been given a credible power and it's you know it's not just this one new order and it's largely a restatement of a previous order i mean nobody no matter how you interpret air i think one question a lot of people are asking on both sides on all sides is why now why this year and

not last year or the year before they were out of time a david swanson campaigner for ruth action in charlottesville virginia. well that's going to do it for now but just because the show stops doesn't mean the news that and our web team works hard to keep you up to date on stories we don't always have time to get to on air today there were a story about the n.y.p.d. actually using facial recognition software on facebook to track down a shooting suspect that's right within minutes of program was able to cross-reference mug shots with facebook photos to track down a suspect now this case is the first of its kind in the u.s. and this is real time crime center could it revolutionize the way police forces track down criminals and the rate so that our team dot com slash usa for the very latest. and if you missed any part of this show or any other show today don't worry we also post all of our interviews in full for your viewing pleasure just what are you to page about web address you tube guy.