welcome to the a lot of show or get the real headlines with none of them are safe and alive out of washington d.c. now it's not going to tell you about this but a cyber security bill working its way through the house that could put your private communications into the hands of the government that a study done by the u.s. air force gives us insight into the work of drone operators talk about the technical and moral issues that state and then have you ever heard of nutra loaf common prison food but it made one inmate so sick the records agreed to question if

we could be considered cruel and unusual punishment so we have all that and more for you tonight including a does of happy hour but first take a look with the mainstream media has decided to. all right so it's another tuesday and another primary day and therefore another news day full of nonstop election coverage coming from the mainstream media. it is primary day in maryland washington d.c. and in wisconsin voters heading to the polls in wisconsin maryland and washington d.c. mitt romney's out in force in wisconsin today three primary and then all three with compañero in washington d.c. mitt romney is expected to win it looks to be backward syndromes challenge once and for all in wisconsin get a decisive win to destroy santorum is case for staying in this race we're facing an uphill battle today used campaigning is home state of pennsylvania

a big win in wisconsin might convince rick santorum to finally drop out of the three key races wisconsin holds the biggest prize at stake ninety two delegates mitt romney has half the delegates needed to secure the nomination others are going to the polls in wisconsin maryland and here it's in the district of columbia three contests where mitt romney is comfortably ahead of mitt romney the only canada holding events in wisconsin today during a stop in milwaukee romney says he's focused on the nomination but not a vice presidential choice. all right so it's a night i'd like to bring up a story of the networks would rather you not know the all they do some reporting on the record amounts of money they are pouring into this campaign even the billionaire backers that are keeping some candidates alive the ads that come out from various super pacs on a weekly basis but there's one big part of this puzzle but they're not telling you what we know of the thanks to the supreme court citizens united ruling there is a lot of money coming in you have to wonder who actually profit from it and i don't

mean in the who's campaign does well because of advice of way i mean who gets to rake in all the dough from the people that are buying the ad time. you guessed it it's all the major media corporations in contrast to news corp to c.v.s. and the like and in fact last month c.e.o. of c.b.s. les moonves admitted the profits of c.b.s. will rise by one hundred eighty million dollars thanks to political advertising and other takers of common estimating that the major media companies and their local stations will pull in a combined three billion dollars this year from those political ads three billion dollars anyway but story doesn't end there is even media companies are not only making bank off of political ads they're also engaging in a transparency fighting campaign one of the problems of citizens united is that not only did it pump our electoral process full of even more money but there's a lot of mystery money so the f.t.c. has suggested why don't all the media companies post online the names of campaign

ad buyers and purchase prices for the public whom the media is supposed to be informing won't be kept in the dark well surprise surprise the media companies refuse to comply complain that it would cost too much to do that it would impose new administrative burdens and they call this proposal a quote jobs destroyer that we're distracted so you can employees from doing their regular work now if you needed another reminder that the mainstream media is not there to inform you but just to make money and there it is. so let me just wrap all this up because back and forth has been going on for the last couple of weeks by telling you what you can do to help bring more transparency into this process the under current law local t.v. stations a slot to keep paper files for who's paying for those and if requested they have to make public the pro publica numeric the new america foundation media policy initiative they're asking people to go to their local news stations ask for that paperwork and then send it to them so they can take the crowd source material and

post it all online and i personally i think it's a great idea if we can complain all we want about the political process being out of money that's changing and that's not enough. we have to do the work if we want to see the change so this is just one small step of reclaiming transparency and of course we're not going to hear about this battle this crowd sourcing initiative and the mainstream media because well it involves them so conveniently they're choosing to miss. well if you thought that sopa and pipa were bad just wait until you hear about cybersecurity legislation working its way through congress we reported to you on competing cybersecurity bills in the senate but there's a house bill that's already gained over one hundred sponsors of perhaps the worst of all it's called sister or the cyber intelligence sharing and protect act also known as h r three five two three and one of the veil of doing things for cyber

security purposes it would allow companies to collect and monitor private communications and then share them with the government or anybody else here's a nightmare scenario the p.f.f.t. scribed a company like google facebook twitter or eighty could intercept your e-mails and text messages send copies to one another and to the government and modify those communications or prevent them from reaching their destination if it fits into their plan to stop cyber security threats so it really is scary as it sounds and what are the chances of stopping it well joining me to discuss it is trevor tim activist of the electronic frontier foundation kevin thanks so much for joining us tonight and so i just read that nightmare scenario that you organization that you put out there you say that's true but really i mean is this bill that bad. yes there are about six bills going through congress right now and the rogers bill which seems to be getting the most steam is probably the worst of the worst you

know it purports to to stop or prevent or defend against cyber threats by allowing private companies and governments to you know share share vital information that could help prevent it but it's written so broadly that it ends up like you said in the open allowing i a species or email providers or social networks to spy on your internal communications as long as it's for quote a cyber security purpose so what it does is a sensually carves out a cyber security exception to all of our privacy and then once it gets to the government that all of this information your you know your communications your private communications we don't know exactly where it goes or what they're using and we don't know which agency it goes who are there whether they're allowed to share between agencies whether they're allowed to use this information other than cyber security purposes like normal criminal investigations and we know in the rogers bill that the n.s.a. is probably going to be one of the biggest benefactors and why the n.s.a. deals with cyber security threats we've also heard many allegations that the n.s.a.

spying on americans in fact we have a suit going on right now accusing them of just that so this bill is very dangerous and doesn't actually solve the problems that says it's supposed to we i mean you guys aren't the only recommendation i to out there speaking out about of the center for democracy and technology is also saying it and that and they also mentioned that you know although there is no it's the think they can agency that's mentioned within the government probably the n.s.a. or you know the pentagon cyber command are going to be the recipients here but then if we have this question as to whether you know if the information gets into the hands of the cabinet do they have to keep using it for cyber security purposes whatever that means or can they just start monitoring you does the bill have any restrictions you know to at least help guide us in figuring out what exactly they can do once it's in their hands. so i guess the problem there are no restrictions and there are even definitions in there that could encompass things that you would even think heard all the cyber security there's

a provision in the rogers bill specifically the suspect what we're talking about talks about misappropriated government information or intellectual property and we fear that this clause in the hidden in the bill that nobody's really been paying attention to could end up being used to censor or block websites such as a whistleblower site like wiki leaks you know which the government obviously has not liked but can shut down because by the first amendment the same thing goes with copyright infringement intellectual property because make it the government we already excuse to censor websites that they think people are downloading music illegally off of and the problem is that the the it's the here trigger which which allows these companies to kind of use cyber security purposes whatever that means. to go after these people and and hand the information over the government so you could actually be encouraging your e-mails might be an indicator or using

anonymization service like tor that allows you to hide where you are born or hide your identity still gives or normal privacy tools that people should be able to use to you know just keep their information private but they're ending up as indicators of a cyber threat. within this interview already both you and i have said cyber security purposes whatever that is and that's part of the problem too right every time that we see not every time that gary often we look at government legislation. there is a definition of something and that being very broad very big yesterday on the show we were talking about the n.b.a. and you know what does it mean to be an associated force of al qaeda and so here we talk about cyber security purposes again is this just a complete blanket statement. exactly a few of these bills in congress are actually are actually narrower and while they're not anywhere close to good they actually do

a better job of defining where cybersecurity purpose is. the problem is that the rogers goes perfectly purposely left a big partly for the reason that this technology changes and you have to have some legal room but again you know we're talking about we want to prevent major infrastructure damage and what this bill allows the government to do is essentially use the threat of cyber security or you know a cyber attack as an excuse to attack americans privacy and. exactly schriever e-mails and even block websites so that's what we want to make sure never happens well there's quite a bit of fear mongering you know involved in this q. and if we just go back to the senate version as i mentioned there is some competing legislation there and so we let me just read you something that senator jay rockefeller had said when they were discussing that and he said think about how many people could die the cyber terrorist attack our air traffic control system and planes flammed into one another or if rail switching networks were hacked causing trains carrying people or hazardous materials to derail and collide in the midst of

some our most populated urban areas like chicago new york san francisco or washington so they make it sound very very scary but then if i read you know some of the other tech blogs that i've read. says that so far nobody in congress has actually provided evidence that cybersecurity legislation of this nature really is is needed. yeah they can dream up these nightmare scenarios and try to scare people but you're right there's no studies or no evidence that shows that this is a giant danger facing us all and you know they in on the other hand they bring up anonymous like anonymous this is some sort of terrorist group and it's going to take down entire systems when and when in fact mostly what they're doing is just a dos attacks which don't actually hack into any system at all and so again those are covered under the bill as well and it could prevent and it allows these companies to actually block ip addresses before attacks occur so it could

essentially censor people from using the internet that many have no idea that they were you're involved in and it also attacked or it hadn't even committed so you have to be one last thing to have because i got to wrap it up and running out of time but unlike with all the major tech firms come out against that legislation here microsoft facebook tech america they're on board how come well with soap and their livelihood was threatened more directly i think you know they were going to have to censor so much content of cells and it was going to do so much more of what legal liability put on them so this situation is different where obviously they want to be able to prove prevent you know legitimate cyber security attacks and they don't want to stop the government from doing that but what they end up doing is supporting bills that are way too broad and that could end up really hurting their users and unfortunately as i'm getting a lot of coverage so not

a lot of people. start talking about configuring already had one hundred supporters in the house and i guess i should go as shock that legislation that really you know threatens our privacy if book might be behind it trevor thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks a lot. hard time for our first break the evening but when we come back the love affair with unmanned aerial surveillance continues this time it's not a blimp the lawmakers are gunning for and that will take a look at the u.s. as drone control stations and how their poor design could be leading to increases in billion casualties all that we can. get on a story. to understand it and then you know here's some of the part of it and realize that everything is all. part of the big picture.

you know the real headline with. the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and from what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories

that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. . is the state english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. all right guys it's time for show and tell on tonight's program last week we spoke about a break summit and the glocks plan to move away from the dollar as the reserve currency ever you'd think the talk of major economies leaving the dollar would be bigger

news but somehow the media just going to gloss over it so why is that kind of producers reason to send you to find out what you have to say on the streets of d.c. to help people in the nation's capital what our viewers have to say on twitter facebook and you tube and see which comments or delete. some of our viewers think they know why it was not big news in the us i'm going to read your response from tim on facebook he said if the news made a big story about the fall of the dollar as a global reserve it would reveal the complete and utter failure of the system and incompetence on our elected officials do you agree with that. toward elected officials to bring all everything to our attention so james wrote it on facebook and said because if too many people realize the dollar may be abandoned as a global currency reserve they will panic and panic is not what i economy planners consider recovering do you want to keep it or delete it. probably would be

a form of panic for people would probably respond negatively don told us on you tube the world needs to let go the dollar the u.s. is no longer the world's sole economic leader america needs to face that times have changed or fight harder to stay in the global game do you want to keep it or delete it. to towler is so deadly well it has to fight each other to remain steady the world's leading currency we're seeing china is on the rise asia is on the rise middle east if you want to keep it or delete it. it's a global economy i will keep it. straight so if you know the dollar fails then obviously someone else might make people have grown tired of hearing more about i get on the news and this is just another setback but there are others who want to hear more and hope someone in washington will do something to turn this around.

i guys thanks for your responses and here's our next question for you earlier today president obama gave a speech calling the g.o.p.'s new budget of form of thinly veiled social darwinism so we want to know if you agree with the president's harsh words let us know what you think on facebook twitter and you tube and who knows your response just might make it on air. now it's not about drone where for warfare all of the time on this show the legal and ethical questions of killing from a far with the push of a button the resulting civilian casualties the anti-american sentiment and the secrecy of the cia's drone program which they will not acknowledge in court but the so-called successes of which president obama is happy to tell in speeches now the truth is as the drone program grows in the military air force the cia increasingly rely on the and unmanned aerial vehicles we can't talk about of the not so let's look at what little we know of the perspective of the drone pilot the systems through which they operate and the technical and moral issues that work study done

by the u.s. air force scientific advisory board has this insight into the poorly designed operator control stations and what they see as the most common causes of us and it's civilian deaths or discuss this with me is jefferson morley writer at salon and author of the forthcoming book snow storm in august washington city francis scott key and the forgotten race riot at eight hundred thirty five percent thanks much for joining us and i think you are ok so you you know when you write about this you start telling us what it is what's like inside that control operating system you know and so how many people are involved right how many screens do we have going how many buttons are there through the drone console operating station is two seats typically there is some variations but the most common model in the air force is two seats a couple screens several keyboards and various inputs coming in from other sources . so it's a complicated set of. now when we find out from the air force advisory scientific

advisory board they do this study looking at what some b. issues are you know technically what they say stands out well they found a lot of flaws this was a study done by the u.s. air force but were done in april two thousand and eleven finished and they had been looking at the the evolution of the ground station over a couple of years and they found flaws all over the place the seat needed to be replaced there were too many screens that was confusing the location of buttons was . was complicated and so for example there was an instance where a pilot pushed the wrong button pushed the kill engine button and crashed a predator aircraft worth four point seven million dollars so these these flaws had real world consequences and the board was trying to figure out how do we straighten these out as we go forward in the growth when i only real world consequences in terms of cost lost you know how about lives lost you know did they have any specific examples where some kind of a mistake i technical level was the reason for civilian casualties the air force that he did not identify any design flaws leading to that but they cited internal

studies which cited two main causes of civilian casualties lack of positive identification and lack of tactical patience these seem to be the major causes of the eyes of the air force now lack of a lack of positive identification could be a design flaw if you don't have enough sources of information coming into the operators so lack of tactical patience that's not really a technological or design issue that's a pilot decision and a policy decision so those errors are probably not due to poorly designed lack of positive identification could be attributed but we started talking about the lack of tactical patience that were necessary you know we're putting we're we're talking about one person that's involved because normally any drone strike isn't just a pilot right like you said there's two seats there's two people in there they have to call they have to get there is a shame in order to even push the button and launch the strike right they're talking they're talking to lawyers they're talking to. commanding officers and they're responding to policy makers and so i think that we need to be careful about

blaming the pilots they're working in an environment where this is what policymakers want if there is a lack of tactical patience at the pilot level i think that's due to a lack of patience at the policymakers and one of the things that i thought was interesting to you highlighted is that they actually have had a really hard time getting pilots to take part in this why is that because it's really boring were by all accounts you spend a lot of time looking at through the eyes of the grown through a camera at a target might be a convoy driving down the road maybe somebody's house and most of the time you're just waiting for people to show up and so the vast majority of time nothing happens it's not a very rewarding job especially for men and women who are used to flying real aircraft it's much less exciting so they did have real retention problems i also think that the nature of the work probably contributes to this this idea that you are killing people long distance it's difficult for any person to do that i think and so that makes it hard for people to stay on the job but then i mean at the same time i feel like those two almost contradict themselves right because you could say

that we see some of the pilots that he had steve because they have to think about the consequences of what just happened when they pushed the button but at the same time oh it's such a boring bird the type of warfare that they're waging yes i do and i think this is part of the this is part of the dilemmas that the pilots are feeling in their heads is it is very easy and some people have warned against a sort of play station mentality that these consuls make it too easy to kill and it's just fun to go out and fire missiles at people on the other side of the world so i think it's a very complicated and confusing situation for the pilots and i think. the air force science board's analysis of the operator station reflects that this is a difficult job it's not you know i'm sure it's a very confusing complicated situation for them it's a huge thing and complicated situation for the rest of the world the people who are actually the victims of these drone strikes for the rest of us that look on and especially you know the fact that they had there is so much secrecy. surrounding this is a big problem to me it's really hard to even try to talk to somebody who is

a drone pilot right so we answer any of these questions but well i mean. it's difficult it's difficult i mean how many civilians have been killed the estimates vary widely the long war journal which i would say is a pro military source has a low estimate of one hundred thirty nine civilians to me years bureau of investigative journalism has one more thorough methodology they say between four hundred and eight hundred civilians including maybe one hundred seventy five children so that's the range of estimates these are difficult statistics that we are by and the government does not offer any but we can see whatever estimate you take even if you take the low ones there's a there's a significant cause for concern and remember too this is not this is a policy that is the beta even in the military dennis blair the former director of national intelligence four star admiral was one of the biggest critics of the group were and says we're relying on it way too much so there's a lot of debate around the house and i think i think it's going to you know i guess that we talk about all the time on the show there needs to be more debate but it's interesting that we can sometimes see some of these internal report since to take

a look at jefferson i gotta thank so much for joining us tonight thank you. all right so here on the show we zero in on a lot about unmanned aerial vehicles but on the side we believe the cia jaison their drone programs need to be frequently discussed the tragic mistakes in yemen pakistan somalia all the secrecy to close the programs but now there is another unmanned aerial vehicle that we think deserves some attention if the project so wasteful and ridiculous that it almost makes an armed surveillance drones look good and two powerful senators are pressuring the air force to continue developing this craft after it was stopped because it was such a drain all the agency's budget and the monstrosity in question of a one point four million cubic foot spy blimp they can hover for days and it's called the blue devil block ok explain it but i think the five news that a fine job inadvertently highlighting how absurd this idea was last year take a look. we hear that the predator drone is

a great way to keep an eye on things from the sky but effectively the viewpoint we have is like down a stroll down the show to stroll we could be gentle with you can get so many cameras on board you can actually take a look and know exactly what's going on over thirty six square miles it's not together yet the air force of even sit on the cameras the choosing and the set and the listening devices put there that optimistic that they released yet in fact that optimistic piece it's going to be in the sky on october fourteenth. well sadly for the fox news g.o.p. cheerleaders the blimp is nowhere near ready not close to gathering intel on which i can weddings to bomb now commentators weren't the only ones to find over this program in november of two thousand and ten former defense secretary bob gates ordered the air force to develop its project thing that it was quote urgently needed to support operations in afghanistan and as whispers grew louder the air force was about to pull the plug two powerful senators stepped in with a bid for save the flying symbol of projects cost inflation and february according

to wired stranger real senators daniel inouye and that cochran dug up the senate money men by wired blog and i was shocked when they sent a letter to deputy defense secretary ashton carter that said the following said we strongly urge you to examine the program and if necessary d. scope the program back to the original baseline requirements so the combat troops in afghanistan benefit from this capability as soon as possible thing is that the air force doesn't seem to agree the pilot project alone cost two hundred and eleven million dollars air force estimate of the football field size ship would cost one hundred eighty eight million per year to run and moreover the air force prefers versatile drones for surveillance and according to a report out by a stranger in today or that was according to a report of wired stranger today so last month the air force ignored the senators and it placed a stop work order on this project i'll be guaranteeing that the shutdown after all the blue devil block two wasn't even included. agency's twenty thirteen budget and

army is working on a similar project called a long endurance multi intelligence vehicle so why might it new in cochrane try to champion this project what just so happens that you have a reputation for spending at taxpayers' money with gusto take a look. and we all know as much as i love that car can he still co-creator and i have for him trying to after time after time. projects that he. has been called the king of the dear lord so watchdog group says he pushed four hundred ninety million dollars of so-called pork barrel projects just this year the most in the country public the senior senator appropriations chairman daniel in oyo has caused a firestorm in congress by proposing a one point one trillion dollars spending bill now includes billions controversy or earmarks. so moreover the two got a fast buck for ridiculous defense projects cochran once championed a failed anti.