free risk free steers free pearl in the old city block against the mineola for your media projects free media dot com. the ultimate. lead. welcome to the lot of show where we get the real headlines with none of the mercy to live out of washington d.c. now it's not going to tell you about this but a cybersecurity bill working its way through the house that could put your private communications into the hands of the government then 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 if you ever heard of nutra loaf common prison food but it made one inmate so sick that a court has agreed to question it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment

so we have all of that i'm more feed right including a dose of happy hour but first take a look what the mainstream media has decided to me. 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 in all three wisconsin maryland washington d.c. mitt romney is expected to win he looks to defect rick santorum challenge once and for all in wisconsin in a decisive win to destroy certain forms case for staying in this race rick santorum facing an uphill battle today used campaigning his 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 barrett in the district of columbia three contests where there romney is comfortably ahead of mitt romney if you only came to holding events in wisconsin today during a stop in milwaukee romney says he's focused on the nomination and not a vice presidential choice. all right so it's a night i'd like to bring of the stories of the networks would rather you not know he while they do some reporting on the record amounts of money that are pouring into this campaign season the billionaire backers thirty bring some candidates alive the ads that come out from various supervised on a weekly basis but there's one big part of this puzzle that they're not telling you what we know that thanks to the supreme court citizens united ruling there is a lot of money coming in you have to wonder who actually profits from it and i don't mean of the whose campaign does well because of ads kind of way i mean who

gets to rake in all the dough from the people that are buying the ad time and you guessed it it's all the major media corporations in contrast to news corp to c.v.s. and the like and in fast last month c.e.o. of c.b.s. les moonves admitted the profits of c.b.s. will rise by a hundred and eighty million dollars thanks to political advertising and other figures and come in after meeting of the major media companies and our local stations will pull in a combined three billion dollars this year from those political ads three billion dollars. anyway the story doesn't end there is he the media companies are not only making bank off of political as they're also engaging and it's transparency in 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 for the f.c.c. had a suggestion why don't all the media companies post online the names of campaign ad buyers and purchase prices so that the public whom the media is supposed to be

informing will be kept in the dark well surprise surprise the media companies refused 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 would distract street and employees from doing their regular work that feeds that other reminder that the mainstream media is not there to inform you but just to make money. there it is so let me just wrap all of this up it's 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 they flood to keep paper files for who is paying for those political ads and if requested they have to make them public so probably get in the new america 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 now personally i think it's

a great idea we can complain all we want about the political process the amount of money that's tainting it 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 now of course we're not going to hear about this battle this crowdsourcing initiative and the mainstream media because it involves that so conveniently they're choosing to miss . well if you thought that sopa and pipa were bad just wait until you hear about cyber security 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 perhaps the worst of all it's called toward 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 describes a company like google facebook twitter or eighty and he could intercept your e-mails and text messages send copies to one another and to the governments and modify those communications or prevent them from reaching their destination if it fits into their plan to stop cyber security threats so is 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 at 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 really i mean is this build up 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 do stop or prevent or defend against cyber threats by allowing

private companies and governments to you know share share by the information that could help prevent that but it's written so broadly that it ends up like you said in the opener allowing i asked peas 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 of course we don't know which agency it goes to or whether they're allowed to share between agencies later they're allowed to use this information for 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 while 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 it says it's supposed to we i know you guys aren't the only organization 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 if they think they cadency 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 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 does a problem there are no restrictions and there are even definitions in there that could encompass things that you would even think are involved with cyber security there is

a provision in the rogers bill specifically that 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 going to pay 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 i talked about the first amendment the same thing goes with copyright infringement of intellectual property because make it the government. or 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 then 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 or hide your identity so 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 or. within this interview already both you and i have said cyber security purposes whatever that is and that's part of the problems you write every time that we see or not every time a very often we look at government legislation. there is a definition of something and that being very broad very day 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 what the cybersecurity purpose is. the problem is that the

rogers bills perfectly purposely left a big partly for the reason that this technology changes and you have to have some legal broom 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 to reality. exactly it's reader 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 too and if we just go back to the senate version as i mentioned there is some competing legislation there and say let me just read you something that senator jay rockefeller had said when they were discussing nap and he said think about how many people could die from cyber terrorist attack our air traffic control system and planes flammed into one another or brail switching networks perhaps 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 have read it says that so far nobody in congress has actually provided evidence that cybersecurity legislation of this nature really 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 terrible 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 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 you know it's attacks which don't actually happen to 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 either off and did also attack or haven't even committed so i ask you one last thing because i got to wrap it up i'm running out of time but i'm nice open paper we solve the major tech firms come out against that legislation here microsoft facebook tech america they're on board how come well and cliffs open their livelihood was threatened more directly i think you know they were going to have to censor so much content of selves and it was going to be so much more like legal liability put on. 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 they could end up really hurting their users and unfortunately as i'm getting a lot of coverage so not a lot of it. yeah well fair talking about fifth but considering it already had one

hundred supporters in the house and i guess i should be shocked that legislation that really you know threatens our privacy facebook might be behind it trevor thanks so much for joining us tonight. our time for our first great evening but when we come back the love affair with unmanned aerial surveillance continues and this time it's not a blimp the lawmakers are gunning for and that will take a look at us as drone control stations and how they're part of the relating to increases in billion casualties all that we can. get on the story and it seems so you think you understand it and the. other part of it and realized everything. is a big. mystery

. nothing will get the real headline not. the problem with the mainstream media today is that we disconnected from the viewers 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 and we're trying to take those stories

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

news about how the media just going to gloss over it so why is that going to produce a preacher in the center to find out what you have to say on the streets of d.c. to tell people in the nation's capital what are viewers have to say on twitter facebook and you tube and see which comments we should keep or delete. some of our viewers think they know why it was not big news in the u.s. under 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. toward elected officials to bring all everything to our attention so james wrote in 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 our economy planners would consider recovery 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 of the dollar the u.s. is no longer the world's sole economic leader america needs to face the times have changed or fight harder to stay in the global game do you want to keep it or delete it. the dollar is so. well. studied to remain steady the world's leading currency we're seeing china is on the rise asia is on the rise middle east do 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 if you know 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. our 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 a 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 you know as a response just might make it on air. now we talk about drone where warfare all the time on this show and 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 un and unmanned aerial vehicles we can't talk about of enough 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 poorly designed operator

control stations and what they see as the most common causes of u.s. inflicted civilian deaths here 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 of eight hundred thirty five six joining us tonight if 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 it's a 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 of the 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 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 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 grown when 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 on a 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 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 do poorly designed lack of positive identification could be attributed to this but we started talking about the lack of tactical patience then where 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 people invited there they have to call they have to get in and order to even push the button and launch the strike right there talking talking to lawyers who are 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 policy makers want

if there's a lack of tactical patience at the pilot level i think that's due to a lack of patience at the policymakers a lot of the things that i thought was interesting to me highlighted is that they actually have had a really hard time getting. to take part in this why is that because it's really boring work by all accounts you spend a lot of time looking in through the eyes of the drone through a camera at a target might be a convoy driving down the road i think 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 we 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 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 have p.t.s.d. 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 word 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 or 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 and 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 have there's so much secrecy. grounding this is a big problem to me it's really hard to even try to talk to somebody who is a drone pilot right can we answer any of these questions but well i mean. it's

a 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 and eight years bureau of investigative journalism has one more thorough methodology they say between four hundred and eight hundred civilians including two hundred seventy five children so that's the range of estimates these are difficult statistics to verify 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 was debated even in the military dennis blair former director of national intelligence four star admiral was one of the biggest critics of the group where he says we're relying on it way too much so there's a lot of debate around they have a role and i think i think it's good you know us 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 reports to take

a look at ever so much for joining us tonight thank you. all right so here on the show we euro not a lot about unmanned aerial vehicles but on the time we believe the cia jaison their drone programs need to be frequently discussed the tragic mistakes in yemen pakistan somalia all the secrecy the cloaks the programs but now there is another unmanned aerial vehicle that we think deserves some attention it's a project so wasteful ridiculous that it almost makes an arm surveillance drones look good as you powerful senators are pressuring the air force to continue developing this craft after it was stopped because it was such a drain on 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 you can explain it but i think it's 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

they have is like a stroll down the show to struggle with need to deal with you can get so many cameras on board they 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 i've even said on the cameras that using on the set and the listening devices put there that optimistic that they released it yet in fact it got up in the streets it's going to be in the sky in october fourteenth. well sadly for the fox news d.o.d. cheerleaders the blimp is nowhere near ready not close to gathering intel on which afghan 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 saying that he was quote urgently needed to support operations in afghanistan and his whispers grew louder the air force was about to pull the plug two powerful senators stepped in with a bid to save the flying symbol of projects cost inflation and february according

to wire gauge real senators daniel inouye and bad talker in the senate money men by wired blog and i was shocked when they sent a letter to deputy defense secretary ashton carter and said the following so we strongly urge you to examine the program and if necessary these scope the program back to the original baseline requirements so that 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 eleven million dollars and the 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 on wired's danger room today or that was according to a report in wired changes that the last one they air force ignored the senators and it placed a stop work order on this project i'll be hearing teeing the shutdown after all the blue devil block too wasn't even included. agency's twenty thirteen budget and army is working on a similar project called a long in durance military intelligence vehicle so why

might new in cochrane try to champion this project what just so happens is that you have a reputation for spending taxpayers' money with customs take a look. and we don't know as much as i think our commissioner co-creator and i have hard time after time corporal projects has been finished work is being called the king of earmarks the watchdog group says he pushed four hundred ninety million dollars of so-called pork barrel projects just this year the most in the country every senior senator appropriations chairman daniel in oyo has cost of firestorm and congress by proposing a one point one trillion dollars spending bill now includes billions controversal earmarks. some are over the two got a soft spot for ridiculous defense projects talking once champion a failed anti id laser gun and know he was a booster.