sure is that so much happening to you each musician on the mark with. the muslim brothers decision to present a candidate he thinks there are many examples. last night had lunch marty attended here moscow time the first us marines reaches straight leaders of america's military on the asia pacific region and challenged china's growing influence. a deadly debt burden a great pension to shoots himself in front of parliament in athens amid a soaring suicide rate and growing for the perspiration across the e.u. . and russia warns against arming the right syrian rebels with peace efforts underway say they can't topple president was only the. headlines again in half an hour but now taking about washington studios again on the alona show tonight including

a look at the latest cybersecurity bill as making its way through the u.s. congress. welcome to the a lot of show the real headlines with none of them or see can live 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 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 at stake and then have you ever heard of nutra loaf a common prison food but it made one inmate so sick but of course as agreed to question it could be considered cruel and unusual punishment so we have all of that i want you to night including a dose of happy hour but first take a look what 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 in all three wisconsin their alleged washington d.c. mitt romney is expected to win it looks to be rick santorum challenge once and for all in wisconsin in a decisive win to destroy santorum case for staying in this race rick santorum facing an uphill battle today used campaigning in 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 is 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 there romney is comfortably ahead mitt romney the only canada 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 up a story of the networks would rather you not know why they do some recording on the record amounts of money that are pouring into this campaign season 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 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 we have to wonder who actually profit from it and i don't mean in the who's campaign does well because of absconded way i mean who gets to rake in all the dough from the people that are buying the ad time hey you guessed it it's all the major media corporations and contacts in news corp to c.b.s.

and the like and fast 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 the story doesn't end there is he the media companies are not only making bank often political as they're also engaging and 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.c.c. had a suggestion why don't all the media companies post online and names of campaign ad buyers and purchase prices so the public whom the media is supposed to be informing won't 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 station employees from doing their regular work got peeved that other reminder that the mainstream media is not there to inform you but just to make money ok there it is so let me just wrap all of 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 they flood to keep paper files for who is paying for those political ads and if requested they have to make them public so pro publica and 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 that they can take the crowd source material and post it online personally i think it's a great idea we can complain all we want about the political process the amount 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 but of

course you're not going to hear about this battle this crowd sourcing initiative and the mainstream media because 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 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 and perhaps the worst of all it's called sista or the cyber intelligence sharing and protect act also known as h r three five two three and out 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 for the e.f.-s. describe 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 plans to stop cyber security threats so it's a really it's 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 and 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 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 allowing private companies and governments to you know share share vital information that could 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 a probe a cyber security purpose so what it does is essentially carves out a cyber security exception to all of our privacy rights 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 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 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 be i know you guys aren't the only organization out of 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 pathetic 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 catnip 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. that's a problem there are no restrictions and there are even definitions in there that could encompass things that you would even think are heard all the cyber security there's a provision in the rogers bill specifically that we're talking about talks of 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 it was of course i like wiki leaks you know which the government obviously has not liked but can shut down because of the first amendment the same thing goes with copyright infringement the intellectual property caused me to give the government away 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 services like tor the allows you to hide where you are or hide your identity so these are 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 and carry off and when 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 need to be an associated force of al qaeda and so here we talk about cyber security purposes again is 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 a cybersecurity purpose is. the problem is that the rogers goes perfectly closely left big partly for the reason that this technology changes and you have to have

some wiggle room but again you know we're talking about lots of 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 to emails and even block websites so that's what we want to make sure never happens well there's quite a bit of fear mongering 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 up 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 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 if i read you know some of the other tech

blogs that i have read. says that so far nobody in congress has actually provided evidence that cyber security 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 lead giant danger facing us all and you know they and then on the other hand they bring up anonymous like anonymous is 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 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 maybe they have no idea that they were either involved and he also tapped or haven't even committed so you have

to one last thank you sergeant because i got to wrap it up i'm running out of time but unlike pepper 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 be so much more look at legal liability put on them so the 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 you know 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 hasn't getting a lot of coverage so not a lot of people. yeah well start talking about fifty configuring it already had one hundred supporters in the house and i guess i should shocked that legislation that

really you know threatens our privacy thief but might be behind it trevor thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks a lot. hard time parkers 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 something else and billion casualties all that we can.

our guys it's time for show and tell on tonight's program and last week we spoke about the brics summit and the bronze plan to move away from the dollar as their reserve currency ever you think about talk of major economies leaving the dollar would be bigger news about how the media just came to gloss over it so why is that producer pressures in a sense to find out what you have to say on the streets of d.c. to tell people in the nation's capital what our viewers have to say on twitter facebook and you tube and see which comments we should keep or delete. some of our viewers think that they know why it was not big news in the u.s. on your read your response from tim on facebook he said at the news made a big story about the fall of the jollier 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's your attention so james it rode 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 i economy planers would consider recovery do you want to keep it or delete it. complicate would be a form of panic for people would probably respond negatively john told this 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 the times have changed or fight harder to stay in the global game do you want to keep it or delete it. will still fight steady to remain still the world's leading currency scenes china is on the rise asia is on the rise middle east if you want to. keep it. it's

a global economy. so if you know the dollar feels the obviously someone else might pick it up people how 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 it's a response that just might make it on air. now we talk about drone ware for warfare all of the time on this show the legal and ethical questions of killing from afar with the push of a button the resulting civilian casualties the anti-american sentiment to 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 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 gives us insight into poorly designed operator control stations and what they see as the most common causes of u.s. inflicted civilian deaths here to discuss this with me is jefferson morley writer at salon and author of the forthcoming book snowstorm in august ashington city francis scott key and a forgotten race riot of eight hundred thirty five pacific special joining us tonight. ok so you you know when you write about this you start telling us what it is. 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 the

drone consul operating station is true seats typically there is some variations but the most common model in the air force is two seats a couple of screen 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 a scientific advisory board and they do this looking at what some of the issues are you know technically 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 drone 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 the engine button and crashed a predator aircraft worth four point seven million dollars so these these these

flaws had real world consequences and the world was trying to figure out how do we straighten these out as we go forward in the growth one 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 seem to be the major cause is that 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 operator 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 a poorly designed lack of positive identification could be attributed to this but

we started talking about the lack of tactical patience then 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 people on the right there they have to call they have to get off it was asian and to even push the button launch the strike right there 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 policy makers 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 too the highlight of his that they actually have had a really hard time getting pilots. 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 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 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 learning fair that they're waging yes i think 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 and complicated situation for them it's using a complicated situation for the rest of the world the people that 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 so 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 a little 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 to verify and the government does not offer any where 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 debated even in the military dennis player the former director of national intelligence four star admiral was one of the biggest critics of the group and says we're relying on it way too much so there's a lot of debate around the role and i think i think it's good you know yes 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 jefferson got it thanks so much for joining us tonight thank you. all right so here on the show we hero not 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 again in 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 and ridiculous that almost make an armed surveillance drones look good if 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 is a one point four million cubic foot spy blimp they can hover for days and it's called the blue devil block to 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 they have is like down a stroll down a soda stream we could be in a devil what you can do you see it got so many cameras on board they can actually take a look and know exactly what's going on over thirty six square miles sat together get the air force up even sit on the cameras the choosing and the set and the listening devices put there that optimistic that they released it yet in fact that optimistic piece is going to be in the sky on 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 i can weddings to bomb now fox commentator is one of the only ones to fawn over this program in november of two thousand and ten former defense secretary bob gates or to the air force to develop his project saying that he 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 to save the flying symbol of projects cost inflation and february according to wire gauge real senators daniel inouye and that cochran the senate's money men by wired blog and i was shocked when they sent a letter to deputy defense secretary ashton carter and said the following that we strongly urge you to examine the program and if necessary d. scope the program back to the original baseline requirements for 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 eleven million dollars an air force estimate of the field size ship would cost one hundred

eighty eight million per year to run now moreover the air force prefers versatile drones for surveillance and according to a report on wired stranger him today or that was according to a report in 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 there will be shut down after all the blue devils lock to wasn't even included in. agency's twenty thirteen budget and army is working on a similar project called a long insurance multi intelligence vehicle so why might a new in cochrane try to champion this project was just so happens that you have a reputation for spending taxpayers' money with gusto take a look. and we don't know much. for. corporal projects that. is being called the king of 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 although he's senior senator appropriations chairman daniel in oyo has caused a firestorm in congress by proposing a one point one trillion dollars spending bill now it includes billions controversial earmarks. and moreover the two got a third spot for ridiculous defense projects conference champion a failed anti id laser gun and no he was a booster for a one point four billion dollars military bridge to nowhere and on top of it all on top of it all the senators have personal reasons for wanting to see the project go through between two thousand and seven two thousand and twelve and only received two hundred fifteen thousand dollars one thousand nine hundred in campaign donations from aerospace and defense industries and only received fifty eight thousand from the industry in the same time frame but the headquarters of knopf six the firm behind the glue devils bible and they are located in the conference home state of mississippi so how projects like this can be justified by senators in a time of supercommittee of a debt reduction and.