these reports. tonight on our t.v. cybersecurity web just got a little more tangled the new system proposal just passed the house moments ago next stop the senate but that might be the last stop because president obama is threatening to veto the bill altogether we'll bring you the latest in the great cyber debate. plus american and philippine forces are flexing their muscles in the pacific joint military exercises as troops march in lockstep we'll tell you who they're arming themselves against and what it could mean for the region. and in the windswept desert of arizona a storm is brewing hispanic community and civil rights activists are protesting the crackdown on illegal immigrants all the while thousands of miles away the fate of

arizona's tough immigration law is being decided by the supreme court so why enforce tougher restrictions now when illegal immigration rates are actually dropping we'll explore. it's thursday april twenty sixth young here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . well topping the news for this hour it's the bill lawmakers call necessary for national security and the cyber act advocates say puts our civil liberties at stake this evening the cybersecurity bill known as cispa passed and a house vote of two forty eight to one sixty eight the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act allows companies to give private customer information to the government and this includes the national security agency the f.b.i. the department of homeland security during the debate a massachusetts congressman got all worked up over the proposed law take

a listen now let's talk about what this bill would do good companies share personal information about consumers with other companies even if the information had nothing to do with cybersecurity yes would companies be free from why ability if they share that personal information of every american yes could the government use personal information to spy on americans yes and while supporters say the legislation is needed to stop cyber espionage the online community is outraged over what the bill could do for citizens online freedoms even the obama administration is now coming out against it here's part of the official statement saying quote without clear legal protections an independent oversight information sharing legislation will undermine the public's trust in the government as well as in the internet by undermining fundamental privacy confidentiality civil liberties and consumer protections for the reason stated here in effect h.r.

three five to three were presented to the president his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill and i with the bill headed to the senate we want to know exactly what does this mean for your online privacy and to discuss this i'm joined now by declan mccullagh news correspondent hi declan so first off want to get your reaction to the house passing this bill just moments ago. well it is just moments ago that this is really timely a few weeks ago i would have said this was a done deal that the vote would have been overwhelming but a combination of a veto threat you had some republicans like ron paul coming out against it even some committee chairmen and in the in the grassroots wave of opposition so that made the vote closer than it would have been but it still went through by a comfortable margin so it went through and definitely talk a little bit more about what this means for citizens online privacy well the impetus behind the bill the perfectly reasonable want and let's allow more

information sharing from the federal government to the private sector you know the feds and secret weapon that's going to let companies fend off attacks from other countries russia and china keep getting mentioned that's great the problem is that the bill also allows information to flow the other direction it allows internet providers to open their networks to the fed that allows companies to turn over customer records doesn't require them to but it allows them and that it by itself is still worrisome. now one of the mower more controversial things about this is the fact that it would trump existing laws that do aim to protect that isn't privacy it's can you talk about that yet the most controversial section of cispa is the language that said notwithstanding any other portion of law companies can share in for what they want as long as it's for what they call a cybersecurity purpose now we have laws on the books like prom privacy laws federal education records laws medical records laws laws protecting the privacy of

gun owners perhaps all these laws exist for a reason and so it's kind of weird to say we're just going to ignore each one of them this becomes kind of this labor law that trumps the other ones the super law and let's let's we've have more debate about that the now the house leadership than even while amendments to no limits were proposed to get rid of that language that by itself is the most worrisome section now is there a way declan to tweak or fix the belt to make it more reasonable. well if the bill said the u.s. government the department of homeland security can share secret classified defense internet defense information with the private sector and i don't think a whole lot of people would have been worried but the bill had information going the other direction as well and internet companies loved it for information they could receive and internet users over eight hundred thousand last i checked around

two hundred thousand signed the petition were about information that would flow the other direction so there were just information coming from the fed that's the way to fix it i don't think too many people would be freaked out that major companies are supporting this bill corporations like google like facebook and these are companies that some opposed sopa but now they're backing cispa why is that what do they have to gain you know facebook has been out in front google's them and i think now technically neutral jaimie they're doing stuff behind the scenes but there are officially neutral and a bit every technology trade association of any consequence has been enthusiastic about this and and will and this different the differences with sopa you have this the very nice political alignment or coalition between internet users and internet companies and that's a really powerful force and that proceeded sopa but now you have internet companies internet users kind of at loggerheads and when you don't have that alliance privacy loses and we saw it here today that supporters of this bill declan say that

something needs to be done to fight online espionage and i want to read you a couple of passages from an op ed rendell by representative mike rogers and representative dutch route through provider first one here is every morning in china thousands are. going to start here china has stolen from u.s. companies the amount of intellectual property equal to fifty times the current print collection of the library of congress. and i go on now to say that i'm going to bring up the other one here. every morning in china thousands of highly trained computer spies now wake up with one mission to steal u.s. intellectual property that the chinese can use to further their economic growth so clearly declan they're trying to address this problem of cyber

espionage that they are saying is harming our own economy what then do you make of that argument well and ruth they have a perfectly reasonable argument. this side of cyber espionage is happening it's not new it's hard to differentiate between state actors and that is to actual governments and individuals the question is is the cure worse than the disease here and you had members of congress saying absolutely it was i'm more worried about my own government than some teenage hackers in china or russia or who knows where and so there sits there saying this is we need to allow homeland security in the national security agency to help companies but nobody's really worried about that but what they didn't address in the floor debate was the information flow in the other direction read literally this would allow. say yahoo to turn over all of

the e-mail of its subscribers as long as it was for a cybersecurity purpose i don't think yahoo is going to be in a hurry to do that but the fact that it's permissible those search warrant require no judicial approval no oversight that's what's concerning ok so this just passed the house moments ago do you expect it to pass the senate and look at what do you expect the obama administration to do with it. well first the senate the senate has been where cybersecurity bills go to die for the last few years senator harry reid has been trying to make something happen he's kind of stymied by the sixty vote super majority so it's a safe buy that this is not going to move that quickly in us in the senate and so it gives opponents and proponents some time to regroup and see what's going to happen in terms of the president the white house issued a formal veto threat this week and start something is done very often so it's worth paying attention but the thing is that they were it's not it's not necessarily

opposed to this on the merits they have their own bill which has or has is more regulatory. targets the private sector more and also has its own privacy problems i mean they're not saying we don't want any bill they're saying that we don't like this bill that has privacy issues we like this other really has privacy issues so you sound pretty confident that this bill isn't getting get very much further well if you are first i mean the senate is controlled by the democrats and so you don't really want to go up against your president unless there's a very good reason second there is it's kind of a waste of time for congress to pursue exactly this bill because you have a veto threat i mean there's a little if you look at today's vote is not enough to overcome a veto most likely so why pursue exact but it is that if it's a waste of time that why did they pass it so quickly today you said without the you know not considering amendments well if they considered fourteen amendments out of forty four but they didn't consider the most privacy protective of the lot which is

may not even be saying much so so why do it because it's run by the house republican leadership and if the president won something they don't necessarily have to agree right that one thank you very much for coming on the show that was declan mccullough correspondent for seen at news. well new developments in the pacific join us philippine military drills are underway in the south china sea and it's leaving china on edge the u.s. and the philippines maintains that this is all simply an exercise but china sees it as a provocation this is tension mounts between the philippines and china over disputed territory of the drills are happening here on the western isles philippine island of palauan there's a standoff between the philippines and china over who has rights to the nearby waters the philippines says the area lies within their territory china claims it's theirs and there's a lot at stake the island said on what some estimates be around fifty billion dollars worth of oil china also has territorial disputes in the area with indonesia

taiwan and vietnam so are the military drills a sign of what's to come and will they be a step toward pushing china to a breaking point to discuss this earlier i spoke with dr paul craig roberts former reagan administration official i asked him if there is more to this than just drills here's what he had to say. of course there is. the military security complex is putting in motion another conflict now they need a conflict to replace the the war on terror. that the war on terror you know has been going on now for ten eleven years and it's proved to be an embarrassment the the problem with the war on terror is that the mighty military of the american superpower. if it can defeat a few ragtag insurgents so in order to keep the war going with iraq is they did for

seven eight years and now in afghanistan for ten or eleven years it's sort of embarrassing i mean they don't really want the war to end they're not trying to win they're just trying to spend money so the profits flow into the military security complex and comes back in political contributions but the problem with this type of conflict is it makes the americans look impotent militarily that the notion that the united states military can't defeat a few thousand taliban is embarrassing so what they need is that they need a new cold war like they had of the soviets. now she'd come into conflict which they can feel they can keep going for decades and so china is the obvious candidate so there provoking john and they're trying to start you know a military build up in china and one that we can point to for more alarm and more build up here so they can keep profits flowing into the military and security

complex that's what it's all about it's not about who's who's olens they are or any of that it's it's about we've got to keep the money in the power flowing to the military security complex but out was the center of all of this tension and that's been going on for years now is all yell and money the island spratly islands that they're now being disputed that they're estimated to. he is sitting on billions of dollars worth of oil a philippine says it belongs to them but china still plans on drilling so in this case could china be seen as the aggressor you know look all of the sixth all of these excuses are just what they have to concoct they can't say oh we need a long term conflict to replace the soviet conflict. so we've decided to do that with china they can't say that so they create make believe things lying or alone on islands and who the islands belong to and that sort of

thing but that's not the purpose of this that's not the purpose of starting a conflict with janet that they can keep going for years without actually having to fight. and the problem with the war on terror is they've been fighting and yet they don't win and so that's embarrassing and it hurts the military his reputation and hurts their self-image in the morale so they need a cold war and that's what this is all about it's not about who's all it is or who's the aggressor it's about the need to keep money flowing into the military security complex i mean what if you had peace what would happen to all these companies and their profits and homeland security and the cia and all the rest so that's really what it's about we really shouldn't let them program us into franking that china's trying to claim something that's not in their ears or that the philippines are or that they are i mean the fillip ange wouldn't be

a match for china or any now and the real question is why does the united states think it has any business being in the south china sea i mean what if china was saying that its business was the gulf of mexico i mean we would be incensed so why shouldn't china be upset when we say that their home waters is our national interest all of this is to provoke conflict it's nothing to do with oil or who owns iran's paul there is a treaty back in the one nine hundred fifty s. that had that states that if a country or something was the price in the philippines that the u.s. would provide some kind of aid. yes but china hasn't threaten the philippines they're not threatening anybody. they're not bombing any countries they're not invading them. they're not doing anything and they're penetrating people economically with trade and and but they're not you know look at africa china is their own business terms how is united states there with that africa command

militarily. so china has warned that these military exercises what raise the risk of an armed conflict confrontation and tension has been mounting between these two countries for quite some time is that more likely now. i don't think the united states actually wants it to come to an armed conflict as i said already i think what they won't is another cold war they had one with the soviets it kept the profits flooring for decades now they want another war like that not a hot war. juggle the hot war is you might not win. but the cold war you can keep everybody worried you can keep homeland security going you can keep all the profits flowing into the military complex with new weapons systems and all of that sort of thing and so that's really what it is about we shouldn't be food what they

tell us it's about it's never about what they tell us about remember there was no weapons of mass destruction in iraq there are no rain in new. the taliban had nothing to do with nine eleven. so everything they tell us is rare so don't we shouldn't let them get away with it again you know paul there's over seven thousand american and philippine troops now taking part in this exercise so it's pretty extensive so of course this is costing a lot of money taxpayer money and not too long ago the pentagon announced big defense cuts is there a kind of a disconnect here that well they're trying to they're trying to overcome the fence cuts by having a new threat and so they're turning china into the threat so yes there is a conflict but they don't want to defense cuts i mean what the look president has

an hour. warned the american people in his last public address in one thousand nine hundred eighty two about the military industrial complex is now called the military security complex about how it would take all the money that the country had and all the liberty the going to it and that people should wake up to the fact that they never did it and that's precisely what it's been doing and it's what it's doing now and so china is the new conflict to replace the war on terror i mean it's kind of running out as they claim they've killed bin ladin they claim the taliban news defeated and dispersed. that it's kind of hard to say that iran is is a terrorist conducting terrorist. so they've got to have a new conflict so i guess paula this is just another sign of the u.s. changing their focus from the middle east to the asia pacific region and you can look at it that way it's a more promising conflict for the military security complex paul pleasure to have

you on as always that was dr paul craig roberts former reagan administration official. well as supreme court has heard arguments in the case of arizona's immigration law the way it plays out in supreme court could set the tone for immigration law in several other states now amid all this we want to take a look we want to take a moment to look at the consequences of this controversial law especially after new footage brings in a tory s case and back into the limelight it shows police tasing an immigrant to death take a look for yourself. kind of hard to see because it's dark but you can see here as a crowd of agents swarm around on a staffie or hernandez who is on the ground as the officers continue to tase him police earlier said that hernandez is behavior justified the use of force but this video brings that into question for further discussion on arizona's immigration law

and its consequences i was joined by author and activist kevin powell is the author of this book barack obama ronald reagan and the ghost of dr king here's his take. well to me to understand and i've been to arizona many times that a lot of folks would chip the latino communities in the river expected by this you know to feel like every time you step out of your house be you walking down a street or driving at you're going to be stopped and not just stopped summarily but asked for identification to prove that you're a citizen i mean that kind of undermines what it is to be democratic society and i think that people you know to stand it is the law it's not just in arizona but it's actually spread around the country you know most probably the last couple months in the state of alabama as well so this is something that has national implications and a political issue this presidential cycle election cycle now this infamous case now infamous case of trayvon martin the teenager shot dead by a neighborhood watchman has put this issue of racial profiling back into the spotlight but this make does this law make racial profiling legal.

well you know it's debatable you know if you have people in a latino community or the black community or the community feel that their coffee under surveillance absolutely and it's it's really not what our country should be about and i can tell you as someone myself. that they can racial profiling is not it's not a situation to want to have to live in and i mean back to the immigration case i just think america you know the stand that our country was built on the bastion of . excess of slavery everyone in this country has come from somebody somewhere else or their own desire to be in this kind of societies that are very society and i think it's unfortunate that this is being debated by the highest court in atlanta and could potentially affect a lot of people in this country now the obama administration as of right debating this law or opposing this law rather the basis that this conflict between state and federal law but is the issue really racial and ethnic discrimination well i think

that the issue is doing believe in the rights of people to immigrate to this country who are law abiding citizens who are working hard many of the children who are in this country they're paying taxes etc you know they have a right to be full citizens overtime and i think they have to be a process in place for that and again this country was built on the backs of their parents and so forth say all the sudden we want to seal our borders and not let people in and one of them in. the whole world wants immigrate to america that's not true but there are people who want to come here and i think they should have the right to be here and kevin we just showed a little while ago that very disturbing video of the man being paid to death is just one of the several people killed on the border we're looking at him now to what extent are agents held accountable for their actions actions that sometimes turn deadly well i mean look at san diego california where they have these ice raids look at what's been going on in states like connecticut where they've been

brazen people's lives i mean there's been over zealous for this. the people that i encountered in new york city which is full of evergreen working mostly law abiding folks and i think that as long as that there's a process in place where people are working in the. laws here and they are actually making an effort to become citizens in this country i support immigration rights one hundred percent and i think that when we take it to the next level and actually are blue i think people that's saying something very ugly about some of us who are supposed to be a law enforcement. and when it comes to some of the cases like that like that case of that man pays to death a lot of questions surrounding what actually happened especially after this new video has been released why are more of these cases being prosecuted part of the problem is that a lot of folks who are immigrants who are not country are probably not willing to come forward therefore a fearful being deported and so they're not even willing to. talk about these issues that are affecting them and how they're some of them are being brutalized in

certain ways and i think it's only when a case like this is caught on video that there becomes an uproar about it but i see a lot of folks are afraid of what might happen if they actually say something about how they're treated by certain law enforcement officials now people like republican presidential candidate mitt romney he's going to argue that something needs to be done about the immigration problem in america and it is a very hot button issue today what do you say to those that believe maybe this is the only way to deter people from illegal e entering the u.s. i say that we as americans lose the moral high ground where we engage in that kind of behavior it is a way to administer immigration laws and give people the space to become citizens if they want to become citizens without having to turn to that kind of bias towards people we lose our humanity in the process and i don't think that's the solution all right kevin thank you very much for coming on the show that was kevin powell author and activist well you know that montra less is more some people are taking that very seriously it's called a tiny house an event and it's

a growing trend in the u.s. people are cramming all their. earthly possessions into houses the size of some bathrooms no mortgages no foreclosures and no one to answer to how these people found the key to making it there are these try economic times on the age of make mansions r.t. producer legan lopez introduces us to people who say when it comes to owning a home pick her isn't always a better. it was the quintessential american dream get a stable job buy a big house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and fill it with a couple of kids and maybe even a dog but these days the real american dream just may look like this or this or even this it's all part of a growing trend in the u.s. known as the small house movement and it asks americans to do something that is quite an american who live within their means during the recession or in times and

tend to be more conservative and we tend see to reduce our costs more about ways to do that and smaller home with a lower price associated with it since the one nine hundred fifty s. the size of the typical household has doubled the paradigm here in america has been . that bigger is better but in the last couple years that has proven to be not the case when the housing bubble burst it took with it the dreams and homes of millions of americans and left many families choosing between putting food on the table or paying for the roof over their heads and others looking for a better solution i think it's a better way to live i really do i think that it makes you appreciate. what you have more i think it gives you more time to do the things you want to do me rebecca when i'm owner of this a seven hundred twenty square foot house in carlisle pennsylvania it's a third of the size of a typical household and yet for her family it's home it forces you to truly live

with the people that you make your family with rather than isolating yourself to different parts of the house with twenty three percent of homeowners owing more on their houses than the property is actually worth these days and foreclosures are rising again in march that idea might be catching on so with a stagnant economy that's going nowhere fast and there are huge advantages associated with unburdening yourself with those traditional costs of ownership and really that's what you do when you except in very very small home this is like i mean come on it perhaps no one knows this better than jay shafer he invented tumbleweeds tiny houses for one basic reason i was tired of paying for more apartment and i really needed any more rent and i couldn't really afford a mortgage so i built myself a tiny house this is jay's house measuring it just ninety seven square feet it is

one of the smallest houses in the u.s. because his montra is if you're living with just what you need and nothing extra then everything is working for you're still living small is actually just living more freedom so while millions of americans are struggling with the large price tag associated with owing a big home people like rebecca n.j. living in houses like this are still pursuing the same american dream but in a little smaller of a package. reporting in carlisle pennsylvania meghan lopez. let's them to do for the news tonight if you missed part of this or any other show today don't worry we post all of our interviews on line in full you can also go to our youtube gave that is youtube dot com slash r t america you can also check out our web site that is r t dot com slash usa there you will find a bunch of stories we don't have time to get to on the air and find out what i'm doing when i'm not reporting the news follow me on twitter that was wall the big picture it's come.