today on r t is setting the stage for surveillance on the home front local law enforcement agencies are taking to the skies for the sake of security bringing drones to an airspace near you we'll tell you where they might be and when you can expect. and then your mother ever tell you not to eavesdrop that's the message journalists and activists are sending to the government taking their battle against warrantless surveillance all the way to the supreme court so whatever habit of those talks of transparency or for that model matter your civil liberties will explore. and libertarians are lining up for their presidential pick and no it's not wrong paul is governor gary johnson and he says he can continue the ron paul

revolution well ask him how he plans to do that in just a bit. it is tuesday may twenty second four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching r.t. . all right so there are some changes afoot in terms of the way we live life in the united states and most likely won't be long before will be walking down the street or in our backyards and we can look up into the sky and say it's a bird it's a plane no it's a drone hard to say when and where actually started but we can follow parts of the paper trail in february congress passed a bill requiring the federal aviation administration to open up national airspace to unmanned civil and commercial aircraft by two thousand and fifteen the bill gives funding to the f.a.a. and assigns the f.a.a. the task of coming up with plans to make this all happen and just last week the

f.a.a. announced a new set of rules essentially they're saying they're going to make it easier and faster for government entities to obtain a certificate of authorisation i'll just read you one line from the f.a.a. website it says of the f.a.a. disapproves assia way the agency quickly addresses the questions from the applicant and tries to provide alternative solutions that will lead to approval so the bottom line is they're here to stay but what will they be used for and to what extent will privacy be taken into consideration when some of these local governments sign up for permission to use drones in their jurisdictions as an activist with the electronic frontier foundation and hopefully will all of us answer some of these questions hey there trevor i know you just wrote about this and you found that there's actually some local governments stepping in trying to ensure that these drones will be used simply for their intended purposes first of all talk about what those intended purposes are and also as of these local governments are saying. sure

so i mean the real problem with drones or surveillance drones at least in the us would be the massive privacy violations they could end up causing because these drones obviously have high definition cameras that can stay flying for hours or days at a time and they could be attached with cameras that can sense infrared light or keep or chemicals even and so there are many different ways that americans privacy can be violated and so we're what we're seeing is that actually local governments are taking the lead on this issue the f.a.a. hasn't mentioned anything about privacy in any their statements even though they're streamlining the process for law enforcement agencies in congress really hasn't talked about this issue either but local local government city councils are actually fighting back against these proposals for example in seattle is probably the best example they of the police you've actually had to go in front of city council apologize for not keeping the city council informed about its drone program

which they found out about actually through our lawsuit against the f.a.a. instead of through official channels and now that they actually are considering a binding ordinance that could put a stop to surveillance or at least put up robust privacy safeguards that would keep people from being spied on so at least some of these people are actually saying you know before we vote on this we want to make sure that you have you know people's privacy in mind i think that's a good thing it's really shocking though trevor when you look about a look at how many drones are going to be used according to the f.a.a. by two thousand and twenty for less than ten years from now there could be as many as thirty thousand drones in the united states talk a little bit more about this push by you guys by the have to get local governments to step in. sure well like i said it's really been tough to get congress to pass any sort of privacy legislation lately and in fact they've been passing legislation like the new cyber security bill that actually hurts americans privacy so we're

really worried that they may not act fast enough for when these drones become prevalent after all there's nineteen thousand law enforcement agencies in the u.s. and many of them are getting grants from the justice department or department of homeland security to get these drones basically for free and with the dangerous capabilities of them who knows how it could turn out and so what we want to do is focus on local governments because they're the ones that really have oversight over police departments they can pass binding ordinances they can you know have real oversight into how these drones are used another great example is what happened last week in shelby county tennessee a similar situation to seattle where they were actually about to buy two drones for their police departments and all of a sudden the county commissioner started raising questions they asked them what they were going to be using them for and they wanted to institute privacy standards and then all of a sudden the sheriff's county sheriff's office backed off and said actually in fact we're not going to buy them now and to their credit the shelby county

commissioner's office actually is going to go ahead and possibly pass binding ordinances about privacy even though other police department isn't immediately getting drones so that's a great sign and hopefully we can see more of that in the days to come and i know you guys did a little bit of digging and found that you know there's a long list of agencies that have already in been approved to use these unmanned aerial vehicles i know we've already talked about this on this show about colleges that have gotten permission that they're actually adding programs as part of their curriculum but i just want to put a few up i want to put a map up this map basically shows all the sites that the f.a.a. acknowledges as active domestic drone authorizations and the agency confirmed that there were about three hundred of them and it. between seven hundred seven hundred fifty authorization since the program actually began back in two thousand and six and i'll just name a few of the schools texas a and m. the university of colorado and the university of connecticut and then there's also

some other departments the department of energy and i idaho the miami dade police department and the city of harrington kansas and these are just a few examples talk a little bit about why some of these schools are taking on you know wanting the ability to use drones in their airspace and also some of these very small cities in this country. first universities and kind of uses for drones that actually may not be malicious or of a people's privacy there are legitimate uses for drones i mean police police officers or law enforcement agencies can use them for search and rescue operations or fighting wildfires where people couldn't get or mapping natural disasters they can even be used for journalism and so i think that's what a lot of these universities are exploring. and as far as who actually owns fronts right now we actually had to file a lawsuit against the f.a.a. because they were keeping all that information secret even though manned airplanes

in aircraft have to be are or are posted automatically and are transparent about who's operating them for some reason they were doing the same thing so we just got this information back a few weeks ago and as you said there's a lot of small long horsemen agencies across the country that actually have. these drones which many of which they got like i said from homeland security money and the good part is that a lot of cities actually been banned these any sort of flying objects from flying over building and such so the miami dade county police office actually has to drones but they're not allowed to fly them within city limits so that really limits the surveillance that can be done on. people in cities and hopefully that trend will continue and you know there's some new requirements out as well for the f.a.a. and those who are set to get started later this year and these are for agencies working in the government public safety and long as they follow the rules they must

be given permission to operate any small drones and we're talking drones about four and a half pounds i got from her that's almost more frightening to me i mean these tiny drones will people even know that they're out there yet drones come in all shapes and sizes we kind of picture them as these huge planes given what we've heard about over in afghanistan in pakistan and elsewhere but they actually can come much smaller than that there are birds like drones that fly around that are the size of a person's wingspan and there are drones are just actually demonstrated and soon drones will be even smaller to get in the palm your hand or maybe not even see them so. the technology is expanding rapidly and it's important that we get privacy safeguards set before all of these law enforcement agencies start using them or at that point it might be too late they're their policies are set in stone and they

can basically use them how are they wish without privacy safeguards and it'll be a lot harder stop in the courts and congress so what we need to do is go to local governments right now and ask them before their police station get drones that they institute privacy safeguards or ban surveillance outright because that's really the best way we can stop this we certainly appreciate you keeping us updated on all these. new regulations that are being passed in our congress a whole lot of people are not talking about it activists for the electronic frontier foundation thanks love. let's talk now about the fight over feist the foreign intelligence surveillance act has gone through a series of changes since first and acted in one nine hundred seventy eight especially after the attacks of nine eleven in two thousand and one some of the more recent changes give the government the authority to electronically ease drop on americans' phone calls and e-mails without a warrant as long as those americans are communicating with someone outside of the united states and that aspect has been challenged by the a.c.l.u.

and this week. president obama has said this week rather the supreme court has decided it's going to weigh in president obama though just like president george w. bush before him argues that wiretapping programs may not be challenged in court so the supreme court is going to decide whether or not these legal challenges against vice are in fact legal as well confusing i know so we've got a nice to associate litigation counsel with epic to help us house this all out amy so the supreme court is going to decide whether or not a wiretapping program in which the government spies on citizens can even legally be challenged what's going on here well the fines and just a little bit odd it has its own kind of procedures put into place it's not like a normal case where law enforcement goes to a judge and asked for a warrant and is then able to conduct surveillance on the organization or an on an individual here they go to the finest

a court to their head they have their own court and there you kind of come and ask for a program they don't ask for to conduct surveillance on an individual for the most part they asked to approve programs for the year there's very little reporting about what goes on we can't even really speculate what the surveillance consists of because nobody really knows and nobody has been able to challenge it in court yet because nobody knows when they're being watched so it's just kind of this back door way into the lives of the american public and on one hand this is extremely significant. is this is the first time the supreme court has decided to weigh in on any patriot act era types of eavesdropping programs. so it could be a good thing for privacy activists but a lot of people see this as a good thing for the obama administration for the government that wants to be able to use this talk a little bit about that balance here well i think the most important thing in the thing that we're really trying to hammer home with and it's up for amendment this year we're going to see if it gets renewed. it's set to sunset at the end of the

year if it is not renewed in fact there in in session today marking up the fight as amendments act to put it back into place and we're looking for transparency and accountability it's what we always ask for in privacy cases we really want the agencies that are conducting surveillance to explain to the public what surveillance they're conducting and when they won't work outside of the law to be accountable for those actions and i think the supreme court case is one step closer to ensuring that those two things taking place i think there's just so much so many interesting things going on right now in the legal world and the obama administration is arguing that those fighting against this and you mentioned this they have no evidence that they themselves have been targeted so therefore they should not be allowed to fight this case but i know you know just last week we saw a federal court in new york overturn part of the national defense authorization act even though the government wanted to argue journalists like chris hedges noam chomsky those kind of people said you know they can't take this issue to court because they haven't yet been targeted even though they could talk

a little bit about i mean this argument that the government makes that you can't fight anything until you've actually been caught exactly and you can't know because you never going to be caught what you get under fire is every year they put out these reports and they tell you how many people have been surveilled or how many orders have been given for surveillance on even how many people because one order can. target multiple subjects and then how many times the f.b.i. has come and asked for what's called a national security letter that allow. than to look at bank statements and other kind of records so kind of taking it to the next level then exactly so you get these two elements but all we know is how many times they've asked for them and how many times they've been approved which is nearly always a rare rare occasion that the government gets you know denied an application to surveil somebody and no other information is ever made public there's absolutely it's an opaque program there's no transparency at all and like what you said you

can never challenge a program when nobody's ever going to know who's being surveilled and i think it's really tough right now because gosh every day it seems like technology is changing becoming so much more complex but as that happens it seems more and more that those in power are using the same excuse you know that lawsuits are forbidden because it will you know expose information that could threaten national security how is their plan in place to try to deal with this more because it seems like it's just going to continue happening more and more the national security is going to be used as the number one excuse and then the government will be able to do whatever it wants exactly and people are so scared when when somebody comes out and says we need this for security we need this to protect against terrorism a lot of lawmakers are scared to go up against that because they think it'll make them look weak however what it does is just promulgated this kind of security state standard where the surveillance gets more and more in our protections our freedoms are guaranteed less and less luckily the supreme court has stepped in a couple of times this year and u.s. we jones this said you couldn't put a g.p.s.

device on a car without a warrant that was something they argue that they could do so we're seeing at least some checks and balances on what surveillance is being allowed however with five it gets very difficult and we're going to keep pushing on them to make it more transparent but any it wasn't that long ago i mean i remember you probably remember turning on the t.v. and everyone was talking about warrantless wiretapping warrantless wire that this was all over the news you know people in the mainstream media even up in arms about this they were outraged what has changed i mean has anything changed. in terms of some of these programs we the n.s.a. is an entity unto itself and that's the best way i can say it we know nothing about them epic has gone to the n.s.a. who's conducted the warrantless wiretapping program who in two thousand and nine it came out that they were not even the face of court again is one small chest and in fife said to prevent against surveillance and i say it was going around the face of course they were conducting surveillance outside of the legal realm and just

a massive amount of information coming in they don't ever tell you what they're doing in fact on the recent case with us but we went and asked for records of this widely publicized agreement that the n.s.a. had entered into with google following the google hack in two thousand then from china the n.s.a. came back and said we are not even going to confirm or deny that these records exist we're not going to touch this we don't even want you to know if this is the case and we should point out it's not just the n.s.a. and government officials doing this they are getting the help of the rise in a t.n.t. communications company that we're paying for services are working with the government always good to have you here to sort of break this all down for us any stepanovich associate litigation counsel with epic. well as we told you on the show last week republican presidential hopeful ron paul announced he will no longer be spending money or campaigning in states that haven't voted in the primaries and said he said he'd continue trying to get as many delegates as possible on the road to the republican national convention and five days after that announcement he won twelve

out of thirteen delegates in minnesota at the state convention there now despite his libertarian leaning ron paul has been running as a republican and so too was another well known libertarian former new mexico governor gary johnson but he has left the red and blue political race and is now the presidential nominee for the libertarian party gary johnson joins me now from new mexico. hey there governor good to see you again i guess let's start with a check on how it's going for you and what you're seeing and hearing out there on the campaign. well look i'm the only candidate that's offering offering a difference as opposed to obama and romney i'm going to declare peace as president state civil ective president say they're going to get out of afghanistan i'm going to bring the troops home i'm the only candidate of the three that wants to balance the federal budget now that means reforming entitlements now i'd like to see

marriage equality i'd like to see the patriot act repealed i'd like to see us and the war on drugs i think there's a real viable third choice here and i happen to be it as the libertarian nominee for president and governor doesn't i do you want to go into detail about a few of those things that you mentioned certainly quite a few issues that you're focusing on that really aren't being talked about by some of the other candidates by certainly by the mainstream media but i want to ask you really quickly you have vowed to continue the ron paul revolution you've always been vocal about your support for dr paul what does continuing this revolution entail. well i'll say it like ron paul said it three weeks ago he said look i'm not going to get out of the race because the people that are coming out to see me are growing in numbers there's more people that are that are coming this direction the whole notion of libertarian leaning libertarian i have the same phenomenon the more people i talk to the more

support that i get the trend line is that absolutely up and it really stems from a basis in philosophy i think the majority of americans are a fiscally responsible and socially tolerant i'm in that category i think the majority of americans are i think the majority of americans want to get out of afghanistan now bring the troops home i think the majority of americans understand that our budget is not sustainable that borrowing and printing money to the tune of forty three cents out of every dollar is going to lead to the collapse of this country a monetary collapse so there is a real viable third choice and that third choice happens to have more executive experience than the other two candidates combined i'm talking about governmental executive experience this is not a handicap choice do you vote for gary johnson as the libertarian nominee for

president and yet and we can blame this on this history of you know the two party political system that we have or a whole host of other things that we really haven't seen too much of you in the mainstream media throughout this campaign but you did i want to remind our viewers you did make it on the invite list for one of the republican debate and i just want to play a quick highlight. oh alright. that sort of burst the created or couple already that this is oh all right certainly winning over some of the people of that debate you were talking about the economy about the need to balance the budget governor johnson the economy does seem to be one of the top issues of course this week as sort of the issue does your is you know private equity what conversation needs to be had in this campaign that is not being held had regarding the economy.

well i am advocating throwing out the entire federal tax system abolish the i.r.s. abolish income tax abolish corporate tax and replace it with one federal tax a consumption tax in this case the fair tax i think it reboot the american economy for the next one hundred years in a zero corporate tax rate environment if the private sector doesn't create tens of millions of jobs i don't know what it's going to take to do that it ends up being cost neutral so it's really the answer when it comes to american exports making american exports twenty three percent more competitive it's the answer to china i want to talk to you about some of the other issues that you mentioned earlier that you have strong feelings about and one of them that you've spoken about here on our team before it's the stop and frisk program last week we saw the new york police department agree to make some changes to that controversial program centrally

before they stopped everyone they wanted to that they found you know suspect and they frisk them last year that was about six hundred thousand people and a great majority of them were black or hispanic now changes that they are going to implement they include a new training video they include information cards for police officers to you know better explain who they should and should not be stopping a you have spoken out about this time and time again do you think that this step was at least a step in the right direction for the n.y.p.d. . absolutely and then let's get back to the choices now running for president i'd states obama romney they don't want to repeal the patriot act i want to repeal the patriot act let's stop detaining individuals without charging individuals that u.s. citizens and that. that those foreigners that are also being held president obama signed the national defense authorization act allowing for the

detainment without being charged of u.s. citizens look we've fought wars over these issues and yet things are getting worse they're not getting better as president of the united states of no laws change i guarantee you that t.s.a. will be as safe and less intrusive within a week of my taking office but regarding stop and frisk as i was asking about i mean do you think that this this video and a couple cards are going to really change things there in new york city where this is a huge problem in terms of racial profiling. well it is racial profiling and no it's not going to really mean are they going to do it a little bit better i don't understand it's an order from on top which is allowing for this to occur the order from on top needs to go away look there are there is reasonable suspicion and then there's stop and frisk for no reason whatsoever and

this is stop and frisk for no reason whatsoever let's talk about a few more things i think governor johnson it was richard nixon in the seventy's that first declared the so-called war on drugs i know you've been pretty adamant that this war on drugs and what do you think has gone wrong here i mean literally in the last four decades this is been going on. well it's like stop and frisk we're arresting one point eight million people a year in this country on drug related crime and to what end well we now have two point three million people behind bars in this country the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world let's legalize marijuana control it regulate it tax it look at the issues surrounding border violence with mexico forty thousand deaths south of the border over the last four years these are disputes that are being played out with guns rather than in the courts this is

a prohibition phenomenon did we not learn anything during prohibition i was just watching that ken burns special the other day somebody somebody on that special said look if we want people to brush their teeth in this country let's just make it against the law to own a toothbrush or toothpaste and watch how many people actually go out and certainly rushing their teeth rigorously for the first times in their life would be a good experiment one more issue that i just want to get your take on make sure everyone watching has the opportunity to hear your stance you mentioned at the beginning of this interview gay marriage i know though for the most part you favor the idea of states making rules for themselves last week we heard president obama come out and support for same sex marriage but he says he'll leave it up to the states good decision. well first of all i am states rights period that's in the constitution but also in the constitution i believe are constitutionally guaranteed rights to for

those that want to have marriage equality for those gays that want to marry one another that this is a constitutional right and so using as an example civil rights in the sixty's look if the federal government would have left civil rights to the states in the sixty's would we still have segregated public bathrooms in some states in the south i think perhaps that we might so federal government has a has a constitutional or has a has a mandate to govern under strict adherence to the u.s. constitution i think marriage equality is a constitutionally guaranteed rights that the federal government needs to apply all right gary johnson presidential nominee for the libertarian party also former got former governor of new mexico thanks for coming on the show today arlen that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com

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