tonight on r t the federal aviation administration is making it easier for public agencies to get their hands on drone technology from college campuses to local law enforcement we'll tell you where they might be and when you can expect them. and they're fighting fires so with fire journalists and activists are taking the government's warrantless surveillance program all the way to the supreme court demanding transparency in the interest of civil liberties we'll tell you what they're planning to do and how it could affect you. and there's been a security breach one blogger took it upon himself to prove the transportation security administration might not be up to par when it comes to protecting the flying public and he's taking his findings to capitol hill so why are we wasting so

much money for these so-called naked body scanners and they reveal nothing we'll explore. good evening it's tuesday may twenty second seven pm in washington d.c. my name is christine and you're watching r t alright 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 we'll be walking down the street or in your backyard and you look up in the sky and you'll say it's a bird it's a plane no it's a drone hard to say when and where this will actually happen and also when it 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 twenty fifteen the bill gives. funding

to the f.a.a. and assigns the f.a.a. the task of coming up with a plan to make this all happen well then just last week the f.a.a. announced a new set of rules as mentally they're saying they're going to make it easier and faster for government entities to obtain a certificated authorization and i'll just read you one line from the f.a.a. web site it says if the f.a.a. disapproves of c.e.o. way the agency then will quickly address questions from the applicant and try to provide alternative solutions that will lead to approval so the bottom line here is the drones are 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 joining me now is jefferson morley stuff writer for salon and also author of the book snow storm in august. hey there jefferson i want to talk to you about this talk to me a little bit about the purpose of surveillance drones and also some of in your opinion the worst case scenarios. well first of all what we're talking about what

the f.a.a. is doing is opening up the airspace to drones of all sorts and public safety agencies get first. or are going to be the first in line to get permission they can fly aircraft up to twenty five pounds. when you talk to law enforcement people what they say they plan to use this. technology for is search and rescue missions and. watching fires. searching for missing people. that kind of thing so they i've talked to a lot of police departments and they pretty much all disavow any intention to use you know use these as a surveillance drones but they certainly have that capacity and the law as it now stands is a little unclear on what the privacy grounds are so you talk about a worst case scenario some police departments have asked for. permission to have

weaponized drones i think that's a bad idea and worst case scenario and they can be used for they can be used for surveillance depending on as soon as somebody wants to do that so we need a lot more protection to be written into the wall right yeah i think a lot of it is just very vague right now and certainly there are situations in which some drones are good you know a lot of people think of drones and they think of you know the these unmanned aerial vehicles that kill people in pakistan but certainly there are some that help out in the time of fire they can detect heat they can detect you know signs of life but but one of the things that is really interesting to me jefferson is some of these drones are actually you know the smaller ones at least they're less than four and a half pounds do you think people understand that that drones i mean the vast majority of the american public you think they understand that a lot of these are these drones are going to be very small the size of some birds

yeah i mean i think. people are beginning to wake up to this technology and it's a it's a disruptive transformative technology like you know like a web browser or like a g.p.s. so you know what they're going to be used for what kind of public civil commercial applications they made him i think there might be a lot of great applications that nobody's even thought of yet so i don't discount the upside of this technology it's not all it's not all a big problem but because industry is driving this thing the government is behind the laws not caught up with this that's where we have the potential problem and i should mention the electronic frontier foundation e.f.-s. did some digging and found out there's a whole long list of agencies that have already been approved to use unmanned aerial vehicles now we talked about on this show a little bit about how you know a lot of colleges are adding drone technology to their curriculum but i do want to but i had the the expectation and the reason the universities are doing this when

you ask them they say they see this as a it's a job growth area and that they want to prepare young people for jobs that are going to be opening up in this industry so that universities are among the early adopters here yes and leave according to the f.a.a. by twenty twenty so less than ten years from now they predict as many as thirty thousand drones will be in use in the united states but i do want to put we're talking about some of these colleges and universities i do want to put a map up showing the sites the f.a.a. acknowledges as a domestic drone authorizations the agency confirmed there are about three hundred active c.e.o. ways and that it should between seven hundred seven hundred fifty authorizations a few of the schools include texas a and m. the university of colorado university of connecticut and then there's also some other entities the department of energy in idaho the miami dade police department of the city of harrington kansas. so we just wanted to kind of you know show people

this is going on all around this country but don't you think however that a lot of people are going to you know sort of start to wondering start to wonder what's happening in their skies. yeah and they are and i think the industry needs to and government need to address this you know you mentioned some police departments there's eighteen thousand police departments in the united states only about three hundred of them have helicopters right now until a cop is a very expensive da parade so a lot of these police departments are going to be able to obtain an aerial capacity for surveillance for search and rescue at a much lower cost so i think especially in the area of public safety we're going to see you know growth and people do need assurances that that there is that there's going to be safety and and privacy are going to be taken into account it's really come it's coming very quickly and those i don't think those concerns have been adequately addressed so far well and what i'm wondering is just sort of about this

rush i mean as soon as this year agencies working in the public in the government public safety round are going to be approved as long as they follow the rules they're going to they have to be a prevent have to be given permission at least to use some of these smaller drones the one that we that we talk about here i don't i don't i think it's appropriate that public safety agencies you know go first i think there be usefulness of drones and search and rescues is obvious in hostage situations so. law enforcement needs to i think you know obtain these and experiment with them and see that they're used responsibly that's no i don't think anybody would would we would criticize that and by the question is you know how transparent are these police agencies going to be what kind of what kind of rules will govern information collected by drones well you know the united states among a lot of countries has weak relatively weak privacy laws at the national level

certainly as compared to europe and that's one of the problems that the drones point is we need stronger protection of people's privacy drones and all sorts of other information and i think that some of the you know. officials at a more local level are starting to acknowledge this. i mean one situation in which you know we thought it was a jury's going to see and we saw in seattle as well and you were talking a little bit about this you know because in some cases the you know the city council has to approve this and so they're asking questions and they're saying you know how do we ensure that this won't infringe on people's privacy and i think that's a positive step you know i think that congress may not be responsive on this issue congress didn't hold hearings on privacy you know before or safety before they before they rushed this they rushed this order to the f.a.a. so i think it's good that that seattle and other cities are taking it up and saying well you know we'll decide well controlled we don't we're not going to wait for the f.a.a. to act we're going to set up some some very clear rules at home and i think you

know if that happens then i think law enforcement will have the trust of the public and people will be less worried about the privacy things but you know law enforcement needs to win the trust of the public in order to be able to deploy this new technology yes certainly a lot of these laws are at the you know federal level made right down the street from our studios that they're just so vague and it seems like that is happening intentionally so you got to ask these questions jefferson morley staff writer for salon and author of the book snow storm in august appreciate having you on the show thank you christine. let's talk now about the fight over five the foreign intelligence surveillance act has gone through a series of changes since it was first in acted in one thousand seven hundred 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 and to do so without a warrant as long as americans are communicating with someone outside of the united states now that have aspects has been challenged by the a.c.l.u.

but president obama like president george w. bush before him argues that wiretapping programs may not be challenged in court this week the supreme court agreed to decide whether or not these legal challenges against vice are in fact legal it's a little confusing i know and that's why amy's tapan of it just socio litigation helpful with epic joined us earlier to help hash it all out well the funds as is a little bit odd it has its own kind of procedures put into place so 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 a organization or an on an individual here they go to the face of court to their head they have their own court and their 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 because 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 to. 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 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 and even how many people because one order can. target multiple subjects and then how many times the f.b.i. has come in and asked for what's called a national security letter that allows them 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 the 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 is 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 the 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 times this year in u.s. we jones they 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 it gets very difficult and we're going to keep pushing on them to make it more transparent

but 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 and this is 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 would be the n.s.a. is an entity unto itself and the the best way i can say it we know nothing about them ethic has gone to the n.s.a. who has conducted the warrantless wiretapping program who in two thousand and nine it came out that they were not even the fisa court again is one small. check and in five said to prevent to get surveillance an essay was going around the place of course they are 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 when we went and asked for records of this widely publicized agreements that the n.s.a. had entered into with google following the google hack in two thousand and from

china the n.s.a. came back and said we're 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 horizon eighty communications companies that were paying for service are working with the government always good to have you here to sort of break this all down for us a means to kind of reference the associate litigation counsel with ethic well there's a new study out by the department of homeland security that finds that the transportation security administration is not doing such a good job tracking or reporting its findings and even when it knows about airport security breaches it's not often fixing them a few things that happen including at least one person getting through the t.s.a. screening with a knife and i want to show you some video of another incident that bought a sewing kit from the dollar store broke out my eighth grade home ec skills and sort of pocket directly on the side of a shirt then i took a random metallic object in this case a heavy metal carrying case. that would be easy to launch any of the old metal

detectors and walk through backscatter x. ray at fort lauderdale hollywood international airport and video of course well not about to win any videography awards for my hidden camera footage you can watch as i walk through the security line with the metal object to my new side pocket my camera gets placed on the conveyor belt and goes through its own x. ray and when it comes out i'm through and the object never left my pocket. that was jonathan corbett president of for time technologies today johnson presented some of his other findings on the t.s.a. to congress why was this morning his sense flown back to miami florida where he joins us from now hey there john again i guess start out by talking again tell me a little bit about you know the center piece of your findings that you presented to congress today sure so the congress today presented actually a little more detail than that we saw that you tube video there there are several exploits that myself have identified these body scanners and one of the videos is

just a nice one because it's so easy to do it doesn't really take anything and it's effective for objects large enough to be a firearm or even larger than that. presented those details to congress so that they can be kind of demand some accountability from the t.s.a. and you seem to be somebody that congress wouldn't want to be associated with somebody that's sort of testing the government were you surprised when they invited you to sort of share what you had learned with them. you know. i can understand having having that kind of point of view but but congress. is a little more accountable to its constituents and congress needs to. actually make sure that what they're doing is what their constituents want is what's going to keep us safe for the t.s.a. right now has very little accountability the courts are having a hard time keeping them accountable congress is having a hard time keeping keeping them accountable they've they've stopped detained actually several people in congress at this point in the airports so it's

getting that leverage that. the t.s.a. for accountability purposes that that we're after and i'm going to use some of the words that you used you called the nude body scanner program nothing more than a giant fraud i know that you're also the first person to sue the t.s.a. for those body scanners talk to me a little bit about your biggest complaint. my biggest complaint there are lots of complaints i guess forefront is the privacy issue and that the government is essentially demanding a digital strip search to head to the airports nowadays that that's what it is no more no less these devices can take pretty graphic pictures of you without your clothes the same applies to the pat downs which require that done properly them to touch your genitals. this is pretty extreme. and is being directed at the general public this is not just people who have made some kind of list or have

failed initial screening we these are methods now used for primary screening and just to be clear you're obviously not arguing for no security at the airport you're kind of are are totally fine and think that those good old fashioned metal detectors do the job just fine. correct they do the job better than these metal detectors don't have blind spots like body scanners are so if you think. an imaging device is essentially like a pair of eyes. if you. know from driving for example that there are blind spots that there are things that you can't see these imaging devices have those same issues standard good old fashioned magnetometers don't have those issues well let me ask you then i mean this naked body scanner program that's now in most of the major airports around this country that was extremely expensive so you know if what you say is correct if the metals actors work just as well or better why would

it be that the government would spend so much money implementing these new machines putting in place this new technology training people for it if it doesn't actually work as well. but that's what i got to compliance fraud you know where exactly the fraud lays who knows just did the t.s.a. know exactly how ineffective these machines were when they bought them. i'm not sure and the other thing that's been brought up is that if you follow the money it does seem to take a pretty suspicious path. companies that make the two companies that make the body scanners that are that are currently being purchased by the t.s.a. one of them is associated with the former. chairperson and the other is is the same parent company that brought us out the security contractor in iraq so these these are these are companies that have deep ties in washington already so you're sort of suggesting that this is sort of favors to friends in

terms of buy your product if it's going to you know give you money and we'll use it in our airports. it's certainly possible you know and when you see. it like. that or so far. he kind of looks for why that happens. and that's one plausible explanation let's sort of talk a bigger picture here it's really interesting to me jonathan this is not a left issue or right issue being angry at the t.s.a. often you find just as many democrats as republicans up in arms about it certainly when congressman presidential candidate ron paul speaks about it about eliminating the t.s.a. gets a big reaction but but why do you think it is that this is not you know an issue on either side that this is sort of an all encompassing issue that people have really rallied around you know it isn't it really should be and sometimes it doesn't necessarily seem like it just because the party that's not has their party kind of

rallies around them a little bit. but you know this this is a problem that's that's gone through both sides of the aisle here. the problem is an affront to our civil liberties and that's not an issue that that's partisan no one wants to be strip searched by the government and that doesn't doesn't matter if you have an r.d.f. your name any indication jonathan because this is sort of your at the forefront of any indication that congress or those people in power are going to actually do something about your findings and some of the other research that's been done by the department of homeland security. on the t.s.a. or do they just sort of want to appease you and listen what you had to say and sort of send you on your way. you know it's slow but it's moving we. have a say in the on the t.s.a. process community that it's one group at a time. there's people from people that don't assume that they're there working for

safety and to people that they question why they even though so. as i mentioned earlier they're back with congress in airports there was one of the other of the day that was accused of assault before the t.s.a. first realize that here is. that the house of representatives for pushing is so one at a time the t.s.a. is slowly alienating the american people and that covers all right jonathan corbett president of for ten technologies good to have you on the show. and stay tuned we'll be right back here in just a moment. of american power continue. i think. might actually be time for revolution. and it turns out that a popular drink at starbucks has a surprising. well

there's a trend in this country and it's hard to say where it all started but it is getting worse and has to do with the kind of speech powerful people use to communicate their message take a look our enemies are innovative and resourceful so we they never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people and they're

doing it was not always a given that the united states of america would have a close relationship insight into russian actions for physicalist to police just as the proximity of the state gives you there are next door neighbors and you can actually see russia from land doing kids' soccer game on saturday that's just entrenched encouragement in a team of mavericks which did just get the job done and we're tired of the old politics as usual. let's have a thing like you do. all right well it turns out it's not just presidential candidates things fairly and often incorrect things member of congress are following suit working hard to sound more and more like the man or woman you'd want to have a beer with or run into at the piggly wiggly. my dear friend the chairman of the democratic national committee with. the we need to let them go to florida. on the table here's the big issue the president

doesn't want to have to be confronted with priorities and spending because he has a lot of chutzpah bollock your passes that free is yours card this in people's pockets is going to be as worthless as a confederate dollar after the war between the states the great war yankee aggression. now according to a new report out by the sunlight foundation there's actually a correlation the more conservative the member of congress the lower grade level they tend to use when they speak the study utilize the widely used flesh can test to score the speech level of lawmakers based on their congressional records and of the lowest scoring members of congress the bottom twenty were very conservative republicans now i can show you a list of the top ten on here senator rand paul is number three on there mick mulvaney rob wood all you know just very very interesting the double that amount was the bottom with the for the lowest grade level now i should say in some of the

cases this was true for lawmakers on the opposite side of the political spectrum more progressive democrats in congress also tend to speak at a lower grade level and overall the congress of today speaks at about a ten point six grade level that's down from eleven point five grade level in two thousand and five so what's up with this dumbing down well i have a couple theories first of all we are in the age of cable networks and pundits who use quick catchy phrases you may have noticed but long winded intelligent orations rarely make it onto our airwaves now the shorter the sweeter the sound bite the better chance it has of being played over and over on c.n.n. but considering that the us constitution was written at a seventeen point eight grade level and the declaration of independence at a fifteen point one grade level which is some for a moment ask ourselves do i want to vote for a lawmaker who talks like me or rather someone that i know or rather who's someone who's articulate well read.