protecting our civil rights and civil liberties we don't usually give government tried and that's really what these bills have done in a lot of ways but with the threat of cyber war looming signing away civil liberties seems like the only logical solution to america's problems are so lawmakers what have you think but do all of these internet bills really have our best interests in mind or is there something more sinister going on or question more. they say that now they feel very comfortable at night they can sleep at night they feel when they go to work that when they come home that we find the motor city is finally getting its wheels turning again but not manufacturing cars one private security firm is thriving on the state's insecurities and offering protection to anyone who asks for

it had to michigan to find out how neighborhood patrols are reading one of america's most dangerous city it's a crime. and watch your tail if you don't it's almost guaranteed someone else well new technology allows police officers to scan license plates on the go whether you're doing something illegal or not i'll give you a few good reasons why you should be alarmed about this license plate recognition technology. it's thursday may twenty fourth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t. well it seems that the face of terrorism is evolving a poll a poll shows that these days americans are more worried about cyber terrorism than actual terrorism and we're seeing the response to this fear it came in the form of a call. controversial piece of legislation that's aimed at expanding the

government's power to monitor the enter net has passed the house and awaits a vote on the senate floor after congress's recess next week so are cyber fears or fears over cyber terrorism justified or is it ever exult a fear mongering our to correspondent abbie martin reports. according to u.s. officials it's the looming threat facing our nation today but you won't be able to see it hear it or feel it coming because it will be in cyberspace in today's world acts of terror could come not only from a few extremists and suicide vests but from a few keystrokes on the computer a weapon of mass disruption it's cyber terrorism and the fears being ramped up by the day in the not too distant future we anticipate that the cyber threat will pose the number one threat to our country it is not a matter of if but when a cyber pearl harbor will occur it's so pervasive that there's even an entire

exhibit dedicated to it at the washington d.c. museum a museum whose executive director spent thirty six years at the cia there will come a time when it will be within our lifetime it'll probably be relatively soon when there will be probably a major cyber terrorist attack. the strike could come from enemies abroad we know from. cyber weapons wreaking havoc they warn were. masters. of this and the hype is working in a new poll shows that americans are now more worried about cyber terrorism than actual terrorism government officials also point the finger at how activists like the leaderless group of anonymous who have been calling for civil unrest in the u.s. we are calling upon the citizens of the united states to physically protest warning that the group may launch cyber attacks on infrastructure. the scale of such

a possible attack is mostly unknown to combat the threat congress is pushing through legislation most recently or the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act it would increase surveillance by allowing corporations to give confidential user data to the federal government but critics warn these bills are heeding the way for government abuse when it comes to protecting our civil rights and civil liberties we don't usually give government blank check and that's really what these bills have done in a lot of ways these laws could also be used to capitalize off the threat of cyber terrorism by impeding net neutrality and what could be a competitive threat it could be something that we wouldn't really you and i describe as a stivers a curate a threat but really just a threat to their current bottom line or to their business since both already passed the house that is awaiting a senate vote one thing is clear the government will continue its attempt to control the internet and the blanket threat of cyber terrorism may be the perfect way to convince the people to give up their rights to privacy on the net once and for all abby martin marty washington. now to talk more about these cyber fears and

if and what the passage of siskel would mean for your online for guns as mike respond to his a campaign strategist for access now dot org mike welcome so what do you think are lawmakers taking part in fear mongering or are cyber threats a legitimate fear. thanks for having me. i don't know about this story called fear mongering but the government certainly hasn't made the case for such a massive information program between private industry in the government certainly not enough to justify overriding constitutional protections. you know against search and seizures especially ones that civilian or judicial oversight so and so mike i know that your organization is pushing for not to pass it already passed the house. what do you me away if it does pass what would it mean for you when i and online users which is just about everyone these days. yes you're right

it's taken up right now i think with the means is that this type of pervasive surveillance state which we implemented these bills returned to law i mean it turns us all into criminals and frankly doesn't make any of us safer so that seems like a bold statement there it turns us all into criminals i mean is there a capacity for them to overstep their boundaries or what do you mean by that so. i guess what i mean is that you know offline in order to access and you know whether it's say if the police want to get inside your house into the war online though those protections are provided for users and so what they mean while abiding citizens will have their information access without any sort of oversight and. you know any any measure that seeks to access user information needs to be narrow

in scope and used to prove necessary and proportionate and. in the senate and doesn't survive for that i do want to bring in mike not everybody in congress is on board. when it comes to this bank looting senator ron wyden and here's what he had to say recently on the senate floor take a listen it creates uncertainty in place of trust in a rote erode statutory and constitutional civil rights protections and it creates a surveillance regime in place of a targeted. cyber security program that is leading to truly protect our nation so he goes on there to say that suspect korea it's a cyber industrial complex are far into a system that profits from a problem so you know we've heard about the military industrial complex as cyber and the next complex. yeah i mean there's

a lot of money to be made off of user data you know i think that's you know why you saw a company like facebook to be valued so high it's because it is out of the information that it has. for people who use it service i think senator wyden also correctly said in another statement that this is a reaction to it in that sphere. you know certainly cyber security is a very important issue but these measures don't make us any safer and you know i think implementing these types of measures would create that cyber cyber industrial complex i think this is his word and that is his wording indeed but you know mike proponents are going to say they're going to point the hacktivist groups and they're going to use foreign threats as a justification you know they say look we need to do something to protect us from these very real threats what do you say to that. i mean it is true

that we definitely need protection for these threats but the rule of law must be held up held online just as it is offline you know law enforcement agencies can get warrants to access user information certainly there are there will be times when they do need to do that but just because they need to do it doesn't mean that we have to step on fundamental democratic principles so are you saying that there's already has test him in place. that in states these safeguards and say it's just taking it too far. yeah if we take it too far you know i think that you know we'll continue to work with lawmakers as well as tech companies to make sure that user privacy is upheld again will point to a statement from senator wyden and i believe this. privacy should be foremost it shouldn't be an exception so that any any sort of legislation that seeks to access

user data chip a privacy first ok so. had already passed the house it's up for a senate vote when congress gets back from recess so time is running out for people like yourselves and others that are privacy activists and really don't want to see this passed what can they do. access now or as well as other organizations like the electronic frontier foundation and cd to the world working together in a coalition to. you know to make sure that the senate continue bills. and that we're continue to work with lawmakers as well as tech companies to make sure that whatever type of cybersecurity legislation that is passed protects users and also want to say that we're also meeting with various government officials as well start companies. in brazil next week for the rio de janeiro human rights technology conference and these types of meetings are going to be really important to make

sure that going forward that we can address cyber security threats as well as protecting users right and lastly i just want to ask you let's say you are successful and privacy advocates are successful in preventing this last legislation from moving forward but you know we saw you there was some people say this is kind of like a. two point zero and this is if this is defeated. they can you expect to see more of a push similar piece of legislation to come before congress. yeah i think that you know as the internet community really wise up and takes the stand you know i don't think that if we defeat one bill that all of a sudden the people are saying attack it up and go home and then there's got already backroom lobbying go another and pass something similar to sopa and pipa so i'm sure that you know if we're successful we are in defeating sis. i don't anticipate this to be the last fight right mike thank you for weighing and that was

my crisp ali he is a campaign strategist for access now dot org thanks. well we have an update for you on a story we've been following from the beginning mass protests in canada have reached a boiling point in montreal last night police and some three thousand protesters squared off again this is the thirteenth consecutive night of demonstrations the students began protesting after an increase in tuition. over five hundred people were arrested it's the highest number of arrests any single night since the protests sparked and montreal was not the only city dealing with unruly rally years there were also arrested in quebec city and sure broke the arrest came just hours after the comeback government said it would be cracking down on striking students setting strict conditions for any resumption of negotiations

with students strike leaders authorities say as long as the protests continue there will be no talk of a tuition free in this case the police use a technique called cattle league where they circled the protesters cut off all the exits and then proceeded to arrest everyone they encircled also a new quebec's provincial government voted last friday on an emergency law that would shut down some universities and impose harsh fines on protesters even blocking students from attending classes it's the latest attempt at the local authorities to curb the unrest and cut the protests off at their source they also banned protesters from wearing masks during demonstrations and want them to provide details of their protests i ten or aries beforehand to which protesters responded with this you could call it a protest rude or a vulgar finger to canadian authorities either way because protesters say they're

here to stay until the tuition debate is resolved and of course we will bring you more on the canadian protests as it unfolds. well it's that time again time to check in with our web t.v. to see what they're working on our producer andrew blake is in the newsroom to tell us what he's got cooking andrew what are you working on over there work and i'm working on work and i'm going to tell you about the transpacific partnership it's a legislation floating around congress right now a lot of people don't know about it though you want to know why they don't know about it and why the white house isn't telling them anything about it the own congressman our own congressman don't even know a lot about this deal because the white house is trying to keep them from figuring out the whole thing now senator wyden is asking for an obama to be forced to give them information on it go to our to dot com slash usa read all about the t p p it sounds or it was an issue as yet t p p r t dot com so she was a read about that also another president bill clinton photographed this week posing

with some unusual guests may or may not be pornographic after says. they were they were so good go check that you get stories about israel about iraq the stories about kelly thomas beating whole bunch of stuff go check this out ok all right i think you're working on something about canada we were just we were just talking about you know i was working on a can it's a really big country there's lots of stuff going on there but these protests are getting worse and worse and i worsening like sirius and not a lot of people are covering them so we have we are doing work at the. you also check it on our you tube page obviously youtube dot com slash r t america that's the way. he is paying attention to canada andrew blake thank you very much for that update that was our t. web producer andrew blake with a preview of what's trending today thanks liz on our web site. well it's become one of the most notorious places in america the demise of the auto industry spark the

downfall of detroit from tens of thousands of vacant homes to an understaffed police force to a government on the brink of bankruptcy detroit has its fair share of problems and it's become the poster child of everything that can go wrong in a city and it's attracted photographers and journalists into the city to shoot so-called ruin pornography but we decide it's not go that route we travelled to the most motor city and saw glimmers of hope we found people in detroit that are resilient people that are sick of waiting for the auto industry the police department or the local government to get its act together taking matters into their own hands to make it a better place it's a city often described as post apocalyptic and if you come to detroit it's easy to understand why around just about every corner abandoned homes charred by neglect

even downtown skyscrapers stand vacant. it's what's left after an exodus of people out of the motor city the statistics just as grim as some of the landscape sixty seven percent of children here live in poverty and according to the f.b.i. detroit tops the list as one of the most dangerous cities in america when michigan central station opened its doors in the early one nine hundred that was the tallest a rail station in the world and it was hailed for its beautiful architectural design but it shut down in one thousand nine hundred eight and since then the abandoned landmark has come to symbolize the demise of detroit but some detroit residents are fighting back. taking matters into their own hands to take back the city. at the threat management center people are trained to defend themselves and protect others we create peace by creating a condition where the violent criminal does not feel as though they can attack

successfully. they'll brown trains men and women to be threat managers. they patrol the neighborhoods of detroit we're looking for anything that looks at us and the rough parts of town the service is free and every time we see someone we greet them. respectfully. every time they respect and this ritzy detroit neighborhood residents pay them to patrol they can be a lot more proactive than the police in a city where police are scarce and reported seven out of ten murders go unsolved it's a service welcomed by the community they say that now they feel very comfortable at night they can sleep at night they feel when they go to work that when they come home they'll be fine you know for. something like that. and while they're fighting crime there were others are literally selvedge in what's

left of the city there's about seventy thousand vacant homes those vacated homes can be a treasure trove of household fixtures from sinks to cabinets to doors and all can be salvaged and put to good use well co-residents. pick up materials that they can reconstruct their homes in detroit employees at the architectural salvage warehouse are disadvantaged early released prisoners like i actually couldn't get a job you know and they actually gave me a shot you know so i'm very thankful to be grateful for that here they're given a second chance at a job at life and from here they can go into the construction business or they can start a business of their own and while they specialize in the are. deconstruction others are focused on building a green infrastructure in detroit there's plenty of land for it we support gardeners all across the city this year though garden at about fifteen hundred

different gardens part of the greening of detroit is urban agriculture plots of land are used to plant vegetables that provide healthy food to the community our vision is to have a city that has that behaves as a healthy ecosystem seeds of hope being planted signs that display some of the bleak landscape hope for the future is taking root in detroit r.t. . well if you feel like you can't go anywhere without being watched these days brace yourself for this it's a license plate recognition device police can slap these things on their cars capture the license plate of each and every car that passes by and collect a treasure trove of information on drivers are being used in california and texas and now other states are pushing for them now proponents of this say can come in handy in catching criminals but privacy advocates are saying wait a minute what is the government doing with this information and just how far can

this go well news managing editor for reason twenty four seven j.d. to chile joined me earlier from another state where law enforcement is pushing to get ahold of these devices and i asked his opinion on the device and whether it makes us safer or is an invasion of privacy take a listen. well we're promising to make this for they always do whatever they can you know put this tech on the road or introduce it into our lives but of course it can invade our privacy anything that's tracks with the promise of stopping crime tracks us it can be used for any purposes that they want to put that information to this particular device tracks our license plates and knows where we're going how often we've been there they can so it can track our patterns of travel and contract who we travel with. so yes can that be used to stop crime you know theoretically in the d.d.s. behind the current push to put these cameras into utah so they say they can track

a drug smugglers and then they can look at also track us going to the store going political meetings going to see or you know girlfriends going to see whoever might be and so they're collecting all this information some of it seems trivial what can they possibly do with this information that they have stored well among the uses they put it so in areas that are pretty highly saturated with these cameras for instance friends of the washington d.c. area they talk about going to nightclubs and having these cameras out there that in spots license plate long and see conflicting gangs and their police on the scene. you know it's you know mediate between the gangs make sure there's not committed problem this is a great use and actually you know they probably can or me at least potentially can stop violence in this way but if they know who are gang members because you already have to track these people in order to know that you have cars from competing gangs there they also could know that you've got people from one of the political groups there you know if they're tracking people by gang affiliation it also struck them

by party affiliation there really isn't a limit on this any of this information they can be used for good purposes to stop violence to recover stolen property can also be used to figure out who's going where who's voting for what who's supporting who to what extent is this technology used today where or what police departments actually use that. about a third of big police departments it's usually qualified as being about one hundred police officers or more throughout the u.s. that is exactly there is about two years it was thirty seven percent i'm assuming the figure is gone up since then and not down in the d.c. area simply saturated by these numbers some other urban areas and i think the l.a. area the california highway patrol these the offense use them along the border in trouble for the sexes let's talk about putting them in on a federal level in utah and arizona but a lot of police departments have these on a more or less at hoc basis don't talk about it don't have policies in place to

monitor how the information is used so it's really kind of hard to know exactly what is being done with this information and would you say that there's a push to get them more widespread for more police to get a hold of these things oh absolutely the put the cops love these things i mean i think that promises to make their jobs easier they look putting a camera in place is not putting a police officer in place that can cripple police officer or something else there's things are automated suit with a cop sees a license plate is going to put the numbers in manual and these cameras capture them scan them automatically and put them in a database someplace else and then i don't and i'm not surprised the police agencies look these things so there is definitely push to put these letters now police officers and proponents of this are going to say hey we could use this technology to catch criminals to catch if a kid goes missing try to track down a kidnapper or you know somebody that could be posing a danger to society is so if you look at that argument could it be

a good investment. well i mean in terms of stopping crime we can make all of our houses article i have sick and see through them probably something most of violence did right there with you know a lot in the process many of these tools that they bring along can be used to stop crime and there probably are good applications and i think i'm sure there are good up occasions recovering stolen cars one of big things they talk about apparently simply driving through some mall parking lots they found a stolen cars and stolen license plates just like that but there's a tradeoff there when you scan license plates you don't have hundreds of people's travel you know where they're going how often they're going and that can be used in bad especially if you put watches on certain license plates somebody you want to know more about it's pretty easy to go out into their lives just. by following with the drug data is there any proof that this technology can actually be prevent effective in preventing crime there doesn't seem to be any of the studies i've seen see that in terms of recovering stolen property and really automobiles there is

some indication of effectiveness but they don't seem to deter which is the big thing they've looked at so far they certainly don't seem to deter smuggling they don't seem to deter crime list is no evidence to that effect yet that may come down the pike the fact is these cameras are being put in place without any kind of conclusive evidence that they do anything to deter crime they don't lower the crime rate whether it's violent crime or property crime and it sounds like not only is there a lack of evidence but citizens don't know when these things are being implemented in their police force. no there's no real public discussion of this i mean it's usually a see a line item of you know about them purchasing one of these but how many people actually know what license plate recognition means if you even bother to look at a budget for police departments very few people do and there certainly is no discussion in most jurisdictions about so apologies that how the information is going to be used or where the cameras in the place most important execute placement exam or secrets all right and lastly for those that are hear this and are outraged

over it and they're like hey i don't want this but i don't want police being able to track my whereabouts at any moment at any time look at a concerned citizen about this or can they do anything with the the first thing to push for sequester with these cameras are actually needed were expensive you so much one of the twenty five thousand dollars each that's the figure i've seen on each installations so the department wants to spin this you want to know if it's going to be assertive or simply asking them that question and making them answer is a good place to start and then push for policies to control the use of the information for things what do you do with this mission how will you stories are you ever going to delete it because otherwise we can develop years with moderns on simply how you live your life right it seems like at least some regulation is needed or that you know people should at least know what the power in the technology that are being used on the j.d. thank you for coming on the show that was j.d. to chile he has the news managing editor for reason twenty four seven news.

coming up in just a half an hour let's check in with alona to see what's on today's agenda a lot already have going on over there. well it's got a busy show today at first we're going to speak with nick hanauer about this doom and gloom report that came out from the congressional budget office this week that says that if indeed the bush tax cuts expire if all of the budget cuts go into effect on january first of next year we're going to fall off a fiscal cliff and go into another recession so we're going to talk about maybe some of the options that are out there for congress to deal with the and david serota is going to join us to talk about mitt romney's education plan that he finally revealed that will kind of compare it with barack obama and see why it took everybody so long to even start talking about this when it comes to the presidential race in the first place and that is coming up next on the ellen show a lot of thanks for that update but that's going to do it now for the news for more on the stories we covered you can check out our youtube channel it's youtube dot com slash r t america and you can also check out our website it's r t dot com slash

usa and to find out what i'm doing when i'm not reporting the news you can also follow me on twitter atlas' well i'll see you right back here at seven stay tuned for the alone a show coming up in just half an hour. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and just you know with truth. i'm a confession i am a total get a friend that i love grabbing hip hop music video and pretty. much it was kind of yesterday. i'm very aware of the world with its place.