welcome to the lone show where we get the real headlines with none of the mersey we can live out of washington d.c. now it's an hour we're going to take a look at a new report from scene at that says of the f.b.i. has opened a new unit dedicated to developing new surveillance technologies now while they wait for legislation that actually forces companies to create about door could this be their work around and since there's so much pressure coming from the government like companies in silicon valley go elsewhere where you have a special guest tonight from iceland to talk about how the country is trying to become a haven for a truly protected free speech and it's friday so lauren lyster is going to join us for our financial checkup and this week we'll continue to talk facebook i.p.o.

selective information sharing by morgan stanley and europe on the brink we'll have all of that and more for tonight including it does happy hour but first take a look at what the mainstream media decided to miss. the happy friday everyone not like fridays are different from mondays or anything if you're in the mainstream media world but there's something about friday that just makes scandal seem a little more appropriate doesn't it and believe me the cable networks well they were loving themselves some scandal today. day six of jury deliberations in the john edwards trial and jurors now have a mountain of evidence to pour over today jury john edwards corruption trial back to work it's the sixth day of deliberations and people are losing their jobs this morning this after a federal agency spent almost a million dollars in taxpayer money in las vegas resulting in images like this one

that it's deliberation day number six in the corruption trial after a week of deliberation the jury and john edwards corruption trial may be closer to a verdict edwards arrived in court this morning as usual with his parents at his side he faces up to thirty years in prison for g.s.a. official at the heart of the scandal has now left the agency nearly became the poster boy for wasteful government spending for nearly a regional commissioner had been on administrative leave since april the first of the six counts that john edwards is facing right now is a conspiracy charge they're trying to determine if edwards used illegal campaign contributions to cover up his affair the g.s.a. executive responsible for the lavish los vegas conference that has become emblematic of government waste has left the agency. this john edwards trial it just won't go away and the g.s.a. scandal while scandalous because yes there was government money being spent by a guy who then had pictures him self in a bathtub enjoying the fruits of the taxpayers' labor well that's candle as but it

is pretty low hanging fruit when it comes to how much corruption is really out there as a scandal involves a little more than eight hundred thousand dollars not an insignificant amount of money by any means but just think about how much airtime the g.s.a. scandal has received hours days weeks on end versus something like members of congress thinking of the main supplier of food to the troops in afghanistan might have overbilled the military by more than seven hundred fifty million dollars that is quite a hefty overcharge and yet there has not been any talk about it on cable networks at all but that's just one quick. example that i had to throw in there today what i really want to talk about is another story that the mainstream media should care about because it involves journalists and yet they don't it was earlier this year that we found out that there had been a smear campaign launched against two journalists at usa today their reporters were tom vanden brook and ray locker and they just happened to be working on a report about incredibly costly propaganda campaigns carried out by contractors in

iraq and afghanistan and one of these contractors in question leoni industry as well despite the fact that they at least four million dollars in taxes they still got that contract from the d.o.t. anyway what happened in this smear campaign was that there were a bunch of fake web sites that popped up fake social media accounts of wikipedia page and all these were the reputations of these two journalists were attacked on these fake sites and these accounts they're also message boards out there criticizing there are reports there was even content published in their names things like articles that they had written in the past that suddenly contained inaccurate information and at first there were even suspicions that maybe the pentagon was behind this whole thing the whole story is really quite the scandal and yet when it first came out the mainstream media completely ignored it but now we finally know who did it camille it's a diac he's a former president and minority owner of leoni industries the defense contractor and so he admitted to waging this misinformation campaign and his statement that he

released you said i take full responsibility for having some of the discussion forums opened and reproducing there previously published usa today articles on that and the statement went on to express regret saying that she will now be completely giving up the remaining minority ownership in the company and also said that no federal funds were used in this smear campaign and they acted alone now this proves that the pentagon had nothing to do with the smear campaign that's great but regardless even if this is a one person with a vendetta kind of story this is a scandal the use of perjury. example of the toxic environment the real journalists work in these days where insulting or exposing government favorite industries for their corruption often brings retaliation this is an attack on the freedom of the press on the freedom of speech this is a scandal i have the mainstream media continue to ignore it even after this confession just another one of those things that they choose to miss.

well as earlier this month that seen at report of the f.b.i. was applying pressure on tech companies not to oppose legislation that would force social networks providers of voip messaging web e-mail to build in back doors for the purpose of government surveillance but it turns out that the f.b.i. has just been sitting around waiting for the legislative process to work out the legal kinks it turns out they've actually created a domestic communications assistance center it's in virginia and it's supposed to focus on creating new surveillance technologies including the interception of all those lovely things that i mentioned that we all love so much our social networks our e-mail skype and the like so is this new center as if arius as it sounds and just how much is it costing you here anyway to discuss this is declan mccullagh chief political correspondent for c net deck and thanks so much for joining us

tonight and i guess first just you know tell us a little bit more as to how it is that you came upon this because i know that the information isn't something that's readily available they're not really talking about it and so what did you learn it was a fair question it was actually the piece you mentioned that i was working on earlier this month about the f.b.i.'s legislative whole issue of for a law that would say that social networking center have to build in back doors for government surveillance and i stumbled across this d.c.s. this center or unit that the f.b.i. recently established. and it took me a week or two to pull the pieces of the story together and it appeared on c.n.n. earlier this week and i suspect it's not something that the f.b.i. well once they're going to be secretive about this they haven't been sort of a web site they haven't. finalized to disclose its budget and so this is not something that they want to pull of attention drawn to i suspect but so in that

case we have to wonder what is exactly that they're going to be doing there right especially if they're going to try to cloak it in this veil of secrecy so you know what does it mean when they say that they're going to focus on focusing on surveillance technologies. well if you'd asked the f.b.i. to build say that. the technology has advanced beyond our ability to eavesdrop or intercept using the court orders or other lawful authorization reality are kind of stuck in one thousand nine hundred in one nine hundred ninety s. this is when a lot of the surveillance technology they're familiar with and are comfortable with arose and nowadays you have people using skype you have people using google hangouts you have people using v.o.i.p. and there is not really equipped to deal with this and so they wanted to it's a two for a two pronged strategy the first is let's have a law saying that these companies have to build in back doors and second let's until we have that let's have the technology that lets us conduct these intercepts but so that's you know we you and i spoke about last time was this the original

piece that you did about the f.b.i. pressuring the companies to put in a backdoor so in the meantime is this just kind of a workaround you know do they have to work with with an individual company or an individual case where they need to try to intercept something here. well there you keep in mind this is still ramping up the budget for the next fiscal years is still in flux the job announcements for some technical positions dealing with eavesdropping and voice over internet protocol easily phone calls on the internet and wireless technologies those job announcements went up last month and i think the application doesn't about two weeks ago so this is something that is not yet operational although it has been set up there's in terms of what what happens once it's done and live and everything's rolling the ideas is to develop some of the surveillance technology it's not necessarily to conduct the wiretaps but it's to have. the technology available so that when the people actually doing

the wiretaps come calling they can they can move to a help desk and that's probably going to take a year or two it's also essentially some of the government's department justices efforts on. rights and still are going to take a little while in that case but how much money do you think that it light cost as you're right obviously this the defense budget still in the works there still a lot of negotiations going on but do we have any idea how much they've allocated towards building this center specifically how much of a salary is that they're offering for these job postings about that there were many one of the salaries was one hundred thirty seven thousand dollars and up to now which is not too bad especially because the whole the consulate in quantico isn't terribly expensive there's the senate one of the senate appropriations committees put aside fifty odd million we're going to know more about this because one of the house appropriations committees instructed the center of the f.b.i.

that is to report back on this group's accomplishments within ninety days after the appropriations bill becomes law so we're going to know a bit more about it in the next few months a idea why the i.r.s. an airport you say that is also involved the u.s. marshals service is involved what do they have to do with it. well it's a department of justice white effort in the d.c. area and u.s. marshals are both of fall under that umbrella and so the idea is not just to help the f.b.i. with that is it help us be i agents conduct wiretaps but also to help local police and state police and there are scores of federal agencies that have police powers i mean fish and game fish and wildlife why i don't know why graham police power but they do and so all these and all of these agencies across the country can go to this d.c.-ac center and say hey we need some help someone's using skype someone's using p.g.p. what can you do to help us actually listen in on what's going on. everybody needs

more powers these days right assessor the show we're talking about agents get guns and they get to go raid farms because someone is making milk that they're not supposed to resell and i want to switch topics really quick here before we go though there is still this effort to get the pfizer and then this act. extended right and the obama administration is actually supporting it a senate panel voted in favor of that today as i'm just curious as to what exactly you think is going on there specifically what the president has a member who used to claim that he would veto any legislation like that gave the telecoms immunity then in two thousand and eight he voted for it and now it is ministration that is pushing aggressively for it. it's a fair question i think of the way that you can sort of interpret this is it's easy to criticize someone in fact it's all you all you always want to criticize the opposition party and then when you take our you'll do pretty much what they do and

there was i will criticize you as are just flip flops over time but you're right i surveyed my president then candidate obama when he was a senator and said what are you going to do about retroactive immunity and he said i mean this is published publicly and. absolutely not i'm not going to do it after your leader is around that were just before the new hampshire primaries when i posted his response so half a year later opted to endorse that and he's been. not exactly the best friend of privacy and civil liberties ever since with some exceptions like. yeah and so i guess the government quest to be able to monitor all of our communications it just lives on and you know for the audience too because they didn't give it a proper introduction we could say started as something we knew as warrantless wiretapping and illegal action of that congress decided to make legal and passed this law and so they're only supposed to monitor really are communications overseas

international phone calls and the such but we're not so sure that's all they're doing declan thanks so much for joining us tonight. are there still a lot more to come and i breakstone is back to weigh in on it romney's bain capital past and could iceland become the tech world and journalistic safe haven after the break we'll tell you how they're making moves that will appeal to those who value their privacy and freedom of speech. and of american our continuing. things are. by the time. and it turns out that you were drinking the ball. game.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. here is what i. like and they alone is so they'll get the real headline but none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back in t.v. .

welcome to the capital account i'm lauren lyster. all right i want to take a quick moment tonight to fill you in on the latest developments in two stories that we've been following closely and the first the defense attorney for bradley manning filed a motion to dismiss ten of the twenty two charges the army private is facing manning civilian defense attorney david coombs he plans to argue that the charges eight of the counts are unconstitutionally vague now of particular concern here are the phrases quote relating to the national defense and to the injury of the united

states or to the advantage of any foreign nation so yeah that good old national security and national defense line still scary and vague but it actually works in nearly every scenario which is exactly why coombs is going after them for being too vague now into other council comes while the dismiss are charges that manning exceeded authorized access on his computers because obviously a lot of being in with your own username and password equals exceeding authorized access right now the motions are filed earlier this month but only made public on wednesday and the next pretrial proceedings are scheduled to take place june sixth through june eighth now while we wait to see if these dismissal lowson dismissal motions excuse me will be more successful than the other attempts by the manics defense we do finally have some movement in another case three people or simply it's officers have been notified that they will soon be fired that's a relation to last year's deadly beating of schizophrenia the homeless man to kelly thomas now if the cops want to keep their jobs they will have

a chance to appeal determination that two of them corporal jaysus aneli and officer emmanuel anthony ramos are scheduled to stand trial next month ramos is facing second degree murder charges and facinelli is facing involuntary manslaughter charges and the other fired police officer officer joe wolf he isn't currently facing any charges for on wednesday kelly thomas' father said that the orange county district attorney claimed to be looking into the possibility of charging vault thomas so that he wanted wolf to be charged with murder because he was the first officer to wield his baton against kelly and that will viciously elbowed kelly in the face twice now we continue to keep an eye on both of these stories we'll keep you informed of any new details that do emerge. now if you've tuned into the t.v. in the last few weeks or even just for a single second i'm pretty sure that you're aware the media has been discussing in the mind blowing detail the obama campaign strategy to attack romney for his bain capital past now we've heard about whether or not bain capital is evil whether or

not the obama campaign was right to attack him for it and finally whether it's smart or not for the romney campaign to try to defend bait but in case you missed it here's obama's take on romney's bain past. if your main argument for how to grow the economy is i knew how to make a lot of money for investors then you're missing what this is about. so one of the many attacks coming from the president is that obama doesn't think that romney's bain past has prepared him for the oval office and says romney is inside to play ball not to play ball and decided not to respond to this attack by basically sidestepping the issue altogether we decided to catch up with our economic campaign strategy spin expert breakstone to see what he thinks of this entire bain bomb. barack obama is criticizing mitt romney's record at bain capital

because while there he made his money by buying companies with borrowed funds and then often paid those loans back by firing all the employees of those companies and selling them for spare parts the companies not the employees this to me is an unfair criticism because romney's experience is a model for saving the u.s. economy we've already borrowed the money from china now we just need to sell something to pay it back to us just texas we sell it back to mexico and it's an added bonus i don't think republicans will be that mad because at least it'll mean that all the people illegally crossing the border will be white i know that's a little unfair to republicans so how about we also sell hawaii to japan that way it will be a state anymore and anyone who says that obama was born in a foreign country. well no longer sounds crazy to be fair though let's ask some regular americans what state would you sell. the new rooms ok on a state that's fine. now you know what louisiana what state would you sell probably

north dakota and how many cases of maple syrup disposed canada would give us for. i'm guessing one maybe two what state would you sell your jersey to who. probably the snow. should probably forty yeah what state would you sell jersey who snooki that's expected to last got said. thanks very much ok have a good day to people said snooki it's amazing how we seem to see why we just sell tennessee and stand up for it but why do you want tennessee plates you want to sell the state that you the user was born rich. once that's settled romney can sit back and say that he saved most of the u.s. economy and leverage that to become president of the more successful country like japan or mexico i mean they just bought us states they're doing great this may not be popular with americans who don't want to sell the state to pay off our debts but it will be worth it because it'll make billions of dollars for america's investors

the chinese who by the way will be having their own election in twenty sixteen right around the time president romney should be looking for another promotion. thanks break down maybe if romney wants to keep climbing the corporate i mean presidential ladder he said take some notes write a seem to me like the people who break spoke to a pretty excited about piecemealing nation and they could even be seen as a jobs plan there would finally be something for all those out of work real estate agents to sell and i don't really care how the romney camp decides to defend themselves but then again i don't have to because i know the mainstream media is going to be all over it. all right so let's go on to what we consider to be part two of our discussion on the government pressuring tech companies to hand over information from subpoenas that contain gag orders to hand over information on twitter users to the business of forcing services like skype to have a back door access for the feds there's a lot of fear about whether or not maintaining web and unlimited or even protected free speech whether that might just become

a relic of the past. unless iceland has to do with it from pushing for open source materials becoming a secure a data center hub the country is amy to put laws in place to stake a claim and claim as a safe haven so here to discuss this with me is information freedom activist mccarthy he's the executive director of the international modern media institute so right thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks for having me all right so let's just start broad base and tell us a little bit more about this international modern media is it to the modern media initiative what's been going on the last two years of it or gets a little bit more in the parliament. so we sort of two years ago with this kind of broad of trying to pick together the best laws to protect information freedom and. free speech privacy transparency rights all of these kind of information regulation related to things just trying to raise the bar on them by creating one country has the best sundered in the world then we were hoping that you know once we have that

in place we can sort of going out to other countries and saying ok let's see if we can do things the same way here you know i bet that there are a lot of politicians here that argue that america is the freest country in the world when it comes to write the freedom of speech the freedom of the press the first amendment that we all love so much and be wrong. but these are the stories we have been to be covering every single day but so when you say that you want to find the best laws that are out there and hope that you can become an example for other countries what does that mean and what is the protection for whistleblowers really mean so ok. package includes things like source protection which we've already gotten through there's a good source protection law in the new media law from last year transparency of media organizations just who owns and who controls and who ultimately decides what they show. that's all. we've been working on new freedom information act which flips around the model instead of having it publish on request as most freedom

information it's too we say let's publish everything by default that way you can hold back things if there's national security reasons or if there's privacy reasons but it should be stated it should be publicly listed this kind of thing we've also done some things to try and improve the the actual physical security of ice and with regards to cyber attacks well ok that's maybe not a physical security issue but it kind of. matters in the whole grand scheme of things. later on we're going to be doing things with intermediate liability which is the big problem now every tech company in the world is really really worried because there's all of these attacks legislative in nature you know you've got things like so people suspect a t.t.p. t.p.a. story. you know who knows what else is down the line and all of these are causing a certain kind of external risk to these companies that are trying to provide online services but are there that's where you see this this pressure coming in of

course from the government but i'm curious you know do you think that it will get ever get bad enough to where companies major tech companies might actually want to say you know what i'm leaving the united states obviously iceland has some financial issues you know that might not make it as business friendly environment but then at the same time you have you have google you have facebook that of all stepped up their lobbying efforts right they're throwing a lot of money towards washington these days they're starting to play the game so i'm wondering if that if that kind of slipping away. we hear very frequently from. companies some small tech companies wish to move to iceland or at least help us develop this model so that hopefully we can push it to other countries so i'm not really expecting google or facebook to pack up their bags and join us in iceland you know we have a lot of good benefits for companies like you know good geothermal good connectivity good laws etc but you know let's face it they need some other stuff too and being in the u.s.

or being in europe you know makes a lot of sense for big companies but there are companies who might want to decide to operate a data center in iceland or to move parts of their operation there or whatever and this will help by some doing the doing it's kind of financial reconstruction because you know we're kind of out of the slums we're not quite there yet but you know we're definitely doing a whole lot better than most of europe at the moment you know it is a bit ironic i guess but you know we're getting there well is there any is there any court a nation because you know it's interesting if you think about it the state department hillary clinton make speeches all the time right about supporting internet freedom around the world wanting to protect people's identities and so there's an entire fund that they have to help create these initiatives right to help dissidents circumvent certain firewalls and i mean does that apply to to iceland in the parliament there. effectively there's always the same kind of lobbying going on every direction some so small though that the concept of lobbying kind of exists

but it's very very small so there aren't the same pressures to same extent now you know we do see things coming on like you know the u.s. state department. on occasion asking the government to give information or stuff like that but you know it's mostly been quite from the so far so when does it get to the point when you know when it really becomes this haven you know when is when is wiki leaks completely relocated to iceland because you can see how so many activists that may have been involved with wiki leaks even activists that are involved occupy. i can get targeted here all the time and companies like twitter who only speak out about it are often forced to hand over that information so this isn't a thing that just happens one days or a lot of people who believe that we did this thing back two years ago and everything's perfect now but no this is kind of progressive thing and when people are trying to decide whether to move their data centers to iceland or to any other country for that matter there's always the question of what do they need in terms

of legal security in terms of protection and the new shop around for the best year section to do it so you know the countries which are in implementing all of these terrible laws right now like the u.s. is doing with these ideas like cispa. they will actually cause innovation. new development of economic benefit to disappear and these are a lot of countries to me if you want to talk about actor right which is internationally i mean you have a lot of european countries and. japan you have you know south korea it's it's really starting to spread far wide we've got to go this far and i thank you so much for joining us tonight and you know we'll be keeping an eye on this land of course things. are still to come tonight our tool time is centered around the hillary clinton hacking out so that we told you about last night on happy hour get your co-pay is ready it's time for another financial checkup with lauren mr.