the maple spring marches on in montreal canada thousands of students protesting tuition hikes are now getting support from people angry at their government's new and to rally long hundreds arrested countless others hurt including our guest political commentator michael phoria. and a new super virus has emerged that can do a lot more than steal your files it's called the flame virus and it can turn your computer against you coming up we'll tell you who's potentially behind the cyber threat and it's targeting. plus it's the list you certainly don't want to be on a secret kill list compiled and approved by president obama is now out in the open

how did the liberal law professor and community organizer who campaigned against the u.s. iraq war become the man we know today. it's tuesday may twenty ninth seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. . a massive protest in the canadian province of quebec and what started as a student protest thousands of people have taken to the streets demonstrating against what they see as the government's attempt to deny protesters civil rights including the freedom of speech on the right to protest now and it's for a fourth month it looks like the protests are only growing it's being called the maple spring and it's turning into an all out citizens revolt now the bulk of the protests are happening here in quebec while many of the protest. peaceful eighty

four people were arrested last night and. demonstration law has only inflame tensions there and while the maple spring marches past its one hundredth day protesters aren't just happening to our north. down south in mexico thousands of university students union workers and farmers have taken to the streets to demand greater freedom of speech and also to protest the possible return of power by the institutional revolutionary party that's being called the mexican spring and it looks like there is no end in sight so what exactly is going on here let's go to canada now where are to correspondent diana a guy h. as you can is in the midst of all the action in quebec to bring us this report. it's not just about to lucian heights anymore even many of those who didn't care much about the problems facing students in care back have now joined the ranks of

protesters. it is something that we should and have to do in this region but that's not ok and we have to be there and we have to make noise it does it's the end of the of the democracy if we keep on this way and the father of our only goal on the ground. for the future to ensure. the country and the city you need to tens of thousands marching every day making a noise to express anger at what they see as draconian government measures to suppress people's rights to freedom of assembly and expression earlier this month the government here adopted an emergency anti protest law to make it illegal to assemble without permission and to insist on a precise road map of any planned march or demonstration decided this is a map of montréal yes that's not the country always that duckworth would think of although. i think they're not very sad or for democracy and they're inside for to

better and the first time i have a higher leverage narrative because stars in their ads are observed mr harper and i got a day after the anti protests law was passed a quarter of a million people spilled onto montréal streets in defiance in a peaceful march more than seven hundred were arrested in just one day there were people coming out from the bar actually at that time and they were arrested and they weren't going to do that once ration there or there had been tear gas. a lot of physical our station but the people keep more and banging their pots and pans each now risking a fine of up to five thousand dollars when there are so many people that get arrested ready can it is me. via or in spending much time showing incidents of police brutality. journalists in canada live in which the politicians and a live look good good good good good the gang are making the rules show they don't

going to get outside and see what's happening in the streets really and they don't want to go about all these good values he didn't want to know about it. was you can see how dramatically the protests have evolved over the past three months in february when they started it was the students of kept the government of the problem the gatherings were generally very peaceful but the police reaction was overwhelmingly harsh and as if that wasn't enough to banks leaders thought a quick fix law to quell the protests would spell the end but it did and now they're facing anger over these and freedom i'm going to check out from the streets of montreal canada r t. well for an update on the events in montreal we were joint we're joined now by our t.v. correspondent and a teacher can and so what is the latest there and canada. well it's actually something very impressive happened here well of course thousands of people continue

marching every night protesting this new bill which makes it illegal to a sample without permission it also insists on a precise road map of any planned march or demonstration and people who came back especially those here in montréal say you know why it's not going to happen and every night at eight thirty they embarked on this absolutely illegal march but this monday over five hundred lawyers and other legal professionals who organized their march also protesting this emergency a lot you know all in their courtroom grounds and was an interesting statement so you have the legal community here you know which is also against this law people see it as a draconian encroachment on their freedoms the law was pretty plays by the local government too quickly qual this student uprising which started in february which by the way has generally been very peaceful and so i understand today that there were some negotiations or an attempt at some kind of negotiations and any developments on that of if there was any kind of a success. not that i know off of but i can say that for sure that this movement is

going to so much more than just the student uprising over tuition hikes now it's about fees and freedom but what i discovered talking to people is that it never was about the specific and mound of raising tuition fees which the government of the province imposed we're talking about around three hundred dollars each year for people of care back it seems the protests have to do more with their identity with a special welfare system that they are striving to keep what's also interesting is this student movement is nothing new in quebec for decades has the government tried to raise tuition fees and every time people stand up against it in order to keep education affordable because the lower tuition rates in north america and because they generally believe that education is is a right not a privilege and from everyone i've talked to i heard that they don't want to be like they don't want it to be like in the us where two asian bees are skyrocketing

their argument is that an equal opportunity is that the stage of education contribute to social injustice and to the growing rift between the rich and the poor. what would you say that these protests so far are mostly peaceful and how are police responding. well police we action has been mixed i should say last week when the same type progress law was passed hundreds of thousands took to the streets of montréal if we're talking about montreal police arrested more than seven hundred people in just one day but people continue to go out and march every night and what happened is and i've been observing this the police escort the marching you can see police cars in the front mounted police in the back and they weren't people that were there what they're doing is illegal and they might be arrested and the march goes on and it's all very peacefully and the people here made a point during this week which is police can't arrest everybody as long as the

community stays united and at this point. where does it where is a going. well is what's next there is a legal motion already to strike down this anti protest law on the grounds that it's unconstitutional also students more jeffrey night very loudly by the way it although it's like a huge festival and their motto is machel in shock so i. thought which means we're going to march every day until we win so that i would be i guess their answer to your question about what's next and thank you very much for keeping us updated over there that was our to correspondent diana a to can. well still ahead on our team you can turn on your camera that's that's what it can do your computer can do this record keystrokes and even download your documents are you scared up next we'll tell you all about the

new flame virus and who might be behind this latest cyber attack. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it's already been made who can you trust no one who is your view and with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called session when nobody dares to ask we do our t.v. question more. r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us.

at first break that just burns your eyes right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. this is much stronger than anything you buy a lot of. thousands of times stronger than any kind of. very. book and they alone if you look at the real headline with 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 to t.v.

. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old true. get a princess bride because. she was kind of yesterday. i'm very proud of the wall that she has played. a lot of american power continues. things are so bad might actually be time for revolution.

and it turns out that a popular drink of starbucks has a surprising him really here. mr. another weapon added to the arsenal of cyber warfare russian experts have discovered a massive virus infecting systems and you brought in other countries the size and

sophistication of the virus and the flame leads experts to believe that this is a state sponsored attack the virus appears to be able to collect huge amounts of secret information and what's creepy as how this can happen flame can take files from your computer and scan all of the traffic on the infected machines local network and collect user names and passwords hashes that are transmitted across the network. and it can also activate your webcam to actually spy on you in your room and see what you were doing and that's not all the virus can actually activate your microphone to listen and hear listen and secretly record your conversations and it gets even scarier it can record your keystrokes to figure out what you're typing the virus can also watch and record your conversations either over skype or in the computer anywhere in the computers in your vicinity so in short it can literally control your computer and make your private information someone else's at

this point it's unclear as to what exactly what country is behind the cyber attack it's believed to have been operating since the august of two thousand and ten the nature of the attack has led experts to rule out how activists are cyber criminals and of course cyber fears have been ramped up recently the fear is being used as a justification for controversial bills like cispa but as the legislation target the wrong people are they too focused on citizens rather than foreign threats which as is the latest attack as it suggests is the real threat well earlier i spoke to aaron swartz he's the founder and executive director of demand progress and asked him about the significance of this cyber attack take a lesson. from sort of this sort of thing happen in practice but you know we shouldn't get too excited this isn't cyber warfare in the sense that critical infrastructure is being taken and what we're seeing here is more like cyber

espionage where you know just like spies used to in olden days put microphones in top what people were saying now they're using computers to do certain things now at this point the big question is who can be behind this cyber attack and what is the possible motive. you know i mean it was analysts who said seems like a pretty sophisticated piece of technology would suggest you know with a great deal of resources probably a foreign government spent time putting this together but you know one of the things is it's hard to trace these sorts of things nobody's found fingerprints or any kind of smoking gun all we can do is speculate and have a feeling of countries all over the world and that's exactly what they're doing right now is speculating and trying to figure out who is behind this the russian security firm. burkett lab. they're the ones that found out about this and here is the had talking about why he believes this is

a state attack and not the job of a cyber criminal or a hacktivist take a listen and we suspect that's. the reason they should stayed behind to the bill pencils these cyber attacks and there are reasons for that these placation doesn't feed into existing groups that develop cyber attack tools and we try not to speak only to might be interested in such attacks we try to base on pure foxley extract from the goals like maybe language groups three six and in this case. we found only traces of holes in the she was inside the kitchen and i was out of cast spare skylab that is a russian company what's likely to happen now as a result of this how can we expect the targeted countries to react. well it's tough because you know unlike a doctor of war it's not clear who the perpetrator is and so it's hard to fight

back you know again it's more like espionage where i think what we'll see as sort of an escalation of these quiet activities you know one country is going in spying on people other countries will feel that they have to retaliate by upping their spy programs and so we're going to just see sort of an arms race has been audition and it's interesting that you say call it an arms race because a lot of people are saying well this is the warfare of the future and is this just further evidence that cyber warfare is very real and is this is the new threat. you know i mean i think again we should put this in context ray google facebook all of these companies are already watching all our e-mails already have enormous amounts of private data about all of us you know this is not like a worker attack in the sense in the cities have been destroyed no houses have been demolished the hospitals have been bombed what this is is you know probably one country getting a whole bunch of data about you know government officials in another country and

yet you know if you know that country that they're spying on it's a little scary and a little frustrating but you know it's not an excuse for locking down the entire internet the way some people want to use it ok so it sounds like you think that this could be this could be blown out of proportion. yeah i mean i think it's very easy for these things to get blown out of proportion and i think there's a huge military industrial complex that has an incentive on doing that you never read time they can say all this is another instance of cyber war the cyber criminals are attacking us again and we're all in danger roland of threats they use those as excuses to push through more and more dangerous laws which like we've seen with being voted on this week could you know threaten all of our privacy and that's exactly how u.s. lawmakers are taking notice zeroing in on the dangers of cyber attacks and it's paved the way for bills like this but critics like you say it can in french the rights of everyday citizens and on our internet freedoms so would you say that bills like this but maybe are targeting the wrong people in this situation we're

seeing that is it's a it's a state this is a state run as hack and not and not a hacktivist and not a cyber criminal so it's if but targeting the right people yeah i mean i think it's a you know a very common tradition you know attacks come from one source and that's used as an excuse to crack down on the general population for all sorts of reasons and i think we're saying the same thing here you know as i've said before on this program that the right way to respond to threats like these is to invest more in making everyone's computers more secure instead what the government is pushing is a plan where they get the spy in everyone or those kinds of spying programs make us all less secure it's totally the wrong solution so but do you think now the defense will be used as a justification to support bills like this you know and ramp up support for it and say hey we need to do everything in our power and the name of preserving cyber security. as i said the debate about just going on this week i'm sure there will be some senator on the floor who you know read half an article about this and will be

able to use it as an excuse why we need to pass this bill now and they'll be able to use it because right now very few details are available nobody really knows the full story and so it's easy to blow it out of proportion now this new is a virus it's called flame and it's a lot more powerful than a virus that was launched against our use against iran just a couple of years ago and so if this can be done today one can only imagine how far cyber attacks can go in the near future. you know there's no question that these things are getting increasingly sophisticated and they're also going to get cheaper and easier to spread their oh the reason we speculate this is a government is because a lot of the technologies of old earth could be supposed to get in there not in common use but you know the way of took the things that are pretty sophisticated not in common use pretty critically good spirit and we want them if you are the reason to think that won't happen here which is why we want to protect against because it's so critical that we invest in making everyone's computers more secure

rather than continuing to with these vulnerabilities hang out there and keep over there when exposed. aaron very interesting thank you very much for coming on the show that was aaron schwartz he is the founder and executive did director demand progress but we are getting and cement look now into the obama administration's counterterrorism tactics and york times article exposes the details behind a so-called kill list that is a top secret process to designate which terrorist to capture and kill and president obama insisted on approving every single name on that ever expanding list according to the report some of the people on that list not what you'd expect they include american citizens and the seventeen year old girl as far as the operatives who were killed from two thousand and nine to two thousand and eleven the obama administration played a direct role in targeting and. he was the american born cleric who is fiery sermons made him this larger than life figure and the world of jihad and he was the

first american to be targeted in this war and may of last year allocate his chief of pakistani pakistan operations a bull. was killed in pakistan by a drone now this was a major blow to al qaeda as operations and this of course is just a small portion of the list of people killed many by drone strikes here is a chart of the number of drone strikes over the years as you can see the charts wild in two thousand and ten. ad and has gone down a bit more recently and now there is a word of this kill list a list compiled and approved by a president who campaigned against the iraq war and u.s. torture tactics shows the president's apparent evolution in dealing with counterterrorism and with some critics comparing this list to a collection of baseball cards for many it appears that the u.s. long ago turned from being a nation concerned with national security and defense to actively going on the off chance of the only question now is if the american public will find these

counterterrorism tactics as palatable come november. also had an artsy it looks like al qaeda operatives aren't the only ones being targeted by the us coming up we'll tell you about julian us on just the latest legal struggle. maybe you. can be alone if you'll get the real headlines with none of them are the problem with the main three 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 to t.v. . or is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like.

russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. overt expected tomorrow for wiki leaks founder julian assange on jesse fights extradition to sweden why. intense relentless pursuit of assad and alleged whistleblower bradley manning is no secret and for some experts the u.s. government's high profile crackdown on the two men is designed to send a warning to other critics of washington's actions and other whistleblowers are to r t is marina poor and i have reports. that is he's an australian citizen in the custody of britain fighting extradition to sweden julian assange just feet plays out like a game of chess and no one wants the king of wiki leaks more than america wiki

leaks wiki leaks wiki leaks wiki leaks since january two thousand and eleven washington has had plans for a song by secret uncovered earlier this month after five million confidential e-mails from the global intelligence company strafford were published by guess who when a defendant is outside of the u.s. they'll get an indictment which is secret they'll see all the charging documents the indictment they will ask or an arrest warrant and that matter will also be so you know that why the u.s. stands behind a big large boulder if you will and then jumps out from that boulder and arrest someone under house arrest for more than a year a songe has not been charged with any crime in any country though sweden wants to question him over sex related allegations the u.s.

meanwhile is determined to punish the forty year old who do play different guns but he back for exposing confidential cables repeatedly shaming america by shining a spotlight on the legalities and overseas military operations and some embarrassing tactics and opinions from the state department washington says publishing the documents has created a national security risk the justice department has reportedly mounted an unprecedented investigation into wiki leaks aimed at prosecuting a songe under the espionage act they're going to continue to go after mr assad to make a point that we're tough and we're not going to let anybody throat and murder whether it's al qaida or whether it's an australian national and some say they'll go to any lengths. to make the point the u.s. government within the federal criminal arena likes to charge others who are either aided and abetted assisted or were full blown coconspirators likes to go after

those in an effort to flip them to get them to cooperate with the u.s. government against of the major players in this case mr a song sources tell r.t. that the u.s. is now working on flipping none other than private bradley manning the u.s. soldier is facing twenty two federal charges for allegedly leaking seven hundred thousand documents and video to wiki leaks he's one of six americans obama's administration has charged with espionage if one of those cases makes it to the supreme court. and the supreme court upholds the espionage act as an act which essentially criminalizes any whistleblower anybody who exposes war crimes anybody who challenges the official narrative of the lies of the state. then that's it because that would mean that any leaker can automatically be sent to prison for life and at that point any idea of freedom of information is over we will

only know what the state wants us to know it's supposed to be about protecting the national security of the united states but that is not the way the journalism industry will well view it they will view it as being something that is a message to them be careful who you talk to be careful whom you write because of what you write because you could be next and i think a number of reporters are going to say i'm not risking critics say the obama administration's unprecedented war on whistleblowers could ultimately deliver i death sentence to freedom of the press if people or publishers could be criminally convicted and jailed for exposing the truth more and more journalists may prefer to abandon first amendment privileges and reserve the right to remain silent marina were not r.t. me. that's going to do it for now but for more of the stories we covered you can go to youtube.