today on our t.v. the cyber world is getting smaller as congress tries to rein in the wild west ways of the internet with so many acronyms it's no wonder people are confused coming up will tell you why you should pay attention to all the legislation so it shows that this sort of turn in a country that is of the people by the people for the people they're turning it into a country that is bought and paid for it will bridge. its total recall wisconsin addition for only the third time in u.s. history a recall election against a sitting governor is just a few days away protesters are using slogans as weapons well corporations are pumping millions of dollars to get their way will bring you a preview. and forget the freemasons today secret society of the world shakers and

movers known as builder berg is meeting right now not far from washington d.c. so why does this shadow we believe group insist on shutting out the world from its meetings and why isn't the media covering it r t s abby martin is on the case. it's thursday may thirty first five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r.t. . well lawmakers today discussing a bill that would extend the government's overseas surveillance powers the measure is called fice and it gives the government the power to monitor phone calls e-mails and other communications of suspected terrorist suspects it was a hot topic back in two thousand and eight critics argued it could be used to target american citizens the debate today is over whether feisal powers should be renewed and beyond face so we've already seen several bills regulating the internet

to some degree there's the stop online piracy act better known as sopa and its partner the secure i t act they protect ip act and it's brother pipa the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act known as cispa the surveillance bill i just mentioned called and these cyber security act of two thousand and twelve so it seems there is a clear attempt to time and time again regulate the wild wild west that is the internet now the senate is soon expected to vote on the controversial bill backers say it's necessary to ensure cyber security but critics say this is a dangerous bill that would wipe out internet freedoms as we know it senator ron wyden gave this morning on the house floor. it creates uncertainty in place of trust it or wrote erode statutory and constitutional civil rights protections and it creates a surveillance regime in place of

a targeted nimble cyber security program that is leading to truly protect our nation. now despite these warnings as seems the possible threat to our online freedoms is largely ignored or accepted by most people but with so much of our lives being conducted online yron people more bothered to discuss this and more i'm joined now by rob biscuits are managing editor of bling buoying. your website was the one that chose to take a stand against the legislation and fight against it and you know what i think there it is went as far as to blackout the entire website for a day to fight against sopa and pipa and here on the website you say are company. states and this bill would kill forever put the company in legal jeopardy and in essence undo the internet and you know many say that the bat because this backlash

against sopa congress back down but now we see bills like cispa surfacing when it first came out they called it so two point zero today they're talking about vices so do you think that this quest to regulate the internet it will continue. i think the problem is that all of these different bills try to tackle the problem of a internet which is seen as being the wild west as you put it but the problem with these kind of problem solving is in government there is it's too easy for these bills to be co-opted by commercial interests by because the interests of the intelligence services who would like more expensive access to personal communications to solve their own problems and we end up with these extremely brave expensive broadly wooded bills which threaten individual privacy or the or even the commercial well being of small businesses and so rob as a member of the internet community how would legislation like this impact you and

what fear do you have that this could have on the internet if these bells pass well there are those the first thing to acknowledge is that there are big differences between bills like cispa which was recently passed by the house of representatives and bills like soap which is the one that we took our site down to protest where so pro went off to businesses like ours in principle goes off to individuals in this far as it allows companies to share personal data with the government without any kind of liability or or any or any way even for people to know what's being said about them so the main consequence of cispa is a as it was described by the electronic frontier foundation it's the end of meaningful prissie for anyone who has personal data stored with u.s. based services. and so would you say that that's why there has been more of a backlash against so. and not necessarily the same to to the same extent.

show sopa was a direct attack on american businesses companies like from facebook reddit boing boing all of us agreed that the horrible things wrong with this bill that could hurt us. the problem with cisco is that but because it doesn't directly attack technology services and in fact it makes life easy if the some of them it's been it's taken longer for there to be a grassroots opposition against this but that opposition has come up and as time has gone by i think a lot of sites even sites which have which would benefit from suspend their operations and how they deal with government have come to realize that it's very important to oppose it so it's unfair isn't this corporate backlash against spot like we saw against is there a danger that. although in there could be harmful aspects to it that it could kind of slip under the radar well it kind of has slipped under the radar because it's already passed in the house of representatives and we're at the point now where the

u.s. senate will be formulating its own version of the bill this may. fortunately the white house has already indicated that it doesn't like the bill and his first interview to it and the good part of that is it means that if anything happens in the senate it's more likely to take into account some of the substantive objections that civil liberties advocates sort of made to the original bill i mean one thing that happened with sr is that even though it had a long just station process republicans in the house brought forward the vote by a day at the last moment to ensure that it would pass and that's when the girls like that happen which i think really tip the hat and show people what the you know what the negative consequences are of letting bills like this pass now rob what kind of steps has your company taken are are you willing to take to speak out

against this attack on the internet how far are you willing to go. well all we can do is inform the public and former readers the best methods that they can take to oppose it and that goes from the traditional traditional methods like writing to your senator raising hell with all your friends on social networks to taking a more active role you can donate to various charities online and. otherwise make your voice heard. you know when it comes we did see this backlash as we just were talking about earlier when it came to so it was representative lamar smith he was a representative from texas he was the one that offered this bell but you know it angered many people yet it was just this week that he was essentially reelected so what happens if the american people forget what they were angry about. it's just relentless as soon as one of these bills is gotten rid of something new comes from

another direction what is it is it's very different to soper and people in certain respects in that it targets different things its methods and its kind of enforcement regimes are all very different but this so expensive that they always seem to have the same effect which is they threaten constitutional rights for example print people for zero zero constitutional rights as a website to be able to publish what we please and not have to betray our users to the security services whereas sr is more direct and it means the internet service providers like comcast in arisan will be able to share personal information with the security services on request and rob you know backers and there are many backers of these cyber security bills say that cyber security is a huge deal you know we have the threat of hacktivists not only within our own country but cyber cyber that terrorism as

a typed up so the argument there is that something needs to be done to put safeguards in place to protect the american people from these attacks what do you say to that. well that's the thing is that we describe these threats in such vague terms and the same is true if the law system needs more precise definitions it needs explicit protections for constitutional rights needs fundamental clarity about who it's end up like you mention domestic activists but when the bill sponsors russ they talk about china or russia so who are these bills aimed at what are they going to do when it comes down to specific measures taken against them for example if you actually read the bill it's full of very vague definitions about things like cyber threat information and cyber security systems it sounds like a cheesy one nine hundred ninety s. b. movie why don't they define these terms more explicitly in fact a really good example was the original version of the bill targeted intellectual

property and that's what kind of raised difference hackles after the whole sopa fiasco and when they were to define very precisely what they meant by intellectual property instead of doing so they simply removed those positions those provisions from the bill and that you get to that point with these things where if people would rather not talk about what they what they mean it looks like they really intend to talk really intend to reintroduce it later rather than rude so. very interesting thank you very much for coming on the show today that was rob diskettes a managing editor of bling bling thank you. just a few days eighth a litle action will take place that may set the stage for not only the november presidential election but for the future of politics overall last year governor scott walker took on unions and the rights of workers to collectively bargain then those workers fired back and took on scott walker his right to have his job are to

correspondent christine for will be heading to wisconsin in a few days to cover that election but before she goes she reminds us why what happens there is so important. all eyes are on wisconsin a crystal ball of sorts they could predict the future of workers' rights in america . on one side governor scott walker who had a three billion dollar hole in his state budget and decided to plug it in part by taking on unions and taking away collective bargaining rights for workers this is alternately about a commitment to the future so our children don't face even more dire consequences than what we face today but fourteen state senators all democrats fled the state in an attempt to block the measure meanwhile chaos erupted in the state capitol. and protesters remained for four months sparking a larger discussion about inequality and the power of corporations but we're here

because a wall street reckless gambling angry ok that is why we're all here people are suffering. recall scott walker organizers collected nine hundred thousand signatures and when you take on main street and you take on the basic rights and values of everyday americans whether they be in wisconsin ohio florida or what have you there we're going to stand up and we're going to say enough is enough union leaders have been on the forefront of the recall effort and are working to raise money for walker's opponent milwaukee mayor tom barrett so far his campaign has raised about three point nine million dollars it's a sharp contrast to walker himself who's brought in more than thirty million dollars the majority of it coming in from outside of the state and it's the koch brothers funded americans for prosperity it's the republican governors association dumping tons of cash and then basically every bar conservative billionaire from the

country is dumping boatloads of money into this thing tuesday's election is much more than about the fate of scott walker it's also about governors in states across this country. who also wish to limit the role of unions and in turn the rights of workers and it's also about those unions and the strength and power they have today and finally it's about money and its ability to control a message and have an impact on what voters decide at the polls in washington christine. are to. the chamber of commerce getting creative at evading campaign ad laws earlier this year a federal court ruling was geared toward revealing who the donors are political interest groups but the chamber said this week they can get around this by clearly supporting one candidate over the other that way they don't have to dish the dirt on who their donors are so why are these groups going to such great lengths to hide where they're getting their cash from and why such

a strong fight against disclosure and transparency from our in that i was joined by chris chambers journalism professor at georgetown university we first discussed if the recent evasion of campaign laws is another win for corporations. i see it draw i mean you know people who are look who are advocating more transparency of obviously gone into the court system because the congress is not you know obviously hospitable place for that given the amount of money that these same sort of people are backing especially in the house of representatives with the recent republican freshman that came in in two thousand and ten so it's a draw right now it's a draw i would say a win for anybody but it looks like another loophole that i have found. as much money as they won and of you know fund campaigns kind of in the background well it's an interesting dynamic because you know you have you have the federal election commission. in this you have the federal communications commission involved in this

you have super pacs which are actually exempt from all of this stuff i mean they're out there like another supernova waiting to explode that we have to keep an eye on but these are just you know you're run of the mill garden variety political ads and you know it's interesting why they do not want these things disclosed i mean it's the same argument that we talked about before when the f.c.c. said put your campaign ad stuff out there in digitally rather than in a rusty cabinet underneath the receptionist office that is the average t.v. station and they they oppose that as if people were going to nationalize and you know take over their companies i think it's because you know they really perceive that they're under siege for some reason that summary for some way some reason so but how someone you know malevolent is going to come down and take all their money

away because it other than that which sounds ridiculous obviously but what other explanation is there is that they don't want to be told what to do i mean internally they're having a fight over this because you know you have stockholders shareholder groups which are supposedly for. enterprise a thing that they push you know as a religion at work you know they're owners of the company they get to have a say well these people are presenting ballot questions proxy questions to their boards everybody from wal-mart over the mexico scandal to news corp and rupert murdoch's problems and said look we need we need to have a different direction we want to have environmental sanity we want to do this we want to do that we want to get out of alec which you know wal-mart just left today and now they're complaining about that too so i mean it really just comes down to control maybe just psychological control they don't want to be told what to do in the case of the chamber of commerce they claim to be not

a political organization right but in this case and it's interesting the way that they're going about it because instead. of having these ads target issues now they're saying in order to get around this we're going to we're going to support clearly is a for one candidate over the other so isn't that clearly a political yes it was clearly political a political before and the reason why this kind of regime was was set up this advertising regime both the way the dollars are funneled in you know which was the f.e.c. f.t.c. is involved in and how it ends up on a mass media which is what the f.c.c. is involved in was because they really wanted to keep the donors anonymous and they cause they had an agenda now it's just going to be moving away from issues to the actual candidates well as it was about the actual candidates to begin with it was about who we're going to root for who we're going to pull for the issue orientation of this was just a reaction to the regulation now it's we have another evolution another reaction so

now they're just going to support whichever person they were going to support in the first place that's where they can do it outwardly and still hide who who the donors are because you know they don't want i mean imagine this i mean not to. internally with shareholders you might be upset i was a general counsel to a bank here in washington before i became a journalist and i know how that is once when shareholders are upset and they want to press their issues but that's part of our capitalist system that they say that they want to preserve supposedly from candidates that they hate now they want to you know fight back on two fronts it's very very interesting and all i can do is look at it and come to the conclusion that it's about control they don't want to be told what to do so it sounds like shareholders are more important than transparency was shareholders that go with what they want to do there you go. you know chris this is a little election year is supposed to be the most expensive costly election in

history. the a super pac then and how they're kind of playing into the mix now we have this other loophole i mean is this all just another sign that the elections have already been bought and sold oh of course i mean i think they were bought and sold back when justice roberts wrote the citizens united opinion but even before that i mean we saw just just money just pouring into this and it was usually by people on the right wing the conservative sort of now even almost extremist right wing situations i mean there are billionaires meeting now and there was a story in politico recently how they're sitting there going oh my gosh you know stop picking on and stop picking on us for being picked on for trying to buy an election. to laugh a little bit about but you know they really really feel be set and attacked for

this and again it seems to just come back to perceived loss of power and control to whom i don't know but there's no other explanation for this so at the end do you think that you know the average voter the average citizen is kind of kind of losing his power and. the power of the money oh yeah definitely i mean democracy is because been bought and paid for now i mean it was just in your face it was always under the table probably for the last maybe seventy five hundred years it was deep under the table now it's up there for everybody to see so you know we have a problem here and i don't think the f.e.c. or the f.c.c. or anyone to even internally in these companies with these kind of stockholder proxy questions are really going to be able to reform that i think it's too late the monsters out of the cave and we're not going to put it back. pleasure to have you on the show q that was christopher chambers journalism professor at georgetown university. well secretive and elite the ability of our group unites the world's

most powerful people behind closed doors it's been happening for decades and this year it's happening in chantelle leverage india at the marriott hotel the secrecy surrounding the conference has sparked many theories as to what exactly goes on in the meetings some even believe it's a venue where the world's most rich and powerful conspire to carve out a new world order are to correspondent abbie martin was in chantelle and today she joined me in our at last hour to let us know what's happening outside of the builder of our conference i think the fuss is especially about this meeting it's different than other meetings because there is no corporate press coverage we see a lot of meetings happening with us on nato g eight it seems like everyone the world knows about that and there's tons of press tons of protests but unlike the build a bird group like the builder group they say that again the build their group build a bird group doesn't have any press there's no press releases there's no official attendee press release out there so no one really knows who it is that attends or

what they're talking about. and so you were there outside and you couldn't get too close but you had there were protests i understand what exactly are they protesting their protest in the agree just violation of federal law there's a there's an act called the logan act which says that you cannot meet with foreign diplomats without congressional oversight and i think that that's really the main key here is people are like hold on why are there one hundred thirty of the most powerful world players and banking mining oil food media defense and politics why are they all getting together and meeting in secrecy behind closed doors without any congressional oversight or really any awareness of what it is they're talking about now we have the some of the most powerful people in the world so you can presume that something is happening something important is kind of brewing but we don't know what and that's kind of bred a lot of theories do we know what they could be talking about well i think i think

some theories have arisen because of things like the euro the north american union these these policies that have kind of been presented right after the builder group that people kind of speculate hold on where these things theorized in this meeting and you saw in two thousand and eight when obama infamously kind of skirted his press corps which is within twenty four seven onto another plane and said that he was going to be meeting with hillary in virginia multiple meetings with multiple people and it was never really disclose what was happening and then right after that we saw that she was as you know. a very high position in his cabinet so people speculate you know who is what's going on at these meetings are these powerful political players being picked for policy positions and it's just completely unknown to the public and so people are speculating that this year like every year in the past they think that they're conspiring or maybe theorizing on how to control the occupy wall street movement control the arab spring movement and how to

control the currency and i think that's what people are really worried about and so you know since since people can come in and they can't hear what they're talking about is a lot of speculation a lot of theories that you just mentioned but is there any evidence to back up these suspicions or to back up the his claims. there's no hard evidence other than what david rockefeller and also people in the builder group have have come out and said i mean all you can do is look at the members who have attended there are leaks there are moles inside build a bird every year that kind of put out things that were talked about even though they're sworn to secrecy media moguls who go there are sworn to secrecy but things do come out and they talk about you know they they release to the public what is being talked about and what is being said and what these people say when they're confronted by independent journalists you know what was said there what you guys do there they just say oh well we just meet and talk the problem about that is i mean when do one hundred thirty of the world's most powerful people just get together

and just talk and have beers i mean there's they talk about policy and they talk about things that affect the entire world so the evidence really is the policies that we see after these meetings being implemented and you just have to look at the people who are involved and what comes out of it and it's really all speculation but then again is it i mean. this year is marco rubio that that's what they're kind of talking about behind closed doors that he. will be the pack for. romney's running mate any word about that while you're there no worry about that people have been speculating that and will definitely see what happens i mean we know that john edwards was picked after attending the billboard group in two thousand and four and he was picked as john kerry's running mate some people said you know did they handpicked him to really run it i mean it is really interesting and we see in david rockefeller's memoir he says if people charge me for running

a secret cabal i stand proud of it and i hold those charges to be true i mean against american interests he said this is self and he is an integra member he is a member of the billboard steering committee that hand picks these hundred thirty people every year and it's kind of like their shining stars of who they think that they could really pursue whatever it is they feel they need to. so today is day one of the build of our conference what's next any big protests are they expected to grow in the coming days as this plays out yeah absolutely this is the first year as it were occupy wall street and kind of the new world order crowd have really joined forces and so we see the occupy build burg movement happening we see hundreds of people that were out there today which was really interesting because it's early thursday and it's only expected to grow alex jones came out there with his bullhorn right when i was taking off back to the studios and he just told me that you know he expects thousands of people especially on saturday and sunday when people are work and are able to show up so as you know he's very i know you. have

a thanks for keeping us updated that was our correspondent martin. ilana shows coming up in just a half an hour let's check in with alona to see what is on today's agenda alone what are you working on over there hey liz well first we're going to have trevor tim join us from the electronic frontier foundation to talk about the amendments act now this is basically it was passed after we found out about the n.s.a.'s warrantless wiretapping program that congress decided you know what ok will make it legal for the government to spy on your communications but supposedly only the international communications and now the obama administration is really pushing for this to be reauthorized it expires at the end of the year but there are a lot of abuses there are a lot of privacy advocates civil liberties advocates are really concerned about it and so today there was a hearing on capitol hill tribe is going to fill us in on what exactly was said let's just say there is a lot of fear mongering because there's no transparency behind this nobody knows who is actually tracking who the courts can't see this and they say that they can't

tell you because if they tell you then the terrorists will know so it's a complicated web and we're going to find out all about it in just a half an hour that's on the show thanks for that update a lot of that's going to do for the news right now for more of the stories we covered you can check out our you too can all it's a you tube dot com. obs last r.t. america you can also check out our web site stories we don't have time to get to on the air they're busy covering on our web site that is our t.v. dot com slash usa you'll find a bunch of stuff that's right that we didn't have heard that our web to wrote a new piece about the newest developments in a class action lawsuit against switzerland sin city syngenta a.j. as a tongue twister company this company created one of the world's most used chemical herbicides and plaintiffs claim that the company knowingly poisoned drinking water and at least forty five states with altered nine we'd kill.