today on our team it's called the transpacific partnership that maybe should be called the transpacific train wreck that's because nina for obama's reelection bid this trade agreement says about the president's broken promises and his negotiating tactics. and a drone is a very very powerful way of snooping on behavior and i don't want them monitoring every every bit of my behavior just days after a drone crashed on maryland's eastern shore rand paul is rallying against their views but as quickly as he makes the point that kentucky senator started backpedaling why is the drone conversation in the u.s. so taboo it is an outrage that a country that professes to pay. for the free press should be

you know throwing the borders jail looks like press badges might be as useless as the paper they're printed on the u.s. might pride itself on the freedom of the press that's not necessarily the case anymore i'll give you two good examples to prove this point. it's wednesday june thirteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm abbie martin you're watching our team. the tepee p. flip flop no it's not a dance move it's back pedaling of rhetoric from the obama administration regarding the power of multinational corporations controversial portion of the so-called free trade agreement between nine nations has now been leaked that allows foreign corporations operate in the us to appeal regulations to an international tribunal that could overrule u.s. law so what does this mean and why is there so much secrecy surrounding this

agreement joining me now todd tucker research director for public citizen todd thanks so much for joining me thanks for having me could you break down the newly leaked document and what the implications would be for trade in this country sure what president obama campaigned on a few years ago was a pledge to make sure that u.s. trade agreements would never allow multinational companies to challenge public interest regulations like environmental protection laws or consumer protection laws but what this latest text reveals is that president obama has adopted wholesale the president bush agenda of allowing these kind of corporations to attack u.s. laws so this is of grave concern to consumer groups and environmental groups and really all americans who believe that the u.s. court system is adequate in the company shouldn't need to go to an outsourced tribe you know to to attack laws we wanted to read actually the campaign promise that obama made them directly from his campaign sheet it says will not negotiate

bilateral trade agreements that stop the government from protecting the environment food safety or the health of its citizens give greater rights to foreign investors than to us investors require the privatization of our vital public services or prevent delap developing country governments from adopting humanitarian licensing policies to improve access to life saving medications so how does this pretty much everything that he stated here the t p p pretty much eliminates all of these things that's right it goes absolutely against a campaign promise and is a complete extension of the kind of failed. policies that in the past have allowed zoning policies and landfill policies and other policies that countries like the in the united states and elsewhere have used to improve the environment that allows all these attacks to proceed with u.s. taxpayers on the line if companies don't like the regulations that our congress passes talk a little bit about the secrecy that's been surrounding this bill we know that senator wyden has been in the senate saying you know you're not even showing us

anything about this bill that they tried to start a bill that would force them to show them more of the legislation that's going on why is this so secret from even the congress and the senate well you know the u.s. constitution envisions that congress is actually going to be the body setting our trade policy unfortunately the obama administration has put itself in the driver's seat and is holding all of the text very close to their chest they've in fact said that the thing is so controversial that if it were actually to be public that no one would want to support the bill so that's how they justify keeping congress and consumers and others in the dark so do you think that the secrecy had to do with this leak provision because of the implications that it could have. well i think that you know this is this is a clear example of you know this is exactly the kind of stuff that the administration should be putting on the table for members of congress to debate for consumer and environmental groups to debate so that we can make sure that it's a good deal because after all this is going to be the framework for trade. among

all asian pacific economies it's theoretically open to anyone that wants to join including china or other nations so it really has profound implications for the next century really of how we regulate trade internationally and the fact that they're unwilling to even debate it publicly is really worrying and this goes beyond just this leak provision i mean there's bill covers so much in this agreement talks about so much privacy or not privacy rights but copyright and all of these things that we saw with the legislation i want wondering if you could elaborate just on how exactly you know the implications of the bill in the broader sense and what else it covers that we do know about sure when you look you know twenty thirty years ago when you had trade agreements it was really about trade about what kind of tariffs are charged on goods as they cross borders today's trade agreements including the transpacific partnership deal with the price of medicines that seniors face at the at the hospital they deal with internet freedom access to free access to information on the internet they deal with environmental legislation

they deal with so much more so this is just one of per of over twenty chapters in the agreement only one of those chapters really has very much to do with goods the rest is how we regulate our domestic economy which is why so many different groups are so concerned give us a hypothetical scenario really quickly on how national corporations could really overstep legal bounds with the just so people can understand so i think it's a really complex issue and people kind of can't grasp what this would really mean and do sure well if you look at you know a few years ago with the b.p. oil spill you know b.p. you know thankfully we didn't have a trade agreement with some of the countries that b.p. is incorporated in besides the united. states such as the u.k. if that had been in place then when regulators went to try to correct some of the lack of regulation and they actually tried to reregulate that sector if b.p. felt that that interfered with their future expected profits that they could challenge the environmental regulation outside of u.s. courts and pick one of the judges that would hear their case then they could ask

the residents of louisiana and of all of the united states to pay them compensation for the new environmental protection law and who would would comprise of this international panel overseeing this these are international trade lawyers that sometimes serve as as counsel to the companies and then the next day they're in a different case as judges so this would never happen in a domestic court where judges are just allowed to rotate out of serving clients and then serving as judges the next day and this in this investor state system as it's called this is what regularly occurs and it's a tight knit club of just a handful of lawyers mostly in d.c. new york and a few other cities that operate sort of outside of the scrutiny of domestic debate . why do you think there's been such a reversal in the rhetoric and also the policy by obama and i read in an article i don't know if it was you or someone else from public citizen that was saying this isn't even this doesn't even equate to bush's policy it's actually worse i wonder

if you could just elaborate on that i'm sure yeah i mean in several respects especially with access to medicine issues this is worse than the deals that president bush was passing near the end of his term. you know why is this happening it's a very good question you know there's so much money in politics now the both political parties are influenced by it but you know i think that you see if you ask a lot of the democrats in congress for instance they're not on board with this policy that president obama is pushing so he's kind of going out there and freelancing and partnering with the u.s. chamber of commerce and other multinational companies to push these laws and what is happening right now to kind of try to expose the bill in congress and in the senate right now if you can just talk about that sure well as you mentioned there are a number of senators and representatives that are pushing for not only this tax to be released but for the entire green light to be released so that people can debate on both sides of the issue the ones that are favor in favor of the tepee and those that are opposed so far even if that very basic request has been denied and as i've

said it looks from the from this live text and from some other leaked text that we've seen that the agreement is going in a very bad direction very quickly what does threaten the sovereignty of this country it would absolutely threaten the sovereignty of this country and also of other nations it would subject an additional layer of review outside of our domestic court systems for any domestic law that it is politically popular that needs to be passed to address urgent public needs it is indeed it is an outsourcing of justice it's creating a two level justice system where companies out multinational companies play by one set of rules and other companies and citizens play by a different side. interesting the two tiered justice system is definitely something to explore could you expand a bit on the other leaked provision or section of this bill that regarded the rights to copyright and things like that sure you know a lot of a lot of folks here domestically have been resisting some of the some of the proposals put forward in domestic law by the entertainment industry to basically

make google and other search engines responsible for any kind of content that's on legally responsible for any kind of content that's available on their search engines. all of that domestic legislation that has been so controversial like so like others that have been talked about is really embodied through the back door in this international trade agreement so even though the forces that wanted to push sopa couldn't get it through the u.s. congress this is a way of getting it through the back door through international trade agreements so what are people supposed to do i mean here we are you know we knocked down soap and everyone so excited we're like yeah we can you know prevent this legislation from happening and then at the same time there are these backdoor agreements happening with all these different countries that put in place the same measures i mean what are people supposed to do when they see this in how can this be stopped sure will even seem you know there's a nine different countries that are involved in this trade negotiation citizens in australia have been absolutely outraged about some of these provisions that allow multinational companies to attack australian laws there's been

a lot of mobilization and there's a result australia has resisted a lot of these u.s. proposals and what we need to see is exactly the same kind of resistance here in the united states contacting a member of congress contacting your you know reaching out to your family and school members and neighborhood and actually educating about this because there's not an internet sufficient media attention to it right now the more attention the more sunlight that we see on this proposal the less popular it's going to be and the more difficult it will be for the administration to get it through and there are two hundred corporate advisors and how many political players and citizens are involved in the process of negotiation hardly any we have over six hundred corporate advisors that are actually have access to all this text they don't need to see that we tax in fact they can just go and see it directly for themselves these are the ones that are driving the administration's trade policy and this is why sort of citizens and really need to be the first demand needs to be that the text is released immediately absolutely thanks so much for coming on and explaining that i really appreciate it i was told tucker research director for public citizen

it's time to check in with our web team and see what they're working on our team web producer andrew blake is in the newsroom to tell us more what's up man what's going on. today. great are your great things i can tell you two stories really quick yes do you remember the flame virus that we've identified a few weeks ago was kind of like a sister virus the whole stucks that thing was targeting iranian nuclear facilities remember yeah. new info on flame today turns out that the developers of it have launched a command code called suicide that's actually killing an athlete named and it's going to erase all of the data right off of the infected computers or cross the arabian peninsula africa and iran it's kind of great there's a lot of infected computers and we don't really know everything about it yet also it's kind of a downside though because it's such a thoroughly executed that they're not going to be able to study this virus flame is actually going to be erased entirely from all these computers so you know is it going to be a case like stocks that were people looking at it for a few years don't quite know yet so good archie dot com slash usa read that one and

then oh here's another one town in texas today they elected a new city council person you know how they did it how how would you vote for someone when i missed that what was it they elected a new common new city council person how so well you would expect in a democratic election right sure ok now they roll dice. i think that's fine because you know i've played some really heated risk tournaments and when you're fortifying siam you really need to have your role so i think i might be able to run for city council is what i'm getting at pretty much probably a more competent way than the election systems already set up thanks so much andrew for letting us know what's going on there and we're going to have a review of what's trending today check that out on our to dot com slash usa see it . bro bot drones the dystopic future of america just days after a forty four foot unmanned surveillance drone crashed on the shores of maryland

senator rand paul is proposing legislation that would curb their domestic use it's called the preserving freedom from unwarranted surveillance act of two thousand and twelve great at least someone's trying to stop the surveillance state from expanding to the sky but wait does this bill really do anything to help their use to explore the issue and answer that question i'm joined by jefferson morely staff writer for salon dot com and author of the book snow storm in august washington city francis scott key in the forgotten race riot of eight hundred thirty five. so it's jefferson i wanted to show you really quickly rans legislation he has numerous exceptions from the drones being used i wanted to pull that up really quickly and get your comment on it he says that the exceptions would be patrolling borders when law enforcement deems necessary high terror alerts and no evidence obtained could be used as evidence in a criminal or civil action so i mean that's pretty broad here you know whenever the

law enforcement deems necessary and whenever there's a terror alert what do you think about that. well i think that those exceptions could be broad but i think that the problem rand paul is going to have with this legislation is that this apparently and i was just reading the law myself this apparently excludes the military use the military's use of drones in the domestic air space and that is going to be a huge problem for the pentagon because the pentagon is actually one of the leading forces behind this drive to integrate drones into the domestic air space the military wants to bring drones home from the battlefield and use them for training at home and in my reading of rand paul's legislation there is no room for that so i think on a political level he's going to have a tremendous problem with that from the pentagon yeah and do you think that he has a lot of support as the bill stands or do you think that there is

a lot of lobbying effort from defense to push this now to not push this through well i think we're i think we're early on i think that the recent coverage of drones in domestic airspace in the last two months is driving public opinion on this and civil libertarians on the left and right are trying to come up with a response but i don't know that something like paul's legislation and there's a companion bill in the house can get through given the strength of the domestic drone industry especially in the house. trevor's and you know i think there's sort of a cognitive dissonance between the people living in this country and the fact that there are already are drones flying around in the sky as we know one just crashed why do you think it was that there already was a surveillance drone flying in domestic areas. i the drone that crashed was not i see no evidence that that was a surveillance drone that was

a navy drawn i think they were training the pilots to handle that aircraft and we don't know what happened i just talked to the navy today and they say the investigation is still going on but i think that that incident points that if the military succeeds in getting this legislation through which would bring many more military drones into the united states you would have literally thousands more. unmanned aviation vehicles in the in the united states airspace that were solely controlled by the military now the military will say existing law covers this there's nothing to worry about but i think that the capacity of this new technology for surveillance is what's driving the type of opposition that you see in the halls bill. that people should be worried about this drone crashing in that there is a risk for other unmanned drones to be crashing. once they are enemy. yeah i mean there's going to be a much greater risk of crashes because there are going to be many more of drones

like this the military plans to bring home from the from the afghanistan and other battle zones probably about five hundred predator of these of these predator a global hawk drones the global hawk is the one that crashed so right now the navy only has five of those craft that they are using when you bring home five hundred more you're going to have more of a risk of more of the risk of crashes now. the people in the military say well drones are very safe there are not that many crashes these are these trainings conducted in which restricted areas where there is and where there isn't a danger to people even if they do crash but i would note in the case in salisbury maryland earlier this week after the crash they had to they had to seal that area off from boaters so there could have been boaters in the area where that drone crashed so i think that a lot more attention to detail is needed here both on the safety and the privacy

from the drivers and i want to show you a map really quickly of the amount of drone bases that already exist and the u.s. as you can see there pretty much covering the united states we already know that and the twenty state and local governments and twenty four universities are already authorized to fly them do you i mean is it at this point where he was except drone surveillance as an inevitability of the surveillance state well i mean. the drones that are being deployed by the universities for example they're not being used for surveillance they're there typically being used for whether observation. observation and the police departments i wouldn't i don't by my count there's not there's not twenty more than twenty i think there is about it doesn't law enforcement agencies that have received permission to fly

and i've talked to representatives of those and those police departments almost uniformly disclaim any interest in surveillance how we saw them know that the howard doesn't know they're not just going to blink at least surveil people. we don't know that and that and i think that's why especially united states we have very weak privacy legislation that at the national level and and so we really are vulnerable to. the possible abuse of this also our laws governing surveillance our laws that were developed around helicopter surveillance primarily and the drone is just a very different and much more powerful technique and our laws and our judges haven't really addressed the the privacy problems that are created by drones so i think that the law is lagging behind the technology right so i wouldn't say it's hopeless. this is part of the problems can be addressed.

by that but we don't have the structure to do it yet but isn't this kind of the same rhetoric as we heard with you know post patriot act and pretty much the post nine eleven mentality for not doing anything wrong there's nothing to worry about and you have to admit that drones and you know the unlimited amount of drones surveilling the skies does create sort of a chilling effect in this country. well right and i think that's why we need that's why we need the protections written into the law before we have widespread adoption and because i just i don't see the signs of domestic law enforcement using this for surveillance right now that capacity is there but i don't see any sign that that capacity has been exercised in that way and what do you think that there is really a chance for accurate privacy provisions to be implemented in the legislation i mean lots of countries lots of countries have much more effective privacy protections than the united states do so effective

a strong privacy protection at the national level is probably the most important solution or a second solution which some of the you know it's a palette it's are are pursuing is is area specific prohibitions against surveillance and i think there in seattle which is one city that is thinking about adopting drones they're also talking about adopting a meanness of law in order to ensure that privacy is protected and i think those are the two real solutions to what the problem now is very specific local legislation to control specific use of. drones by a police department and then also national privacy protection on a on a much broader level it's much broader than just drones right now we don't have either of those that's what we need i mean it seems great yeah we should we should implement privacy protections and it just seems like in a state of national security where privacy is so rooted in this country it just

doesn't seem like the push for them is really there i mean i could be wrong let's hope you're right jefferson i want to get your pen in really quickly on just drone warfare in general it seems like right now. there's two options either invade and occupy countries or use drone warfare abroad do you see a third alternative here or is this really just the way things are going to be in this is certainly. drone war is going to be the preferred mode of the us military intervening so the question is. since there's very little appetite for big ground invasion big ground interventions like we had in iraq and afghanistan if we're going to pursue a policy of intervention it's going to be via drones but the replications of that the implications of that i don't think have been thought through very well because we are imagining that this is a low cost policy for ourselves but in the two countries where drone war has been the most intensive in the obama years yemen and pakistan both countries are notably

more unstable and more anti-american now than they were when the drone war began so we're seeing the negative effects of drone war already in the countries where it's practiced most intensively that's a warning sign for the future very interesting point thanks so much for joining us that link up your son morley staff writer for salon dot com and author of the books no storm an august washington city francis scott key and the forgotten race right at eighteen thirty five. all right well now we've heard about the cleveland five bomb plot as well as their arrests of the so-called nato three but just to recap cleveland five is a group of men who were arrested for allegedly conspiring to blow up a bridge in ohio the plot wasn't successful because an undercover f.b.i. informant reportedly provided them with a dud bomb all the defense that pleaded not guilty and are being held without bail until the trial begins meanwhile the nato three is

a group of men facing terror related charges for allegedly plotting an attack to president obama's campaign headquarters in chicago during the nato summit last month many parts of this case are coming under fire at the moment because lawyers say that illinois anti terrorism statute is all encompassing and ill defined however beyond the fact that both sets of men were arrested and then the alleged plot was deterred not much news has been coming out about either of the cases both police agencies as well as the government have been hush hush about the plots it seems like the u.s. is attempting to lock up these potential domestic threats and just throw away the key and one case police are accused of entrapment and the other the defendants are still being held and awaiting for official indictment while the mainstream media is focusing on other things we'll continue to update you on the cases as they develop . and recent months there's been an increase in the number of journalists being arrested here in the u.s. credentialed journalists in new york have been prevented from doing their job if

you don't have specific city issued press passes you could be arrested just for reporting and put through a legal one tree as a result are to correspondent on a study of churkin a report on how not even a press badge protects journalists first amendment rights. the. dramatic. a must cover band for journalists the idea i showed them. apparently that wasn't enough would be new york police his press feeling to pass the test this reporter got arrested. while covering the occupy wall street protests no muss no fuss officer just puts caps on them. and i just. try to tell him that i'm a journalist. people out my state department greasy ssion asked whether i have or new york police want unfortunately that's one expires t.v. rights or daily russian newspaper and has worked in the us for the last three years or they will prove you have they don't really care that it's just just business and

you credentials can't really protect you sent through a whirlpool like legal system the seasoned journalist was treated as a protest participant under arrest twenty four hours behind bars a quickie trial six hundred dollars in fines were his punishment for doing his job covering the news of the day and then there were the two days of community service they would you even bring right over here this inefficient station give you brooms drugs cans and child and you basically walking around sweeping the streets because of the debris paper secret about whatever kid who is now on probation for six months it is an outrage going to countries that perspective to have a an giant respect for the freedom of the press to be you know throwing throwing reporters in jail. but this case is not unique rather it's part of a dangerous trend in the u.s. when you let's the state controller who is

a journalist that's just propaganda simply was an independent journalist who has witnessed police reject press passes on a state by state basis throughout occupy wall street protests in new york they don't care even if you have a press pass i've watched i've watched a cop grab a journalist by his press pass on the ground i've seen supervisors call out to grab a journalist press pass and take it from him i have d.c.d. protests in the name of in oakland they require a local oakland press. in new york they've been rejecting fast passes from other jurisdictions to have a first amendment which guarantees the freedom of the press i mean there is no nothing in the law which the last police agencies to determine which pressed hard when janet pressed and which are not acquiring a press pass has also been sending journalists through a vicious circle not of just paperwork with guessing games in which they think might be in that proper near impossibility before all you have to prove

that you've covered breaking news but it's hard to cover breaking news in the police won't let you so create this catch twenty two take several months finally if they like the news you're making they'll let you get a pass. arbitrary or unattainable press passes demanded journalists arrested for covering the news the constitutional concept of media freedom under siege i think we're slowly coming into a state of affairs where. shooting a video camera is a lot more dangerous to the stablish myth and shooting a gun choosing to view his arrest as an invaluable cultural experience he treats it with humor i got two articles i was on my experience i would say it's pretty good i'll complement freedom of the press in america a first hand account if that teacher can ask parts he. doesn't for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or check out our web site.