today on our t.v. the waiting game continues julianna saunders tucked away inside the ecuadorian embassy in london awaiting an answer to his pleas for political asylum just a few steps away london authorities are waiting to arrest him in extradite him to suite it it's a tense stand off for the wiki leaks founder we'll bring you the latest. plus ticking toward increased interest rates american students might be coughing up more money on their student loans in the near future if congress doesn't act fast well president obama's speech today pushed lawmakers to finally act or will students be left to pick up the tab we'll explore. there may be as many as thirty thousand drones flying in u.s. skies are twenty twenty which is a huge number basically you know one every turn. searching for

a booming business to invest in just look up drone programs are flying high and so are the profits of the companies making them will take you to california the land of the silver screen and now surveillance for eons. ads thursday june twenty first five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t. well he is the world's most famous whistleblower and he's seeking asylum now at an ecuadorian embassy it's another twist in the case of wiki leaks founder julian assange that has captured international attention and a last ditch effort to prevent extradition to sweden a son now waits to hear if ecuador will grant him asylum hasn't been he hasn't been charged for anything yet but the ultimate fear for him is to end up in the u.s.

our correspondent sara firth brings us the latest on this case from london. held under house arrest and oppressed by the government in an effort to silence a pro-democracy message to the public but we're not talking about famous political dissident song suchi she's now free and being warmly welcomed by the british government we're talking about a western explain and a freedom of speech the charges of ever being both against julian assange yet he still spent more than five hundred days under house arrest fighting extradition to sweden and possibly the u.s. now he's desperately hoping ecuador granted the safe haven see the latest dramatic twist in the case of julian assange has once again called the eyes of the world's media behind the could do it and to see those julian assange takes it away from the height and his supporters say this is a dark a tale of a man who's been abandoned by his own country persecuted by the u.s.

and failed by the u.k.'s legal system but he's not looking for consular assistance he's looking for political and diplomatic assistance and he's looking for the government to stand up for and the son just fights has been a long one eighteen months of legal wrangling in the resulted in the rejection of his supreme court appeal against extradition to sweden what this was about was once joy gets extradited to sweden he's in prison in sweden the next thing that happens is the u.s. assuming there's an indictment largest an extradition warrant in sweden eventually the u.s. gets his hands on him they stick him in a prison in the united states fiza what might await him across the atlantic may well have prompted his latest i think you'll end up actually the united states facing very serious charge probably life in prison if not the death penalty and it will be a stacked against those who are seeing with the bradley manning case united states now has kangaroo courts rather than real courts these on time founded concerns as

a long list of u.s. biggest openly. not only for songes incarceration but even his death this guy is a traitor a treasonous and he has broken every law the united states the guy ought to be and i'm not for the death penalty so if i'm not for the death penalty want to do it illegally shoot the son of a and his why because of his work with wiki leaks this guy has made some powerful enemies you know the collateral murder video shows american helicopter gunships shooting reporters the iraq war logs the afghan war diaries all of this the cable guy makes his embarrassed american british government's freedom fighting in the twenty first century is a whole new ball game new rules you play is an unexpected me even first on his legal team this was a complete surprise so we found out about it on twitter and say the man he revolutionized with and three wiki leaks released groundbreaking stories has in

another twist become the story himself and there are many now hoping that the next big rally will be julian assange himself served. london. well millions of college grads saddled with student loan debt and that burden might just get worse starting july first that's of congress doesn't get its act together and stop interest rates on government subsidized loans from doubling president obama today urging congress to act fast the message is as you guys embark on this day of action i want to make sure you keep this going don't stop until it's actually done. there's nothing more powerful than millions of voices that are calling for change in all of your voices could make a difference so keep telling congress to do what's right to get this done tell them now is not the time to double interest rates on your student loan tell them to double down on the best but it is strong and secure middle class and that means

your education. and as interest rates are set to go up students that do graduate can find jobs fifty percent of them are unemployed or under employed and check out these sobering statistics out of the bureau of labor one hundred fifteen thousand janitors today have bachelor's degrees eighty three thousand bartenders three hundred twenty three thousand restaurants servers an eighty thousand truck drivers all of them working these jobs with a college degree they are among the millions that have fallen into this student debt trap so where has the pursuit of the american dream gone wrong and with so many students crippled with debt how could that impact our already troubled economy to talk about this steph gray economic justice organizer for change dot org joins us now welcome staff so let's say interest rates double how would that make

a massive problem that much worse well students and their families are going to be paying thousands more over the late time of these loans in new york alone that students and families are going to be paying four hundred twenty million dollars. and so we just saw there president obama today he was urging congress to act fast how are the mistake are you that they will take action. not very just because of how much congress has been gridlocked and how they continually throw middle class policies under the bus and pit them against the stafford loan interest rate increase to sort of put congresspeople and their constituents in very difficult positions as opposed to taxing the rich which you know it's pretty easy decision for people who are part of the ninety nine percent but then again the majority of congressman are millionaires so that's not one of their priorities so you think they're kind of disconnected from the the trials and tribulations facing

millions of students these days oh absolutely and you know it's easy to detract from the stats and facts showing that this is a crisis holding back the american dream for an entire generation when all they say is oh well everyone in generation y. or the millennial whatever you want to call it they're just so lazy and entitle to you know that's a great way to have people just stop right there instead of doing their homework to see the real issues the matter for them or the g.o.p. trying to be obstruction area because it's an election year so the more they can hold back any sort of economic progress that would help the poor and middle class the more they can just blame it on obama and the democrats of course have been very helpful either i mean they're mostly just in it for the youth vote we just wanted to we just have there the lone student loan countdown clock set to take effect july first so counting down because this is very important and would mean a lot for a lot of young people here in the u.s. you know. loans have surpassed one trillion dollars so that is greater than the

total credit card debt in america how in the world did we get here. you know a lot of the factors are very similar to those that lead to the housing bubble you've got these predatory lenders who are running with no regular practically no regulations private lenders don't have to provide income based repayment they don't have to provide any sort of default prevention options and meanwhile the federal government outsources a lot of its collections so you know the federal. department of education doesn't really try to block defaults there either the whole system is basically designed for students to be to have extreme difficulties paying off their loans unless they magically graduate and. fifty thousand dollars a year job which isn't the reality for most american students who can barely afford to feed themselves when waiting tables you know a lot of people are say critics are saying that you know the responsibility rests

with the students they are the ones that took out these loans in the first place and therefore now have to live with the responsibility of paying them back what do you think about that. the students knew what they were doing when they took out their loans but it's absurd to expect that all american eighteen year olds should have the working knowledge of a veteran debt lawyer no one's asking for a handout people are just asking for fairer repayment options and for interest rates not send their debt spiraling out of control i mean gosh if my student home loan or credit card at least i could discharged in bankruptcy or have options with debt management plans to lower my monthly payments interest rates there's no options with student debt you can even discharged in bankruptcy if you're disabled living below the poverty line those are secure social security so it's the system it's not the students and that's it that it's one of those are the ones that will haunt you to the very end and they will make sure that they do everything they can to get that not very many options for no options it seems to get out of student

debt and you know so if we're seeing that combination of a bunch of things skyrocketing tuition here in the u.s. interest rates going up when they do graduate they're facing a very bleak job market. well you know it's easy to yell get a job at an generation that you just don't understand you have these baby boomers who don't realize that mission is skyrocketed six hundred percent between one thousand nine hundred twenty cent far outpacing any other consumer price index you have to them yelling at these students and they're completely disconnected. and if you yell get a job it just shows that your ignorance and that you haven't picked up a newspaper in the past two years and i do know for a fact many people that are trying it's just the supply does not correlate with the demand right now so so many young graduates only without a job many of them saddled by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt i mean

how is this affecting the life choices that young people make. well they're not able to buy homes when they want to they're not even able to rent apartments if their credit gets wrecked sixty percent of employers check credit when hiring so there goes the opportunity to actually get a job which would help pay off the debt and then if you do end up getting a job that doesn't pay very well well then again if you can't adjust your monthly payment to something that be fair to both yourself and your lender thing and you're stuck between a rock and a hard place again all of these forces push students into defaults in some states will even lose your driver's license harry specific job that. is actually going to hold a kind merican dream for this whole generation becomes a vicious cycle of like if young americans can't afford to buy homes or cars it's going to lag the entire economy so why don't we are now lives in a matter of parents so i mean well what are some alternatives because this is a huge problem a lot of young people are becoming disillusioned and saying that my degree that i

got eight isn't really worth much or if i were to get a degree i should have spent tens of thousands of dollars to get myself into this situation what are the alternatives maybe go abroad to get that degree where it's more affordable. perhaps i mean speaking of abroad at least in australia if you've got high student debt you don't have to start making payments until you're making at least fifty thousand dollars a year so if you're a teacher or social worker and you're making below that line then you're not going to have to pay off your student debt until your salary rises to that level and there is a mandatory income based repayment systems that covers all federal and private student loans in australia and you know a lot of people might look at that and think oh well you know those poor still want to pay off their debt but look at australia's economy look right now they're booming they're not holding back their youth and are stan that this is the future of their country and they're looking at the bigger the bigger picture you know we

saw these occupy occupy wall street protests a lot of what they were protesting is this growing income inequality gap that we can't deny is happening today here in the u.s. and a recent c.b.s. poll found that two thirds of americans believe there is too big of a gap between the haves and the have nots and it is this student debt dilemma playing into that problem absolutely and the gap is shiner ational. absolutely i mean you could have thirty years ago you still would have been able to get a decent entry level job but just a high school diploma nowadays that's not an option at all whether you have a b. a master's i mean essentially level jobs asked for five seven years of experience are you supposed to get that when you're twenty two and you just graduated. a lot of questions and a lot of hopefully doesn't go get even worse and congress does act before july first we're going to have to wait and see what happens stephanie thanks so much for coming on the show that was jeff grey economic justice are there for

a change dot org. well drones are set to take over u.s. skies soon now there's growing concern the public will lose their privacy to these spy planes the winners here seem to be the drone makers and much of the reason for that is the aggressive and powerful lobbying happening right now by the defense and aerospace industry our teaser mon glinda shows us who's cashing in and what's its call what it's costing the american taxpayer. the drones of today have revolutionized modern warfare and are known for their seek and destroy missions over afghanistan pakistan and yemen but the drones of tomorrow will be humming over american homes there may be as many as thirty thousand drones flying in u.s. skies by two thousand and twenty which is a huge number basically you know one every town now that congress and the president have cleared the way for spy planes to fly in u.s. skies defense and aerospace firms are pushing their way in d.c.

in hopes of cashing in on the expected drone business boom right now the global markets worth about according to some estimates a little less than six billion u.s. dollars but it's supposed to double almost double to over eleven billion you know within the next decade in two thousand and one the defense department had ninety drones just eleven years later it has an arsenal of more than nine thousand five hundred remotely piloted aircraft with the wars winding down overseas most of those unmanned aircraft will be used to messick lee for surveillance and disaster assistance raising safety and privacy concerns why do you need drones against your citizens that's a military weaponry your police department is not your military and we've lost that distinction then there are the weapons manufacturers and weapons manufacturers know that we need war in order to be profitable so they buy congress defense and

aerospace firms which build drones have spent millions of dollars on lobbying over the past year those efforts have helped them secure government contracts but lobbyists are also having a very heavy influence on the legislation and regulation over these unmanned vehicles but that's sort of the way it works here and they're the ones who know it best and know what they want written into the legislation so and that's a real lead. could be a real problem because they obviously have a vested interest with billions of dollars in contracts northrop grumman is one of the dominant players in the unmanned aircraft business spending more than four million dollars in lobbying radio and splurges nearly seven point four million on lobbying last year according to first tweet research while general atomics spent two point three million dollars the sandiego based company has signed two hundred fifty million dollars in contracts with homeland security since two thousand and

five the argument all the time by local law enforcement is these drones are very cheap and they're very effective. yet despite the huge potential for danger in the privacy realm for american citizens you know it hasn't really been proven that law enforcement can use these efficiently and safely anyways quite the opposite the office of inspector general of the department of homeland security characterized the quarter billion dollar drone program along the southern border as highly ineffective recommending a halt to further drone purchases a one hundred seventy six million dollars navy drone recently crashed and burned in maryland right now and 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 crashing just by the criticisms influential leaders in congress are helping the defense and aerospace industry write the rules and cash

in on the coming revolution in los angeles ramon the lindo r t how to talk more about this and your own revolution and who's profiting from it joining us now is amy so benefits associate litigation counsel with apic welcome amy thank you so let's talk more about who is exactly cashing and i'm putting drones and our sky as well. you see it in february two thousand and twelve congress passed a law requiring the f.a.a. to allow more drones in the skies now that law was almost verbatim in fact they brag about it put into place by the drone manufacturers the drone lobby who wrote exactly what they wanted to be in the law send it to congress congress kind of passed it through without much looking at it and it is now in the hands of the f.a.a. who based on congress's action has to allow a certain number of drones in the air space in the next few years and this drone

lobby has become as you just hinted a very powerful lobby so can we incent expect their influence to only grow i think so this is a growing industry i think it's something that people put a lot of time and money into over the years because of drones use and in the war environment and now is that environment is starting to not need drones as much there's they're looking at other avenues they're looking at other ways to sell their product and one of those is for use in the united states for public safety and for surveillance and i think that's where we're really concerned about and so what would that mean for the average american citizen to have so many of these drones hovering in our skies i think it means that you are going to have to walk out and just expect to be on camera to potentially be on camera twenty four hours a day seven days a week and what we're hoping what epic is trying to do and what a lot of organizations are working on is to making sure that that doesn't happen and to making sure that people can feel comfortable when they look up and see these

things in the sky knowing that they're not allowed to tape them at all times they're not allowed to conduct this round the clock surveillance and that there are limits put into place and so this is all being done taxpayer money being spent on putting these drones i mean is it paying off do they make us safer it hasn't been shown that they do in fact it hasn't been shown that they do much of anything not only to. not make us safer they might make us less safe we have records where drones have actually narrowly missed hitting manned aircraft passenger planes which could be potentially dangerous in the skies they're not effective for law enforcement there's been no evidence showing that they really raise the bar in how much they're able to do how much they're able to get done and they're very very expensive and people the report that just came out about customs and border protection show they're not able to recoup the costs that they put into these

aircraft now typically we've seen these drones being used on the border and now we're going to be seeing more of them and there is a push to use them domestically i guess it looks like it's heading in the direction of law enforcement being able to use these things and i mean what does that mean it is a lying blurring between the military and local law enforcement and we hope not but it looks like that might be the case especially when you look at the predator drones and aircraft that are traditionally and have been really put into place to be used in wartime environments and the thought of bringing those over and having them spying on american citizens some police departments have asked about weaponize in these drones with tasers or with rubber shotguns and there's just a great amount of concern there and not only is it law enforcement buying these drones on their own but one of the prominent manufacturers raytheon actually advertises on its right when you go to their web site if you want one if you want

to drone and you don't want to pay for it go to the department of homeland security and buy one for you there are grants available and we can get you one wanted to mention because proponents of drone say that this is you know this is cutting edge technology we can put something up in the sky that does the does a job we don't need we don't need to put lives at risk in the end it's done efficiently they say that the drones have been used to seize illegal people on the border. they've been used to seize tens of thousands of pounds of drugs what do you make of that argument that they can be used for safety if they're used correctly well however many pounds of drugs they're claiming they're being used to to seize is actually such a small percentage of how many drugs we see is coming in the border it's actually kind of comical because they they say the number but they don't say what percentage that is what they do all the time now we do admit there are positive uses for

drones the united states they've been used to do mapping and route out maybe environmental abuse from a factory there was one specific instance where it found that a factory was just drastically abusing the environment around it they can be used in safety situations maybe to monitor monitor forest fires or if maybe somebody goes over a cliff they can be used to fly down and monitor that person's condition until rescue can be undertaken however the incredible amount of surveillance equipment that these drones can carry just doesn't always justify having them up in the air especially not without really comprehensive protections that just aren't in place right now and these drones are getting bigger and bigger and better and better and more advanced this mega drone just came out they can fly eleven eleven miles in the sky for extended days and days at a time i mean where does it end to me and these things just keep getting bigger and

better well and traditionally technology technology is only going to increase so they're not only getting bigger but they're also getting a lot smaller there are teeny tiny drones there's one to two feet they call it to put switchblade drone that can kind of follow you up the street and surveil you that way and they're getting more advanced so i think as time goes on we can only continue to expect them to get more and more advanced what can be done about this i mean this is a relatively new technology. more regulations need to be put in place in order to ensure citizens privacy or or what can be done for people that are concerned about these things hovering in our skies well epic has gone to the f.a.a. and we've asked them to put into place comprehensive privacy protections grounded in principles of transparency and principles of accountability to make sure that anybody that operates drones the united states will be operating them in a privacy protective manner a lot of citizens have had success going to their state local governments asking them to pass local ordinances or regulations but banning terms altogether banning

record weaponized drones making sure that surveillance equipment can't be used against citizens and most recently senator rand paul and house representative austin scott have introduced kind of narrow legislation which would prevent drones from being used for criminal surveillance without a warrant being obtained first so there are steps being taken but i think we need to just keep pursuing this and make making sure that there are protections ok so we just talked a lot about the possibility of drones being used on this level domestically to what extent do you think drones have been successful in their use of broad in afghanistan and pakistan well this isn't something we normally get into an epic we're very much focused on the privacy of domestic individuals people in the united states or people who are citizens of the united states however they have said have typically been used overseas and this is a program that the obama administration is just starting to recognize has taken place it's been over there for quite some time and details are starting to come out

and be publicly acknowledged so i think it is more and more details come out we're going to be able to evaluate that program and see how how significant it is that we're time technologies are now being used in non-war time. with out being targeted to war time principles and what that is going to mean right and as you had mentioned earlier moving out of war time. a lot of these drones are going to be moving into our own country to what extent are they used today here in the u.s. well we know for a fact that there are about three hundred active drone authorizations for them to be operated in the united states recently a group came out and said that they have found that there are sixty four bases where military drones are operated we know that their customs and border protection bureau who monitors the borders has ten predator drones or reaper drones and it's a variant of the predator which are capable of being weaponized and just recently

the f.a.a. has taken their first action into allowing more drones the united states and kind of opened up the realm for law enforcement to purchase drones are going to take immediate steps to make it easier for police departments so they are being used now they're not uncommon but they're about to get a lot more college boy i guess where we have a lot to look out for see how far it goes. we wish you success on your. the legislation and hopefully helping us get some kind of a privacy as these things continue to expand in our skies amy thank you so much for being on the show that was amy stepanovich associate litigation counsel with apic. well the alona show is coming up in just a half an hour let's check in with alone and to see what's on today's agenda alone what you have going on over there. got a busy show and kind of a heavy show today a lot of foreign policy everything from a report saying that the cia's currently in turkey helping allies decide which

rebels in syria should be armed to the u.n. special repertory saying that the u.s. drone policy threatens fifty years of international law so a lot to discuss there as well as just this idea of executive powers executive orders executive privilege something that we've seen president obama use a lot and most people try to justify if it happens to their party line and help their cause but how much power do we really want the executive to have that is an interesting question and those are all the questions you're going to be addressing in just a half hour thanks for that update alona that's going to do that now for the news for more on the stories we covered you can check out our you tube channel that's youtube dot com slash america and for a story that we didn't have time to get to on the air i were web producers are busy working on them you can check those stories out on our website that's r t v dot com slash usa and see what i'm doing when i'm not reporting the news you.