tonight in our patience may be a virtue before wiki leaks founder julian assange on jan british authorities it's exactly what they need as both await an answer from ecuador assad is hoping to be granted political asylum to avoid being extradited to sweden it's a tense standoff for the wiki leaks founder we'll bring you the latest plus ticking toward increased interest rates president obama please with congress to stop student interest rates from rising and time to act is running out but is now really the time for partisan politics to override america's future generations maybe as many as thirty thousand drones flying in u.s. by two thousand and twenty which is a huge number basically you know one every town searching for

a booming business to invest in just look up your own programs are flying high and so are the profits of the companies making them we'll take you to california the land of the silver screen and now surveillance koreans. it's thursday june twenty first eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . well he is the world's most famous whistleblower and he's seeking asylum now 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 songe now waits to hear if ecuador will grant him asylum he hasn't been charged for anything yet but the ultimate fear for him is to end up in the u.s. . our to 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 suchi she's now free and being warmly welcomed by the british government we're talking about western explain and if freedom of speech the charges of import against julian assange that 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 in the safe haven see the latest dramatic twist in the case of julian assange has once again caught the eye of the world's media behind the ecuadorian embassy julian assange takes refuge but away from the height and his supporters say that this is a dark a tale of a man who has 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 the son just fight 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 julian gets extradited to sweden he's in prison in sweden the next thing that happens is the u.s. assuming there's an indictment lodges an extradition warrant in sweden eventually the u.s. gets his hands on him they stick him in a prison in the united states fears of what might await him across the atlantic may well have prompted his latest. and very serious charge probably life in prison if not the death penalty and it will be a stacked court against as we're seeing with the bradley manning case. chords.

the zone tom founded concerns of the long list of u.s. biggest openly cool's not only for songes incarceration but even for his death this guy is a traitor 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 i want to do it illegally shoot the son of a and here's 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 cable guy has embarrassed the american british government freedom fighting in the twenty first century is a whole new ball game new rules you play is an unexpected me even 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 so if the london. all 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 subsidized loans from doubling president obama today urged congress to act fast in messages 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 and 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 investment in a strong and secure middle class that means your education and as interest rates

are set to go up students that do graduate can't find jobs fifty four percent of them are unemployed or underemployed check out these sobering statistics out of the bureau of labor one hundred fifteen thousand janitors today have bachelor's degree is eighty three thousand bartenders three hundred twenty three thousand restaurant servers and eighty thousand truck drivers all of them working these jobs with a college degree now they are among the millions that have fallen into the student debt trap so where has the pursuit of the american dream god wrong and with so many students crippled with debt how could that impact our already troubled economy well earlier i posed that question to steph gray economic justice organizer for a change dot org take a listen. most students and their families are going to be paying thousands more over the the length time of these loans in new york alone 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 domestic are you that they will take action. you know 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 congress people 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 well everyone in generation y. where 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 matter for them or the g.o.p. just trying to be obstruction area because it's not actually or 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 i've been very helpful i they're i mean they're mostly just senate for the youth vote we just wanted to we just had their 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. student 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 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 ahmed any sort of default prevention options and meanwhile the federal government outsources a lot of its collections so you know the federal student loans the 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 end up at 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 what a lot of people are saying the 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 so save your social security so it's the system it's not the students and that's it that one of those are the one 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 it on the nation 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 of my own two 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 very specific job that absolutely 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 that's going to lag the entire economy so why don't we are now lives in a matter of parents so i mean what are some alternatives because this is a huge problem a lot of young people are becoming disillusioned in saying that my degree that i got eight isn't really worth much or if i were to get a degree i shouldn't have spent tens of thousands of dollars to get myself into this situation what are the alternatives maybe to 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 if 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 system 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 omics just organizer for a change dot org. well drones are set to take over us. now there is growing concern that the public will lose their privacy to these spy planes the winners here seem to be drone makers and much of the reason that it is that much of the

reason for that is the aggressive and powerful lobbying happening right now by the defense and aerospace industry. shows us who's cashing in and 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 i twenty 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 and u.s. guys 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

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 liefer 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 the. it can 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 raytheon 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

large 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 crashes despite 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. let's talk more about this drone revolution and who's profiting from it we were joined by amy has to step out of match associate associate litigation counsel with

affleck take a lot. well you see on february twenty 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 airspace in the next few years and this drone lobby has become as you just hinted a very powerful lobby so can we insist and 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 other 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 and knowing that they're not allowed to take them at all times are not allowed to conduct this round the clock surveillance and that there are limits put into place and so with this is all being done taxpayer money being spent and putting these drones up i mean is it paying off and 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 do they 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 and how much they're able to get done and they're very very expensive and people as the report that just came out about customs and border protection showed 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 since we're going to be seeing more of them and there is a push to use them domestically i guess where 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 is a line 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 ing 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 racy on 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 d.h. us will buy one for you there are grants available and we can get you on what to mention because proponents of drone say that this is you know this is cutting edge technology we can put something up in this guy that does the doesn't job we don't we don't need to put lives at risk and then it's done efficiently they they say

they drones have been used to seize illegal people. 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 after use correctly well they are however many pounds of drugs they're claiming they're being used to to seize it's 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 of what they do all the time now we do admit there are positive uses for drones in the united states they've been used to do mapping and route out maybe environmental abuse from a factory there is one specific instance where it's found that one 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

a rescue can be undertaken however the 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 magazine around just came out they can fly eleven ad eleven miles in the sky for extended days and days at a time i mean no where does it add it to me and these things just keep getting bigger and better traditionally technology technology is only going to increase so they're not only getting bigger but they're also getting a lot smaller they're a teeny tiny drones there's one to two feet they call a two foot switch blade 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 advance what can be done about this i mean is this is a relatively new. technology do more regulations need to be to put in place in order to ensure citizens' privacy are 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 and i privacy protective manner a lot of citizens have had success going to their state will governments asking them to pass local ordinances or regulations by banning terms altogether banning rep 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 a 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 being a possibility of drones being used on this level domestically to what extent do you think drones have been successful in their use abroad in afghanistan and pakistan well this isn't something we normally get into it 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 drones as i have said have typically been used overseas and this is a program that the obama administration is just starting to recognize have 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 as more and more details come out we're going to be able to evaluate that program and see how how significant it is that wartime technologies are now being used in non wartime locations 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 wartime 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 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 calm and of oil i guess where we have

a lot to look out for and we'll see how far it goes and hope 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. an update now on a story we've been following since the very beginning the three men who drove to chicago in may to protest the nato summit have now officially been charged a grand jury handed down and eleven count indictment against these three individuals including four counts of terrorism just to refresh your memory of this is what these men did they are the nato three consisting of a group they are brian church jared chase and brian vinson better and better early who allegedly plotted to attack 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 antiterrorism statute is all encompassing. and ill defined now all the charges seem to come from the four makeshift bombs that were allegedly found with the men the bombs were reportedly consisted of gasoline and beer bottles with bits of cloth into the next to serve as fuses the men face arraignment on july second defense attorneys have said that all three men intend to answer not guilty pleas if convicted the men could spend decades in prison we will continue to update you on this case as it develops well that's going to do it for the news for tonight but stick around the big picture is coming up at the top of the hour the republican chairman of the house government oversight committee darrell issa convened a for a vote on wednesday to hold attorney general eric holder in contempt over congress over holders refusal to turn over documents related to the deep fast and furious

program those documents have been withheld by president obama using his executive privilege the republicans and democrats are split down party lines over this issue and house minority leader nancy pelosi says this issue is only going to become more political tonight host tom hartman will ask the host of ring of fire radio like pop and pop antonio if it's time for democrats to wake up and smell the hatred coming from the republican party. and if you missed this or any part of the show today you are in luck we post all of our interviews on line in full just go to our youtube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america you can click comment and share we want to know what you want us to cover so just leave us any story suggested and suggestions we are listening answer read all about some of the top stories we didn't have time to get to today you can check out our web site that is our t.v. dot com slash usa and you can also follow.