today on r t it's no secret that the leaks founder julian assange has made more than one enemy in the u.s. but now an unlikely senator is demanding for his songs to face the u.s. justice system we'll tell you who it is and how she's targeting press freedom in the process. of dreaming of an economic recovery as american families forego summer vacations the government tries to fix its financial woes by luring foreign tourists to the u.s. will show you how uncle sam is trying to shine up like a new penny. plus the u.s. drone program has become the backbone to american wars abroad and surveillance act

at home but this military pillar might not be as stable as you think we'll speak to the u.t. austin professor who actually cracked the drone code to prove how easy it is to hijack one. it is monday july second five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine fair and you are watching our t.v. . all right let's just get this out of the open wiki leaks founder julian assange is in fact the target of a criminal investigation by the u.s. those who have said so before have been accused of being paranoid or overly dramatic or touting conspiracy theories but the evidence is starting to pile up now as long as currently awaiting an answer to his request for asylum in ecuador he's at the embassy in london and top officials in the united states are not only keeping a close eye on what happens with that but they've also been working tirelessly to

see if there is a way he could be extradited to the united states while the u.s. justice department has kept quiet on the matter for a while there's more and more evidence both from the justice department itself and even a recent letter written by the u.s. army's criminal division which says as much but there's a new there's some new stuff going on democratic senator dianne feinstein has just issued a statement to australia's largest newspaper she's demanding that isaan should be prosecuted she says mr assad should be prosecuted under the espionage act she also says she believes mr assad has knowingly obtained and disseminated classified information which could cause injury to the united states she says he has caused serious harm to u.s. national security and should be prosecuted accordingly now there are a lot of questions these claims bring about like exactly which serious harm to security she's referring to and how what a songe did in publishing syria secret military cables on wiki leaks differs at all

from what newspapers newspapers like the new york times did when they published the very same classified information to answer those questions i was doing earlier by trevor tim activist with the electronic frontier foundation take a look. absolutely that's the real problem with this statement is that when she says that isn't just guilty of espionage because he knowingly disseminated classified information that's the exact same thing new york times that with all the wiki leaks cables and with a host of other classified information they post that they publish every week or the new york times of the wall street journal the washington post does the same thing for forty or fifty years it's been well established fact that publishing classified information if you're a private citizen or a journalist is protected by the first amendment now the government has argued that they can go after government leakers but never have they been able to prosecute a private citizen for publishing this information in the public interest and the real problem with feinstein statement is that if it if it actually came to fruition

then not only would wiki leaks and joined us on to be in jail for doing what essentially every other newspaper does but in the future other newspapers who want to publish stories in the public interest like for example obama's kill a story the new york times recently published or the story on cyber attacks against iran the administration would be able to threaten these newspapers or the prosecution to scuttle the stories or after they were published you know bring them to trial and not only would it stifle free speech in the sense that it could put journalists in jail but it could also bankrupt many media organizations would have to spend millions of dollars defending themselves against what is traditionally a protected. protected by the first amendment travel and stop you there because you thought a whole lot of things right now you differentiated what the government has traditionally gone after which is government leakers whistleblowers people working for the government of course the prime example here in this case is private first class

bradley manning he's an army sergeant our army on private accused of you know actually giving this information to wiki leaks as we know he has been gone after in the highest degree i guess you could say he. kept in solitary confinement for nearly a year his preliminary hearings have already started and it's very clear that the government seems to have no sympathy for somebody in his shoes but you're right this is treading on some very different first amendment waters here when we talk about a private citizen when we talk about wiki leaks what do you think you know the grounds that they could even stand on in this case i mean what should what should the american people be concerned about in terms of first amendment freedoms. well like you said in the opening it's clear that the u.s. is still investigating a songe you know feinstein didn't reveal that the investigation is going on she just said that she thought it should but actually the justice department confirmed

just last friday that the wiki leaks investigation is still active and their essential argument according to the a.f.p. is that at a songe communicated with manning and manning gave him because materials because of a post on wiki leaks website called the most wanted leaks or that he you know a songe asked for it now this is completely the same type of behavior that journalists in gage and all the time with government sources you know it doesn't land magic classified information doesn't land magically on their desk in an unmarked envelope you know they poke and they prod and they ask their sources for information and then go try to find more and then eventually a story emerges and they publish it on the front pages of the nation's newspapers and if wiki leaks is punished for this same type of behavior that was just done over you know the internet then any newspaper can and any journalist can and it would be it would just completely overturn you know decades and decades of first

amendment law yeah i mean i think it's a really good point because it's not only i mean when we look at i'm just using the new york times because the wiki leaks information was published you know assigned himself worked with a few different newspapers but the new york times is the main one here in the u.s. . they worked in concert until you know several weeks or months later when the new york times the fatted to back off we've heard editors that work there say join us on who's too difficult to work with you know blaming that sort of thing but in reality the new york times did exactly the same thing that wiki leaks did in publishing some of this information we leaks of course published more. but don't you think that warriors eventually if this case does come to fruition they going to have a really awful hard time. making the case that there was anything different between the two entities. oh yes actually what the new york times does is actually considered worse than what wiki leaks did because the new york times routinely

publishes what is called top secret classified information which is actually the highest classification that u.s. government uses and the only thing wiki leaks has published although they've published hundreds of thousands of documents has been secret and below which is a lower classification so essentially the new york times is publishing material that the government considers more sensitive and more damaging to national security if it got out now granted you know feinstein said in her statement that this information has severely damaged national security which there's absolutely no evidence that that's happened you know these disclosures had been out for more than a year the government can't point to a single person who's been killed we know of no real disruptions in foreign policy and national security and in fact it's actually made the american people more knowledgeable what our government is doing considering that they literally classify anything involving foreign policy or national security these days so it's number one a credit to the public this information is out and number two the new york times isn't

just in much trouble or if or more so if this was actually a crime which again it's not yes certainly as we've been paying close attention to some of these pretrial hearings for bradley manning that seems to be one thing that prosecutors either are having a hard time come up coming up with or unwilling to release even though a judge now that they have to which is some of that information on exactly what kind of security threats have been have happened as a result of these wiki leaks cables let me switch gears for a second term i mean the u.s. and australia of course close friends and allies but there seems to be a whole lot of disagreement in you know some of the messages getting out there i want to play something senator bob carr australian foreign minister said just a few weeks ago. if the americans want to do extradite him why haven't provided him from the united kingdom they have an extradition treaty with the united with the united kingdom and according to one one one here it would be easier for them to do it from the u.k. then from sweden however this is

a few weeks ago but you know senator carr as recently as yesterday is still trying to make the case that joining us on to is you know of little interest to u.s. authorities that he doubts they will pursue this what's going on here with these mixed messages well he's clearly either ignoring the evidence or lying i mean in australia actually australian journalists issued a freedom of information act request in their own country for australian diplomat diplomatic cables different in the wiki leaks cables about their conversations with the us and their investigation into a songe and base the cables ended up coming back to them saying exactly what we've been saying for eighteen months now it's that the u.s. is involved in an expansive investigation to go after a songe among other charges with conspiracy to commit espionage and not only that if we don't want to believe the australian diplomatic cables we can just believe the justice department which said on friday that the wiki leaks matter an

investigation is ongoing so the idea that this investigation is a figment of his imagination just doesn't comport with the facts yeah certainly this is a story that is developing and changing almost on a daily basis appreciate having you come on the show to weigh in trevor temp with the electronic frontier foundation. well the tough economy and the stagnant rate of growth in the u.s. has meant fewer americans are spending big bucks on travel and tourism around the country so top officials are dumping money and resources trying to get people from outside of the u.s. to come spend money here they're making it easier for people in countries like brazil and china to obtain travel and if you can launch an advertising campaign called brand usa to try to market the u.s. abroad argy course one of the important has this report. america's economy was once like the strongest and fastest roller coaster everyone wanted to ride. but nearly

four years following wall street's financial freefall more than fifteen million u.s. citizens lack full time jobs. and employment problem the u.s. president hopes the visitors from other countries can help fix more money spent by more tourists means more businesses can hire more workers washington has launched a marketing campaign promoting brand usa all over the world. with a heavy focus on travelers from brazil china and india visitors from all three emerging economies contributed a reported fifteen billion dollars to the u.s. in two thousand and ten part of what's going on in the united states is americans don't have any money anymore and they can't afford to go on vacation and part of what you're seeing is them looking to replace the weak pushed out american middle class with folks from other parts the world where the economy is going better and wages are growing in an effort to lure the big spenders the white house has made it easier and quicker for more chinese and brazilian citizens to obtain tourist visas

before brand usa came brand big apple new york city of america's top tourist destination attracted more than fifty million visitors last year now while the weak u.s. dollar has been a burden for the buying power of u.s. citizens customers armed with a stronger currency kept business booming and prices from dropping international visitor are they're great shoppers and they spend a tremendous amount of money the brazilians spend a tremendous amount of money the europeans the chinese spend a lot of money george is the c.e.o. of n.y.c. and company an organization that markets the big apple around the globe he also serves as marketing vice chairman for brand usa every eighty five visitors foreign visitors it comes to the united states who creates one. and because we have so many different visitors you know we have over ten million international visitors in two thousand and eleven and now we have well over three hundred twenty five thousand

jobs in the hospitality and travel and tourism industry so it's a huge boon to the economy but some argue quantity may not be great to quality it does tend to create a fairly low paid service industry jobs that doesn't tend to create great jobs having people in the business of manufacturing or high end services no medical services business services tends to create much higher quality or pay jobs and tourism which tends to create a law jobs for people cleaning hotel rooms and serving meals i decade ago the idea of an american president betting on tourists from brazil china and india for jobs would have raised many eyebrows. today however two hundred million dollars is being spent to brand usa abroad while social services continue being cut at home. r.t. new york. all right let's take a moment now and check in with our web times they our web team excuse me to see what they're working on today archie web producer andrew blake is in the newsroom

andrew what's happening i would have you been doing all day sleeping and my desk i know that's not true because i keep walking by your desk and seeing you hard at work. ok let's go back i know our earlier in the show tonight we're talking about we killing stewing in the sanjian all preceptors having to extradition anyways nother big things happening right now it's a bit old but it's just starting to surface now you know just down the street we're in d.c. we go up the road to fort meade maryland you know my dog bradley manning is getting close to his eight hundred day of being in prison for allegedly leaking documents to wiki leaks right we all we all know what's happening at that right well absolutely so been keeping a close eye on that thank god someone's got it and we just found out that speaking of keeping an eye on things the u.s. army with the u.s. army criminal investigative command has responded to a freedom of information act request and as it turns out the u.s. army is actually investigating the bradley manning support network which is

a national international group that advocates to help out manning said twenty four year old private first class was accused of leaking documents to wiki leaks eight hundred days behind bars almost still no trial and do a lot of people in this group the bradley manning support network i mean we're talking about like journalist journalist honestly little civilian people who you know pay pal five dollars just to go to his defense fund yes pretty much anyone you know thousands of people who are just you know trying to encourage real transparency in the united states it's no big deal so they're under investigation by the u.s. army and they won't say a what they're investigating or for how long it will be investigating or when it will and but if you go to our two dot com slash usa you can see the file there go through the stories read more about manning aren't all that ok all right artie producer and her blank thanks so much. well here in our city we talk quite often about the drawbacks of drones how many of them are being used as surveillance

vehicles limiting privacy in a society where let's be honest big brother has been watching us for years well now there's a new set of concerns and they have to do with the way in which our own drones could be used against us the reason unmanned aerial vehicles are able to be unmanned after all is because someone is controlling that remotely so even if the drone can be physically hijacked it can be it turns out technologically hacked a team of researchers at the university of texas has proven this and let me take it let me show you some of the video that sort of shows how this is done the researchers hacked into the g.p.s. system of a small but sophisticated drone with a so-called spoofer one that mimics real g.p.s. signals that took complete control of the drone by sending it false g.p.s. signals making it go wildly off course several times the implications of this are that a terrorist group could do the same thing and use it to crash a drone into a building even another aircraft well just a little bit earlier i spoke with professor todd humphreys he's part of the team

from the university of texas at austin radio navigation lab that led this demonstration and i started off by asking him what the department of homeland security's response was take a look well initially. i think they were somewhat skeptical that we could pull this off but when they saw the test results the footage and so forth i believe that they were happy that happened because now that we can shed the light on the problem perhaps they can get the funding they need to address the problem so break this down from a from what i understand it only takes about a thousand dollars in part to assemble i think you guys call it a spoofer how does this work. well this moving device does cost about a thousand dollars in the hardware but at the middle a little bit misleading the software is where all the magic happens and it took us about four years to develop a team of two or three ph d. students how does it work well it turns out that the civilian g.p.s. signals are completely open on authenticated so all you have to do is join up your own signals that are indistinguishable from the civilian g.p.s.

signals and then raise the power sufficiently that you commandeer the g.p.s. receiver instead of the authentic signals. either that congress is going to open u.s. airspace to drones by twenty fifteen as of now about fifty six domestic government agencies are already authorized to fly drones in the skies above the united states and i think sixty three known active drone launch sites across the country we're showing a map of some of these sites now unless i'm mistaken i mean drones are simply going to share the air space with what we already have which is other planes what are the dangers that we're looking at here. well first of all i want to say that i'm a big proponent of bringing into the draw the drones into the national airspace they're going to come we might as well accept that the question is how can we bring them in reliably and right now the dangers of bringing them in before addressing this problem would be that somebody from the ground could hack the drones and turn them into their own to their own devices making them go into you know a different place or along

a different path so it could cause loss of life it could cause collisions but i hope that we can address the problem long before that happens and we should mention to our viewers military drones g.p.s. systems are encrypted so that's something that would be much much more difficult to hack into but that isn't the case for similar civilian drones you said you guys are are proponents the bottom line is as you say they're coming various police departments in this country of our purchase droughns i have from what i understand even fedex is looking to bring in drones more cheaply and efficiently to deliver packages but if the navigation systems on these drones could be hacked i mean let's go into some detail about what could actually happen here. well the navigation systems of these drones have a variety of sensors some of them have altimeters and magnetometers and inertial sensors but at the very bottom is a g.p.s. unit and most of these drones that will be used in the civilian air space have a civilian g.p.s. unit which is wide open vulnerable to this kind of attack so if you can commandeer

the g.p.s. unit then you can basically spoon feed bolts navigation information to the navigation center of these drones. so you said when you sort of proposed this idea to the department of homeland security that they didn't really believe that you could do it but they wanted to check it out i'm certain that this is something you know they would have thought about ahead of time that this was a possibility i mean certainly hackers like the hacking hacktivist group anonymous can hack into just about anything of course this is a possibility i guess i'm wondering i mean do you think that they were as you know prepared to see what you show them. you know there were some there are some very sophisticated people at the v.h.s. the problem homeland security and i know that they're well aware of these problems because they're well aware that the civil g.p.s. signals were never authenticated i think the real challenge was whether we could actually pull this off on a u.a.b. that was flying in midair with all the correct alignment and compensation for the

timing delays and so forth that was a big affair and my students and i worked hard to demonstrate that it was indeed possible and perhaps within the capability of other hackers so you know you and a couple of ph d. students at university of texas i guess i got to ask you i mean what's going to be next what else are you guys working on i think you have a good point that this is important that you notify our government agencies that this is possible. what's the next project for you guys. well we've had two goals all of the way along in this research first goal is to raise awareness among the general public that we shouldn't blindly trust g.p.s. signals to civilian g.p.s. signals which are under unencrypted the second goal is i think the more ambitious one let's see what we can do to fix this problem there's a grassroots approach to that where you fix the receivers themselves but there's a top down approach to where we could actually change the satellite signals coming from the g.p.s. satellites and that's going to take time going to take money and political will but

that's what we're hoping it will eventually happen so that the problem is solved globally. as you certainly have a great grasp on the technology that we're dealing with i know that in the media it's very rare that a lot of especially the mainstream media even talks about drones i know fox news did this report and you spoke to them recently but. it's i think a lot of people are going to be surprised and i'm wondering what you think i know last month we had a drone crash here on the eastern shore of maryland. but do you think i mean as somebody who spends so much time sort of developing drone technology working with it understanding it do you think the vast majority of americans even understand what drones are. i think the vast majority of americans are fascinated by drones by the prospect by by the thought perhaps they could get takeout food delivered to their doorstep by a drone for example but there is a lack of deep understanding of the the inner workings of the technology and

perhaps of the safety threats and that's what we're trying to do is highlight some of the safety issues involved oh my gosh i've never even imagined takeout food delivered you know have the pizza you know have dropped off the senator and i have never even thought about that but there are some more serious concerns out professor humphries i mean as far as surveillance i know a lot of police departments have used drones and are planning on using them even more or surveil people in this country i mean isn't there a level that you speak to with your sister students about some of the negative negative effects of these drugs are having in this country. of course i've got some tall fences around the back of my house and i have a reasonable expectation of privacy when i'm having a barbecue there in the back of the house so of course i wouldn't like to have any drone surveilling me and my family as we're having a barbecue but i'd like to see these kinds of concerns balanced with the kind of economic benefit the drones could bring so whereas we'd like to welcome them in we've got to address problems of privacy we've now got to address problems of

safety before twenty fifteen when the f.a.a. opens the skies to these drones there isn't perspective here i know university of texas certainly not the only university we've done stories before on various universities that are not only working on drone technology in specific matters as you and your student have but also developing entire programs i mean certainly this is a field where you know a lot of people might not like it but it is growing and developing an. entire program you can major in some universities in drone technology talk a little bit about why this is for those who are less familiar with the growing technology here wasn't part of it goes back to the drones inevitability they're coming it's a juggernaut they're going to be here so let's develop the technological skills we need to harness this kind of technology and train a new cadre of engineers to develop even even further more ambitious project i know

that there are good good research being done at georgia tech and in universities in mexico and in other places these are just people recognizing that this is the world that's facing us and let's be on top of the of the issues. professor todd humphreys assistant professor at the aerospace department at the university of texas at austin. one of the biggest occupy wall street gatherings in quite some time is set to take place this wednesday july fourth in the birthplace of independence itself philadelphia pennsylvania the event dubbed the national gathering has been endorsed by more than one hundred occupy groups from around the country and as many as two thousand people are expected to attend many of them have already arrived and like previous occupy events the police have been out in full force take a look at this video from over the weekend. or. i didn't say at least twenty seven people were arrested just last night and as you

can see here the officers use their bicycles to surround occupiers to sort of keep them detained in one area occupiers plan to remain in that area though thursday to through thursday despite temperatures nearing one hundred degrees now there have been reports of participants trying to get water at a nearby fire station and actually haven't been denied some people involved say instead of camping out this time around occupiers will focus on putting together a list of grievances that they plan to take to lawmakers in washington are goals include health care and housing issues a small group of protesters will march a ninety nine mile march to wall street will be leaving on july fifth and you know it should be an interesting gathering there this week especially on the fourth of july itself since a local tea party group is also planning an event a celebration of american exceptionalism they call it and about two thousand tea partiers are set to show up there as well so it could be an interesting clash of ideals perhaps we'll keep you posted though on whatever happens or this week.

well yesterday in mexico a historic election that brought the longtime institutional revolutionary party or p.r.i. back to power after a twelve year hiatus and the greek opinion the f.o. is the name of the young the future president he's promised to unify the country and to rule with honesty transparency and a full accounting of public funds here's a look at the celebration in some parts of mexico after the results were announced . yet there was blood in the polls for quite some time now but despite his promise to put an end to corruption the answer was already been accused of paying broadcasters in mexico for favorable coverage his wife is a former televisa soap opera star and television is largely being blamed for totally unbalanced coverage of the election and the other candidates on the race manuel lopez obrador with the leftist democratic revolution party or p.r.

d came in second place with thirty two percent of the vote and joséphine vasquez with the conservative national action party or pan came in third place. mexican presidents are constitutionally limited to one six year term but parties often hold on to power for much longer those p.r.i. is the party that actually ruled mexico for seven decades under what many called a cloud of corruption the party was voted out of office in two thousand but since then about fifty thousand people have been killed as a result of drug violence under the power of felipe calderon who vowed to crack down on the cartels and organized crime what remains to be seen is the extent to which this will change mexico's relationship with other countries including current close friend and neighbor the united states well i'm going to do it for now but for more of the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or check out our website r.t. dot com slash usa and you can.