as americans get ready to celebrate the country's anniversary of independence on this eve of the fourth of july do americans realize their internet freedoms are at risk is it time for a declaration of internet freedom. and there's another thread to freedom happening behind closed doors with some of the nation's biggest leaders and pacific rim nations transpacific partnership it's a top secret trade agreement that could have wide ranging affects on internet freedom trade and health care the same with you so is this trade agreement actually now on steroids we merge. your girls who. will work for you for your. beautiful girl. and the best things in life

are free that is if you're pretty. into the world of travel exclusivity for the bold and beautiful. it's tuesday july third five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching r t. well our fundamental rights are mapped out in the bill of rights but in this modern world is it time to adopt an internet bill of rights many internet leaders think so a group of on line advocates are calling on elected officials to sign the document it's pretty straightforward the bill of rights hones in on five key rights we should fight to keep on the internet they are expression don't censor the internet access openness innovation and privacy that's to protect privacy and defend everyone's ability to control how their data and devices are being used now the

group that came up with this bad it together in opposition of sopa and pipa to internet bills critic. strip citizens of some of some of the rights that are on this internet bill of rights but we are seeing bill after bill come out that aims to regulate the internet in one way or another so is this a fight internet advocates can win aaron swartz founder and executive director of demand progress joined me earlier and i asked him why now is the time for an internet bill of rights take a look. well i think most of your viewers are familiar with the sopa fight in which we stopped the bill that would censor the internet and a lot of criticism came about as being sort of negative having a negative vision of what was bad but not having any positive vision of what was good the idea behind these principles was the kind of outline our view of what a good internet looks like that the coalition we brought together to stop the bad things can continue working to push for something better so it's kind of setting

the vision of what it should be and what you want to be in the way the internet should stay you know i think that's right and i think you know you read the principles and they they seem so unobjectionable that it's hard to imagine anybody could disagree with them i mean it was for censorship people's access to the internet but in fact i think it's been quite revealing as we've seen just the past couple days several corporate mouthpieces have come out against the principles saying that they're dangerous and harmful and i think it's really a telling moment that these corporations are just for you know stopping piracy or fighting crime or whatever it is they say therefore they're actually against these basic fundamental freedom issues that i think most americans would agree with and i do want to read aaron a part of the preamble to this internet bill of rights that reads quote we believe that a free and open internet can bring about a better world hate the internet free and open we call in communities industries and countries to recognize these principles we believe that they will help to bring out more creativity more innovation and more open society as so aaron tell us about

the organizations that have come on board and signed this bill of rights internet bill of rights which you know i mean they include my own group demand progress dot org a new group that started up a fight for the future as well as some more traditional groups like the electronic frontier foundation and public knowledge which have been working for decades to protect you know what is now known as internet liberties so i think it's a really exciting time because we have a coalition of sort of older groups that work through the legal process and sort of file a loss. they go to the courts for years and these younger and much more internet savvy groups which have been doing the kind of activism these are around sopa are now coming together and saying look here's a clear set of principles we can both agree on and i know ultimately you would like to get our elected leaders on board with this do you think that will happen. you know i don't i hope so i think it's going to be an interesting struggle i think one of the things that elected leaders saw during the sofa fight was that there is

a benefit in being seen as aligned with the internet you know we saw even republicans like congressman darrell issa come out strongly not just against but in favor of the internet in favor of internet openness and in freedom and i think the internet kind of embraced them for that and so part of the idea around this is to say to members of congress look you know don't just be in hollywood pocket there's a whole other view of the world that you can join the view that accepted by most americans instead of just a handful of big corporations and that provides an agenda and a vision going forward about what members of congress can do and accomplish and you know it and what we have hacktivists and way away you know renewed fears of cyrus to carry you think it's going to be hard to kind of get people to to jump on board with this cause when you have that fear there. yeah you know i feel like whenever issues of internet freedom are brought up you hear the same sort of bogeymen one of course is you know cyber criminals cyber pirates all these sort of things that they

try to child pornography is you know this is the reason we really need to crack down on the internet there's the reasons freedom can't be allowed to exist and the fact is i think if you you know july fourth is a good time to remember what this country was founded that wasn't founded on fear wasn't founded on terror it wasn't founded on the idea that there are some criminals out there so we better take away everyone's rights in front of them the exact opposite notion that it's better to let a guilty man go free than to put an innocent person in jail that it's better to protect everyone's freedom of speech than the crack down and make sure nobody is ever offended and you know freedom is messy is the former president said but i think it's important to protect it and it's more important than ever on the internet where this new terrain is being decided for the first time where we don't have the founding fathers to lay the groundwork where it's up to all of us to decide what goes and what doesn't that and this is going to be a tough fight because i mean you're up against lobbyists and special interest groups the motion picture association of america for example and they were in

support of i do think that this is really going to be an uphill battle it's always been an uphill battle i mean we knew that since the very beginning i remember when we first start the fight against sopa you know is a handful of us public interest groups and an army of lawyers from the other side you know and they had resources we just can't compete with there's a new batman movie opening in a couple of weeks and one of the people is starring in the movie is senator patrick leahy the member of congress who wrote the first version and so you know i can't cast any one of the movie i can't give them these kinds of junkets but what we can do is we can rally people and that's what we did during the civil fight we brought people together who otherwise were politically engaged for the most part they had never met their members of congress before and they came together and said look the internet is so important to us and that's something hollywood can ever do now. you know aaron when we things activists like you we saw sopa and pipa they were shot down but since then since but came out people were calling that a soap

a two point zero we're seeing things like slice and other legist pieces of legislation that aim in one way or another to cracking down on internet freedoms do you think that we're going to continue to see legislation like this. oh yeah i mean you know that forces against freedom are powerful like you said there are many of them it's not just hollywood but everybody has an interest in restricting freedom in some particular area or another so we've seen you know with just certain groups have an interest in invading people's privacy because they sell people's personal data you know and that's that's just the way it goes right there are all sorts of private forces who are interested in particular private interests but what they're up against is the public and the public interest they're up against a whole swath of people with this notion of collective good and collective identity and the sort of private mercurial aims that these private corporations have so i think you know again on july fourth it's time to remember that's what this country was founded on was americans coming together and fighting entrenched here in the in

power as opposed to just letting it run roughshod over their liberties and what better time to remember those fundamental values erin want to ask you. you know we hear a lot about these bills that aim to crack down on internet freedom but are there bills that aims to protect internet privacy and if so why don't we hear about those it's a good question there are certainly some some very interesting bills one that is currently being worked on in california would give your e-books the same level of privacy as your library books right now this privacy protection for the books you check out of the library but the corporations can sell the list of books you read in the pages maybe they can give them to the government or sell them to other companies without any rights so it's an interesting privacy bill there there's a whole swath of things that groups have been working on another one the coal coalition has come together trying to protect privacy in an e-mail right now don't even need a warrant to access your g. mail account which is just ridiculous so then there's an interesting bill being

worked on by a coalition of groups to change the law clarify that you do need a warrant to access that kind of private information unfortunately you know as i said before we don't have the army of lobbyists and p.r. agents to get stories like. so we're depending on people like you to tell us about it as the would you agree erin that this this and show adventure not freedom is a nonpartisan issue whether you're republican or a democrat whatever your political affiliation is that this is something that you can that both sides of the sides of the spectrum can find common ground you know i think that's been one of the most interesting things my own group demand progress at or exist what done a lot of joint work with republicans with patrick ruffini who is president george w. bush's web master i mean you know really you know some might say the left wing and right wing that is not a left wing versus right wing issue it's an issue about the people's interests versus the corporation the government's interests it's about power versus the people and that's something that works on both sides of the aisle the tea party is

not a big fan of government intervention they're not a big fan of people spying on you or jamming over your e-mails so that says and so this is something where both left and right and some together because they're really clear issues of liberty and this ad using this issue internet freedom part of the part of keeping liberty as the activists like yourself argue do you think it's going to be an important issue this election season i certainly hope so and i think it'll be interesting to see whether the candidates address it i mean we saw during the last election cycle how sites like you to twitter and facebook and so on became a core part of the presidential campaign process you know all the candidates how do you see that debate all the candidates have facebook pages and twitter accounts and i think you know it's going to be even more intense this year where so much of the electorate is on the internet is using social networking tools that are going to be forced to answer the kinds of questions that people on the internet care about which are these questions about internet freedom about these tools that have come

to take up so much of their lives and whether the presidential candidates want to shut them down and right aaron keeping up the fight for internet freedom that was aaron schwartz thank you so much for coming on the show he is the founder and executive director of demand progress. well speaking of internet freedoms wiki leaks founder julian assad remains held up inside the ecuadorian embassy in london as he waits to hear about his asylum bed last week british police demanded that he reports a london police station for the first step of extradition to sweden he's wanted there on sex crime allegations but assad is not going anywhere a spokesperson says he's waiting to hear on the plea on the asylum plea that is a song to show airs here on our t.v. and today is the last episode spoke about the conditions he's been living under since sweden began trying to extradite him months ago take a look right now i have this u.s. grand jury which has been investigating me for eighteen months and it appears you

have filed a secret indictment which we will use to try next i mean states at the same time. i have a case in the supreme court here in great britain which used to be the house of lords. and if. if if i'm not successful then i will be extradited to sweden imprisoned immediately without charge i have not been charged . in any country and then be go to a sex trial or not maybe they will drop it but they refused to come over here to to interview me to ask questions we offered to do this by phone to go to this with him to see hear their huge to do this instead they demanded exadata me to ask questions without any charge and this is the situation i being now under house arrest i have electronic. medical aid to report i would say

sion. it's a big group but on the other hand i do have a platform you know it does give me to a degree. a plot and this process comes out of the legislation in europe in response to nine eleven so this particular thing that i'm dropped on to came about as a result of. european police departments and government saying we must have a way to quickly take terrorists from one european country to another. and we'll continue to follow the a songe asylum bit and the twists and turns in the case and by the way julian assad is celebrating his forty first birthday today. but a group of men known as the nato three have pled not guilty to terrorism charges they have before the summit even began in chicago back in may three men were arrested for allegedly plotting to firebomb president obama's campaign headquarters

and other targets across the city here they are twenty two year old brian church twenty seven year old jared chase and twenty four year old brett brant vinson betterly some of the charges filed against them are under anti-terrorism statutes that have never been used before police say they found written plans for assembling pipe bombs and confiscated a mortar god swords a crossbow a throwing star ninja knives among other weapons. police have admitted that the group was infiltrated by undercover agents well before the men made it to chicago but the defense accuses police of entrapping the man in a court encouraging them and a bomb making effort remains to be seen whether these men are innocent or guilty but the question now is how far are law enforcement officials allowed to go to protect national interests. well still ahead here on r t the us is meeting with several pacific rim countries this week in california discussing

a secret trade agreement could this trade deal actually be now on steroids will dive into the topic in a moment. and what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions breakthrough that's already been made can you trust no one. with a global reach where we had a state controlled capital it's called session when nobody dares to

ask we do our tea question more. it's being called nafta on steroids and international trade agreement brewing between nine countries has been stirring controversy on capitol hill that's because the talks are being held in complete secrecy and the thirteenth round of negotiations started today and san diego the transpacific partnership is a trade a group. between chile australia new zealand and the united states among other countries critics say will compromise food safety create monopolistic drug patents and will lead to more expensive medicine allow millions of american jobs to be shored offshore that is cause financial deregulation and impede net neutrality and with so much at stake for the american people why are the talks being held behind closed doors earlier i was joined by mike but not out from the yes men i asked him what's the big secret what the meetings it's like any of these trade negotiations

is being pushed through by the corporations essentially and their handmaidens in the government and they would rather the public don't know because the public suffers when these kinds of negotiations are made so you're saying it's likely about what they are talking about isn't going to be very popular yeah it's not popular to shore jobs for example that's a big no no even in even in the united states right now it's not popular to promote g.m.o. goods in a lot of places i think it's also not popular right now to roll back you know regulations on the financial industry and wall street and doing things right now like prohibiting bens on risky financial services which the c.p.p. negotiations are attempting to do is absurd i mean most people out there are

actually feeling the pressure of a series of risky financial negotiations over the last you know decade and more and so i think that yes it's really unpopular and that's why they would rather do it without any public input now today is the thirteenth the round of negotiations they began today and yes they are behind closed doors but what do we know about the negotiations that have happened thus far. well we know that there are major corporations like pfizer pushing for new regulation regulations that would allow them to open up markets to their drugs and outlaw. some of the you know give them a longer patent so that they could withhold lifesaving drugs from people for longer we know that there are things like offshoring of jobs that they have in the agreements thus far we know that they're planning to institute sopa like

regulations and i know in your program we just heard from somebody is concerned about internet freedoms well blocking the t.p. or stopping the t.v. people should be something at the front lines of that because if these negotiations in san diego this week go through it's the final round and the obama administration would like to sign this before he goes into office you know before the big election season now some are caught going as far as calling that one mass on steroids how would you do you think that's a fair comparison. well it's one way of describing it i mean i think you know all of these. trade negotiations of last really two and a half decades that have been pushing for these continued liberalization of markets continued what they call free markets but really has become about just pushing whatever regulations will help corporations help the big corporations this isn't

about helping everybody do business around the world this is about helping the biggest corporations make bigger profits it's really just another way of privatizing public space and public services that we said led to that congress is also concerned about this and they are taking steps to try to bring some of the things that are transpiring and these meetings to light about mike why should people be so worried about the experience secrecy surrounding these meetings. well i think people should be acting to try to stop anything that is that secret if the government is is allowing let's say negotiations like this to happen without the public knowing there's a problem right it's this is not what democracy is about democracy in order for citizens to act we have to know what the contents of the agreements are we why not just put them on web cams let us see what they're talking about i think that would

be really important for us to feel like we actually have a democracy here instead of what we seem to have which is. something else it's corporatocracy and is speaking of that you know the decisions that are made in the name of this trade have major implications for small businesses you know another set aside and then they're basically left in the dark they have no implied on what goes on here so what is the danger in that. well i think the danger is that you know all of these regulations sneak up on us right like they make a decision like the like regulation that they allowed to be implemented across borders and then according to this agreement that they're trying to push through it's going to allow companies to actually sue sovereign states so if a company decides that they don't like a regulation or a law in a country they can go and override that law by file filing suit that's one of the

ways in which it undermines our sovereignty every everyone sort of use one of these nations the signature on this so i think i mean overall it's it comes back down to this problem of how democracy should function and what we should expect of our governments and you know especially now with the obama administration i think many many people had expected more transparency than what we're getting. and so you know we have a very very important story some are calling that you know one of the most important are expansive trade ideas avar negotiated but what's largely ignored or reported by the media was that well i think that it's just not very sexy. you know it's it's another trade negotiations i mean there was the same problems i think a lot of the regulations that were being pushed through with the world trade organization in the ninety's and early two thousand but you know once enough people knew about it they rose up and they eventually froze those negotiations in their tracks over

a series of many years. there are people gathering to try to block this to try to get more public attention for it in san diego right now where the last round of negotiations are happening there are groups like stop t p p dot org that are actually rallying people and protesting like i say there is a growing awareness of this. there is a growing awareness of it i think that you know the more people find out and the more that they find out how it will impact them. the more that there will be protests unfortunately they've really been able to slip this one under the radar of most americans and most people around the world in part because there isn't much of an editorial prerogative to cover something like this when there's massacres in other places in the world editors aren't going to be that excited about putting you know this on the front pages of their papers but this should be on the front pages of the of the papers because this is the kind of thing that results in the social

inequality and the environmental problems that eventually lead to that kind of violence so this is one of these things at the root of our problems and it should be being addressed and it should be public and it sounds like there is a lot of things at stake for the public i mean and i know we're in the thirteenth round of negotiations today about for those that are concerned and want to take a stance and want to know what is happening behind closed doors anything the average average citizen can do. well the average citizen can go to for example the website of the organization public citizen and they can find out their how to act against the t.p.t. they can also go to stop the p.p. dot org and they can work there they can educate themselves first of all on what's going on and they can also try to put pressure on the obama administration to do something about this instead of simply pushing it through right now there are

a number of congress people in the united states who are beginning to rebel against this i think sixty seven of them signed a letter. urging president obama to do something about it i mean that's a fairly large number of congress people trying to put pressure on obama to start to break with his you know corporate. benefactors so hopefully people can find out who their congressperson is put pressure on them as well right mike thanks so much for coming on the show and weighing in on this very important issue that was mike but no no yes that's. all tomorrow of course is and a pet independence day one of the biggest travel days of the year but it turns out that if you're beautiful you have more of a chance of traveling for free on a website not attractive people that want to travel with wealthy suitors that want to travel with attractive table some people call it a win win others call it just plain sleazy artist anasazi

a target to show you how if they're beautiful a free drink vacation is just a couple clicks away. there are many places to see so what are you waiting for a few bucks tight to take a dream vacation well now all you need is looks and off you jet with the help of this new dating website. well you can join our girls who would love to travel with somebody attractor beautiful people who want to travel for free and we set up an account to see the chances of actually being offered a free trip a name and the description and not even a profile photo and here is an invite to go to england for a week with a so-called generous user name tall one or the site has tens of thousands of members adventurous and full of other appealing traits ready to see it all singles of all ages and even smells bankers athletes executives one side pays they have the money and they're willing to spend it on you the other goes on

a free ride the idea that people who are quote unquote beautiful should enjoy economic advantages over people who are not is disgusting on its face it's a smidge different from prostitution the site's founder begs to differ a little money is over exchanged and again we're very strict about making sure there escorts are not a lot of match this trouble so bill has already gone on her first trip through the site and now it's totally not taboo to be on any online dating site i think this one is just really really cool i went to call the event two weeks assigning up to this woman it's all about bringing back courtship past and i still believe that guy should spoil you especially when they're trying to impress you a single frequent flyer ken is on the other side of the game willing to impress i don't know if it's about being lonely i think it's it's probably an easier way to meet someone who wants to travel than walking down the street and starting asking you know. ken is willing to cover some but not all of the costs so find the right

person for subsidizing it but probably not paying for the whole thing critics dubbed this new dating option sexist classist and tasteless we need a constitutional amendment that says some things are just gross there should be a cabinet level ministry of a keenness with no such ministry inside the service claims it's actually a win win for all you've got to remember there's one princess and once in a while. with endless pages of princesses awaiting power bring wealthy magical knights can pick and choose who they will rescue next and if they are to new york. well that is going to do it for now from one of the stories we covered you can check out our youtube page that youtube dot com slash r t america you can also check out our website our web producers are busy working on stories that we don't always have time to get to on the air here that's our teeth out com slash usa and to see what i'm doing when i'm not.