mission speech. tonight on r t one delaware based tech company is quietly leading the way in surveillance infrastructure and serving as a middleman between law enforcement officials and your most personal information coming up will expose the secrets of the company that already knows yours. and speaking of secret surveillance one government agency is actually spying on its own employees heads of the f.d.a. have been monitoring scores of e-mail correspondence is between scientists and congress is this the latest incident in the war on whistleblowers question more oh you're very right. it's a secretive meeting about the world's elite don't want you to know about some of the world's richest and brightest are descending on the bohemian grove yet again

we'll take you deep in the california's redwoods to find out what really goes on there. good evening it's monday july sixteenth eight pm in washington d.c. my name is christine freeze out when you're watching our t.v. . well there's a vast movement taking place right now that's been in the works for about twenty years basically certain companies with one in particular are developing the most high tech systems in order to be able to serve as a connector of dots you could say with those dots being communication entities from cellphones to e-mails to online shopping habits and one of the most successful of these companies is called new star it's got more than four hundred telecommunications companies it works for to help deal with data requests from law enforcement agencies so we're talking cell phone surveillance requests text messages cell phone locations wire taps and just last year there were one point

five million of these data requests these are even has several commercials out and here's part of one to help get this customer to your web site let's start by knowing where she is through ip geolocation we know she's in miami which means she might very well be interested in your product so using a local display or far away from dreary winter coats and instead of thinking about something that a lot of time and so it's not just law enforcement companies it's also for marketing companies so we wanted to find out a little bit more how exactly this works so our team correspondent liz wahl broke this down to give us a look on what's really going on and how it could be affecting you. neustar is a massive telecommunications company the delaware based company was founded back in one thousand nine hundred eighty as part of lockheed martin one of the world's largest defense contractors now the company has grown to provide a wide range of services providing information for internet and detainment and

marketing industries now what alarm security experts is just how much information this company has about consumers anyone that uses the internet or cell phones that is news starr has info on just about every cell phone in the country in its database they also manage telephone area codes and numbers and with this vast amount of data hundreds of companies turn to neustar to handle law enforcement surveillance requests now since new star isn't a wireless carrier they've been able to work under the radar their role is to provide this invisible network store and streamline communications information and let's take a look now at how this network operates so you set out to get a cell phone you had over to a wireless carrier team mobile risin wireless cricket whatever it is that you decide on and they have course they assign you an area code and a telephone number and it's actually new star that decides on this information and

since new star was there from the very beginning they can claim to have the responsibility of providing you with cyber protection now let's take a look at the flip side here of the government wants to get information about you they can go directly to new star since they have this vast database or they can head on over to the cellular provider and which case that provider will outsource that government surveillance request to neustar so as you can see neustar is the middleman in all of this and when the government or a company requests this information neustar is likely to have it now if you take a look at new stars website it goes that the government is one of its biggest partners the site status quo. over three thousand government agencies major industry associations regulatory bodies and others rely on a new star to help navigate the complex world of cyber security now new stars

coziness with the government could be alarming to internet privacy advocates especially in the wake of a recent new york times article the times reports that cell phone surveillance requests from law enforcement has skyrocketed the reportedly one point five million requests for text messages cell phone locations and wire taps and washington. again this is a company which has in many ways laid the foundation for the surveillance infrastructure in this country it connects people with companies as you saw the want to market to them aggressively and it does this neither with their knowledge nor their approval and very few people are talking about it but there was a pretty in-depth article recently and buzz feed breaking down what new star is and . wrote that article and joined us on the show just a little earlier today the news are the very large. and that cell phones are down to your question only one small part of what they do is you guys showed they

provide. the numbering system for united states in the. phone book landline and mobile. but and i think two thousand and three they bought a company that only did so phone surveillance or less from the government so when they acquired that company becoming a place for companies to other smaller mobile companies who are saying we're overwhelmed with requests we don't know what to do let's outsource our now this is a company which has in many ways laid the foundation for the surveillance infrastructure in this country and really tell your article nobody has been talking about this i know you called it one of the most important companies that you've never heard of why is that. well i mean they do infrastructure and i think you know they they don't provide many consumer based businesses inside their giant business so i think that people pick up the phone you're not really thinking about. who's

routing your call how did you get your number who's making it possible to have portable phone numbers and you're definitely not thinking about the surveillance possibilities. start doing anything wrong here are they breaking any laws you know there's no suggestion that they have i think that what the experts i talked to really wanted to know. more about how many requests they're getting and how they deal with them and you know there's been a lot of. good things written lately about how a lot of the law enforcement quest don't always come to the most appropriate channels or with the peanuts and be nice to know what you start doing to make sure that the model forces requests their information they're doing it the right way i mean or even if they have any interest in making sure that those channels are being you know those rules are are being followed if there's simply just the umbrella company that all the law enforcement agencies sort of end up going to now i mean i wondered is anyone regulating them or making sure that they're following the rules

but you know the. security i mean becky for another privacy expert and in a statement to me she said that they do work patiently well not to characterize how often but they do what they do reject law enforcement so they are vetting requests for. propriety and legal protocols but again we don't know the volume they're dealing with so there's a lot of unanswered questions it's really interesting here in washington there are tons of congressional hearings and conferences about cyber security and something that's always interesting to me when i attend these things is how many sort of the same faces you see i know that i was at a cyber secure. conference and michael chertoff was there so a lot of these people sort of come in and out i know in your article you talk about the company so dushan net and how it was founded by an f.b.i. veteran back in two thousand and two and you know soon after it started businesses

grew and profits skyrocketed skyrocketed i'm wondering i mean are you suggesting that surveillance by law enforcement has sort of become its own industry i think that i think it i think it was you know i think that there's always been a revolving door between government and private industry and surveillance is no different. again there's been no no one has accused edition or star of doing anything improperly but again just the sense of their large databases combined with their business of handling surveillance requests does mean that people call for accountability and transparency when you talk about this revolving door i mean do you think that people are aware of it and do you think people should be concerned about it i think that people should be aware of it i mean i think that people concern. grows in proportion to their lack of understanding so i feel very concerned when i just see the same names the same faces you know if there was more

transparency i might feel less concerned. let's talk about how this kind of activity is perceived by americans i mean i have you know these people in washington these elected lawmakers working together in the name of cybersecurity you know oftentimes they're coming up with legislation to deal with this but it turns out they're not exactly representing the desires of their constituents there was a recent poll done this was done i think by united technologies in the national journal congressional connection and basically found that two thirds of people said that government and businesses should not be allowed to share information they're concerned rightfully so i think about privacy and civil liberties so what about this sort of this connection i guess between the people and their elected officials when it comes to cyber security and some of this action being taken to deal with this. i mean i think that is. one of the roles of our elected leaders pressure on these companies to tell us their requests to more

accountability and transparency i think you saw that with the cell phone surveillance so the only reason we know anything about the volume of surveillance requests that stuff of comes getting is because of one congressional inquiry that yielded i think there are nine companies that are asked to write letters to talk about the volume of their surveillance requests so that was a very positive thing and i think would be excited to see more of that for instance neustar has not been asked blows their volume over question the number that they've rejected why so that could be a step yeah absolutely and i think it's interesting too. you're talking about here some of the things that new start other companies like it too as they deal with. cell phone location so this makes sense to me when you're talking about trying to find you know somebody that's missing you know let's get these companies involved to try to find out you know the best acting most accurate location of their cell

phone the most the last conversation they have this is a little more easy to swallow then you know if the government wants information for a person who's done nothing wrong and wants to know more about their text messages i mean and i mean how how is how do we move forward i guess as journalists and as concerned citizens to try to find out if this is actually happening. i mean i think i ask questions and by telling our elected leaders to ask questions and to request more regulation around this. you know news stories of big companies we don't understand all of what they do but i think that i'm glad that more people are interested. you know in terms of more steps of pro publica recently offered a kind of op ed in the new york times that talked about how you know your cell phone they call it basically a tracking device and i think that you know whenever you look ation. aware you

should know that you can yourself to tracking of all you know i mean it's very easy to go down like a conspiracy theory or you know that whole year but you know that's the reality of it absolutely for those of us who have an i phone just about every app we open you know or siri to help us find someone something she's got to know where we are unable in order to be able to help us really interesting article appreciate all the information that you sort of put together for it on her mind she west coast editor for buzz feed f.w.d. thanks so much all right well we here at r t do our best to bring you a slew of stories you probably won't see on the mainstream news outlets but our prior interview be a testament to that fact and apparently the public like getting a dose of alternative news and once again it's documented in a new study out by the pew research center it turns out more and more people are turning to the internet than ever before and found that when it comes to videos

viewed online are t. came in first by a long shot the study tracked around two hundred sixty videos in all between january of two thousand and eleven and march of two thousand and twelve and in analyze the nature of the videos the topics that were viewed most often who produced them and who posted them and found that in terms of news videos that generated most internet attention the japanese earthquake and tsunami the elections in russia and the un. rest in the middle east we're at the top stories now this fifteen month long study also looked at subscribers to you tube pages the study cited examples like the new york times news channel which has about seventy eight thousand signed up the associated press news channel which has about two hundred fifty thousand and r t at the top once again with two hundred eighty thousand subscribers now if you're wondering who is using sites like you tube or vimeo turns out seventy one percent of adults have used it at some time and twenty percent visit these sites on a daily basis and if you wanted to know about the second most viewed organization

among the top videos it was fox news although the study pointed out that more than half of those videos were posted by viewers criticizing the network. folks we are on the heels of a presidential election living in the age of twitter and let me get a time when your knowledge doesn't only come from one of three evening newscasts or the morning paper and we know there are plenty of people out there who want to call our g.'s news coverage propaganda conspiracy theories but the bottom line is we are covering stories you're not seeing in the mainstream media because we think they're important and it's nice to see that you think so as well for those of you have been clicking thank you very much keep it up and for those of you who haven't visited the site in awhile you can find us at youtube dot com flash r t america. so we're going to talk we are talking a little bit before about a new star and companies like this are no doubt part of a future that is already on track to include more surveillance cameras more action

taken in the name of cyber securities and more surveillance overall and over the weekend the new york times and veils are pretty astonishing findings involving a major surveillance operation by the food and drug administration on its own employees the times paints an in-depth picture of the lengths the f.d.a. officials went to to monitor its employees communication on every level the f.d.a. says this was in response to employees suspected of leaking confidential information about safety and design of medical devices but employers employees excuse me have filed a lawsuit over the issue and just to give you a little bit of idea of the extent of this the f.d.a. used software which tracked their keystrokes intercepted their personal e-mails copied the documents on their personal fund drive and even followed the messages line by line as they were being drafted so i want to talk more in-depth about this and a little earlier i was joined by jesselyn radack director of the national security and human rights for the government accountability project just lynn also wrote the

book traitor the whistleblower in the american taliban i asked her what she made of all this cyber tracking take a listen. but it is definitely a blockbuster article that stood out to me for three different reasons first we're not talking about surveillance of national security or intelligence agencies which do handle classified information this time we're talking about mass surveillance of the f.d.a. second the surveillance itself cover such a wide range including journalists including members of congress including president obama. so that was striking to me that we should mention some of the e-mails that were sent from petion within the f.d.a. sent people like chuck grassley people you know democrats republicans everyone involved here a lot of people who work for the f.d.a. simply concerned about some things that were taking place in their jobs in their

agency and felt that if they spoke up they would be terminated so they wanted to sort of bring light of this right to members of congress and they do it which is exactly right the first amendment provides that you can petition congress for redress of grievances and as it was they were doing exactly that going through a proper channel by going to congress and strangely congressman van hollen ends up on an enemy's list of sort of yeah they created and i mean he was number fourteen i think and his staff were was thirteen and then a bunch of grassley staffers are on the enemy's list so these people are doing nothing wrong by going to congress about concerns they have about a danger of a substantial and specific danger to public health and safety and medical imaging devices that we use for mammograms and colonoscopies and the idea that these

devices are emit in too much radiation. we should say i mean i think it's fair to point out that you know any job that i've ever taken when you first begin a job and i can imagine this is not the case for government workers your employer tells you that you know the work you do on work computers the emails you sent through your work e-mail your work has the right to from time to time perhaps check in on you and monitor this that when you sign on you sort of agree to this so i mean is this simply what was going on the f.d.a. says you know the people who were doing the surveillance say they were concerned about secrets being leaked you know yes you're you have a limited expectation of privacy at work and they can monitor your e-mails but they can't pick five scientists who happen to be complaining about the safety of medical devices and monitor them and only them and outsource it

to some company where. which is how this whole thing became public in the first place is that they outsourced it to a group that accidentally put it on a public website and that sal the one doing a little research he had no one ever being monitored was googling his own name to find out if there was anything bad about him and came across the information in this way wow so it's really outrageous on so many different levels i mean it's bad enough when you have the n.s.a. monitoring its own people but here they are that's a little more you know easier to swallow i think people it's an effect to expect exactly but the f.d.a. and especially when it's concerns about safety that will affect people and these people are sort of trying to be quieted down talk about the bigger picture here i mean critics of this say this is you know get another example of the government waging a war on whistleblowers well it's very interesting because suddenly this suddenly

it's funny how congress gets very. upset when they're the ones that get surveilled or when information they have faith think is in their purview wait and then they can have a grassley said as a fed this was like the gestapo and that's exactly what grassley said and so i hope this will sensitize congress to the fact that this information that this happened they were being surveilled which is completely outrageous but this is happening on a vast scale to employees in particular those who more often than not are whistleblowers and it's to tamp down any kind of criticism or dissent now if an employer wants to randomly monitor employee e-mails to see how many people are playing facebook or on facebook or playing games fine but drilling down on five people who specifically have complaints and here i should

mention the complaints are not about national security they're about industry they're about g.e. which is enjoyed a very favorable relationship with the f.d.a. and that's why we've seen so many lawsuits over faulty devices stints. other items that i gave as you know you make i want to talk also about some other so just little i have you there this is also speaking whistleblowers of course the court martial proceedings for private first class bradley manning resume today i guess i'm wondering you know he is of course for people that don't know i think most people who watch us know that he is accused of leaking classified information to the web site wiki leaks but how are you feeling about the way these proceedings are going i mean are you optimistic at all that manning and his lawyer are making any headway here i have confidence in manning's lawyers but i'm not optimistic

about the outcome i'd like to see more outrage from people about what happened here and what is being done to this twenty four year old that could put him away for the rest of his life because as he said at legibly said in his own words i felt like i was watching war crimes. and the proceedings themselves again but the court has refused to release any kind of transcript so one time to move the detainees have more transparency in the proceedings in the kangaroo commission military commissions we have set up down there and then private manning is getting even his lawyer wrote about that and said you know even if it was a terrorist in custody you don't use need to prove you know that you know the government we need to show that you know that terrorist was aiding the enemy or causing harm to the security of the united states this is not happening with an

american soldier exactly and jeffrey dahmer at a cannibal este cannibal got more due process and fair treatment wasn't tortured and bradley manning is been already subjected to torture and already declared without having a trial first declared by so many people to be guilty reversing the usual prose. of innocent until proven guilty well just when you said you expect to see and hoped that you would see more outrage hard for that to happen when so few media outlets are even covering it are making it a story hopefully this will pick up as the trial continues appreciate having you on the show just thank you very much christine justin is the director of national security and human rights for the government accountability project well it is one of the longest running annual gatherings in this country and yet it's one of the least well known bohemian grove is a two week gathering for some of the most wealthy and powerful men in the world and

takes place just outside of san francisco in a town called mon to rio those who have attended in the past to say important policy decisions have been discussed their political candidates are often chosen and yet even members of the media who get invited never breathed a word about it correspondent abbie martin is in want to rio and has more on the significance of this annual event the street from the san francisco airport headed to do you a city with beautiful redwoods and picturesque coastlines. the perfect getaway for the world's rich and powerful and in fact every year ceos media moguls and high level politicians flock here to the bohemian grove secluded campout less than half a mile from where they're millionaires billionaires the people that control the world control the central banks the build nuclear weapons i mean this was their plumber playground dr peter phillips spent three days on the inside now on the outside he argues that the public has a right to know what's going on and his calling for an occupation of the grove it's

speaking to the the powerful of the world saying we want to have a democratic process we want to have an open transparent process and they're making business deals there they're popping policy with a lot of conversation a claim which members deny their motto here is that weaving spiders come not here which they claim means there's no business discussions it's just the vacation from the wealthy men author and activist mark dice has a rare grove yearbook issued every decade showing everything from men in drag to high profile politicians giving speeches it's a really good way for the ruling class to get an inside perspective from another ruling class remember the book shows george w. bush and his father giving lakeside talks along with presidents jimmy carter and richard nixon others who have attended our david brooks of the new york times along with c.e.o.'s from c.n.n. and fox jimmy buffett david rockefeller and henry kissinger mark also has an

official two thousand and five membership list of grove attendees your typical warmongers george bush sr colin powell richard perle and your typical republican establishment and cider. for hundreds heeded the call to protest. the people in the growth are about to be conquered. college student kimberley is out. ridged by what she sees as the top one percent excluding the rest from the discussion shows that we are really the franchise that our voice is a little. money is speech and so if you don't have money you don't really have a voice activist felipe in the siena worries about dangerous policies that are drafted from within the redwoods the nuclear program was discussed here and then developed later the fact that reagan was here. and then afterwards we had the reagan revolution where. an event with so little transparency has bred

theories some of them pretty wild about what goes on on the inside especially at the cremation of care ritual where grove members burned a coffin effigy to a forty foot. to counteract the crimean ceremony the protesters held a creation of care festival. the creation of care of course is the opposite of cremation that peace and justice activist cindy sheehan speculates on the lack of media coverage as a part of that you know they're they're the propaganda arm for the one percent the corporate media is the one percent. i mean if you look at it that way. they are of the corporate one percent they're not going to do negative stories about themselves about capitalism about global empire and war. how can someone own a two thousand in old redwood grove that's the question that the occupiers are asking about the bohemian grove which they say belongs to everyone and not just the

one percent. here at the gates the bohemian grove line of right police made sure that everyone didn't gain access to the layer of the one percent. are they do you know california. and 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 on tonight's edition of the show host tom hartman will sit down with congressman dennis kucinich to ask about the department of justice's criminal case against major wall street banks and the ongoing libel rate and scandal later time we'll tell you tell you how iran's writings are influencing more than the literary world a change in american politics as well and for more on the stories we covered go to you tube dot com slash our team america and for the latest information on the stories we cover today and a few that we didn't get to check out our website our team dot com slash usa and you can always follow me on twitter i'm at christine for now i want to thank you for watching have a great night.