the waiting game wiki leaks founder julian is songs remains holed up inside the ecuador embassy in london waiting on an asylum decision but his health may be declining an update on the case and why some of us on just supporters are questioning his leadership. five years ago today a bridge collapse in minnesota sent thirteen people to dare their death this should have been a wake up call to lawmakers that infrastructure here in the u.s. is literally crumbling but since then little has changed party takes a look at the state of infrastructure across america. and we live in a social media society which and sites like twitter be forced to reveal the names of people who set up a fake account we'll dive into the topic of internet freedom versus user privacy.

it is wednesday august first six pm in washington d.c. i'm christine you're watching r t. well today marks the eight hundredth day of private first class bradley manning sitting in jail manning is accused of leaking classified information to the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks we've been staying on top of all his a pretrial hearings but we also want to spend part of today looking at the man behind wiki leaks itself julian a son a son has spent the last seven weeks inside the ecuadorian embassy in london awaiting word on whether he might be able to get asylum in ecuador since first unveiling wiki leaks julian assange has been somewhat of a controversial figure but now it's clear he's even making some waves within his own circle last night a battle erupted on twitter one of the few people who has met with both assad and

bradley manning started criticizing him the comments are in reference to a fake new york times op ed and former new york times executive director bill keller you know wiki leaks took credit for the hoax that for many across the internet so this tweet came across from it david house it said as long as wiki leaks is controlled by a saw and the shortcomings of a songes leadership will continue to put wiki leaks supporters at risk then jacob appelbaum another man associated with weekly wiki leaks tweeted in response to david house attacking wiki leaks i think in a film for a long time he is probably a confidential informant a snitch or worse also wrote that people often ask me how i feel about david and now it's a model matter of public record i wish him luck with his legal cases and nothing more. meanwhile julian assange his mother recently told the associated press she's worried about her son's health she says her son has essentially been living in prison like circumstances for the last two years now ecuadorian officials for their

part said they will not announce any decision on the asylum request until later in the month i want to wait until the olympic games in london have wrapped up. while keeping a state secret that's a big business here in the united states in fact the federal government spends billions of dollars every year trying to prevent the public from knowing what it's up to art is going to check on explains. keeping government secrets is expensive business according to america's information security office last year the u.s. spent around thirteen billion dollars on classifications that's twice as much as it spent ten years ago and more than the entire budget of the country's environmental protection agency for instance the u.s. government keeps way too many secrets even even government entities responsible for evaluating these things like the office for government information oversight. these officers have may have done studies and said well you know a lot of this material doesn't need to be protected so it's in many ways it's

a huge waste of money u.s. security agencies regularly fight in courts to keep volumes of decades old documents classified like the files on the cia's bay of pigs operation in cuba when the u.s. tried to overthrow fidel castro in one thousand nine hundred sixty one but the sharp increase in secrecy over the last decade is due to america's expanding counterterrorism programs rather than on classified historical files the power that the national security staff has acquired under president obama is greater than any time. during the cold war period the government indicted only three people for disclosing classified information however the obama administration along. as prosecuted six government officials for leaking information to the press more than all other past the ministrations combine and thomas drake was one of them he was a senior executive of america's largest intelligence agency during the bush

administration he blew the whistle on fraud and abuse with regards to the agency's secret surveillance program mr drake was charged under the espionage act much of what's happening now particular my case it sent an extraordinarily chilling message that anybody who i was a senior executive the government had a very high position and say it sends an extraordinarily chilling message that if you speak out if you speak up we're going to hammer you and we're going to hammer you hard because look what we did to mr drake but after a public outcry last year the government dropped charges against thomas drake in exchange for him pleading guilty to a misdemeanor of misuse of a government computer speaking truth to power is very dangerous and his world the power elites. those in charge they don't like dirty linen being aired. they don't like the skeletons in the closet being seen. and they not only do they object to it they decide to turn it into criminal activity national security german

they say the government always has and always will leak information deliberately to advance their own interests and it's not at all the curves that they're after the primary. looking at here is that the national security state is striking back is becoming much war repressive in regard to its response to whistle blowing by you know individuals who. oppose houses that are being carried out or who oppose simply abuses of power the obama administration is spending record amounts to keep its secrets coming down hard on the kurds and yet thousands of classified documents are making their way onto the web the internet has taken leaks to whole new level but it seems the more the internet reveals the more upset the government becomes about secrecy i'm going to check on in washington our team. well talk now about

a topic most people and even most lawmakers here in washington actually agree on infrastructure and the need to make sure it's strong and safe about it was on this day five years ago that the interstate thirty five west mississippi river bridge in minneapolis collapsed. the buckling of the bridge over the mississippi river happened during the evening rush hour and resulted in the deaths of thirteen people also the injuries of nearly one hundred fifty others it caused a closer look at infrastructure all around the country now we already knew at that point after all that it was the levees breaking in new orleans and not hurricane katrina itself that caused the excessive death and destruction there back in two thousand and five but since these two things happened and what specifically has been done what's changed the american society of civil engineers ranks this country's infrastructure every five years and in its most recent report card in two thousand and. eight steps were given you see there are a couple cs and mostly d's and d.

minuses and earlier today i talked more about the issues with infrastructure with rachel mccleary vice president of the urban land institute infrastructure initiative at the urban land institute we firmly believe that infrastructure provides the foundation for metropolitan prosperity and national prosperity you see this across the country and across the globe as. countries and governments recognize the vital importance of investing in infrastructure and building the pillars of a modern economy and you know and examples like the very talented things that are happening right now in india with the collapse of the electricity grid and i see the perils of not making those investments in a timely way and not not spending the money that we need to spend on infrastructure but what do you say to people who say you know maybe in a few years we'll be able to really invest in those projects but we should focus

now on climbing out of debt. well i mean i think investing in infrastructure is both a short term solution and a long term solution. but the urban land institute we focus on the longer term view a lot of places like the american society of civil engineers and others are really looking at the short term job benefits and helping to put people back to work which is of course an immediate concern so pumping money into infrastructure investments not only does it give you benefits today but it also you know provides those long term benefits but you need so you know it's not it's not an either or question and we have this report card that we put up on screen just a few moments ago this is by the american society of civil engineers this is not a partisan group looking for political gain these are grades given by by people who understand the engineering aspect of things that are built in the last lack of safety standards have been implemented i mean i know that if i brought

a report card that looked looked like this home to my parents there would be some immediate changes that would happen i guess i'm wondering why. you know letter grades and information like this has largely been ignored you know i mean i think across the u.s. at the national level it's been harder to get traction on the infrastructure investment issue i think we do see some strides happening at the regional and local level as local governments across the country are really trying to figure out how to move forward with their infrastructure priorities and in some cases that means you know figuring out a place to find the money locally so in two thousand a los angeles county voted for a one cent penny sales tax increase that will go to forty billion dollars worth of transportation and transit road investments. so you do see pockets of progress at the national level we've had some. improvements there was

a federal aviation bill that passed just last month the federal transportation bill was a bipartisan compromise bill was put through congress that will provide some programs to billet and funding stability for the transportation surface transportation program for the next couple of years so you know it's still an uphill climb but i think that you do see more emphasis being put on infrastructure investment and in particular more and more local and regional sort of innovations around how do you tackle this problem it's really tough too because where do our all of our lawmakers meet will they meet here in washington i live here in washington and if you look around it's hard to imagine that there's any issues with infrastructure you look around the roads are being repaired things are being built there's cranes everywhere around this city you know working on buildings but in

fact as a country overall you know just since that report card came out in two thousand and nine reports show that public construction spending including state federal and local projects has actually been on a staggered decline any idea why that might be well you see i mean you know local governments across the board are strapped so federal investment in infrastructure at least in transportation infrastructure accounts for about a quarter of total spending and the rest of that money is spent by state governments and local governments and you know it's just been tough times for local economies trying to figure out in the national economy where's the money come from what priorities should there be. and you know i think infrastructure when you as you said when you look around and you see the state of roads and bridges it's not always apparent what the scale of the needs are you know don't you don't see it and you know by and large engineers are quite good at you

know when you turn. tap the water comes out when you drive on the road it's pretty good quality and so they they've been making do yeah i think that's a really good point a lot of it is not apparent i know just across the pond here from here in baltimore a few weeks ago some glaring examples of underground infrastructure i know when i worked as well as a local news reporter it seems like almost every week in southern california we were having a water main breaks and this happened a one hundred twenty year old water main burst and it shut down a lot of the city i know a few days later some more issues a sinkhole actually made the road cave in but when i read about this i know one of the things that i saw first was what are we doing with one hundred twenty year old pipes under under our road and i mean i think you made a good point when you said we might not have the money now but investing could bring jobs i guess my final question is just you know who can we point to finger at to you know for the problem and also for the solution well i think it's going to

have to be you know all hands on deck to build the infrastructure for the future but i i just want to emphasize that it's not just enough to think about you know how much money we spend we also have to think about the return on that investment and the connections between that investment and land use and development and how we're investing in how we're building the places that we want to become you know our it's conservation part of the equation are we really thinking about managing and maintaining the infrastructure that we have appropriately and finally about pricing in terms of sending the right signals about you so it's not you know i think you can overemphasize the total amount of infrastructure spending but we really need to think about as a country is how do we invest wisely how do we build the future that we want for ourselves in the coming decades and what does that investment in infrastructure

really need to look like absolutely some really important. there rachel mccleary vice president of the urban land institute infrastructure initiative thanks so much for being on the show had to be here. so i had on our last week we uncovered the embarrassing information that the u.s. government is pumping millions of dollars for reconstruction efforts in iraq only to be wasted so is this an isolated incident or has the government's frivolous spending thanks for the into other wars. the climate of american power continues. things that are so bad. might actually be time revolution. and it turns out that a popular drink of starbucks has a surprising him really here. mr

. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through it's already been made who can you trust no one. is in view with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more. and i say for you now on

a story we told you about earlier this week we reported on the hundreds of millions of dollars being wasted on reconstruction efforts in iraq with relatively little progress to show as it turns out infrastructure failures in iraq are not isolated incidents when it comes to u.s. efforts abroad but actually more common occurrences in a report released earlier this week it shows that a large amount of the u.s. government's four hundred million dollar investment in large scale infrastructure projects in afghanistan in just the year two thousand and eleven was also wasted the report by the special inspector general for afghanistan john soco found that quote a decade of struggle and bloodshed and more than eighty nine billion of us appropriations for afghan reconstruction has not cleared the landscape of serious problems he went on to say the united states risks wasting billions of dollars more if u.s. funded development programs cannot be sustained either by the afghan government or by continued donor support it's an ominous warning to military officials looking

for an exit strategy in an increasingly unpopular war audits of construction sites in afghanistan discovered quote weakness in planning coordination and execution are to blame for the wasted funds so much so that several major construction projects that were actually supposed to be finished by mid two thousand and thirteen are significantly behind schedule four of the five delayed projects were to build power lines another to construct provincial justice centers across the country meantime in his final report to congress the commission on wartime found as much as sixty billion dollars in u.s. funds were lost to waste and fraud both in afghanistan and iraq over the last decade. they might be wondering why u.s. military progress hinges on reconstruction efforts these days considering that we spent the better part of a decade evolving many regions of those countries is all part of the effort to win the hearts and minds of the people and to establish democracy in the region from the ground up in short it's a tool at least in theory to try to curb the taliban insurrection with the twenty

fourteen deadline looming the question becomes who will pick up the cost of these unfinished projects the answer is looking more and more like it's going to be the u.s. taxpayers if lawmakers approve or will request from president obama for new reconstruction funding the united states will have provided nearly one hundred billion dollars to rebuilding afghanistan since the war began so there you have it ten years in war and relatively little progress made as far as rebuilding the country's meanwhile back at home american infrastructure is crumbling and the economy is not doing much better i think the american people deserve a plan that lays out how much longer their taxes will go to build schools and roads and buildings in countries other than our own i think these are questions that are not being asked often enough of our candidates for president and for congress the men and women who often sign off on the way the money in this country is spent. as you may know we hear you talk a lot at r t about social media and the way it's being used more and more by the

government both in investigations and for the purposes of surveillance we will do in the past additionally how sites such as facebook actually sell users' information to companies for marketing purposes so we want to focus on twitter what those behind twitter have and have not done to cooperate with the government so here's one case there's a user who scooter handle is unstudied dork when he seems to be parodying steve auckland the chief executive of northcliffe media which has said that the spoof tweets are obsessive and offensive. an e-mail by twitter to the account holder that was recently made public said that twitter is obligated to respond to the lawful process and will do so on august first twenty twelve that's today but now twitter has re neg on its promise that is refusing the order so could we be seeing a new chapter will other social media take cues and perhaps even follow suit in standing up to the government to answer that question and more i was joined earlier by christopher chambers

a journalism professor at georgetown university. i don't think it's it's possible but they're not i mean this is this is the result of social pressure this is a result of their own users turning against them and it's really an example of the tension that you see in twitter and most of these social media giants they've become the mainstream media outlets that they you know thought that they were going to supplant and and move beyond evolve beyond i mean you know with with with guy adams and n.b.c. i mean twitter has become in b c two has become the daily mail you know which was the which was the result of the author yeah so the guy adams case for those people who have not been following this is a british journalist who works for the independent and i know he was criticizing some of the coverage of the olympics a lot of people were talking to you on twitter somebody criticizing about the coverage and so he gave the corporate email address of an executive b.c. public knowledge which is already posted apparently in twitter guidelines you can't

give personal information. they thought he was violating twitter rules they suspended his account and then re brought it back i guess i guess the point is here guys are starting to tread in waters a murky waters. of free speech starting to be defined. in this use of social media i mean they've become in their you know if you want to call it evolution they're trying to monetize themselves are trying to make money they're acting more like traditional media outlets well that you know they're going to have to deal with the same hobgoblins that all all these outlets from fox to traditional newspapers and what part of that is dealing with people who are using them as an outlet for what most would say legitimate either media criticism or parody and satire which is protected speech parody and satire in case of the daily mail you know. with with auckland is protected speech but that doesn't mean you can't turn around the

targets of that and go after those people with with. legal process whether they'll win or not is a different story the thing that's nothing new rich people powerful entities have always used the courts or law enforcement to quell debate and quell information they don't want out there the question is how does the the media outlet respond to that well they're supposed to respond by protecting that kind of free exercise and the free flow of ideas as long as there's no you know nothing on lawful going on i mean i know with the daily mail they thought well you know they might have been hacked but there was no proof for that but twitter does have to respond to lawful subpoenas the question is are they going to roll over and fold and they were going they did that twice and got called on it by their users and that is the scary part now i think another really interesting aspect of all this to me oh you use words like protected speech we know of course the first and here in the u.s. twitter is not just a social media website for the u.s.

there's something. global it is used by people in countries with very different rules and laws about speech and so i think it's really interesting to see the way that some of its founders have had to deal with oh yeah i mean you have this whole legal tangent now where things that might arise in pakistan or london are being fought out in a federal court in san francisco which has nothing to do with china or pakistan or london or anything like it and so that part is fascinating in of itself but it's all part of that same maturation or evolution or growth of twitter from this group global consciousness which is what the founders and i think you know we're back to vist and practical content users alike like to think of it as and the reality which is it's maturing into this you know see the entity that didn't really want to be didn't want to be like n.b.c. or far right now it's now has to deal with that and they've opened that pen. bob so

they're going to have to deal with it and protect supposedly protect the very people that ject the information into it you know you live by the sword you die by the sword absolutely i want to talk really quickly a little bit bigger picture here to the extent you know your professor at georgetown i'm sure one hundred percent of your students have some form of social media my hundred twenty percent. as a member of the media it's the same thing a whole lot of people in this country more and more use social media rely on social right to communicate do you think the majority of those people understand the extent to which this is a tool for law enforcement yeah i think i think they're understanding it now i think what you're seeing is that the enemy in these two instances we did not become in b.c. because people hated them already it didn't become the daily mail people hated them already it's twitter it's almost like they're supposed to be your own cool who's

supposed to be watching over you and he's off doing what he's doing his own thing i think people are much more attuned to this now i mean the serious content suppliers of the serious twitter users beyond beyond the teenagers tweeting that you know they hate somebody but even they are starting to catch on but that stuff is curated it's stored and could go to people that they don't want to go to and not their ex-girlfriend but to the federal government or to other governments i think this opened a door that i think the casual user is now seeing i think they're starting to set about what do you think that would take for you know twitter and facebook to actually say you know under no circumstances will we give your information i mean is it going to take you know a billion people leaving facebook or threatening to leave facebook it's going to take it's going to take that kind of insurgency because they are mature businesses now with evolving business models and they've had trouble obviously facebook as and now twitter and they are much more in tune i mean you know the whole thing with guy

adams was a strategic. relationship the twitter head with n.b.c. well now users are starting to see that they're going to be much more distrustful and it would take a large scale insurgency but leaving them that would be like telling americans you don't drive anymore i mean we might you know protest high gas prices we're not going to drive so they don't have to worry about losing the users they have to worry about losing the users trust and that's much worse really i think it's a really interesting point that you bring up that i hadn't thought about just sort of this relationship of twitter with n.b.c. for lympics coverage purpose but the fact that in this case physically they notified n.b.c. whereas most of the other cases they're notified by the federal government they want information on certainly i think we're going to see some changes in the. christopher chambers journalism professor at georgetown university always good to have you here and for those of you who use twitter and facebook and all of the other social media something to keep in mind that it's not one hundred percent

protected information that that information is out there for good and that if law enforcement inquires that those sites could give up your information something to think about we do have a whole lot more coming up for you in our upcoming broadcast we have want to eight pm eastern as well as one at ten pm eastern for more on the stories we've already covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america our website r t dot com slash usa. at first break let's just burn your eyes right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. much stronger than anything you'd be biopsied loses thousands of times i'm stronger than any kind of ever put you know i. is the state run in english speaking russian channel it's kind of like.

russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. we just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old only true. confession . that. he was kind of yesterday. i'm very.