coming up this hour you heard it here are two young covers the truth about a sophisticated surveillance system that can track your every movement so smile for the camera because chances are big brother is watching are you going to block the break down. and the d.c. jail is going digital replacing face to face visit with video chats but is this a good idea to to limit humor it when interaction for inmates who haven't been convicted of a crime. plus when it comes to foreclosure fraud can a single person achieve what president obama and all of congress have not been able to do while one woman who's running to be clerk of court is willing to try we will ask her how.

it's monday august thirteenth five pm in washington d.c. my name's christine and you're watching our t.v. . i want to tell you know about a previously top secret program used for the last several years in many major cities right here in the united states and there are a whole lot of elements involved here we're talking highly technical facial recognition software closed circuit cameras like many of those ones you may have noticed in parks on the sides of buildings and this also involves former senior intelligence officials who collect information about people by recording them and then encrypted that information and instantaneously delivering it to a central database center where it's aggregated with other intelligence and then mined for data by some of those top members of the cia f.b.i. and other organizations this is

a program is known as trap wire and was revealed by wiki leaks and a short time later the whistle blowing web site experience what's called a distributed denial of service attacks that cut access to the site for a whole lot of people the hacktivist group anonymous put out a video about it and here's their take the software is being billed as a method by which to prevent terrorism but it can of course also be used to provide precedented surveillance data mining people. governments corporations and others. using technology like. this. and it was our website it's a web team right here at our t.v. that has really been on the nuts and bolts of the story from day one with this story strafford e-mails reveal secret widespread tromp wyler wire surveillance program that story was then referred to in

a host of other articles in publications like point going reasons salon and firedoglake and to break this story down for us more down with where producer angie blake who wrote this story last friday he started off by talking about the amount of media attention being drawn to the issue take a look. the way that this story has quickly spiraled out of control in just three days is almost like make believe but what's actually happening is science fiction so we kind of make sense so we have to back up two thousand and four this company releases abraxas put together this thing called trip wire and not a lot is known about it right now and it's still not the way it's been all week and where people trying to dig up information we don't really know that much but we do know abraxas has this program called trap wire the vice president of intelligence there said it's more sophisticated than any facial recognition program out there and they can use these cameras to go in and track someone in whoever they're

located in and so far as the biggest myth politan cities across the united states so we're talking d.c. new york chicago los angeles las vegas and there's just the connections goes so much deeper than that too but so what they do is they monitor all these video streams they get sent to a database in center and they can go and they can zoom in on someone they can find out who they are and what they're doing and they can go back and they say they'll walk that path to back it go backwards go in time and they can start off with one suspicious activity report and go to see what this person's been doing and they can find out who these people are where they're going to go you know it's kind of these are not criminals or suspected terrorists i mean that's what that's why it was established that they said this is here you know the started to upload back in two thousand and four as a response to kind of like nine eleven but it's everywhere and what i see everywhere we're just starting to find out really how deep this goes because i'm a bracks this is kind of peculiar abraxas was acquired by another company based out of san diego called cubic in cuba got them

a few years ago that was two thousand and ten one hundred twenty four million dollars which is nothing tracked wire system if you have it installed in certain cities certain states they're spending hundreds of million dollars just just to have that going so cubic took a hold of a brac this in turn getting trapped wire in. turn being able to look at anyone anywhere in the city's places like d.c. where you can't swing a dead cat around without hitting something that's considered critical infrastructure sites whether it's like a part of energy satellite office or a da hotdog stand or something where anything around in d.c. is going to be considered critical infrastructure site and all these cameras in d.c. for instance are hooked up to the d.c. metropolitan police department who in turn feeds them to track lawyer and they have this massive intelligence database but that's one thing we really have to see how far back this goes because cubic also runs the transportation farecard

systems in new york in d.c. in chicago and in los angeles so in a place like d.c. or new york for example you have the same company where you give them your credit card and you bias their card and you get on the train can go anywhere within twenty miles you give that company your information and at the same time they had your face and they're watching you when you get off that train they can find you anywhere in the city and you're referring just a minute ago to the millions of dollars that this program cost where does this money come from from what i understand is often paid for by taxpayers i know l.a. mayor antonio goes it was talking about it recently and here's what he had to say. we all need to be vigilant and proactive in protecting our city from terrorist threats los angeles consistently rank in the top the list of terrorist targets we need your help in keeping watch over our city i watch as a community program that partners new law enforcement officials provides an easy

way to report suspicious behavior and activities. so los angeles is believed to send about one point four million dollars for money on this talk a little bit about the money and if taxpayers are even aware that i mean no one was really aware that this was happening until thursday friday and the thing is turbo has been around since two thousand and four and before last week you can go ahead you can google and you can go to trap wired dot com or dot net rather and find out all about them you can find out about a breakfast but the reason that this is becoming so significant right now is last week we had leaks released a new batch of the strafford files that anonymous were able to uncover from the strategic forecasting intelligence company last year and there's a bunch of communication in there from stratford kind of touting this program is kind of like the be all to end all of big brother like this was this is how we're going to be able to watch everyone and like they're there talking like internal communication and least in these e-mails that are allegedly part of the staff or a talk there are same pretty much we can do anything at one point actually said in

d.c. our capabilities are increasing every single day so a lot really isn't known about it let alone where the money's coming from we do know that d h s and the d.o.d. have been having some sort of financial ties to them throughly kind of have to go online and start going through this crazy like wormhole of information on traveler and you'll be doing it all the national with wiki leaks you know having this denial of service ok well also that's one thing that we can only speculate on right now we can reach is being hit by d.d. o. s. attacks for roughly two weeks now and last week it was last wednesday someone from the week at least we were counted said we don't really know why we're getting hit we know we're getting hit with upwards of a bleep gigabits per second worth of traffic attacks and they said one of the reasons could be like a backlash for stratfor e-mails that are about to come out sure enough twenty four hours later that's when we start hearing this so is stress for who you know we've

had something against wiki leaks and says hack was delivered from anonymous to them as you months ago. are they in orchestrating this infiltration together or you know it's it's no secret that a lot of people are opposed to wiki leaks a lot of people are opposed to julian assad is how many different countries are fighting for him right now and how many different people are upset over the military doesn't it that they've leaked so are they related we don't know but it also makes it much more difficult to find out about a trap or so right now people all over the internet are trying to find a trap or trying to find out about abraxas trying to find out about q that there's all these companies but pretty much what you need to take away from this if anything is that right now across america there is a surveillance system that knows who you are and can watch you and it sounds really really really creepy but that's what's happening but as of now under the data systems across the country are not all connected it's not a few it's none of you know l.a. program sees your face that they can send it to d.c. right move i mean l.a. might not be able to necessarily send it to d.c.

but that's actually where it gets a little creepy are these cities there are specific citywide law enforcement agencies have contracts with the traveler and abraxas one really interesting thing though is last year d.c. was putting together a proposal in order to acquire a couple thousand private business surveillance feeds that they would then have routed to the d.c. police department who in turn can then turn them over to trap water so in d.c. for example you have around three thousand cameras that are used in public schools you have cameras that are used as part of the department of transportation all those road cameras those red light cameras those are going to trust lawyers so you're not safe right now certainly a lot of ways in which the connections of already been made and a lot of ways in which they're going to be made even more in the future are do you have particular injured like thanks for breaking this down for the early days story . well let's talk now about a new program happening right here in washington d.c. the d.c. department of corrections is joining about one hundred other correctional institutions

with what's called video visitation here's a little piece from the d.c. department of corrections explaining what this is all about the department of corrections video visitation center is housed within the d.c. general hospital complex adjacent to the d.c. jail in southeast washington d.c. those wishing to visit inmates housed at the jail are no longer required to stand in long lines undergo extensive security checks or be subject to pat down searches to enter the facility instead with video visitation family members friends and other visitors simply set a visitation appointment by telephone or through the internet so the deal for this technology was reached between the d.c. city council and a company called global tel link global telling to install it for free and according to the department of corrections but calls are also free and the purpose is to quote make the jail run more efficiently. i guess now if i have a fee can stand a staff attorney with the d.c.

prisoners project i'd be welcome to the show i know the prisoners d.z. prisoners project have spoken out against this technology what are your concerns i just want to say it's a d.c. prisoners project of the washington lawyers committee for civil rights and urban affairs ok and i'm proud that we have a fairly long title but we're speaking out about this primarily because it replace is all visitation in person at the jail rather than being a supplement to the existing visitation policies so instead of being able to go into the same room with your loved one and see them through a partition you are separated by five hundred yards across the street in another building and then have to call in by videophone what do you make of these arguments are these are these are what does the department of corrections is saying that it's more comfortable for prisoners that it saves the g.o.c. four hundred twenty thousand dollars and it's generally a more efficient system well efficiency is yet to be tested it's shiny and new so

we don't really know exactly what's going to happen if there is some sort of a breakdown in the technology or when staff gets overrun with the how many people may be coming in or the online registration system breaks down or something like that in terms of it's comfort for family and friends that it may be the case that it might have more air conditioning or in may alleviate having to stand in lines or be searched however that doesn't really replace a child being able to go up to the window and speak to their father or their their their loved one and to be able to do that in a really more private intimate way one thing that you mentioned was the cost it is actually not there the department of corrections has said there is no cost to the clients to the to the prisoners or the families however global telling. i can't really be doing this for free that's what i was going to ask you i mean of course a big communications company wants to make money somehow so is this something where

it's going to be free just for the first year or i mean have you guys looked into this the prisoners have have been afraid that that's what's going to happen like it's going to be a bait and switch the department of corrections has gone on the record and said that's not the case we have discovered that global tel link actually runs a program that if you contract with them exclusively for your telephones not this video visitation system they will basically give you this as a perk of using them as their exclusive contract what that means is that in the competitive business bidding process maybe families could have gotten lower rates on their regular telephone calls with their with their loved ones but instead they're getting a higher rate of telephone call on those regular phone calls and then the part of corrections is getting this basically kicked back now i think it's important what you mention that this is not a program where family members can choose either one of you to face to face or i

don't want to wait in line so it is completely replacing the face to face as is and i know that the federal bureau of prisons has even said that face to face visits are important for prisoners and some of the prisons that are adopting this do have the option talk a little bit on the significance that this is the only option here in d.c. because the district of columbia is unique among jurisdictions this is extremely important for keeping family connections d.c. unlike maybe maryland right next door virginia sends all of its prisoners who have a felony conviction into the federal bureau of prisons the closest location where you can visit somebody who is in the b o p is in winter in north carolina just south of the virginia border or in cumberland maryland if anyone's ever been out to deep creek lake they know that that's a pretty hefty drive in. itself also these people are mostly in rural areas so even if you wanted to go visit your family member in west virginia it would be in

a location that would be hard to travel to and expensive to stay overnight so this means that this window of opportunity that they have while their loved one is local in the d.c. jail is exceptionally important for their family connection i guess you know i looked around a little bit to see why this policy change was necessary and i couldn't really find you know a substantive reason given for why this switch was made what are you saying well now that i know that global telling is involved i actually think it has a lot to do with the contracting with the telephones not just not the video phones what the telephones so that in the video in the bidding process to get a telephone contract the district has made this choice to get a basically a bonus from their contract instead of changing the cost of the families and lowering that cost are there also concerns though that with these video chats that these will be i mean when we talk about the d.c. prison these are people who have been arrested but not yet convicted as you say so

i mean what if you know the prisoner says something to a loved one on a video chat cannot be used as evidence in a court in a court case it's very possible that these could be recorded one of the reasons that the department of corrections wanted to do this was stated reasons rather is that it would be more secure and the phone calls that people make from the prison are monitored and it's possible that these video chats could also be recorded for later preservation very very interesting stuff as you say a lot of whole lot here yet to be determined but we appreciate you talking about what you guys know so far i beefing constat staff attorney at the d.c. prisoner project thanks so much my pleasure. well one of the battleground states in the upcoming presidential election will always be the state of florida and in addition to having a large number of seniors who vote and care deeply about issues like medicare taxes florida also has one of the highest percentages of home foreclosures coming in

second place with ninety one thousand coming only after california with one hundred twenty five thousand florida in many ways is a microcosm of what's happening across the country on so many levels but to a larger degree there and it turns out many of the real closures that have taken place there and around the country have actually been deemed fraudulent so this means the financial institutions in charge of monthly payments collection and negotiate ing loan refinancing and modification they've been charged with what's called robo signing so they engaged in a number of faulty practices like forging signatures switching dates and otherwise messing with paperwork that justifies a foreclosure lease abstain is running for clerk of courts in palm beach county florida and she knows firsthand about some of these problems she joined us earlier and shared her story about her decision to run for office take a listen. well my story starts with watching most nations. a full medical

calls are all cancer battle for unconditionally more good when you're willing to work with mike nation on their family he can more help some change can keep out level then when i see my herb situation i notice i couldn't get anywhere and i always did hate all my bills on time was very savvy and then you continued to change very serious on started any way so you know let's put some numbers out from where you're from where you are specifically palm beach county things are pretty dire there in the first quarter of this year forty three percent of homes were considered to be underwater which means homeowners actually owe more on their mortgages than the homes are worth across the united states that number is thirty one point four percent so fifteen point million borrowers fifteen point seven million borrowers this is according to zillow lisa talk to me about some of the fundamental problems with what you found to be going on i think a lot of people thought that these problems would be fixed right there there is no

solution will help in more formal to a more serious then a few minor typo we got was with the essence of american property rights and crossed all of our founding fathers put in the founding of our car and without the american civil from the ground up the ending up and saying this is wrong this was where are all this would be considered a crime by the laws and the and by federal law you know we have that we're really not going to be much help anymore king family because our proportionally are going to ration almost elected officials. more or. or i mean and i think that's a really really good point i mean we're talking about large corporations with large

power we're talking about a problem that a whole lot of people have said they plan to deal with and and yet have and so let me ask you i mean as county clerk if elected by the way we should tell our viewers the election is tomorrow. how much power would you actually have if you are in fact elected. well the clerk of the circuit court is a constitutional office in florida and i do not set policy but what i can do is number one with my class form educated citizens whom led me to represent form of the defense so for us that affects all of us what effects our property values in our county runs on property tax revenues property taxes are set on the value of a property owning a massive overlearning all the property we have won the value your statistics show we also have county elected officials across the nation starting to

understand and up with people who are less than once awful so while there is not much one county official can do together county officials across the nation we can so ok we're not going to see much resolution or solution from the federal level we're not see from the state level but there are people that really care enough step out of their comfort zone and run for office we have just they don't or now in the north carolina john o'brien now in massachusetts still means. register be out in california. there's a sheriff running sheriff elect me to serve in carroll county. north new hampshire christopher conley there are clerks in louisiana elected officials across the nation of ending up in the duty function of their role dealing with aig but the bottom line leave it is as you say i mean individually some of these county

officials don't have the power but let's let's be honest here this is an issue the president obama has spoken about times and time and time again and i want to play really quick him talking about a deal struck to help borrowers this is him back in february. we have reached a landmark settlement with the nation's largest banks that will speed relief to the hardest hit homeowners and some of the most abusive practices of the mortgage industry and begin to turn the page on an era of recklessness that has left so much damage in its wake so we're talking about the settlement that was reached with banks like bank of america and what was supposed to come out of that it was supposed to reduce the amount people owe on their mortgage it was supposed to bree bring about lower interest rates and even pay restitution to homeowners who suffered at mortgage related abuses i guess i want to know to what extent you know since this settlement happened how have the have things changed where you are i'd

like. what. you're. getting from offer from the bank for help. her by some balance he we were on weren't we crazy more. back during the boom but everyday family still a morass to your credit or not. i do want to play something that your opponent you're running against sharon bach she's the incumbent i want to play something she said really quick. as your elected chief financial officer and fiscal watchdog my highest priority is protecting your tax dollars in this economic environment those tax dollars must be stretched further than ever so it's important for you to know that i'm diligent in my efforts to increase efficiencies and reduce costs within my own organization. so she has in the past called herself its fiscal

watchdog but is apparently received donations from a company called lender processing services which has been sued for fraud on multiple occasions i guess i'm wondering first about your opponent sharon bach and also on a larger scale about other people in this position why they haven't taken on these big issues do you think that having to do with a well he lives on in credit he did receive a donation a contribution i believe he was earned while i was worried about the group he well that's in fact. need institution and longer process services rather powerful it has the power and regulatory capture over many of our prosecutorial. regolith we were to turn a general who fired to forty two and what eating longer process. is. ongoing and. that we're all looking into what what has to

happen people have to be brave enough and are even. their own them. you just. read. at the end we people who represent not sorry lisa we're out of time but we sure do appreciate you coming on the show today lisa abstain candidate for the palm beach county clerk of court that primary election is tomorrow well for more than two decades turkey has been seeking e.u. membership a goal that has recently lost much of its appeal thanks to the ongoing euro crisis financial gloom has caused some turks long term you residents to head home in search of better jobs and opportunities are the correspondent has arcilla reports. what about five and a half million turks living in the european union their presence is certainly felt

in societies in europe but as the e.u. continues to be deep in the red the lure of their original country's economic promise is getting harder to resist and the residents living on this street known as little anatolia say that more and more of their compatriots are thinking of cutting their losses and heading back home like the owner of this snack bar belgian born has been finalizing his plans and is set on relocating his family back to turkey. europe is finished the crisis is getting worse every year it's going to continue first greece then spain italy right now belgium there is a lot of stress a lot of taxes it's to pay the wedding turkey every year turkey is very powerful life is good if you can live well why would you want in belgium it's no longer like this and the numbers say it all the e.u. managed a one point six percent growth in two thousand and eleven while turkey was at about seven point five percent gaining recognition as last year's fastest growing economy

in europe while it is expecting a slowdown this year the grass still looks greener on their side and dependence and europe is not quite as it used to be the trade volume used to be very high with the e.u. countries percentage wise that used to be around fifty percent now it has gone down to just over forty percent that means we're diversifying our trade and more and more trade with african countries asian countries all around the world and this of course has spurred a lot of growth so we need people to be able to manage this we need qualified people personnel so we see that a lot of people are now coming you know second third generation immigrants are coming back home for this purpose but there's another reason why a growing number of turks want out of the e.u. i think like you know with the crisis what's the result we reject. foreigners obviously now that there are fewer jobs less money what happens is priority is first given to the belgians and after the foreigners the turks the moroccans the

russians my decision to go back to turkey is economic but also because when there's a crisis there is discrimination if you know of this community as this migration trend rises turkey is still officially knocking on the door it's candidacy for membership hanging in the balance for the last twenty five years thanks to a long list of requirements to fulfill and political opposition from some e.u. countries people are afraid that the you will come up with more and more excuses even if we do overcome them people say that other excuses are not that it matters any longer for some turks. turkey doesn't need europe it's europe needs turkey in a few years you will see that i mean against turkey becoming part of the e.u. and right now turkey doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry either does or sylvia r.t. brussels well that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america.