support for planet money comes from a large bank looks like n.p.r. it needs an ally one planet money reporter seems to have found it in a big bank and his coverage maybe shielding his investors coming up archie shows you who's profiting from the positive congress. and working for the federal government means that surrendering certain rights to privacy that much we know but when it comes to spying on employees big brother wrote the book i had a look at how far the government is willing to go to keep staffers in line. and it's not just the federal government shelling out the big bucks for the chance to spy american households are actually contributing to this surveillance society with everything from g.p.s. trackers to in home cameras so could our own actions be paving the way to warrantless wiretapping.

the good evening it's monday august twentieth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine if you're watching r t we're going to begin this evening with a closer look at one of this country's most well known media outlets national public radio for years and years and p.r. news and programs have been funded in part by the government and in part by listeners those who call in and pledge money and those who give big donations as well but more and more recently it's common to hear the names of sponsors mentioned on n.p.r. and it turns out there are actually certain programs sponsored entirely by one company and that may or may not influence the content of the program so we're going to look tonight at the financial program planet money hosted by adam davidson when you click to listen you're likely to hear this. support for planet money comes from

ally bank and p.r. keeps people in the know so doe's ally customers can talk to a real person any time of day or night learn more at ally bank dot com so who exactly is ally bank well it turns out among other things the company has spent quite a bit of money lobbying against the creation of what is now the consumer financial protection bureau so maybe it will come in no surprise then that when planet money host adam davidson had the head of the c.f.p. be elizabeth warren on for an interview things got a little heated take a listen this crisis will not be over until the american family begins to recover this crisis does not exist and if you're in the right that's the no it's not my crisis that is america's crisis if people cannot pay their credit card bills if you're not paying their mortgages remote views on this issue of this of course just a snippet from the fifteen plus minute interview but we do want to talk today with

a journalist who has covered it what's going on here foster kaymer writes for the new york observer. foster you are in our new york studio and i know you recently wrote a piece for the observer breaking down the different aspects of this controversy i was let me ask you this when you started looking into this what surprised you the most what surprised me the most was that it was davidson from planet money on n.p.r. you know n.p.r. and this merican life which was the program the planet money was spawn from are known for their very very very strict journalism and at the standards and adam davidson in the program seemed pretty unimpeachable so to have this very very generalist program that is very beloved come in conflict with ethics issues was a pretty big surprise yeah absolutely but i noticed that the title of your article . it was n.p.r. planet money host adam davidson under fire from rogue media ethicists.

sarcastic towards these journalists i mean have they gone rogue because they formed a website or are you implying something else here. they're the only kind of implication with the rogue and i kind of regret my choosing the words there is because these guys form this project called the shame project where they're taking on mainstream journalist big names like early on huffington and malcolm gladwell and exposing their conflicts of interests and things that people might not know about them with regard to their ethical quandaries and they're not really mainstream to put it lightly they founded the this alternate weekly russian publication that was a satirical publication they're not with a mainstream outlet so the word rogue was kind of shows in because they are very much on the outside shooting in but they did a pretty good job surprising a lot of people including myself with this report right and i should tell you we

have the them both on the show yasha levine and mark ams were on the show just a few hours ago talking about it as well but you of course we want to talk to you as well because you wrote the article another controversy foster surrounding adam davidson was that he took speaking gigs for events sponsored by big banks big banks like bank of america and j.p. morgan i know you actually reached out to a r. and the new york times who davidson also contributes to what did they tell you in terms of whether davidson broke company rules. they said that they did not in both instances and both companies have vaguely worded policies regarding this essential it comes down to you wouldn't speak to somebody whose industry you could affect and notably the new york times has let a few people off on this rule like their tech columnist who is a very widely read guy and he's taken multiple speaking fees and he's never really

gotten in trouble he has a very very wide following whether or not this has something to do with the fact that he's never been peached by the times is anyone's guess but the core of the times and n.p.r. they both said that davidson is gigs were cleared before he actually took them and therefore they abide by the journalistic ethics strictures that they post in their guidelines foster let's broaden this discussion a little bit i mean how does the public know you know the founders of the shame web site certainly came out with this information and put it out there on the enter web about an incident and about you know for example the interview happened almost three years ago but how can the public know right away if what they're listening to what they're watching what they're reading could represent a journalistic conflict of interest. well the only real way to know is if they're making these disclosures up front and i believe n.p.r. started doing this at the bottom of the show the one time planet money reported on

the sponsor in question but these disclosures need to be probably a little more towards the forefront and they could be closer examined and they just need to be as visible as possible so listeners can decide for themselves really if what they're being told is conflict or not and we're certainly getting into a tricky time as things change when it comes to you know the cape cable networks and you know internet journalism and as much as we in the question really this show this show is sponsored by our so you know it's sticky web that you you get in once you start sorting out these conflicts yeah absolutely and so many of us you know we do we like to think of journalism as a higher calling but the bottom line is and none of us are independently wealthy we need somebody to pay the bills it's a business a requires advertisers what do you think foster i mean how can there be a balance between keeping a journalistic outlet afloat and keeping it honest. well first off we should

probably note that everybody. has an asking price at the end of the day i think all journalists like to think they're above this but all journalists are in conflict in some way to some degree with what they're reporting on and so the question is how can you distance yourself from these outlets as you go about reporting on them and there's really no perfect answer the question might be to avoid reporting on them all together paul krugman for example doesn't take speaking gigs because he thinks it's the clean sound and so you know it really comes down to the readers choosing the publications in the media outlets they trust and and making decisions about who they trust and who they don't and alternately these publications and media outlets making the best efforts to gain the trust of the readers and listeners and viewers by being as transparent as they can be because when something like this comes up and nobody knows about it like anything else once a surprise that looks bad in this case whether or not there's

a really really deadly awful conflict at the heart of what adam davidson is doing is it isn't actually going to be sussed out by anybody really besides adam davidson n.p.r. but it looks bad because it is a surprise and maybe the point is that readers and viewers and listeners should get less of the surprises yeah absolutely i mean i know that if you ever watch and b.c. for example you know half of that company is paid for by g.e. general electric and any time there's a recall or any time they have to report on stock they always mention before this story at least that by the way our parent company g.e. or our parent company comcast so you know you do see that sometimes let's take this in a little bit of a different direction foster talk to me a little bit about what you're seeing now as somebody who sort of has you know their eyes and ears into to what the new media is doing these days what what else concerns you other than than the specific example of adam davidson and planet money

. you know the disconcerting thing is really when certain media outlets take preference to the most read and beloved writers or columnists over others like thomas p. freeman has been busted for taking speaking gigs numerous times and yet he wasn't fired he stake in david pogue for example the new york times has taken junkets and he was not fired whereas another writer who took a junket in the new york times travel section who had a cult following but he wasn't as big as friedman or as david pogue didn't get off and so he got fired and this kind of differentiation in standards is a really dangerous thing because it alludes to the idea of populism and it leads to the idea of well if they're succeeding to a certain level then they can scrape by some of the ethics problems that others can't and when it comes down to that it's a pretty deadly practice for the future of journalism in the future of ethics in

journalism yeah i think i think there's some good questions being raised both in your article and on the website shame and we do appreciate having you on the shelf foster came our senior editor for at the new york observer. thanks rob. coming up on our team it's no big secret that big brother likes to pry but not just on suspected enemies of the state the u.s. government is spending billions to monitor its own employees of next we'll show you how far it's willing to go to protect state secrets.

it's part of american power continues. things are so bad. might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out the procureur drink at starbucks has a surprising in radio call. it

where you put a picture of me when i was like nine years old and just you know look through. i have a confession i am a total get a friend i love grabbing hip hop music video and pretty. much it was kind of a big yesterday. i'm very aware of the world with its place. why i want to talk now about surveillance on the government level and the ways in which it's increasing despite calls for more transparency last month we told you how several employees at the food and drug administration were the targets of

a major surveillance program by their employer after it got out that they were reporting concerns they had to lawmakers and other officials well it turns out the f.d.a. is not alone and i want to put this in perspective here in total there are four point four four three million federal government employees according to a count made in two thousand and ten last year non intelligence agencies spent five point six billion dollars to quote safeguard classified information and the f.d.a. was one of the first to establish the total surveillance on employees including personal e-mails the program used by federal agencies is called specter three sixty and it can read comments posted on social networking sites and gain full access to hard disk data adjustable rate aca director of national security and human rights is the director of the government accountability project says here she's also the author of the book traitor the whistleblower and the american taliban jesselyn good to see you again i know that we sort of really talked about this when the

information came out about the f.d.a. let me just ask you quickly what do you know about this specter three sixty just that they can really drill down on everything you're doing including keystrokes increase.

this kind of situation it seems to me in the case of the f.d.a. at least i mean the system worked exactly right employees who work for the organization were concerned about the products they were concerned for people's safety so they told lawmakers that seems to me an example of things working right having their employer then come crack down harder on them seems to be a system gone wrong well yeah and in this case the f.d.a. was monitoring their communications with congress and their communications with the office of special counsel and you have her first amendment right to communicate with congress that the lose lose proposition is that it was lower now can either remove incriminating information from his or her agency and be charged with the espionage act or they can go ahead and complain to congress or the inspector

general or the office of special counsel their work computer and risk being monitored and fired and retaliated against in numerous kinds of ways for that from what i'm hearing just lennon and i'm wondering if you're hearing the same that in a lot of federal agencies that employees are sort of freaking out about all this that they're learning more and more that this goes on and it's making them less apt to come forward for fear of retaliation are you hearing that you know the same and what do you think the impact of this could be i think what's having a bigger chilling effect is the fact that we have a crackdown an unprecedented crack it down on whistleblowers for allegedly mishandling allegedly classified information in these are really people trying to expose fraud waste abuse and crime and i think these very public prosecutions of people under the espionage act is what's having the real the real chilling message

we've been hearing of the espionage act talked about pretty. certainly in regards to what he leaks founder julian assange i know he has been sort of you know in the ecuadorian embassy for the last few months he's been told he is welcome to have asylum there. and he says his concern as far as being extradited to sweden for questioning is that sweden will then be able to have him extradited to the united states he says he fears he'll be tried under the u.s. espionage act and he did speak to the public over the weekend i want to play just a little bit about what he said the united states must renounce its witch hunt against wiki leaks. the united states must design its f.b.i. investigation. the united states must know that it will not seek to prosecute. oil supporters. the

united states must pledge before the world that it will not pursue journalists for shining a shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful. so julian assange is calling for some pretty serious changes to be made a what are the what's the likelihood that some of these things will be you know some of these wishes will be heeded the likelihood right now is not high but my clients three of whom he personally called out thomas drake and william binney and john kiriakou are extremely grateful that aside in his very brief speech saw fit to mention them i think there's an accusation out there that joined us on just only about joey in a songe and clearly he cares about the plight of whistleblowers who like him are being criminally pursued under the espionage act and there are persistent rumors

that there is an indictment against julian assange cheer in the u.s. and they want to try him that has been made public and he has not been charged yet so so you know a lot of people are saying you know what's the what's the big hoopla he has been charged why is he why is he so concerned well the big hoopla is that neither the united states nor sweden promised not to extradite him if they got their hands on him so it very much seems to imply that the sexual assault allegations or there have been no charges filed but there those are pretext to get him to a country that has a history of expediting people to the u.s. . to be torture. let's kind of get back to sort of what we're seeing though within federal agencies i know that the five people involved in the surveillance operation at the f.d.a. have filed lawsuit but what course of action do people in the federal government

have when it comes to defending themselves from being prosecuted in persecuted for their actions well whistleblowers under the whistleblower protection act can make claims of frog waste abuse and dangerous to public health and safety to the u.s. office of special counsel one of the big loopholes is that that does not cover intelligence employees or national security whistleblowers who are arguably the ones you would most want to hear from yeah it's really interesting so often when we do hear about surveillance operations most people think we're talking about you know defense and military and cia and it's really not just that there's a whole lot of other things going on that people need to be aware of great to have you on giving us your insight just loan rate ak director of national security and human rights with the government accountability project thank you and it's not just millions of dollars for the growing surveillance needs for u.s.

government purposes something else is going on as well the household video surveillance market is now estimated by some to reach around twenty five billion dollars in the next four years and it's no surprise take a look. and so we can monitor everything twenty four seven because someone who could do to even when i'm working late i'm always close to home but the rise in home monitoring control i'm locking the front door when my daughter forgets her keys i can even turn off the light in my teenager because my family thinks i have everything. i do i want to be sure she says so she travels with a g.p.s. tracker that way i can check on her anytime i just want to give her a really quick shout out to all my friends about this really cool thing that we invented here a progressive snapshot. a totally different way to see the current search. better the more you can see. now why you snapshots catching up.

well it turns out something else is going on as well our cell phones have become more than just a way to communicate they've also become a useful tool for law enforcement to weed out criminals and as of last week the justice system says that's ok the u.s. circuit court of appeals ruled that americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy when carrying cell phones a rule that can allow police to track a g.p.s. signals without a warrant or probable cause to dig a little deeper into this i was joined earlier by our two producer and you're blake and i asked him first of all just how common this surveillance business really is. well you said it would you say by two thousand and sixteen we're expecting twenty six billion dollars this industry alone in within the last decade or more specific last two or three years we saw this huge transition where telecom companies you know places where you're talking like horizon yeah places are going to get a cell phone contract landline contracts broadband cable internet all that stuff

those companies have also in the last couple of years entered the home surveillance market which is great because that's one going to have everything streamlined to one bill you don't have to worry about pain you know a.d.t. one thing in time warner another no you can have the same company that sends information over telephone wires or five or optic cables those same people can see exactly what's happening in your house and they realize that they can make a ton of money by doing that and they have men and so the surveillance market really has been picking up in the last couple of years but it's just. about to get to it you know if we go to this case to the court of appeals it's kind of terrifying what we know now well yeah i mean talk a little bit about this court case and you know how much they can get away well did the one argument has existed since the bill of rights at the fourth amendment protects against unreasonable search and seizure and that the government or anyone can just you know stick their hands in your pockets and put

a big magnifying glass over your house and see exactly what it is that you're doing but last week the united states court of appeals for the sixth circuit said well maybe there's a little we have it leeway here anyway when you see the word on reasonable you know for a sigh slee they said well if you're committing a crime in this case distributing marijuana across state lines you shouldn't. apply to you because you're not being reasonable yourself they said that if you can pull up to you the ruling says that there is no fourth amendment violation because the suspect in this case did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the dead a given off by his. interiorly procured pays to go cell phones this thing is so if you have a cell phone and you carry it on you and you transmit data across that you your transmitting data in a public place you should not think that it's unreasonable that we're just going to go ahead and watch you so g.p.s. tracking on cell phones is somehow reasonable as of last week yes absolutely these

officials now there is a difference though i mean certainly on one hand we can talk about cell phone tracking and i think a lot of people would find it pretty surprising but when it comes to our actions out on a public street a lot of people are wondering if this is even legal but i want to show a little in a part of an interview with private investigator steve rambam. you ignore experts the prophecy. was drawing meeting with people talking. at this point right now if you didn't think. that it. was. at this point at this point if you weren't for approximately fifty million street all the way down to the battery you or i could there is no location but you can go to all the public hundred most buildings where you're not being good. so that was a really sure part of an interview by a little bit about. you know basically steve rambam private investigator says this

is totally legal oh it is i mean if you are in a public space like if you watch the rest of the interview i know it's on the archie you tube channel mr abbott says that in new york city from battery all the way up to fifty first street you can walk anywhere on the street in manhattan without being i don't want to say spied because this kind of has a negative connotation i mean sure it's not really that friendly but it's very true when you are out in public you can do whatever you want you can follow someone long as you're not assaulting them you can take photographs you can talk to someone you can do anything that's the same reason that why there's been a big of a bit of uproar in d.c. in recent weeks and that pelton police captain actually had to make a statement saying that when police are acting in their official capacity in the public they can be videotaped because there is no expectation of privacy in the public if you were doing your job in the public we're going to go ahead and people can watch you and which is great for you know bring some accountability to law

enforcement but it's you know can work on the other way around too if you're doing anything in the streets anyone can be watching you and that information whether it's willingly collected by law enforcement agencies or volunteer it over it's totally legit to be handed over and the case that we're seeing with this cheap p.s. tracking actually i believe it goes back to one thousand nine hundred sixty electronic communications privacy act and we've talked about it a couple of times before on our cheat. what the e.c.p.a. does is it says if you just get a court order you can go ahead and try to monitor someone's. digital communications so we know whatever it's going to be but the thing about a court order so it's not a subpoena and it's not a warrant you just have a judge say sure stamps of paper and you can track someone and with that believe magistrate judge ruled earlier this year that there's around thirty thousand americans have been surveyed by the united states government in the us you know you there's nothing you can do private on your cell phone there's nothing you private you can do on your streets we should tell our viewers that now there's

a the latest push is by law enforcement to be able to surveil people in their vehicles so stay tuned for the next we are out of time and everything yeah are you really well that's going to do it for us for now but for more on the stories we covered go to you tube dot com slash r.t. america are check out our website it's our team dot com slash usa and you can follow me on twitter at christine and you can see me back here in about ninety minutes.