another day and with more on rest in the middle east al qaeda is calling for the death of diplomats the u.s. has shut down its consulate in indonesia and that is just the beginning of the latest straight ahead. plus the time to rage against the machine of secrets that is the new book takes an in-depth look at whistle blowing in the internet age with a particular emphasis on the case of wiki leaks coming out party says down with author into greenberg. and then later be careful not to run red lights in some

parts of the u.s. local governments are sending out tickets thanks to red light cameras all in the name of public safety but wait a minute some city employees caught on camera don't have to pay so is this is the way the local agencies to make some money. it is wednesday september nineteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for and you're watching our team. let's begin today as we have for the last several days with a look at the latest in what's happening in the middle east and north africa for the last eight days protests on the streets of cities in several countries have become widespread and in some cases violent most have come out say they're

protesting an entire muslim film made in the united states that insults the prophet mohammed one of the major events today a rally in lebanon planned by hezbollah here's our correspondent paula slater with more. tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the southern lebanese city of tire this is in line with a call that went out earlier by the his but their leader hassan nasrallah no way he called for his supporters to show their anger firsts in a shouts and in their faces he says that this film is the worst attack ever on islam now so far the demonstration is useful if one of the demonstration on monday in which more than one hundred thousand hizbollah supporters took to the southern suburbs of beirut now and that's one has called for staggered protests throughout this week we understand that the next protests will be on friday in an instant lebanese city of about a bit but at the same time we are hearing reports of an american to be changed kate if seen that for the second time has been attacked in lebanon now this comes only

wednesday as clashes erupt between palestinian protesters and israeli security forces at least twenty people were injured when the catch was you want to you know a global crossing in east jerusalem the protesters threw firebombs as well as stones at the security forces they responded with tear gas and rubber bullets we're also seeing again protests in the pakistani city of karachi hero hundreds of protesters have stormed a barricade around the u.s. consulate building we're seeing the same kind of banners the same kind of american rhetoric most of of focusing on calls for the american ambassador to pakistan to be expelled now hundreds of protesters also took to the indignation city of medan here they are calling for the united states to be punished for allowing such a movie to be made also on wednesday there's a lot of attention focused on paris where a weekly newspaper by the name of sally had though has published

a crude caricature of prophet mohammed we understand that some of them are showing him naked now this has sparked a fierce debate over the whole issue of sweden a speech with the french foreign minister say. that there will be consequences with god in this publication and he has condemned these caricature has been published in the first place but we are hearing from the french prime minister that the freedom of speech is something that is protected although something that used to be used responsibly nonetheless muslims that in this country has been organizing themselves for protest so far that protest has been banned but it is likely to go ahead we know also that they believe this is a cloak to move and that it has nothing to do with freedom of speech french police a position themselves outside the headquarters of this magazine it's a magazine that was firebombed last good when it published an edition that mocked radical islam at the same time at least twenty indices are on lockdown around the

world for fear that there will be reprisals and revenge attacks and that was already correspondent policy or. the internet has given rise to unprecedented new ways of communicating as we've seen with social media like facebook and twitter and connecting as we saw with the arab spring it's made it much easier for the government to spy on its own citizens and also in some cases for citizens to spy on government and here at r.t. we've spoken extensively and in-depth about the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks how it's impacted both journalism and geopolitics how leaking over all has been made much more simple when daniel ellsberg leaked the pentagon papers back in one nine hundred seventy one he literally had to go through every page photocopy it and then cross out certain information he also had to expose his own identity when he gave that information to certain organizations well today we're going to talk about how far we've come and what that means for us as a society a country and on an even grander scale. use the right cryptographic tools keep your

mouth shut and you too can anonymously frictionless lee eviscerate an entire institution's information so as one man who understands this issue inside out there may not be daniel ellsberg in the world ready. to push through the twentieth century stubborn barriers to leaking but the twenty first century would be wise to expect more broadly mannix of the man who wrote that andy greenberg joined us earlier he's a staff writer at forbes magazine and also the author of the new book this machine kills secrets how we can leakers cypherpunks and hacktivists aim to free the world's information and he first explained his contrast daniel ellsberg and probably manning i think you know what i was trying to do was draw a contrast partly in their motivations but i believe fundamentally they both saw themselves as whistleblowers the contrast between the two that i was trying to draw out really was more of a of a matter of the ease of the lived in than the technology that they used and what i think we can see is that is that ellsberg actually expected to go to prison for the

leak that he was perpetrating that you know this the seven thousand top secret pages that were the pentagon papers whereas manning although he said he was willing to go to prison you know to his credit as a whistleblower he never expected to and i think that that shows that in the forty years between anonymity technologies had developed anonymity technologies had developed to this degree where he felt that he was protected and it was only because of his own human error of describing his his league to a hacker eatery lamo that he was caught. yeah and in writing this book i know andy you've traveled literally around the world just to really get a better understanding of how we got to this point in terms of leaks i just wanna get your take i mean what are some of the most important things that you learned well you know i i met with julie massage in two thousand and ten just before the the release of the state department cables and he struck me he seemed to make it so easy to release trolls of classified secrets so i wanted to figure out where to

decide where this idea of this cryptographic anonymous inbox come from is really just a kind of one off brilliance kind of singularity from this brilliant guy doing the standard where did it come from some larger tradition and and so i ended up tracking down the the movie called the cypherpunks who in the mid ninety's had were already sort of dreaming of using encryption and anonymity tools to disempower the governments and. take that power and give it to individuals and so and so i sort of traveled around the us tracking down these cypherpunks and cryptographers and inventors and philosophers who i believe inspired a songe a songe was one of these cypherpunks so. when i saw that the wiki leaks sort of came out of this very linear tradition of of of anonymity technology is slowly developing over time i saw that you know this is something that can be systematized and replicated so then i went looking for the next week since that is the it was

a kind of tour of the activist world that took needs from bulgaria iceland to paris and and finally to berlin where i met this the the engineer known as the architect who rebuilds wiki leaks mission site and then led a mutiny within weeks and went to form his own group called open leaks i want to talk to you about some of these other groups that i know that in your book you talk about not just wiki leaks they have these other organizations that are sort of sprung out of it why do you think though that they haven't had the same impact as wiki leaks. that wiki leaks had initially well you know one thing that i try to highlight in the book is that they have in very small cases i spent some time with the gary a group called balkan leaks successfully did obtain classified or releases secret documents about the bulgarian governments and leaked them and eventually partnered with with wiki leaks to release wiki leaks very explosive documents double garia but before that they were already using the same technologies and methods as wiki

leaks did and successfully showing the this can be replicated with but i believe what's been missing from other situations is are two things and one is a technical understanding of anonymity tools which blocking leaks has been the same way that we did essentially using tor this very. very secure and well tested piece of anonymity software as the as of fundament of of their anonymity promise but then also i think the other sites don't have the kinds of journalistic or free expression figurehead that wiki leaks had and julian and sons' and a songe which is kind of colorful personalities like amazing media. persona he he was a kind of beacon for whistle blowers i'm not sure he still is but he was at one point you know let me ask you something i mean as far as julian assange i mean to this day and a major newspapers the major networks use wiki leaks as

a source they do entire stories about information that they got along wiki leaks and yet so many of them have distanced themselves from julian a silence from wiki leaks why is that. well i think wiki leaks in a way has it has betrayed the principle that it used to tell it of being simply a tool for whistleblowers you know wiki leaks no longer has anonymous submissions portal so the information that it seems have gotten over the last year is you know has either been explicitly or you know revealed to be mostly come mostly sourced to the hacker group anonymous which makes wiki leaks less of the kind of whistle blowing all that and more of a just a kind of publishing site for hackers which i absolutely do think reduces its not only its credibility but its but it's its role as a kind of moral outpost for free expression yeah there seems to not be sort of that

time taken to go through and give these documents for people who are concerned about what's going on instead it's just you know troves of things coming in and then being published it definitely is a difference and i was at the end veiling here in washington of that collateral murder video and it's really interesting how much that changed how it sort of put join us on the national. stage and i want to play a little bit about what assad said recently from the patio there from that ecuadorian embassy where he's been staying united states. that it will not. prosecute. or else the point. the united states must wage before the war it will miss it you journalists were siding shining light on the secret crime. so it appears andy that you know one man's witch hunt is another's legal investigation i guess how did we get to this point where songe is

in hiding holed up at the ecuadorian embassy. well i mean it's a complicated scenario with songes legal limbo as so many moving parts i mean essentially he's he's he's not actually facing any charges of related to his publication yet but he's right that the obama administration is absolutely we join a war on on leakers you could call them whistleblowers i mean i would i would call some of the militias whistleblowers but. the obama's justice department has in fact and they did six leakers under the espionage act and that's more than any other president in history combines which is an amazing reversal of obama's transparency promises from two thousand and eight yeah absolutely i want to switch gears now to the future of internet freedom i know that you've covered this extensively for forbes and we've watched over the last several months the failure by congress to pass cybersecurity legislation and now it's come out that president obama is

planning to issue an executive order on this very topic so far what's been leaked out is pretty vague but give me your thoughts on this you know strengthening battle between internet security and internet freedom i mean who is in the lead well i what we saw in the in the legislation that that has killed essentially in with cisco was because of sharing between the private sector in the government that i did think was of major concern i mean one of the things that i try to highlight in this book is that there's a sort of. porous membrane between the private sector and the government that allows the government to swoop in and take documents or you know private information from the cloud in a way that is troubling i mean that we don't know what is in this every securities legislation yet but but i think this is absolutely the the internet moving data to remote servers has empowered kind of government surveillance that is troubling

around the world in the u.s. and abroad even more so finally on the i want to talk about something that's just sort of starting to come. now and that is news that a new i phone application could be coming out and that would allow apple's got the patent for this and basically it would allow people who get this app you know large companies to shut down the usage by other people of their cellphones or of their cameras what do you think this would mean on a larger scale well i'm not going to the full story about this but but i have covered another app called open watch which was actually a full suite of apps for android and i phones that allow you to turn your cell phone into a kind of invisibly recording surveillance or you could see sue valence the way you know you're instead of the government surveilling you your suv alien the government from below but. i'm not sure what the this other after is that would sort of. be a counter measure to that but i do see

a lot of promise in terms of individual liberty in the in the sense that smartphones and other democratizing technologies are going to allow us to you know to watch authority the same way that authority watches us yeah certainly interesting this one a little different very very interesting the work that you have done i thank so much for coming on the show and green greenberg the author of the new book this machine kills secrets how we keep leakers cypherpunks and hacktivists and to free the world's information so let's talk more now about this i phone application that will allow companies to shut down cell phone usage remotely by individuals who just aren't following the rules all right so how can come out yet but we could be talking in the future about gym locker rooms classrooms movie theaters on airplanes i don't leave one prisoner would have loved to use this function during a fundraiser a few months ago when he was caught on camera saying this. leave

it to believe. they were. here. today. and they will. governor romney's comments have gotten in him into some hot water with opponents and supporters alike still the fact that a speech given by a presidential nominee is recorded shouldn't come as too much of a shock even at a private event we live in a time when we videotape just about everything whether our dog is doing something adorable or police officers are beating someone up in a back alley it is the digital age after all and a freedom that we enjoy because technology allows us to capture what's actually happening what's actually being said and what it might not always be this way i want to tell you a little more about this patent awarded to apple this week it's titled apparatus and methods for enforcement of policies upon a wireless device now in it there are details about why this policy enforcement

capability could be useful it gives examples of the need to disable noise or light and the naming from wireless devices you know at a movie theater or preventing wireless devices from communicating with other wireless devices you know for example in academic settings and for forcing certain electronic devices to enter quote sleep mode when entering a sensitive area also written in this patent a reference to government buildings so where is now you may be able to record what your elected officials are saying well that could change soon again this is just a patent for an app that hasn't come out yet but we will be keeping our eyes on this story and we want to let you know we figured you know you should enjoy these freedoms to record and have control over your cell phone usage while you still have them. still had on r g a get ready for the game of red light green light local governments across the u.s. are cashing in on traffic light violators ahead we'll ask if these red light

cameras are installed for public safety or just to make a quick buck that's next. it's part of american power continues. things are so bad. might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a procurer drink at starbucks has a surprising. here

is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call i don't know. i'm sorry i missed the guy who cares an awful lot about my sorrow our school. their terrorist cells in your neighborhood all want to give us a defeat terrorism a limp all the credit card public. consecutively out of the. clear the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that facials that garbage because that breaking news i'm not me martin and we're going to break that.

r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us.

let's talk now about some pesky cameras that can really ruin your day now if any of you have gotten one of these in the mail you'll know what i'm talking about the super annoying red light cameras installed on our streets to make them safer to catch those drivers who put people's lives in danger right well it turns out the major motivation for them might be something else entirely money and while they run lots and lots of money to cities and municipalities across this country they do come at a cost the cost of people's privacy for more on this i was joined earlier by mike reg's associate editor for reason take a look. studies that show studies that have been to your studies through your studies from florida from your next ago from california have all shown that there is no discernible decrease in traffic fatalities or it's b.s.

when red light cameras are installed. in fact one study a new mexico found if you compare it for intersections that had traffic cameras to six that did not and three of the four intersections that traffic cameras actions actually increased so what cities are keeping them on anyway i mean you know they get approximately twenty percent of the amounts of the speeding ticket the other eighty percent goes towards the companies that supply these because these cameras are incredibly expensive so it really is just revenue generating projects for cities and now here's something interesting the city of rochester just adopted a new procedure that exempts city employees from paying for these tickets now according to the rochester democrat and car chronicle city of rochester employees have committed at least one hundred and nineteen red line violations while driving say vehicles now in some cases we're talking about ambulances or police cars but often those police didn't have their sirens on and there were also violations by you know solid waste building services cemetery and library vehicles do you think

this gives further evidence that the priority is not money is money rather than not safety. to a certain extent i mean you know if you find somebody a city employee who are running this red light camera you know i mean that becomes i think part of it is just the fresh ration of the paperwork it may also be really that they you know they don't feel like they feel like completion recently reviewed since these laws and you know i think really exceptional about. city employees and they're certainly nothing exceptional about laws that savors of employees of the rest of us police fire they've got all kinds of incredible exceptions and not just when they're driving their their work vehicles but also with a you know they in trouble with their jobs or that kind of thing so i mean. i'm not actually sure the public employees being exempt from speeding camera tickets has anything to do with the fact that speeding cameras are intended to generate revenue more than their own safety i think that's a substitute with that's all the separate but equally problematic trim the public

sector employees in general get to play by different set of rules i want to go back to something you talked about a moment ago and that is that if you know what kind of cameras these actually are these are not cell phone style cameras these are very expensive pieces of equipment as we know. you know i held us up earlier this isn't mine but you can actually see you know the license plate a pretty good make out a pretty good picture of the person driving the car. so these are really really good cameras talk a little bit about i mean it i don't know if you know how much they cost i certainly don't and talk about the role of these private companies and sort of selling these cameras to different places while thanks to vandals in maryland and the state of maryland read we do kind of know which cameras cost because maryland just recently has been installed everywhere that in certain parts of maryland that have experience vandalism on their red light cameras they've installed another

camera next to that want to document vandalism so according to the state of maryland these cameras cost anywhere from thirty thousand dollars apiece to one hundred thousand dollars in fees which is part of the reason why. only get about twenty percent of the revenue from these cameras because the other eighty percent goes to paying for the equipment and then also paying for the companies. that operate them and that issue tickets because many cities are basically you know they've outsourced a big process a lot of writing tickets for speeding in general i mean you know if they started out at intersections to discourage speeding in skirts red light running now they're from everywhere i mean there's on i ninety five interstate. and on the east coast us they have these in the medians on the interstate that sort of just capture speeders but they're incredibly expensive. and if you think about a camera cost one hundred thousand dollars issues let's say

a two hundred dollars ticket. you have to issue a lot of those tickets to make your money back. but a lot even more if you consider the fact that you know states and cities don't get all the money that comes from these cameras but the same time what is that save you that saves you you know the pension of a police officer that saves you gas for a cruise or saves you overtime pay you know so i mean cities see this is a cheaper way basically. i i had to be crude but of ripping people off it's a cheaper way of ripping people off and having cops out there sort of sitting around waiting to catch somebody going six miles or a speed like i want to talk with you about that the privacy aspect of this from what i understand these cameras are not just taking pictures of the license plate on the person driving the car it also stores the date time and location data talk about some of the privacy aspects of this i'm mean to a certain extent that you know there's. anything that our cameras going to catch you right in your car there's a good chance the police officer could also catch you doing because you're on

a public roadway. and so there is you know there may be an argument to sort of violate privacy to a certain extent by five think even more troubling is that they these cameras don't have discretion and they can't you know nobody wants you're pulled over by a police officer who exaggerates that they were speeding but if it would be nice if you're pulled over by a police officer you explained that you had to go to the bathroom or that you know your wife was having a baby or something and and you know yourself for but you're off the hook and there's no discretion on several cameras and they also present the other problem that a lot of times you know because bureaucracy is generally inefficient let's say you sold your car on monday and the person who bought it from you doesn't get a new license plate until friday and in between the day you sell it and the day that license plate is changed that person runs a red light and the speeding chemical she said license plate i mean i've read lots of stories now people who fly who they post their ticket online and if you've ever

gotten one of these you know that the ticket often comes with an image of your car running the red light or speeding and somebody comically posted this picture saying you know i got a ticket for speeding in my toyota corolla but the picture attached to it was a man on a boat now though there's all these like kind of crazy inefficiencies and who do you review this with you know i mean now i think a lot of people are finding that you can review. with because you're fighting against a machine and not a person it's an important discussion to be had and certainly when we talked about it this morning in our editorial meeting everyone sort of groaned just at the mention of it so it's a topic that hits close to home for a lot of people mike riggs associate editor at reason magazine thanks so much. well that is going to do it for us here for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or you can check out some of the stories that we didn't get a chance to do but our amazing web team did.