since coming into office president obama has expanded to drone warfare around the globe now it appears the is the ministration is laying the groundwork for future presidents to use the high tech spying and killing machines but is this a power grab by the executive branch. trying to stop leaks of classified information the white house was out with a national insider threat memo i'll tell you what it says and ask is this another attempt by the obama administration to target whistleblowers. and julian a song that has a new book out called cyber cypherpunks freedom in the future of the internet will dive into the topic of internet freedom one of the co-authors and look at how the internet is helping to shape the world.

it is monday november twenty sixth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for example and you're watching our t.v. all over the weekend an in-depth look into the obama administration's drone policy was revealed in an article in the new york times now we learned several months ago about obama's so-called kill lists those secret terrorist list that the president decided he must personally give the green light for each of their targeted deaths well as well as out it's not just a series of individual missions but a permanent policy one that we now know was sketched out in specific terms before election day just in case mitt romney would have one administration officials were concerned that of clear standards and procedures were not in place the targeted killings would simply be dictated by who's ever in office as opposed to having a clear set of rules and guidelines guidelines to stick to well colonel morris

davis is a professor at the howard university school of law as well as a former prosecutor at guantanamo bay and joins me now to talk more about this and colonel davis you let's just start with this targeted. this is described as a whole lot of people a sort of war whack a mole once you get one there's going to be many more to get until the game is over well it turns out in this new article especially that this game has no end in sight right you know war on terror is a war without him because it's really a war on a tactic not on a group of people so you know terror can't surrender so we'll be fighting this war for you know long as we live yeah and it was imagine you know even though president obama did win a second term this sort of you know drone strike architecture is still being drawn up for future leaders for for you know the twenty sixteenth president whoever that might be what do you think that says that there is now a sort of an architecture in place. well i find it interesting particularly with the egyptian president mohamed morsi where we've got john mccain and others here

saying that the administration needs to stand up to morsi because he can't put himself above the rule of law. if you compare his powers to the powers that our president has taken over the past decade since nine eleven where you know now we can listen in on your phone calls and your e-mails we consider you a threat the president can order you assassinated so you know compared to the powers that morsi has taken in our president has done a lot more so i don't know that we need a rulebook you know we've got the rules that we need we have the constitution we have international law the geneva conventions it's complying with those rather than trying to give a president the power to put himself above the rules and i think that was the concern here you kind of trust obama but what if it had been mitt romney or someone else in office yet do you think that there was a particular fear about mitt romney i mean what do you why do you think the president and his advisors you know decided that they needed this or were most

concerned about i don't know that the fear was necessarily mitt romney but i think they're much more comfortable as anyone would be when they're in charge and they hold the power then therefore unlimited executive authority but the prospect of leaving office and handing that over to a mitt romney or if you go back to the republican primaries where you had like a michele bachmann or rick perry the thought of them at the controls of the drone program and deciding who lives and dies is a pretty scary prospect well the other thing too i mean even if there is sort of a rule book as you call it i mean who is to say that the next person in charge can't you know throw that out well that's been the argument you know since nine eleven that the president is the commander in chief has unilateral authority to do anything necessary to keep the country safe and so we've really you know it's called if he put a label on it call it patriotic like the usa patriot act right. which is really be you know we're scared to death so we give up or is great scared to death and going

to take away the principles on which this country is founded that it will give up our liberties if you'll keep us safe so if you put a nice label on it and call it the patriot act and we're willing to give up the liberties that we claim that we're the champion of something i found interesting from this new york times article from over the weekend it was revealed that there's not necessarily agreement behind closed doors they may present a united front but within the walls of the white house and capitol hill is it the defense department the cia they seem to want more freedom in terms of carrying out the strikes while you have the justice department in the state department and even the counterterrorism adviser john brennan arguing for more restraint i guess colonel davis i mean to what extent do you think a drone strikes. you know the impact of drone strikes is discuss and that impact is that it has replaced guantanamo bay and torture at guantanamo bay as being the number one recruitment tool for militants for terrorists well i guess the one good

thing i took away from the article that said there is that internal debate because i think a lot of folks including myself are of the impression that you'd ministration that kind of. solve this issue when they were all on one page in support of the program so i guess there is a little comfort in knowing that there is still some dissent and some debate. it's also scary as well that you know we don't have just a drone program we have drone programs and we have a military program is governed by the law of war and international law and then we have this other program governed run by the cia which is a civilian agency that i'm not aware of what any internationally recognized legal authority for a civilian agency to go overseas and kill so it is a you know there's still some questions that i think pose a real serious problem it's hard to remember but about four years ago. and obama you know who has you know made himself the sole authority to give the green light

to these drone strikes it's hard to remember but four years ago this is a president who campaigned and beat his primary challenger hillary clinton because of his it's very strong language being against the iraq war this is a president who during that campaign four years ago said more times than i can even count that his intention and his promise was to shut down guantanamo bay a.s.a.p. not only as one time of day not shut down but most of these policies that we're seeing that we're learning about run so counter to that you know those campaign messages. i guess i want to ask you what you think happened and of course there's a lot of things that the general public will never know and b. why do you think the public hasn't sort of held the president accountable for these promises or what i think happened was i think president obama believes what he said back in two thousand and eight in early two thousand and nine when he said all the right things about returning to our principles and our values and restoring

america's reputation as being the champion of the rule think he meant what he said i think you took office you know the economy falling off a cliff you had health care reform was his number one priority i mean you had the dick cheney's intellect liz cheney is going on and saying you know you're with us or with the terrorists and i think in the political calculus standing up for the rights of detainees what in cracking the top ten list so i hope and there's some talk that you're in a second term when he took office the first time you talked about a reset on relations with other countries and a second term perhaps you ought to be a reset on our national security policy so that we have policies that we can live with whether it's barack obama sitting behind the chair where mitt romney yeah and certainly some of those you know when when he first coming into office there was sort of things written put him set in stone up. about torture of prisoners but what i found interesting too was there are always loopholes and that's what makes it

tough is you just can't do you can't make a sweeping law because you know at least under this administration because you know between the cia and the defense foreman and the justice department everybody wants to have out clauses i guess you would say in order to do that i guess was the last thing i want to ask you is. kind of what surprised you most about you know what came out in this article what came out earlier this year in the article about the kill list and which direction this country is going in i guess what most surprised me is the access that scott shane has because we keep hearing you know all these indictments for people leaking classified information but it seems like the administration when it's convenient particularly with you know some favor journalists the leaking a little classifieds not that not a bad thing and it's unfortunate that we have to depend on leak you know people leaking information to keep the public informed because our democracy is supposed

to be based on an informed public that we can vote up or down whether we want these policies or not but if you're kept ignorant and afraid then you trade your liberties for your security yet when what we learn is dependent on some of these leaks it makes you wonder just how much more we don't know how much more isn't being leaked by these unnamed sources sometimes colonel morris davis as always thanks so much. also ahead here on our team at the white house issues a new memo on national security and stopping leaks that come from inside the government is this just another attempt by the obama administration to silence whistle blowers and how will that issue.

well i want to take a closer look now at action being taken in the name of u.s. national security but that might hinder government employees ability to president obama government employees ability to take a stance and make information known now president obama recently released a memo to the heads of executive departments and agencies about the national insider threat policy basically to help detect threats on the inside employees

working inside the government according to that memo he says the threats in compass potential espionage or violent acts against the government or the nation and unauthorized disclosure of classified information including the vast amounts of classified data available on interconnected united states government computer networks and systems now begins our here is that this memo might be a larger attempt to silence whistleblowers since one of the provisions restricts contacts between government officials and reporters just big more about this i was joined by kevin got stolen a blogger at firedoglake. it's important to note that legislation actually didn't provide the sort of protections that people who are for whistleblowers rights would have hoped they didn't extend it to you national security agency employees it just covered the other agencies so here what you see is a focus on national security on clamping down and making sure that the flow of

information doesn't take place and it airs on the side of protecting the policy is in programs that are being carried out for so-called national security purposes and this really has a a root in being a response to p.f.c. bradley manning's allegedly of the wiki leaks documents which i think is important to put out for can text purposes because after that they formed a working group and started to put together this activity yeah absolutely this seeing as bradley manning was a member of the military and you know is accused of leaking these classified documents this would fall under what the president has said you know needs to be monitored. so it's a what i mean as far as bradley manning i mean this you know took place two years ago or more talk about you know his role and this memo. well what we're seeing

is just the slow wheels of bureaucracy turning because this was part of the program was that you would go back and get these standards and what we're seeing with this memo is the agency is following through with the stablish ing these standards minister perf loise and it goes along with the fact that there's been this leak hysteria in the past months starting in may you had those stories related to the cia sting operation with the underwear bomb plot you had people talking with reporters about the drone program you had people talking about cyber attacks on iran and those stories became really high profile and senators like dianne feinstein or out really raising everyone's attention calling a lot of attention to it making sure that people knew that in her mind this was something very detrimental there had to be a response so this is just piling on in addition to the hysteria in washington you

know see the insider agency moving forward with this task force proposal well senator ron wyden has been one of the biggest critics of these types of programs even place to hold on the intelligence authorization act for supposedly or twenty thirteen saying quote i think congress should be extremely skeptical of any and he leaks bills that threaten to encroach upon the freedom of the press or that would really reduce access to information that the public has a right to know he goes on to say without transparent and informed public debate on foreign policy and national security topics american voters would be ill equipped to elect the policymakers who make important decisions in these areas really interesting kevin why though do you think it is that when you look up you know lawmakers who are concerned about fourth amendment rights it is such a small group namely as senator wyden. well i suppose it has to do with the fact that there are very few senators and even you know congress men

who are willing to confront these national security agencies and raise a stink about these different policies you know whether they be warrantless wiretapping torture or targeted killing programs or whatever might be happening overseas in the way of special operations those things that really deserve scrutiny and oversight there are very few senators in congress people who want to put their careers on the line and challenge military brass intelligence agency heads and say you see this and i think it's very important to make it clear to your viewers that it's already official policy that you would not release classified information if you work at intelligence agency so this is adding an extra layer it's extraneous it's already known to people who work and it's clear that these are just additional mechanisms that make it impossible for intelligence agency employees to speak to the press and it limits it to having only official spokespeople who have left views

on national security out there in the press and so it's now more of the official line and less what lower level people think about the jobs they're being asked to do yet and left i'm going to tell to you having a balcony aspect of this and what you think it says that the administration has no qualms about trying to limit the access. well it's important one of the things in this anti leaks proposal is that you wouldn't be able to enter into a contract with your company for i believe the term is as a at least a year and in that there is no definition of media company so it really amounts to your free speech rights if you're an intelligence agency employee being curtailed and we're talking about people who leave agencies former employees so they're no longer working for these institutions so you would have to be quiet and you could talk for a period of time and then you also have you also have the fact that you couldn't talk to people who are lower level and one official spokespeople on background so

if you're a journalist what people should understand is usually you can call somebody an agency and talk to them and they can give you basic details about how things work they may not give you what you want you can report your new story but at least help you understand the way that an agency functions so you can have the right information you need to start to publish the story kevin just last question i mean a lot of people that hear about this say you know what these protections are heated classified information is that way for a reason when u.s. security is at rest when we're talking about some of these people with some of the most privileged secure information there needs to be a program in place to make sure that they don't take it outside and make it public and therefore put this country at risk kind of separate for us sort of the difference between that leaking classified information and not being able to report wrongdoing. well so the concern would be that right now you have this threat of

prosecution if you if you report that something i'm lawful or corrupt is going on in cover government i think that might actually be the case if you look at the fact that the obama administration in its first term prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president in the history of this country so it just it makes it seem like it's pretty obvious that people it's not just about right information it's about finding any controversy from big from the government having to face any controversy yeah absolutely the president of course as we saw last week willing to pardon a turkey or even two but not a whistleblower kevin a blogger at firedoglake thanks so much well the internet has changed the world in many ways has made it smaller and but it also made the channels between the government and its citizens much easier to navigate and the more people who use the internet and become reliant on it the more that we as a society are getting closer and closer to

a decisive point now the founder of wiki leaks julian a songe argues that the decision we must make as a society is whether the internet will become an instrument of freedom or of oppression he's coauthored a new book called cypherpunks freedom and the future of the internet along with jacob awful mom jeremy zimmerman and andy mueller mon it's a question that many people are actually not asking that very few have explored so we want to take an in-depth look and i'm joined now by one of those authors jeremy zimmerman hey jeremy thanks for being on the show talk for say you know this cypherpunk movement i know it's been around for a couple decades now tell me a little bit about the movements mission. well there's a word cypherpunk is a fun cyberpunk which is a science fiction current which describes a world based on information and that predicts the internet in a way and a pun on site cyberpunk and cipher would choose encryption of communication this

was the name of the mailing list in the ninety's that was frequented by the most brilliant hackers programmers people we invented the cryptographic tools we are using today and the political notion of encryption and digital technology was. one of the primary source of concerns for the people in this meeting these many many things happened on this maybe. and from what i understand right now already there's a whole lot of buzz around this book because it really raises an important question that i guess jeremy what's your hope for people who read that i mean what do you want the takeaway to be. well i hope that people will understand that we are in a moment of our history and that the difference between the two societies you models that we see one would be a society very nice mary which technology will be used to enslave people to control them to survey and punish them and in another world. technology will be

a service of the individual technology would be used to to access to cultures to share knowledge to get in better contact with democracy to democracy. i guess the difference between the two is the way we handle technology is or relationship as human beings to technology some would say oh i understand nothing about technology i don't really want to know but not knowing that knowledge is a bit like not knowing how to read and write so it is about the sharing of knowledge on why technology matters so much what the very notion of the architecture of the communication networks we use matters so much why personal data and privacy so far amounts to other fundamental freedom let me kind of take apart what you've just said i mean i think it's very obvious certainly the the the

freedom part of the internet the part of the internet that makes the world small that makes it so you know facebook for example you can see your friends living all around the world you know what they're doing so the places they're going the music there and you know that can make it culturally really a neat thing for anyone in this world we saw sort of with the arab spring what twitter did in that realm but you said that you know on the negative aspect the technology could be used to control people and in slaves people what do you mean by that. well that's my point but there's a crucial importance of the notion of architecture of communication systems when you refer to twitter and facebook those are heavily centralized infrastructure that's are in the hands of private sector private corporations we know everything about you and the difference between those centralized service and the decentralized service that everyone can use as well is fundamental one key if the

government wants to access the data on a centralized platform they just have to to seize the materials that just have to issue subpoenas or get court orders and they may access those if they don't also all these data are stored in one point can leak sometime in the future and then all of the life of people will be exposed so it is really about making the distinction and about it is about who you trust and who you don't and those technical intermediaries of the internet are getting such a crucial role people trust them without even knowing what they're about people accept those contracts when they subscribe and accounts on facebook and twitter without even reading them and this is something extremely different when you just imagine for instance you mentioned are bringing a dip in a new regime before falling harvested the fuss word of the tunisian citizens.

by snooping on the communication the power that's one government could of gain over its citizens by get things we know in real time what they do on facebook and such websites is tremendous and we have massive examples around the world i think that's a really good point and a lot of people would be surprised to know a lot of people here in the united states a it's not just for example ben ali it's not just leaders in other faraway countries i mean there is talk now that even the united states government wanted to you know there was talk that the hamas i believe twitter page that they wanted to shut that down so talk a little bit about that. of course it's all around the world it's not only in the most brutal dictatorships i mean even russia it's recently a blacklist of websites that are censored from the internet and the so-called

western democracies play a great role in the surveillance of the communications for instance there's a french company i mean sold to get the levy off nationwide interception system that helps monitor and serve a let's all older communications in the in libya so. the governments are increasingly trying to get a hold on the internet that can control communications online and they can use those extremely powerful centralized private companies just meter in these books to access their cities in the gulf so that the only solution is for people to do to understand the crucial importance of privacy in the d.c. kristie of online communication and to get into using those encryption to that a lot of people to protect themselves their personal that that's a protect themselves their private communications with a strong mathematical tools that the state can break only with extremely

difficult and costly efforts yeah a it's almost like the more expansive the internet gets the more these governments are also want their power over it to be expanded is very interesting let me switch gears for a second jeremy i want to talk briefly about your one of your call authors julian assigned she has of course been holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london for months and months now talk a little bit about out first of all how he was able to contribute to this book and second of all how what we saw happen with him and with the wiki leaks leaks website sort of is an example of what you guys have spoken about in your buck. yes well. to me there's no question about it during the sollecito hero and wiki leaks of public interest. is rest since political asylum granted by ecuadorian government actually prove he's allegations that

the. case is not about being extradited to sweden for being heard in this very flaky case of minor rape you know the ecuadorian government going from the risk is extremely serious that's easy gets extradited to sweden you would then be x. ray that extradited to the u.s. where he would probably never exit the country. currently has the whole of the u.s. government against him there is a tremendous majestic storm against him that that's one thing. the ration of we can take but at the very beginning of it we can lead is an initiative of the very few people who are just using a free and open internet in order to do what they believe was the right thing to do and this is the promise of the free and open internet that these biased since

universal where everybody can participate where everybody can innovate where everybody can think of new ways of attempting to change the world and i think that this is this power of the individuals who are free and open internet that cares so much the government and the big dominant operation who are teaming up to attempt to control their internet today certainly some really big questions being asked in your new book cypherpunks at want to thank you so much for being on the shell jeremy zimmerman joining us from paris france my pleasure. all right well that's going to do it for us for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america or check out our web site r t v dot com slash usa we often do a lot of stories there that we don't have a chance to get to hear on the air and of course you can follow me on twitter i'm at christine for example.