since coming into office president obama has expanded to drone warfare around the globe now it appears his administration is laying the groundwork for future presidents to use the high tech spying and killing machines but could this be a power grab by detective work. and trying to stop leaks of classified information the white house is 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 everyone loves a parade but some are seeing red after confidential information including social security numbers turned into confetti at the macy's thanksgiving day parade how could this happen some answers in the.

whole good evening it's monday november twenty sixth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine frizz out and you are watching our t.v. . 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 list secret terrorist list that the president decided he must personally give the green light for each of those targeted deaths well it's turned it turns out is 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 won and ministration officials were concerned that if clear standards and procedures were not in place the targeted killings would simply be dictated by whoever is in office as opposed to

having that set of rules and guidelines in place to stick to talk more about this i was joined earlier by colonel morris davis a professor at howard university school of law as well as a former prosecutor at guantanamo bay now we first discussed how doesn't seem to be an end in sight for the war on terror you know war on terror is a war without end because really a war on a tactic not a group of people you know terror camps surrenders will be fighting this war for you know long as we move yeah and it we should mention 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 it for you know the twenty sixteen president whoever that might be what do you think that says that there is now sort of an architecture in place. all 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 you know 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 put 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 if i decided that they needed or were most concerned about i don't know 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 than they are for 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 and that has 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 you put a label on it call it patriotic like the usa patriot act right. which is really the we're scared to death so we give up are really 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 that they may present a united front but but within the walls of the white house and capitol hill 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 discussed 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 the administration that kind of. solve this issue and 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. is 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 in 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 you know there are still some questions that i think pose some real serious problems it is hard to remember but about four years ago pro. didn't obama who has 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 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 is one not shut down but most of these policies that we're seeing that we're learning about running still counter to that those campaign messages a 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 and what i think happened was i think president obama believes what he said back in two thousand and eight and 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 of law i think he meant what

he said i think you took office you know the economy falling off a cliff get health care reform was his number one priority and then 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 in cracking the top ten list so i hope there's some talk that in a second term when he took office the first time you talked about a reset on relations with other countries in a second term perhaps you ought to be a reset on our national security policies so that we have policies that we can live with whether it's barack obama sitting behind the chair or mitt romney yeah and certainly some of those you know when when first coming into office there was sort of things written set in stone of. out torture of prisoners but what i found interesting to was there are always loopholes and that's what makes it tough is you just can't do it you can't make a sweeping law because you know least under this administration because you know

between the cia and the defense for men and the justice department everybody wants to have out clauses i guess you would say in order to to do that i guess is the last thing i want to ask you is. kind of what surprised you most about what came out in this article what came out earlier this year in the article about the kill list and which direction this country's going in i guess what most surprised me was 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 classified not a bad thing innocent fortunate that we have to depend on 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 in 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. still ahead here on our team 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 tackle that issue.

you. say.

welcome to the capital and i'm laurie mr. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that many americans

call i don't know. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about my sorrow. you know what my sales. want to say to featurism a liberal democrats. because there's really. no call for you to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're a profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm not me martin and we're going to break that. 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 report wrongdoing when they witness it president obama released

a memo last week to the heads of executive departments and agent agencies about the national insider threat policy now the purpose is to help detect threats on the inside in other words employees working inside the government who might have information the president doesn't want being made public according to that memo these threats encompass potential espionage violent acts against the government of the nation and unauthorized disclosure of classified information including the vast amounts of classified data available and interconnect to united states government computer networks the concern here though is that this memo might be a larger attempt to silence whistleblowers since one of the provisions restricts contact between government officials and reporters to speak more about this i was joined by kevin stole a blogger 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 to 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 policies and 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 tax purposes because after that they formed a working group and started to put together this activity yeah absolutely seeing as bradley manning was a member of the military and you know was 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 do i mean as far as bradley manning i mean this is 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 in a superfluid 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 were 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 fiscal year 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 reduce access to information that the public has a right to know he goes on to say without transparency and informed public debate on foreign policy and national security topics american voters would be ill equipped to elect the policy makers who make important decisions in these areas really interesting cabinet 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 senator wyden. well i suppose it has to do with the fact that there are very few senators and even you know congressman 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 targeted killing programs or whatever might be happening overseas in the way of special operations those things that really deserves 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 so 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 do you 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 less kind of going to detail to having a balcony aspect of this and what do you think it says that the administration has no qualms about trying to limit new yeah exactly. 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 the 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 could 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 in 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 news story but at least helps you understand the way that an agency functions so you can have the right information you need to start to publish the story becoming just last question i mean a lot of people that hear about the say you know what these protections are needed classified information is that way for a reason when u.s. security is at risk 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 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 unlawful or corrupt is going on in covering 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 spending 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. blogger at firedoglake thanks so much well let's shift our attention now to the issue of privacy and take a look at some of the glaring examples of privacy problems that exist it turns out

that some of the confetti at the macy's thanksgiving day parade was not confetti at all but shredded documents from the nassau county police department and the shredding well it doesn't it wasn't done very well when one young man started to collect it after he noticed something strange with bits of paper that fell on his friend's jacket here is a little bit from a local news report with more details she looked at offered and it says isis and and then there's a number and that's you know written like a social security number like that's really bizarre it looked like this we've blurred out the social security number and other information but it made the college freshman concerned so he and his friends picked up more of their phone numbers on it addresses more social security numbers license plate numbers and then we find like all these and similar reports from police in fact some of the confetti strips mentioned arrest records and had official police reports. well it turns out

some of the so-called confetti also included information about mitt romney's motorcade from when he was in town and also identified detectives including those who worked undercover to talk more about this and other privacy problems i was joined earlier by r.t. correspondent stasia charkha pretty people who have heard this story it's really hard to get over how ridiculous it sounds because when we think of confetti the first thing that pops into mind are these little round colorful pieces of paper right but as we just saw in that report the ones in question here are long and pretty wide strips of paper that you don't even need to you know put together to be able to read the information that they contain and it's incredible how much information was held in the so-called confetti i mean like you say undercover police information no less the presidential candidates motorcade you know and it was just like a ok let's throw around this fun pieces of paper it's really people are saying

what's next are they going to start selling puzzles as you know christmas gift so you can put them together and see some sort of secrets a state secret information it's really ridiculous and some people who are actually concerned are saying what else is out there i mean if it's that easy to have somebody throw around secret information from the state what's what else can be out there that people don't know of because another vigilant college student didn't catch it yet give him one point for trying to recycle but negative a thousand points for what was actually being shredded in the way it was being shredded it must have been very strange to to see this it isn't surprising example of course but let's remember too we are in a digital age so much of what we do not only isn't private but will live on forever take a listen. i don't know how many times i have to go on the air and tell people your privacy is not private when it comes to your actions on line we hear stories like

this all the time teachers other people losing their job because of a picture posted on facebook talk a little bit about this on a. well i mean christine we all know that in this day and age anybody who you know to quote george w. bush uses the internet has heard trillions of times that i do you should not be posting tweeting or e-mailing anything that you would be ashamed to see on a magazine cover because that's how private the internet is and we know that with twitter for example even a deleted tweet is there forever with facebook they own the photos that you have once posted there they remain on facebook even though if you delete them they are still owned by the company you know even apps like snap chat for example that have been quite popular recently where users are kind of promise that their photos will be destroyed and say ten seconds after the recipient sees them there's still no promise you know nobody made taking snapshots of screenshots illegal so you never

know who is going to do that and kind of reveal your private information and of course we're not even getting into the whole area of emails being monitored and so on it's just really funny that in this kind of self obsessed self centered culture people are tweeting and posting these very personal and private details about themselves thinking they're just sending them to friends or acquaintances but in reality just because these actions are so light and take a couple of seconds to post they're not light at all and kind of quite important consequences and people know this yet one after another fall into these traps and we can talk about this without talking about some of the lessons that people famous people even have learned about sexting one of the most well known examples of course was dubbed again anthony weiner the democratic congressman from new york with sending suggestive photos of himself over twitter there was also congressman christopher lee's who ended up resigning after sexting a woman on craigslist there's

a football player brett farve who's photo we actually can't show you but it was sent along with some grass graphic text messages to a former playboy model he was speaking to and who can. forget tiger woods whose extramarital affair was made public after his mistress released the text messages and voice mails that he had sent so you know these are of course some of the most high profile examples of how what you do is much harder than ever to hide from but honestly in your reporting on privacy matters i know you've done a lot are people learning to live in this digital world and where do we go from here well a lot in terms of are they learning christine you know apparently not because these examples keep coming up more and more often you know as people get more involved in new wear and newer social networking sites so this is something that we're seeing all the time i mean when we're seeing these high profile people when we're seeing you know cia generals obviously not being able to keep their privacy secret online how can anybody else be able to you know learn to do that but in terms of our you

know where do we go from here is either people are going to have to be more conservative online you know and try to keep some of these private photos or private messages to themselves which is not likely going to happen as you know of course with all of these examples and many more that we still are probably will be hearing and you know months and years to come but maybe the public needs to just kind of relax a little bit and get over it if sexting is now going to be a part of the you know everyday reality when social networking is all around us maybe people should start treating it like lightly but also that's something that's not very likely to happen of course because we live in a kind of scandal obsessed society so very likely that anything that comes out there is going to be buzzed about but that's just one of the risks people should take and case of these high profile personalities if they're going to do that those are the consequences and i think you raise a really good point honest as you know that something that only takes fifteen seconds or a minute people you know doesn't cross their mind but what gets me and what is so

interesting being here in washington is lawmaker after lawmaker politician after politician doing these scandalous things with digital media and not learning you know from their other coworkers and colleagues who have gone down in scandal they're making the same mistakes at least it makes for exciting times here are the correspondent ana stasia churkin a. well that's 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 you can also check out additional stories at our website r.t. dot com slash usa and of course you should be following me on twitter i'm at christine for now have a great time.