coming up on r t the us supreme court today ruled that a civil rights group does not have standing to challenge the government's warrantless wiretapping program an update on the fly so fight ahead. and it's a government agency charged with keeping the u.s. safe so what are the biggest threats the secretary of homeland security outlined some of the issues today we'll fill you in. and an apology goes a long way but don't tell the u.n. that the united nations is refusing to compensate haiti's half a million plus color of victims and their families will look at the case ahead. it's tuesday february twenty sixth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. it was a pretty court today made a decision that could have a big impact on your right to privacy in

a five to four vote the supreme court ruled that people do not have the legal standing to challenge the foreign intelligence surveillance act the law allows the government to intercept foreign communications of a lawsuit as part of a group of civil rights or it's from a group of civil rights advocates and journalists that challenge the foreign intelligence surveillance act some things you should know about face of the law allows the n.s.a. to wiretap conversations of u.s. citizens phones without awards it was first signed into law back in one nine hundred seventy eight and the supreme court today there were a leg means lawyers cannot challenge the law in federal court what the court did not consider is whether or not the law is constitutional and earlier today i was joined by dinner mccall director of open government program at epic and i asked her how this ruling could be a catch twenty two and what it means for your privacy. it is very problematic because standing is a preliminary question that has to be answered before the supreme court can ever get to the merits that is the constitutionality of five cells and what the court

set out here basically is a scheme understanding that it makes it very difficult for anyone to challenge five because the law and the activities surrounding it are so secret it's very difficult for any plaintiff to obtain the facts necessary under this ruling to actually be able to get standing and to allow the supreme court to then consider the merits of . now the supreme court ruled by can't be challenged in these cases or it's very hard for it to be challenged what's interesting though is that the ruling did not weigh in on the constitutionality of this law can you explain this it did not what we've seen recently is that the supreme court has been rolling very narrowly if there's a way that they cannot reach an issue of constitutionality they will select that path so here they used standing as a way to avoid that question of constitutionality it doesn't necessarily rule out

the possibility that the constitutionality could later be challenged but the factual scenarios under this ruling that would allow for that kind of challenge are exceptionally narrow it would be very difficult for plaintiffs to be able to meet that standard under this ruling so no one has any legal standing because they can't prove that they're being watched through flag is there any way or what how would it be possible that for the court to ever look into the laws constitutionality it would be very difficult that's exactly the problem here is that the activity surrounding pfizer these intercepts these wiretaps are so secret that it's difficult for anyone to get the facts necessary to be able to make the showing to get standing under this ruling because basically said it and have no idea whether or not they're being spied on is there any way for somebody to know well the supreme court did consummate. laid a factual scenario under which. some five intercept is for instance used in a case against

a foreign national then that foreign nationals lawyer may be able to challenge under the fourth amendment but the reality of the five intercepts is that they're very rarely used in any real criminal proceedings they're used to build the backbone of national security information collection and information sharing but ultimately what does this mean for citizens privacy the ruling today just makes it one more layer of secrecy and makes it more difficult to get any sort of judicial oversight of these very secretive programs that the n.s.a. and the other national security agencies are engaging in it it destroys accountability. now for those that are concerned who is more susceptible to government spying to being monitored under this program well five those sets it up so that if you are a citizen of the united states and you are communicating with someone who is outside of the united states that communication could potentially be intercepted so people most at risk would be people who are communicating with those outside of the

united states in this instance it was journalists attorneys human rights activists those sorts of people would be very much at risk especially since they may be talking with potential plaintiffs or people who could be caught up in investigations by the federal government so i mean one of the wider implications of this do you think that journalists now might feel that they need to watch out the way they're who they're communicating with and you know the manner in which they're communicating for fear of being wiretapped well we have these very important privileges set up within our system for attorney client privilege we have standards of confidentiality built into our journalism and the integrity standards surrounding journalism and this undermines that. it makes it very difficult for there to be attorney client privilege it makes it very difficult for a journalist to guarantee to an informant or someone who's talking to them that

there's actual confidentiality in those conversations do you think that this could potentially change the way that people communicate this ruling today it could it could chill legitimate speech it certainly makes it very difficult. to expect any sort of candidness in conversations with attorneys with human rights activists with journalists with the very sort of people that we want to be able to talk freely very important ruling today a very interesting case. unfortunately we're not hearing too much about it but we're glad that you could fill us in that was ginger mccall director of open government program at pic agenda paula time to tell you delivered a state of the homeland security address and while the media hoopla is all about seaquest ration the homeland security secretary covered a lot of ground we know reach our next d.h. three point zero if you will and as you'll see the software metaphor is really all on a politician to discuss everything from cyber security to immigration and our producer

rachel curtis was at the brookings institute and to me earlier way in the studio with a d brief on a politician as a dress secretary. made cybersecurity a huge portion of her speech so we've edited together some of the more interesting and important moments of that if we'd like to take a listen to it. the cyber realm wasn't even a major priority of the early department and now it is one of our five core mission areas over the past four years we have built and deployed systems to detect intrusions and defend federal cyber networks we've expanded our twenty four seven watch center the end kick we have comprehensive plans in place to manage cyber incidents and to stay ahead of rapidly evolving threats and technology we are moving aggressively to recruit educate and train our cyber workforce for the future we need greater information sharing so that the government can learn from the

private sector where people fight this threat every day and we need to ensure that the government can use information at various levels of classification to help the private sector protect itself. well we've seen in proposed piece of legislation before example and even and in her speech we just heard this focus on the public and the private sector is working together to share information how did secretary napolitano. reiterate that today sure so first she brought up the idea that there might be some sort of civil liberties issues with this that it might affect privacy in the way that she kind of got rid of those concerns was by saying listen public public sector and business information sharing is something we already do and she brought up the example of aviation she said listen essentially what happens already is that the t.s.a. and different airlines share information to ensure airline safety and she also

talked about who should be in charge of cyber security in the first place she says listen i understand that the department of defense has a much larger budget for dealing with this they have their own cyber command but what's important is that while the g.-o. d. can deal with cyber threats that occur internationally the department of homeland security is better suited to deal with domestic threats the one issue there is that once something is in the virtual realm these distinctions between national and international become a bit of relevant interesting want to shift gears a little bit now because i know that she did cover a lot of ground immigration of course of a very hot topic today what did she say on that front sure so she had a lot to say and most of it was very positive in regards to the work of the department of homeland security under her tenure if we'd like to take a listen to that we now enforce our immigration laws according to common sense priorities focused on the greatest threats to our communities. previously this was not the case meaning the college student who came here with her parents when she

was a child was considered the same priority as a drug smuggler this was changed last year alone we removed more than two hundred fifty thousand criminals from the united states but can you go into more about what what stance she was taking what direction does it seem she wants to take the whole immigration debate today in the law yeah absolutely well she would talk a lot about congress needing to take some sort of action in this regard but i want to do a little bit of fact checking on what she just said right there essentially she said we removed a ton of people who were criminals who would have provided a safety threat to people in the united states but as the immigration and customs enforcement said themselves and some data they released forty five thousand parents parents who arrived in the country illegally without documentation but whose children are legally american were taken from their children in the first six months of two thousand and twelve alone so figure of those two hundred fifty

thousand people that she just mentioned forty five thousand of them in the first six months alone are parents and the thing is that deported immigrants who try and three enter which often parents who have children still in the united states do are considered felons and they're considered top priority for immediate removal so when we hear that word criminal we really need to think a little bit about what it means in the d.h.s.s. and in regard to these deportations there's some really interesting facts about this a lot of conservatives are saying that obama hasn't been very strong that he's kind of left a soft open border but under president obama and secretary napolitano we're set to reach two million deportations by the end of this year by the end of two thousand and thirteen which is more than all of the deportations from eight hundred from eighty ninety set eighty ninety two to nine hundred ninety seven combined well so that definitely puts puts it all into perspective there it certainly changes the way you're thinking about how the dia test is dealing with the protection. well you know the v.h.s. of this organization it is just ten years old or relatively new or part of the cat

obama's cabinet issues set on making any big changes to get that feeling yes so when she was talking about department of homeland security three point zero as you brought up in your introduction she's the idea is that it's supposed to be more flexible more proactive as opposed to reactive in the huge way that they're planning on doing that is as we mentioned before this information sharing the idea is if you get information in real time and you're able to get it to local law enforcement people you know in federal government all of these things we can do a better job of dealing with these threats but one thing that she never talked about was how getting all of this data might have a very negative effect on on the privacy and liberty of people in the united states very interesting rachel thanks for staying on top of this that was our producer rachel curtis well we know that drones have become critical to u.s. military strategy and the technology has taken pilots off the battlefield and allows them to fly drones from remote locations far away from any combat zone but

while these pilots are physically out of harm's way a new study shows that drone pilots are not spared the psychological trauma the study by the armed forces health surveillance center found that pilots that operate drones experience the same rate of post-traumatic stress disorder depression and anxiety as soldiers deployed in iraq and afghanistan to discuss what's behind this i'm joined now by dr sue dubose he's an emergency medicine physician and iraq war veteran he's also the founder of the battle continues dot org welcome doctor great to have you here it is great to be here thank you know this study suggests that even though drone pilots they aren't at imminent danger they still face health hazards what are behind these findings i'm not surprised to hear this it comes down to mental stress basically i mean even from my personal experience what i saw out there is it's not always the you know pay. and so these warriors who are injured who get p.t.s.d. it's the ones who are almost injured are the ones who face imminent danger so

p.t.s.d. or post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder and it's defined as an anxiety disorder that is from an out of the ordinary traumatic event that is perceived to be a threat on your life so this can be from combat it can be from assault it can be for many things and often drone operators there you know doing missions that involve life and death so i'm not surprised by these findings right so it seems whether you're whether or not you're actually in the situation or doing it from afar killing somebody is killing somebody and you're going to face that reality one way or another. it is i mean in the military we were always taught to follow the mission so you know whether the mission is driving tanks whether the mission is being a medico whether the mission is operating a drone you have to follow your mission and off and combat zones you're in danger

or you're making critical decisions in that mission where life and death is involved in this can have psychological impact. you know we hear stories of soldiers that are deployed and you know as you said they witnessed the horrors of war and they come home feeling alienated from civilian life but drone operators even though they aren't actually deployed can they face that same kind of feeling that they gauge didn't and this is a remote warfare but they still have this experience of war and they come out come back come home to their families kind of facing the same kind of alienation definitely i mean these are defined you know out of the ordinary traumatic events and you know most of us are used to these events and you know usually in the combat zone we see young soldiers who are eighteen nineteen years old and they're basically tossed from high school straight into the combat. so on and you know i won't ever forget the story of you know some of these guys who just come up to me

and you know hand me their weapon and they're like doc you know i can't take it anymore it's just an incredible amount of stress that the soldiers are going through so similarly you know when operating a drone these are out of the ordinary you know mental mentally stressing advance and this can cause the same symptoms which is why are there even instances that drone operators can be subject even more stress than traditional pilots i was reading you know just the nature of their work they're kind of staring at the same place for hours and days on end and they're kind of they see when they're doing it remotely they kind of keep a close eye on the area and they keep after the traumatic event has happened they still continue to monitor the area whereas if you're actually there you tend to flee and not stick around so could that have these psychological impacts as well i'm not sure if there's like a study to show that is the reason it's happening and that's the whole enigma about

p.t.s.d. i mean we don't really know i mean why is it that you know according to the rand studies that you know out of every four. warriors that go to war that one of them comes back potentially with p.t.s.d. what is it in that one person is it how they're hardwired is it what they faced and you know as we learn more and more and more about this over the years we'll figure out what the moment is so certainly we're seeing that there are health health concerns with operating a drone this kind of new warfare. i wonder if drone operators are screened in the same way that traditional military. and military soldiers whether they're you know when they're in the field if they're screened in the same way. the screening is also very challenging because you know as an emergency room physician myself for instance if i have a patient with a heart attack. i can do an e.k.g. and look for it i can do

a blood test and look for you know the trip on in value and i can see that they have a heart attack but p.t.s.d. these are invisible wounds mental alertness and i guess it's hard to hard to screen for it even because there's no test that can give the diagnosis it's a clinical diagnosis where you have to just look at the symptoms the patients are having and a lot of times you also have to rely on. the soldiers coming forward telling you what they're experiencing emotionally and psychologically so much of that here a lot of a lot of these soldiers will go undiagnosed right definitely a lot of them go on diagnosed and you know for the listeners out there what i would say is the onus is on the boss the society the family members that have to recognize this because you know it isn't going to be a magical test that discovers this it's not going to be some sort of a government you know policy it's going to be that family member that loved one out there who's going to catch this and it's important to recognize the symptoms you

know are the symptoms i would say they divide into three categories two of which are very easily recognizable so there's. so hyper vigilance anxiety getting easily startled there's flashback so you're reliving those and having nightmares still is usually you know those two categories are usually identifiable but the family members out there what they should look out for is also avoidance where things that normally the soldier like to do or the drone operator like to do they're withdrawing from that they're withdrawing from family members kind of becoming secluded and i think the listeners out there can recognize that and hopefully seek help it's a very interesting study and i appreciate you telling us all about it that was dr city of pows in emergency medicine physician iraq war veteran and founder of the battle continues dot org. also here on our it's an apology goes a long way but don't tell the u.n. that the united nations is refusing to. i've been saved haiti is half a million plus color of victims and their families will take

a look at this case after the break. the same story doesn't make it news no softball interviews no pop pieces to me top twenty. little words you're the only one of the. well now to a country that's in a constant struggle to pick up the pieces it was in two thousand and ten that an earthquake struck haiti killing more than three thousand people united nations

peacekeepers had already been in haiti since two thousand and four and stayed there to deal with the destruction but they are hurt more than they helped a cholera outbreak in haiti that claimed more than eight thousand lives was traced back to u.n. peacekeepers and the global peacekeeping organization first denied any involvement now the u.n. has rejected a claim to compensate the more than half a million cholera victims and their families and the victims never got an apology earlier i was joined by alex mayne senior associate for international policy at the center for economic policy research and our team producer many below who reported from the from haiti on the issue i start off by asking alex why isn't the u.n. being held accountable. that's a very good question and the u.n. is often associated with humanitarian action in this case they have created an even greater humanitarian crisis in haiti their peacekeepers that were there since two thousand and four peacekeepers from the paul brought the cholera bacteria to haiti

and it spread very quickly and although it hasn't been in the news much lately the color situation is actually getting much worse and i guess do you think that this tragedy could have been affected we're talking about a thousand lives could have been prevented rather well absolutely i mean had the u.n. screened those troops that have gone in and made sure that none of them carried that bacteria that would have been one way to do it but also avoiding dumping their waste into a major waterway and that's in fact how it was spread throughout the country that could have been entirely avoided as well i want to ask you because i know you were in haiti not too long ago so you kind of saw the situation there for us had haiti has not been spared misery the country has been plagued by natural disasters that earthquake we mentioned earlier poverty how does something like this make a bad situation even worse i think that that's actually the best way to see to put it because if you look at the u.n. and you talk to the average haitian you ask them what the u.n.

is there for the general answer is you know i don't i don't really know the u.n. the fact the matters have been there for almost ten years now since two thousand and four and they're seen more as an occupying force more than as a as a helping force and it's hard it's hard to to miss the presence of the un there now one actually important thing that i want to throw in there is that the support the c.d.c. is and the pan american health organization have both said that it would actually cost international community about anywhere from eight hundred thousand to one point one billion dollars to revamp the country's infrastructure to provide possible water clean drinking water to every haitian in the country we're talking about a country of ten million people one time payment of one billion dollars that's the same amount of money that the united nations spends to keep these thousands of u.n. troops. station here in haiti every year a billion dollars every year if that when he was just reallocated to actually revamp the infrastructure of the country that would be a big help alex i want to ask you if steps aren't taken to has all of this problem and as you as you have mentioned it's not going away if it seems like it's getting

worse how will it continue to devastate the country will absolutely continue i mean the world health organization predicts that you know they'll be something like one hundred thousand more infections during the coming year of color of something isn't done but there is a plan on the table that exists that the u.n. has actually backed the two point two billion dollars plan because that's what's needed to provide haiti with adequate water infrastructure in order to provide that clean drinking water that can get rid of the cholera epidemic however the u.n. has not really stepped up to the plate in terms of funding they've only provided one percent of that funding so far but they really have a responsibility to do a lot more and as we know haiti at the. top poverty is a huge problem their lack of access to resources and so how dependent is this country on these non-governmental organizations to clean this mess up oh absolutely the i mean haiti really has a very weak institutions at the moment their health ministry very few people to

help deal with this epidemic they've been completely reliant on international help and that help has been dwindling international aid organizations been pulling out despite the fact that the epidemic has actually spiked again last december we saw something like twelve thousand cases the previous december with eight thousand cases of the situation again is actually getting worse at the moment. appreciate your shedding some light on this really troubling situation over there in haiti that was alex main senior associate for the international policy at c.e. p.r. and many rob lowe his producer breaking the set. and now to a look inside iran as the international community continues in goshi ations and kazakstan over today over the country's long disputed nuclear program the country's might be getting closer to a compromise a compromise that could be the key to lifting crippling economic sanctions are

tease them or if an ocean is on the ground it's a ron and give us a look at how the country is moving forward despite economic hardship. the international ban on iranian oil cost the country around forty billion dollars in two thousand and twelve according to the u.s. but despite the huge gap in iran income officials had some good news in the harsh sanctions normal experts have increased by police the cheapest and for me a. column in this what they look like a bad thing well they actually play a whole lot of oil we've been asking our government there many years to decrease the penultimate i will not be in the argument i was too high up around eighty percent of the time making our economy to vulnerable now i'm say today is a huge number of opportunity of mine we get rid of the dangerous oil deal in the us and iran actually has a lot of the tentative resources to feed from the well known copper is just a while minerals and so it's wanting to street in to the cooler and he's finding

that in one frame it's at the. mine in the last couple of years having brought their bills without having damaging large ball. here in the country under sanctions that shows are doing better than ever that more never our currency rielle fell by almost forty percent in october but i sell because that is both at home and abroad and identified it from price rises and he went into sessions and responses to more than a hundred countries worldwide but even if farmers cannot send them abroad to confident these new looming. thousands of industry workers also benefits which has been overcome the country's highest ever inflation the amount of production and price of the stash it is a fact i want to make every year the as a ten twenty percent of my salary i have some bonus to my daily payment but for users to use the most for tax incentive for free while international sanctions

don't stare actually targets assumed industries current measures affected banking safe in making financial transactions and had not supplied. the also. the banks that are not in u.s. and europe maybe in china no south america be penalized them for dealing with you know that the mean they're the main problem which is actually really good internationally people who live like gold in the structures must be green one way round look goofy these small knots have great how benefits especially for demand well for the country you don't feel good friend you're on the biggest no life which has always been a significant social revenue and as the latest round of sanctions ever it's also something iran may have to rely on even before. we know. from iran. well for many prisoners letters from family and friends is the only way to keep in touch but that lot of communication is blocked at one florida county jail only

allowing mail to come in the form of postcards now the a.c.l.u. in florida is fighting back in a class action lawsuit against flagler county they say the post-card only policy is unconstitutional according to the daytona beach news journal former flagler county sheriff don fleming started the program in january of two thousand and eleven in the new rules meant inmates could only receive four by six postcards the sheriff says the policy is meant to make the prison safe for the family and friends of inmates say it strips them of their right to communicate with loved ones and it also raises questions of journalists being able to interact with prisoners in private and i am going to leave it off there but from our the stories we covered you know you can always check out our you tube channel you tube dot com pleasure to america and you can also follow me on twitter at liz walther now have a great night.