coming up on r t it's been over a month since internet activists aaron swartz took his own life and i will speak to his partner about his death the news that the department of justice was prosecuting swartz for political reasons. and a judge rules key documents in the whistleblower case of bradley manning have been released we're scanning through the documents and we'll have an update on the pretrial hearing. and too big to fail but not too big to take billions of dollars of your money now u.s. senator wants answers as to why taxpayers are paying out eighty three billion dollars a year in subsidies to big banks are to look at the issue head. it's wednesday february twenty seventh they begin here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. we begin tonight with new developments in the case of aaron swartz in

a recent closed door hearing regarding the computer fraud prosecution of the internet activist it was revealed by the justice department by a justice department representative swartz was indeed targeted because of his politics back in two thousand its warts and others laid out their views in a piece called the guerilla open access manifesto the manifesto according to the justice department demonstrated his intent and downloading content on a large scale earlier i was joined by swartz is a partner at the time terrence berkner kaufman is the executive director of some of us dot org and she started by giving us a little background on the manifesto. so was published on blogs several years ago and it was coauthored by a few different people and it's actually unclear what role aaron played in in writing it begin with but the basic content of it is saying look like academic literature is really important scientific literature is really important. for all

these reasons and a lot of it isn't even under copyright and yet it's locked up behind pay walls that mean that people in developing countries and people who don't work at academic institutions can't afford to access it even though the authors of the richer want people to be able to read it and there's just these corporations basically that are set up to make people pay for stuff that should be free and the manifesto is saying look like this isn't fair these documents should be available freely yes herron and i have interviewed aaron a number of times on this show and he was very outspoken about internet freedoms and i do want to play a clip now. of some of his appearances on the show. so what it is it's sort of a patriot act for the internet that allows the government to go to providers like facebook and google and so on and ask them for data without a warrant i can't think of any possible justification and nobody's pointed to a single case where somebody has been put in danger because the government didn't lie which is crazy is to say oh the laws unclear you might be breaking it but we're

going to do is throw you all in jail seize all the data shut down the entire website take all of your money and then have a decision about whether what you did is legal or not. so well was it about aaron's message that perhaps the justice department didn't like. well you know you know we don't actually know what's going on here because the justice department and the prosecutors are stonewalling us getting the information we need to figure it out but like aaron has done a number of things that just the f.b.i. the justice department didn't like over the years he opposed soca which the justice department was for he. had downloaded these documents from the pacer database which the f.b.i. investigated him for and decided that it was actually completely legal and he had done hadn't broken any laws but he was on their radar had an f.b.i. file and i really need to know an errant family needs to know who made the decisions here who decided to persecute him like this and why and the testimony of

the of the justice department officials to congress point in the direction of this being a political prosecution that this was because of his views on copyright and his views on internet freedom and this was done to be a deterrent to other activists and not just like this you know not not what it should i mean the honest thing to do would be to say this is a guy who did something what do we think that just outcome in this for this person's life is and instead they were holding him up as an example because political view now the prosecution was coming down on aaron for. allegedly downloading all these articles from further with the intent to distribute these files i want to ask you since you didn't know aaron a very well what was his intent and downloading these files. you know i don't know the answer because. aaron was so like he felt so under siege the whole time that we

were dating that he couldn't talk about his motives with me he was worried that i would be subpoenaed and i didn't have privilege we weren't married and so i could be forced to testify potentially and so we never talked about that. but i would say that you know he the prosecutors talked about his intent in their press releases but it's actually irrelevant the legal case the legal cases should be about you know what did you actually do and he didn't distribute the articles and there's no evidence that he intended to distribute the articles other than the fact that he had published this thing that he like helped write a few years earlier on his blog that wasn't about the specific action. so it's really seemed irrelevant to the legal case now terry and i read your blog post there and you mentioned that aaron thought that the prosecution was based more on a misunderstanding than on a political vendetta and your errant girlfriend that you knew him pretty well do

you think that he might still be with us today if he knew if he knew this if he knew the truth. i don't know that. being a political prosecution would have made it any easier i mean i don't think that he thought it was a pure misunderstanding like the prosecutors in this case were clearly abusing their power but they also clearly just didn't understand the internet they don't understand technology one of the press releases said you know there's no difference between stealing with a computer and stealing with a crowbar which. our friend larry lessig because that means you obviously don't understand either computers or crowbars. lastly i want to ask you because a little bit of a development here the white house has announced a new directive that makes taxpayer funded research available to the public from government agencies do you think that this was in response to aaron's death and if so is this enough of a response i mean i think that there have been a number of promising developments on open access over the last two years not just

after he died jay store started publishing some other very small portion of their database publicly shortly after aaron was indicted in it and. you know i think it's brought a lot of attention to this really important issue but i also think you know it's never going to bring aaron back and the things and we've done with his life were much more than this and it don't also only a first step like we need all academic journal articles from all of history should be available for free online there's just no reason they shouldn't be and this is only a small step in that direction terrine a very sorry for your loss and appreciate you coming on the show that was karen steinbrenner kaufman she's also the executive of some of us dot org thank you very much for having me. well now an update to a story we've covered closely here at our table and that is the case of army private bradley manning pretrial hearings continue to drag and while not much was discussed inside the courtroom interesting developments have emerged outside of it

the government announced today that it would start releasing court documents filed throughout the pretrial process after receiving numerous freedom of information act requests from journalists so what does this new development mean moving forward earlier today are to his own andrew blake broke down the significance of this announcement this incredibly significant i mean on paper at least choice of words but yeah. this case has been going on for a very long time you know bradley was arrested me two thousand and ten and these these pretrial motions have been occurring for over the last year now and he's not even going to be tried until june at this point which will be over over three years since he's been arrested and throughout this entire process the court has released nothing the judge has released none of her rulings there's been no transcripts that have been made public no information whatsoever about this case has been able to come out of the courtroom except. when it comes out of the people at the very few

members of the media who have been paying attention so this is really significant affected so first time ever that the government's actually letting the rest of the world the people who can't make the drive out to fort meade maryland to get to see what's actually happening the case but also the same time it's heavily redacted in comes a little bit is too little too late we're being handed now is eighty four documents out of five hundred believes it's something like thirty thousand pages altogether have been entered into the court but what are we going to see those it's already you know some of the stuff that we're looking at here is already your old so you got so you have some of it there some of the others and what is in those documents that. a whole lot that we don't already know to be honest because what comes out here are rulings from inside the court during the last year manning's defense attorney david combs on his part he has actually gone and published his own his own . matters that were introduced in the court like his own pleas his own take of the thing and he's actually been really keeping people following up on the case up to

date on this because he is the only way people been able to actually find out from inside the courtroom with the exception of the media so a lot of stuff that we've heard just you know basic motions ruling something that you know we hear on a day by day basis as this case keeps dragging on dragging on but for the people who are actually reporting on this the people who are alive the facts for the few members of the media who are actually going to for media reporting on the case against bradley manning they aren't provided this information so when you hear that bradley manning was in court today and he said this that and the other thing we only have the word of the journalists who provide us with that information and there are many of them that the government has tried to make sure that even though this is an open door proceeding nothing really escapes that room and you know. there's a great piece in the guardian today by picketing something like that all right i hope he doesn't see this but had a great piece today where he was actually saying. that you know this whole thing is kind of just like a farce that the government is trying to you know tell people that oh no we're not

silencing anyone this is like an open door meeting but you know they're going after a whistleblower alleged whistleblower accused of releasing sensitive information and the information that they're finally providing us with the case doesn't really say much at all so you have these documents but this kind of just scratches the surface as you said there's thousands of documents are we expecting to see those come out any time soon the government what they said is that because due to the sheer sheer magnitude of the these these papers are very the volumes of them are just quite extensively some thirty thousand pages over five hundred dock. it's been entered in the court as they go over and review and read and analyze these documents allude but surely we're expected to have these called into coming to the public but meanwhile we're not given and you sort of do what doesn't happen like these papers are from hearings that stretch from january two thousand and twelve in through february two thousand and thirteen and there are no court transcripts in

here what these rulings are what these papers are essentially a ruling from the judge and motions introduced by the defense and the prosecutors that are facts that we've already heard from the case just a little bit more specifically because now they're actually written down in front of us and journalists aren't sitting there trying to scratch out what's being said and what the guardian report said was that yesterday yesterday. colonel denise lind the military just resigning over this case she made two different rulings regarding the pretrial speedy trial the whole snafu because. one of those took over an hour and a half to read so that's an hour and a half we're journalists are sitting in a media room and members of the public are sitting in the courtroom trying to pay attention to an hour and a half of reading spoken by a judge with no regard seemingly to anyone else except the people directly involved in this case so this is the first time that the government's actually willing to provide the media with any sort of help assistance so some kind of

a turning point another thing that happened this week the judge denied dropping the charges defense was asking that these charges against the army private be dropped due to the conditions that the army private was subjected to leading up to this was actually the second time that he refused to dismiss charges against bradley manning you know last month they were hoping to have these charges dismissed because he was staying at quantico for months and you know the u.n. said that these conditions were tantamount to torture it was just cruel and inhumane and. eventually said ok well we'll take one hundred twelve days off of whatever sentence you can get which could be life i don't hide all right he is still facing these charges andrew thanks so much for that update that was our team lead producer andrew blake. we are going to shift our attention now up north where thousands have taken to the streets protesting tuitions hikes this was the speed of the streets in montreal where police have a portable arrested thirteen people those arrested were accused of assaulting police officers the protest was organized by a radical student group called a as. it was deemed illegal because the group failed

to give police their planned protest. for more on that demonstration i'm joined now by ashanti hathaway a correspondent for press t.v. welcome there shauntay so tell us what led up to these arrests well a lot of has to do with after about an hour and a half into the protests things started getting somewhat violent events were a little more angry after a while and first there was more of an energized environment students sort of getting angrier later on and it started with students throwing snowballs and rocks and things like that at police officers so that's when police officers decided to retaliate and then after that that that's an arrestable all right and take us back to the origin of what sparked this protest in the first place well what happened was there was a day and a half education summit that was posted here in bonn tree all and students here had elected they had really taken part of last year and wanted to get the liberal party

out of office and they wanted to elect the party who was well p.q. who had ran the campaign basically saying that they were going to free which and right well all of a sudden the story changed yesterday and there was an announcement that they were going to asian hike of seventy dollars and after that when protesters decided to come out and speak out against it mark against it but in addition to that the organization he was one of the main people who were organizing these protests they are also saying they want which unfreezes but they want government to look at greece wishing input back. interesting can you tell us how many people took part and who made up this group of protesters i know we're talking in the thousands all students were where it was apparently the teachers who made up this group of protesters so the majority of the protesters were students and majority of the students were actually sort of the more grand students here but they're also

working or if you're of the students and there were children who were also involved and just some who are back or who are also for the cause of interest ok tell us more about this group say or what were they protest what is that group about they're described as radical tell us more about this group right there kind of described in the area as more of the mills and more radical groups and basically they just their main goal right now is and i spoke about earlier is that they want free to wish and they want the government here to offer free tuition for the people who are in quebec and they think that we're back to be the leader in the world and start this whole idea of the government paying for to wish in and even though it will be taxing citizens more they believe that that's something they believe that it is their right to have wishing for higher education. and they're taking it to the streets but the protest has been deemed illegal by authorities there can you tell us why. well first of all the protesters never told police officers the how

much real police that they were actually going to be having a protest and where the protest was going to die generally of the protests but in addition to that as an hour and a half into the protest the police were let go along with their protests originally but when things started getting ugly when eggs were thrown no rocks i think they had to start forming the very arrogant they had to order first and get the whole thing under control and it's my understanding that it's a law there that protesters are mandated to tell police what their route is ahead of time is that correct exactly it all right i want to ask you how education officials have responded of doesn't seem like this is going to lead to any change well education people have responded in the area saying hey there is inflation and they really can't do very much but the university spokesperson said that the university president said that he was disappointed when she heard there was going

to be tuitions knowing that students were going to be protesting in not be happy about it because last year there were massive protests dealing with the same exact thing but overall many educators say this is the starting point and they want to talk further and see how they can handle the rising cost when it comes to education a very contentious issue over their tuition hikes appreciate you filling us in on the way everything has been playing out that was ushant i have a way as a correspondent for press t.v. . last week we reported on how groups across the country are protesting against standardized tests here in the u.s. well now the college board has announced they're going to make changes to the s.a.t.'s and that's the test that most high school students are required to take before they graduate but the reasoning behind changing the test is questionable it's not due to the demands for a change that protestors have been calling for college board president david coleman told the washington post that the new test focuses more on skills students

need to succeed in college but he also said one reason for the make over is to make sure that the test stays relevant and that's because more students are taking another standardized test the a c. t. and it seems that the worry is that this other test could take away a chunk of the standardized test market so the reason for change is to remain marketable and profitable it seems many students feel like the s.a.t.'s are a game changer and that their futures depend on how they do on the test. still ahead here on our team too big to fail but not too big to take billions of dollars of your money now u.s. senator wants answers as to why the taxpayers are paying out eighty three billion dollars a year in subsidies to big banks are to looks into the issue when we return. the same story doesn't make it news new softball interviews no coffee suze some tough questions.

let me let me i want to we're going to let me ask you a point. here on this morning because we're having a debate we have our knives out. but the truth is this time it was just about staying there to get here it is the way we're being i

don't want you to talk about theory when we. hear is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares enough about what you saw. you know what kind of terror cells you. want to see the future isn't the only liberal democrats to. secure the support of the. you know the super to distract us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage he calls it breaking news i'm happy martin and we're

going to break the set. well he turned out to the big banks and whether or not they are still too big to fail senator massachusetts senator elizabeth warren yesterday federal reserve chairman ben bernanke. excuse me though mr chairman you did not wipe out the shareholders of the largest financial institutions to the big banks because we didn't have the tools now we could well now we have the tools eighty three billion dollars says that whatever you're saying mr chairman eighty three billion dollars says there really will be a bailout for the largest financial institutions if they fail that's that's the expectation of markets but that doesn't mean this we have to do it or warren also asked if the banks are going to pay taxpayers back a big chunk of money it gets every year she citing a bloomberg study that says

a handful of the nation's biggest banks get eighty three billion dollars in subsidies annually so why are the banks getting a break to discuss i was joined earlier by anthony rammed the economic director. of research at the reason foundation i began by asking him why warrants question is so hard to answer when are we going to get rid of too big to fail. well the dodd frank back to explicitly. tells a regulatory body called the federal. it's called but it's a federal stability oversight committee to identify banks that are too big to fail and so this agency soc has named several companies that are large financial institutions effectively saying if these companies go under we have to do something about them now ben bernanke says well the markets expect that will bail these companies out but just like with fannie mae and freddie mac. before and during the lead up to the financial crisis everybody is expecting the

government to bail out banks if they don't trouble because of the belief in washington is that we have to maintain stability ben bernanke explicit mandate at the fed is to maintain price stability washington is all about trying to create stability in financial markets there's no way that if goldman sachs or j.p. morgan chase were to go insolvent that they wouldn't be bailed out so there's this expectation exists and it was explicitly put in place by the dot frank act warren there she cited this figure of eighty three billion dollars that a few banks get in subsidy isn't this is taxpayer money where the banks be able to survive without being propped up by taxpayers. well let's let's parse out this eighty three billion number because it might sound as if taxpayers are actually giving that in cash to the banks and it's not exactly what's going on if anyone in that is right yet so it's an implicit it's an implied subsidies so what that means is it's related to the way that banks borrow money so if any one of your viewers

yourself were to go get a loan you're going to pay an interest rate depending on how good your credit score is now large banks because the market thinks that they're too big to fail that they'll be bailed out are effectively looked at as like very good credit risks if you loan money to them you're probably going to get it back because that bank is going to be bailed out if they can do trouble so you can lend money to large institutions at a lower rate than smaller institutions so these large institutions get some kind of benefit we don't know exactly what that is and there's all sorts of estimates. it's an academic paper that suggests that they can borrow at point eight percent better rates than small banks and if that number is correct then that means that in effect taxpayers are offering an insurance program to banks every year that they should be getting eighty three billion dollars in premiums on that they're not getting so that that's where that number is coming from if the if the subsidy is something different than that number could be lower or higher but the other way to think

about it is of the tax payers are offering this too big to fail insurance program like life insurance if that exists the banks should be paying for that insurance and they're not burning did argue that he he what he argued against that eighty three billion dollars he was he questioned how accurate that figure was but either way you look at it it's the big banks that are getting some kind of a kickback they are getting. a b. in relation to the small banks they are getting rewarded they are getting a kickbacks i want to ask you the argument that you hear time and time again is that shutting down these banks would be disastrous for the economy and of course we saw this situation back in two thousand and eight and the taxpayers foot the bill they bailed out these banks is has anything changed it has had any policies been implemented to make sure that we don't have to do that as taxpayers ever again. the unfortunate thing is that since the financial crisis the large banks have only gotten bigger the fact that we did bail them out enabled the top ten banks to

essentially leverage that cash to position themselves and take even greater market share so now the large banks are even bigger so if in two thousand and eight the banks were too big to fail and washington was afraid well then certainly if something happens again it's definitely the it's actually the case that the government will bail out wall street ben bernanke he was trying to argue well what you we don't really know that's going to happen that definitely is going to be the case but even he emitted that the big banks have an advantage you can't deny if you just look at the rates that the banks borrow at the interest rates that they pay to borrow money they're lower than smaller institutions that implies a subsidy where is that subsidy coming from it's coming from the market expecting that they will be bailed out nothing has changed they've only gotten bigger so it's a fair assumption by the market that if that's going to be the case if we are going to explicitly have a too big to fail system then the banks should pay for that insurance so it looks like too big to fail is still a phrase that's going to be sticking around appreciate you coming on the show

anthony and i was anthony ran down zero the rector of economic research at the reason foundation. we'll tell you the world says goodbye to a musical legend american pianist van cliburn passed away at the age of seventy eight he had the first place award at the nineteen fifty eight. international competition in moscow his music won the hearts of the russian people during a challenging time politically he spoke fondly of the russian people that flooded him but praise for many he symbolized the power of music to bring people together according to the new york times his publicist confirmed cliburn died at home the musician had been treated before for bone cancer. well between bailing out banks and big bonuses for the very banks taxpayers bailed out some people have had enough and some of the folks affiliated with occupy wall street have come up with an idea to get a little revenge we'll see inside every one of these credit card offers. is where

it leads it's a business reply and you know. the bank sign contracts with the post office to get these envelopes and they only pay postage on the envelopes again mailed back and the banks are assuming that we use these envelopes to send in our credit card applications but we don't want to work credit cards do we research we don't want them from the big banks that cause the financial crisis we can use these envelopes in other ways but the shift in the envelope and suddenly the envelope becomes really more for it because why does that matter well the region the whole piece costs more in postage to mail. so even though the envelopes don't contain letters they still send a strong message it's unlikely about that the move will cost banks as much as taxpayers have copped up to bail them out and we are going to leave it off there but don't forget to follow me on twitter at liz wahl for now have a great night.