coming up on our t.v. after a bruising confirmation hearing john brennan is officially sworn in to lead the cia but when it came time to take the oath of office he used a constitution draft that was missing the bill of rights that story straight ahead . plus you have the right to report police officers a new ruling says citizens can video officers and use the footage in court will look at the ruling and what it means for citizen rights. and the u.s. loves to use drones overseas but more and more american police departments are turning these machines to track their citizens back home now congress is demanding information on the drone domestic drone program we'll take a look at that issue ahead.

it's monday march eleventh eight pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. well after a contentious confirmation process john brennan is officially taking over as director of the cia brennan was sworn in on friday by vice president joe biden with a few people in attendance the media however was not invited to attend the event and only a few pictures actually did come out from the event that the white house press photographer released but the secrecy of the ceremony is not what has critics reeling it's the version of the constitution that brennan chose to be sworn in on instead of using the bible john brennan placed his hand on a regional copy of the seventeen eighty seven draft constitution that george washington himself had actually written on now when asked why this version of the constitution in particular was chosen a white house spokesperson said quote brennan had requested

a document from the national archives that would symbolize the united states is a nation of laws. before he was sworn in director run and told the president that he made the request to the archives because he wanted to reaffirm his commitment to the rule of law as he took the oath of office as the director of the cia but here's the thing this version of the constitution does not include the bill of rights so the first amendment right to free speech the fourth amendment right to protect citizens from unreasonable search and seizure and the fourteenth amendment right to due process they were not included and they were not under his hand when he took his oath as host of office and cia whistleblower john kiriakou now serving two year sentence for whistle blowing on the cia's secret of waterboarding program says the symbolism here goes beyond the constitution that brennan swore in on. with the likes of john brennan the director of the cia i think the president has made clear

that he's very comfortable surrounding himself with people who are comfortable killing people and i think that's what the future holds now of course director brennan is legally required to abide by the amendments to the constitution as are all other americans but when both john brennan and the white house make a point of marking the symbolism of the constitution and the rule of law it's hard to ignore the other symbols this act never only sends out in the process. human rights advocates across the nation are seeing signs of progress today when it comes to domestic drone use the house of representatives voted wednesday to require the defense department to disclose whether or not military drones can be used to spy on u.s. citizens on u.s. soil the measure was buried deep into a long appropriations bill and it asks the newly elected defense secretary chuck hagel to open up about policies and procedures used to determine if the situation requires the use of

a new avi now nick gillespie is the editor in chief of reason dot com and also reason television he joined me earlier to break down the latest developments in this case and give us a bigger look at the big picture. well i you know i think the real problems with the room system are the drone programs and surveillance programs in general americans that we don't have a clear legal framework for when the government is using this is in order to serve a healthy whole or to even go after them and then so that clarification really comes through at the highest levels and then starts getting worked out you know we're going to be we're kind of going to be screwed in all sorts of things so tell me why this drone drone bill if if wanting to know is between congress why this is going on it turns out domestic why wasn't very an appropriations bill and i'm brought to fraud front of another bill perhaps. you know i think that's a good question and i don't really i don't have an answer for that but i mean one

of the things is is that you know it's clear that the you know in general when we're talking about using drones and or in the situations there is not been anything approaching a transparency or an open discussion of what's going on and so we're probably fullish to think that anything similar that the mess that was all is going to happen too and that it really takes you know kind of political theater in a lot of ways in order to work around the issue of the use of drones or more specifically because you know i think we're fixating too much on a particular type of technology because drones seem kind of like something out of the jetsons future or whatever but in fact what we're talking about is the ability of the government. you know to surveillance who investigate and to check out what american citizens are up to or what people are overseas and sadly but somewhat predictably the obama administration in general as well as republicans in the house and democrats in the senate they're not interested in actually or grabbing the

constitutional issues the legal issues and the civil liberties issues that are attending to all of these last now. like i mentioned it was buried in the middle of an appropriations bill i have to ask you how likely is this bill to pass and how likely are we as american citizens not a part of the congress to be to get this information out in the public well i you know i don't know how likely it is to pass i do know for sure though that the only way that this the only way that this information gets out there is by people actually picking up the mantle and try to crowdsource of things to call an attention to it you know last week and i do think it's a simple certainly memorable and very telegenic but it's also worth remembering keeping or most which was the filibuster led by rahm all of that out to forestall the brennan nomination permission rather and it was an incentive you know he knew that he was going to actually get away with holding up the nomination for

a day or so but it calls attention to things and what we're seeing now more than anything that you know that filibuster is an interesting kind of new media phenomenon took place largely in terms of in terms of there was be tweeted. stand with rand became a hashtag that's one of the most awkward high stakes around the world most of the viewers on c.-span two were watching or watching online this is all part of a tectonic shift shift that includes things like wickedly and anonymous and whatnot that are growing in digging through information that either is not particularly well acted shores kept from people and bringing things that used to be areas of the for so that if we want more information about drones that drone policy we want more understanding about the hardware as well as the lethal software if you are going through this we have to make it happen citizens in distributed manners where they go into battles and they bring things that you know have been tucked away like

easter eggs right up to the front and center of problems now next that we know whether or not this is going to apply to only what the government is doing or also what local all of. of course an authority is arguing with a strong female but some of them are getting their hands on them so is it are we going to find out a wider scope of these drones. again you know i think it's up to us by that i mean there are. you know there are local police departments that are already using drones for various ways for various things and there are private industries you know that are that are built around the idea that drones are useful technology and that they can be used to counter or counteract surveillance by the authorities of life and that's why i think it's really important that we do looking at the technology of drones but that we actually caught up so we're pushing back on that because you know a drone is not so different than a kind of high powered surveillance camera or various types of listening devices or even thermal imaging devices that have been used to go after certain types of

suspected drug dealers and what not and you know these have all been issues that are you know end up in front of the supreme court and you know they there is an attempt to kind of simultaneously cloak these by burying them into appropriations bills or other types of legislation that doesn't really see the light. but then also to focus on the technology as if that is somehow the issue drones are here drones to are going to be here all you know throughout the future it's a technology like the telephone you know that's not going away it's more question of how do we deal with it how do we put the restrictions on government so that their use of them is both limited and also incredibly transparent so that we don't find out five ten fifteen twenty years down the road that we're being surveilled in ways that we did not even know when this was flying there are a lot of benefits to technology but there's also a lot of question as to how to regulate nick gillespie editor in chief of reason

dot com and reason television thank you for that report. with the debate of drones and drone pen transparency well underway here in the u.s. it seems that the u.s. is dr reporting on afghan drone strikes altogether why you may ask well senator rand paul filibuster last week showed that the public was in favor of clarifying drone strikes at home but apparently the air force doesn't think that that same standard applies abroad the u.s. air force says sunday that it will no longer provide information about air strikes carried out by unmanned aerial vehicles in afghanistan in a statement made by u.s. central command the information was reportedly removed because it disproportionately focused on the use of weapons operators by remotely piloted aircraft so in other words the data they were gathering was paying too much attention on afghan drone strikes being carried out so they found reporting about them all together back in october the air force chiefs started posting the data all

about these drone strikes online in order to provide more detail about the use of drones in afghanistan but it seems that that flow of information has finally stopped. a drive by shooting in front of the low income household complex and injured thirteen people in washington d.c. around two am this morning the washington d.c. police department released this surveillance video today in the hopes that finding the two cars would actually help the public find the people behind the gun fire but like i said thirteen people were injured the victims were mostly shot in their legs and arms and some were grazed by bullets the youngest victim was seventeen years old one person shot in the back was seriously injured though he is expected to survive police are still searching for a motive in case now you can see that the location of the shooting is a walk away from the u.s. capitol building this shooting occurred in our nation's capital right near the most

iconic building of our government yet it appears that only in the local newspapers that this story is actually gaining any traction it is unlikely to receive the same attention as instances like a laura and sandy hook did the question we should be asking ourselves is why and so i posed that question earlier to hip hop artist and activist immortal technique he started by giving me his take on the lack of media coverage for shootings like this . you know people don't think that it's a story that fits in the narrative of america in this it mr asian is very much for banning guns and having a position that is anti-gun and i think that they do this because it's a knee jerk reaction to having to deal with the reality that this is a very violent society inside america and that even banning guns is not going to end that violence you know we are such

a violent society because we love violence we love the violence that occurs towards other people but not the kind that occurs towards us which makes us just as selfish as every other human being you know first and foremost and i feel very sorry that anybody had to be hurt over some drunken dispute or some revenge some act of revenge or whatever it may be that actually occurred that made this incident happen but i think that you know more government involvement really isn't going to be the answer to something like this as a matter of fact i think what we need to do as a society is confront the violent nature of america. now every city has its problematic districts they do we just accept it as a fact of life that bad things happen in those areas or should i should we be doing i mean obviously you don't think the government should be getting more involved should we be doing more individually. well i don't want anyone to think that i don't think someone should be involved but definitely i don't think the government should come in as

a regulator because you know the police are going to do what comes there and clean up the crime scene they didn't come there to resolve anything they're not taking rival factions of the neighborhood and having a concrete discussion with them about what their grievances are with one another look this is how it really is and i'll just say it plainly if you and i are the audience at home is watching the link of twelve inner city children you know working on computers quietly in a library hardly anyone is going to click that link but if you link it to you know a dozen urban youth throwing a bunch of computers at one another people want to see that they want to see violence they're not afraid of that violence that doesn't affect them they're afraid of the random violence that affects them you know none of that no one here is scared or terrified of those drone strikes that are going to kill children in pakistan or yemen tonight but they're terrified of the idea of someone coming into

a middle school or a junior high school and killing the people who aren't supposed to be killed you know oh my god twelve little children that's not supposed to happen in the majority of them are in coded american language from the parents of hard working americans and i think that's the difference they're not scared of those people dying because in our society those people are supposed to die the children of gaza the children of yemen the children of syria they're supposed to die well and i really here are not supposed to die and frankly it's. scares our society when we have those random acts of violence when the people that are not supposed to die are done ok so the other question that i do want to ask you is we've talked about the government and police involvement a little bit there is another another round suicide is this the realm that the media plays in it i know that your music often focuses on

a sort of trickle down effect of kind of breaking down all of the different players can you break down the different players in this in this gun violence culture that we have. well look you have people that are going to take a moderate position you have people that are going to take a conservative position you have people that are going to take a liberal position on the gun debate but again i go back to the fact that whether it's guns or whether it's now whether it's any other killing implement you know just dealing with the actual legislation. concerning firearms or concerning any other tool. i think we're still missing the point we still haven't addressed why we excuse our violent behavior so i would think. who specifically is involved and not addressing this as they say well i mean i don't think it's just mainstream media i mean for example i've known people that work at r.t. and they say i mean i like working here because we we get to cover the stories that

the mainstream media won't necessarily touch you know i think that when we talk about independent reporting and independent journalism you get to touch certain stories that are lost in the framework of the debate you know the mainstream media is going to go with some story about you know justin bieber having a bad birthday you know and yet who does that affect but people want to hear it because they've been trained to hear it they've been trained to hear you know the way certain people's names sound and all of a sudden the interest in whether they lived or died goes away all those children died well it must have been something that their parents did that is the responsible for the fact their responsibility and why they had to die and no one's ever said that about anybody else so really it's just more it's just more dehumanization on the part of the media as well which is unfortunate the family doesn't really only the media but it boils down to

a lot of different factors and the fact is we're just not covering these cases of poor neighborhoods where this violence is happening and arguably growing hip hop artist and activist immortal technique. well as citizens we trust police officers to work for the best interests of the public by protecting our streets and enforcing the rule of law that's not always the case however police officers have their guns their tasers but tons of riot gear and dogs to protect them but the tools civilians have might be much more powerful now in the wake of a case where a photojournalist was arrested for taping police the u.s. justice department reaffirmed its ruling that says he was within his first fourth and fourteenth amendment rights to film the incident photo journalist manny garcia was arrested on in june of two thousand and eleven after filming police officers arresting two men in montgomery county maryland his memory chip was taken away and

he was charged with disorderly conduct now those charges were eventually dropped and mr garcia himself consequently sued the city for his arrest but this case goes beyond one man's fight for reparation earlier i was joined by mr garcia's lawyer robert korn revere and he's a partner with davis right turn main l.l.p. he started by giving a little background on why the case is so important and so controversial. well the controversy is that you have a journalist filming police activity on a public street and gets arrested for it and as you say we do trust our police officers to protect us from from danger and in the vast majority of cases they do but in certain instances they either don't know or or are confused about the state of the law and this unfortunately is one of them where they get upset that they're being filmed either by a journalist or by a private citizen and then take action to stop that form either by simply stopping the incident from happening happening or by arresting that person which is what

happened in this case and i understand that he was thirty he was thirty feet away from the police officers and then when they shined a spotlight on him he moved back to one hundred feet so it's not a question of whether or not he was interfering and this is happening on a public street and i correct with that's right and you know this was an experienced photojournalist someone who's operated in war zones and operates he has been a criminal white house photographer for twenty years so he knows how to deal with situations of authority and not to get in the way and that's exactly what happened in this case he stayed a respectful distance he didn't interfere with the police activity when the spotlight was shined on him and moved even further away and when he was initially challenged by the police he simply identified himself as a member of the press opened his hands to show that he had nothing threatening other than a camera and it was at that point he was arrested now one of the poor and poor and things to note about this case is that mr garcia was fighting it both as a journalist as well as uscis and i want to read a quick quote from from their brief that is filed it says the first amendment right

to record police officers performing public duties extends to both the public and members of the media and the court should not make the distinction between the public's and the media's right to record here that was actually from the justice department so he's not only going to sign anything and he's not only fighting here as a journalist he's saying that as a citizen he should have been allowed to do this right so shut the. be a distinction really when it comes to reporting police officers between journalists and citizens no not at all i mean the first amendment belongs to all of us it protects private citizens and it protects members of the press from government action that restricts their freedom to speak or to recruit gather information that allows them to talk about possible public misuse of power and that's exactly what was happening here and courts around the country increasingly are dealing with situations like that as there was another case up in boston involving a private citizen who filmed a police arrest was ultimately arrested himself for similar circumstances here and

the court went out of its way to say that private citizens are protected every bit as much as journalists and that the first amendment protects these kinds of activities and speaking about the fact that there are so many of these cases popping up we actually do have a clip that highlights a few of them if we could go ahead and play that. that. was. what it would. take pictures of the subway system. works. well actually. the jury is only just doing our job. so obviously those are each individual circumstances and there's a lot of parts of that but the u.s. justice department was your case in particular reaffirmed that they persistence has a right to film police officers so why does this keep coming up time and again i

think part of it is as in your last story technology advancing faster than the law you have now everyone carrying out their own personal recording device people with smart phones can record either still pictures or video and audio and as a result you have images like the ones we just saw showing up on you tube now i have to be fair i have to say i've also seen images of police behaving very respectfully and following what i believe are the appropriate constitutional guidelines but unfortunately you also see examples of where police are obviously upset that someone has the temerity to record the incident of public officials performing their duties in a public space and as a result they take some kind of action against that recording when at the end of the day these cameras can work to prove the police officers innocence as much as they can work to prove possibly excessive force we only have about a minute left but i have to ask you what tips would you give to somebody to when they want to go and we're filming a police officer to make sure that they're not crossing any boundaries well i think

as mr garcia was acting in this case to make sure that you if you remember the press identify yourself as a member of the press do not interfere with police activity because if you do they're within their rights to prevent you from doing that. but if you're staying a respectful distance if you are exercising your rights and i think as courts and the justice department increasingly make clear those boundaries will be protected as we move forward and hopefully a fork a successful governor makes that more possible in the future all right robert corner vera partner with davis right trainmen l.l.p. thank you so much for joining us thank you today marks the second anniversary of the fukushima daiichi nuclear power plant disaster two years ago today an earthquake hit the island nation of japan causing a tsunami that killed almost twenty thousand people but the impact of the tsunami went beyond the initial impact of the wave itself the ocean water flooded the

fukushima daiichi nuclear power plants back up system causing three reactor meltdowns the fukushima disaster has made people think twice about nuclear power as a clean energy alternative to fossil fuels take the case of the san onofre nuclear power plant as another example that once here in the u.s. it's located right outside of los angeles now the plant experienced issues with its equipment and thirteen months ago and was consequently shut down a new report released by the nuclear regulatory commission shows how some of the plant's owners decisions actually contributed to the generators malfunction earlier today i was joined by our own ramona lindo and he broke down this case even further . well this report that was released over the weekend by the nuclear regulatory commission is actually something that they requested from mitsubishi now mitsubishi is the manufacture of the steam generator etc no free which has proven to be faulty and in this report needs to be she indicates that both mitsubishi and the utilities

southern california edison had noticed that there were some issues with the design of the steam generators that they were installing back in two thousand and eleven despite the issues they decided to move forward and it only took about a year for these leaks to show up and force the closure of the nuclear plant now both mitsubishi and southern california edison say that even if they had addressed the issue there's no way they could have predicted the two where which eventually resulted in the leak and ultimately resulted in the shutdown and even if they had done those repairs which they had observed needed some address even before the insulation that this would have still happened now i understand that emissions are human argument that they could have prevented this but from what the report concludes i know a couple of senators have actually looked at it doesn't walk don't like the company

cut safety choir's to avoid jumping to even more regulatory hurdles. exactly now barbara boxer has been very vocal same that the utility company knowingly installed these these steam generators knowing that there are flaws in them now. utility company southern california edison has said that when they saw the design they thought that it was sound and that they would have never installed something that would have put the public in danger but critics say that. mitsubishi and southern california edison were not as forthcoming about possible issues with the new steam generators because they wanted to streamline the regulatory process. to really get things going and if they had to address some of the issues with the steam generators it would have led to more lengthy regulatory filings and so that's why barbara boxer and other critics are saying that that there was some cover up before

the seam generators were actually installed so how much of that outage actually costing us and how much will it cost you to restart it sure now this is been a very expensive project for southern california edison the installation of the steam generators back in two thousand and eleven cost something near seven hundred million dollars and the two leaders spent more than four hundred million dollars in just operating the plant since it's been shut down and it's not even producing any energy now these costs are are maintained the plant and importing energy from other places just so that people here in southern california can have electricity but really the a big cost is really the confidence that neighbors around the nuclear station have because right now especially after fukushima there are people that are really worried about the safety arounds and and and i do we only have about a minute left in the show i but i have to ask you obviously the focus on daiichi disaster happened two years ago today how is this affecting the way that we

approach nuclear energy here in the u.s. right well following the fukushima disaster here regulators have instilled a slightly stricter in. concerned scientists say that it's definitely not enough their star there are still a lot of safety issues plants around the country so far right now we get about twenty percent of our inner of our energy from nuclear plants here in the u.s. so people are still waiting to see what happens as any know free how much it eventually cost to get this plant back on line if it ever does get back on line helen and we do know that japan is still dealing with so many of the issues we know that hawaii actually experienced a bunch more of debris floating up from the japan tsunami and also from the fukushima disaster r.t. correspondent rym uncle and please keep on the story for us you got it and that's going to do it for now but don't forget to follow me on my twitter it's at meghan underscore a low.