for years the u.s. and mexico have teamed up to take on deadly drug cartels seventy thousand lives lost and another twenty thousand have disappeared in mexico but a new report says some of those disappearances are actually being carried out by security forces which are funded with u.s. tax dollars the story coming up. and from preventing cyber attacks against the u.s. to making government more transparent our team goes to capitol hill today to hear what lawmakers are doing to keep you to keep us safe and how to make government more open. and it was nearly ten years ago the iraq war started the u.s. invaded over claims the country was producing weapons of mass destruction but that wasn't the case along with the thousands of lives lost on both sides we'll look at the financial impact the war has had here in the u.s. .

it's wednesday march thirteenth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our t.v. . well again with the deadly drug war and mexico over the last several years the u.s. and mexico have worked together to take on deadly drug cartels the war just south of the border has claimed seventy thousand lives and new information shows that more than twenty thousand people disappeared during the last mexican ministration now a scathing report from when rights watch says that many of the disappearance as are actually being carried out by security forces which are funded with u.s. tax dollars are teaser mungle and shows us the crisis of enforced disappearances. discovered to mexico's drug war has highlighted dramatic shootouts and the capture of notorious drug kingpins the u.s. back strategy to crack down on cartels has not reduced violence south of the border and has led to human rights abuses members of the army are they were the police

check people against their will and have taken steps to seal their identity since they were illegally adopted recent revelations show that around twenty five thousand people have disappeared during the last six years of mexican drug violence in a year long study human rights watch looked at two hundred fifty reports of missing people and discovered that all in one hundred forty nine cases mexican security forces were involved over the past six years the u.s. has dedicated nearly two billion dollars to pay and train mexican security troops the conflict lies in the fact that many of these military units the u.s. is supporting are also committing human rights abuses among the agency's fault it is the elite mexican navy the navy has worked closely with u.s. intelligence to track down cartel leaders last year to cia agents were shot while riding with a navy commander the navy was delayed interior operations in the middle of drug

wars to states that were landlocked and were kind of in an almost an act of desperation be in charge relied upon this is not the first time you expect military units unless. america had been implicated in rights abuses in colombia at the turn of the century the army was helping paramilitary groups commit widespread atrocities is the function of military the military are not training or the method we think they're not training investigation they want to move the want to be in in a domestic environment they want to get for the lady law prohibits the u.s. from giving funds to military units involved in human rights abuses but stopping the cash flow could alienate america's neighbor and close ally in the drug war rather than withhold care to the money sent a message to mexico that the serious abuses need to stop every single year the u.s. releases that money sent to message to mexico that it's just this is usually an authority have a blank check from the united states to whatever they choose with human rights

consequences as government seems satisfied just we've been forced disappearances under the rug becomes families remain without answers and without help in los angeles from delhi in the r t. from are the disappearances in mexico that have become all too common in the u.s. backed war drug war in mexico i'm joined now by our team producer give me now that i welcome that now so i want to start off by asking you what happens when someone goes missing does law enforcement immediately certain investigate the case or what happens essentially the law enforcement searching and investing investigating the case would be like the dream come true of a journalist or i guess a spokesperson for a nation as a whole imagine if someone went missing if we if we found out immediately here in the united states that would be huge but when when the nation is responsible when mexico is responsible for essentially getting rid of some of these people who are

known as that this about i see those are the missing people in mexico for example one of the two hundred fifteen that have gone missing between december of two thousand. six in. two thousand and twelve during their. reign in mexico as president. those people that are missing like they are just basically swept under the rug and the world doesn't know about them because it is not there it's not their goal to. shed light on this issue because they are trying to combat this drug war and what happens is that they just go missing and it turns into a human rights violation because. the nation isn't being accountable for what it's doing well you bring up this issue of accountability and that was going to be my next question how often are people convicted in connection to the disappearance while the idea of connection and disappearance is kind of not even

there because in between now in two thousand and five alone eighty two journalists have been murdered in mexico their bodies have been found you know and there is a very much accountability for any of these people so what human rights watch has done is they have effectively. pointed out one hundred forty nine out of two hundred fifty cases in which those people are just missing so hundred forty nine of those two hundred fifty people since two thousand and seven have been completely missing and that's why the director of human rights watch in the america is so critically concerned with this issue because it's an interim merican issue we're talking about a border that is two thousand miles long and border city of the one where this has become such a prominent issue which essentially sparked the debate in mexico and in the u.s.

regarding exactly why people are missing because when you hit the drug cartels they start to fight and they start to react and that's why some people are going missing the question remains is it the fault of the national government or is it because the guard tells are like killing people that are inside that is an unresolved question. that i want to ask you given out. let's have a look off here. the last has backed mexico's strategy to crack. to crack down on violence and i want to ask you based on your observations and experiences has this strategy lead to less violence and bloodshed. effectively know it's anything it's led to more violence and more bloodshed there's very little evidence that points to these american efforts you know funding six hundred million dollars into. into mexico under the reign of.

and yet the who's the new incumbent president who did say you know we're going to try to make sure that these disappearances don't exist anymore i know that's like that's hard to believe that he even said that because he has effectively done very little to nothing and we myself coming from colombia i can tell you that my family left colombia due to the fact that drugs and the cartels worse such an imminent threat to our family had to flee in two thousand and three just after the death of a. lot of. it was just a critical it was a moment of crisis and so then julie like i can understand why people are scared in mexico and i can understand why because you know the u.s. is funding mexico in the army the navy police national federal to try to get rid of these cartel leaders like the cartel director of from. what is but you know

other cartels do exist and there's a cartels in mexico alone versus the kind of. which was the one single one in colombia making these two huge distinct differences between the two countries you know appreciate you sharing some light on this and kind of bringing your personal experiences apologize a lot of television out a lot and i thought that was r.t. for two seconds you know that i thank you and out of capitol hill where hearings were held today on the issues of cyber secure. transparency the obama administration has placed cyber security at the top of the agenda but there's a heated debate over how to tackle the issue while protecting citizens privacy when it comes to transparency the obama administration has vowed to be more open from the secret drone campaign to cracking down on whistleblowers some question just how transparent the administration is more of the developments on capitol hill today i'm joined by our producer andrea and our correspondent megan lopez welcome ladies so i did and i'm going to start off with you cyber security is becoming more of

a priority these days what lawmakers target as the biggest cyber threats that face the u.s. today you know is it was really interesting listening today you know that we're also we're all very used to listening to lawmakers talk about the imminent cyber threat cyber nine eleven these sorts of things and it's always characterized as a threat from abroad and you know that talk was sort of discussed here in this hearing today but another interesting aspect that was mentioned was the growing threat of domestic terrorism or domestic cyber terrorism here at home so that's something that we haven't really talked about over the department of justice hasn't really talked about and they really made a concerted effort to discuss this today and i think that's one of the more notable things that we can take away from here when it comes to that it seems like there's always this question of how to take a measured approach how to balance security cyber security and privacy how did

lawmakers approach that today was really interesting also because you saw a lot of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle i think this is one of the issues that you know you could see strange bedfellows that they were all very interested in taking a measured approach approach in balancing privacy and security so in other words they were very much interested in safeguarding you know our freedoms while all. also trying to. get more of a cyber infrastructure ready at the ready here at home and another interesting aspect was there was a lot of talk about resources you know we've been talking about the sequester and this and that and how it will impact you know the different aspects of the government one of the big things they were talking about today was funding it all came down to resources that were needed in order to do that. and i think something . so much interesting was i heard one of the speakers at the hearing today had sort

of his point of view when it came to cyber security and in the relationship between the government. then the government they think well we trust us we will do a good job exercising this discretion the problem is those of us on the outside don't have that assurance that they're actually going to exercise their discretion what wisely and you never know one of miss ration is going to be replaced by another administration and there are lots of different federal prosecutors out there and we don't want to give tools to any one prosecutor that person should not have. yeah and i think this has been kind of a big argument here is how do you address this issue. was there anything proposed in terms of legislation because we've said we've we've heard a lot of argument about this is how do you make it so the legislation isn't so broad that prosecutors can kind of swoop in and kind of. overreach prosecuting over yeah well what was really discussed there wasn't really so much introducing new pieces of legislation anything groundbreaking there it was more so

to and this is a phrase that was repeated on and on and on was to sort of. make the gaps moller in the existing legislation right now so a lot of times especially people from the department of justice wanted to be able to make things a little bit more narrow in scope within the already existing frame the structure of the law that we have that we see now so i would be the computer fraud and abuse act that would be the d.m.c.a. all of these different pieces of legislation that already exist but need to be scaled back right i want to bring back in because she also went to a very important hearing on the hill today this hearing was aimed at examining open the over open government act five years later meg and our agency is complying was there was a cautious optimism that came from the senate today and they were saying that the obama administration is complying and actually going above and beyond what the freedom of information act actually requests and on the other hand you have

agencies that are not in fact the vast majority if you look here all the agencies that are in red are the ones that are not complying with the two thousand and seven . open government act so it's actually the vast majority it's fifty three percent now most agree just one of these was the department of justice and they said that they don't only not have to actually implement these things but that they're not they don't need to they don't need these kind of things which obviously took a big hit from critics none the least of which was tom blanton who's the executive director of national security at george washington university and he went so far as to say that the d.o.j. has a sort of cold war mentality where they think that national security interests actually need to protect the information but he argue that in the light of nine eleven it shows that we need to release more information and have more transparency in order to protect the government what is interesting ladies thanks for shedding some light on these two very important issues that we try to pay attention to here in our tape

and well keep on keep those developments coming that was our producer our journalists heroin our t. correspondent megan lopez. all three out of ten that is the number of americans who currently put their faith in the government that's right according to the pew research center a record low number of americans trust the government that it was reflected all across the board including bipartisan groups experience some sort of disenchantment artie's corrina senseless goes out on the streets of the nation's capital to ask are you surprised. although the pew study told us how many americans no longer trust their government it didn't really give us many clues as to why do you trust your government or not. i would say yes i trust my government most of the time not really at all but most of the time yes definitely i trust my government class why should my ok why do you think the rates would be that low what do you think happened recently people are under educated. you know most likely you know

a bunch of rednecks in this country. you know in a bad way but there's a lot of an educated people this country i think government people don't care about american anymore i think they're more interested in the next election and less interested in what's right for the country certain politicians have lobbyists or special interests and keeping their own job security becomes a priority a house the senate the president's office i think we're all struggling with the inability to make progress on these issues particularly around budget i don't understand how our government can run a country this size and not have a budget for. sick going on five and a half years now i don't i run a company i have a budget i have to answer to shareholders how they don't i don't know this budget you know this immigration tax reform there's tons of things education reform i mean where do you start and where do you stop they can't get along i mean you get harry reid and boehner boehner telling harry reid to f. i'm self didn't know the right. although i did agree with them but it's more i

don't know egos or you know to show who's right or wrong and they're not working for the people i think we should fire all these bombs throw them out and start over though the rift between parties has widened recently as regards mistrust of the federal government sentiment about congress is actually pretty uniform across party lines almost sixty percent of people declaring all different party affiliations say that they disapprove of congress and they place the blame squarely on members not the system so looks like the only bipartisan agreement coming out of the capitol these days is our collective disapproval in washington d.c. and kurdistan quist party but we are approaching the ten year anniversary of the iraq war these anniversaries often serve as a time of reflection so we want to take a close look now at the cost of war when the u.s. invaded iraq in two thousand and three the bush administration estimated the war at a cost in the ballpark of fifty to sixty billion dollars but they were way off between two thousand and three and two thousand and eleven the war cost more than

eight hundred twenty three billion dollars but the real long term costs are estimated to be as much as three point seven trillion dollars now this is of course the financial cost you can't put a price on the thousands upon thousands of human costs and this war but the government. the government cuts are take effect with the debate right now with the government cuts set to take effect and tackling the nation's debt and what the u.s. struggling to get the economy back on track we ask how much has the war contributed to the current state of the. khana me to discuss i'm joined now by our t.v. producer bob english bob great see here so i guess the big question now ten years later is what do we better off economically if the u.s. didn't spend the billions upon billions of dollars on this war the short answer is definitely if you look at the actual numbers eight hundred twenty three billion dollars spent president obama himself expects it to exceed one trillion dollars

that's a lot of money and any time the government spends money you expect a certain amount of waste or fraud and what we have in iraq especially with all these private contractors are these no bid and low bid contracts as i would call them and there's been a lot of fraud so just from that angle the u.s. didn't need to spend that much money there and it's unfortunately if you're going to spend money it might as well be spent domestically as opposed to in some foreign nation and we not too long ago reported on the special inspector general for iraq reconstruction estimated that the u.s. wasted at least eight billion dollars that was supposed to go into rebuilding iraq a lot of these projects we never even saw finished they were kind of just abandoned but i do want to ask you bob because it will we hear this argument world war two is used as an example credited for the getting the u.s. out of the depression so you know i think it's no secret that war can be seen as a way to stimulate the economy or investing. you know tools that are necessary

creates all these jobs. and some people are going to make that argument when it comes to the war in iraq what do you think i'm really glad you brought up world war two because that is a great historical lesson and if we go back to nine hundred thirty nine thousand nine hundred forty one it was actually the lord keynes in collaboration with irwin rothbart who was a statistician who invented g.d.p. what we know is gross domestic product in other national accounting identities to justify the long term spending this was commissioned by the by the british because . as they knew that they were going to be in the war for a long time and prior to this it was understood that long term deficit deficit spending would not work so the reason we have this notion of deficit spending is good today is because of this world war two era so actually in world war two we did not we did not get out of the depression because of it we got to be depression because the government got out of the way after world war two all the price controls were lifted and free markets were let to you know let things. get

interesting that you say that's how because especially today in this day and age we have this bitter debate in washington over how to handle the debt. with the problem be so dire if it weren't for the debt taken out to finance the war because that is how the war was financed for most part sure iraq war was deeply partisan issue and the deficit today is a partisan issue so i think the argument can be made that we spent all this money on a partisan issue so of course there's going to be. it's going to influence current policy but when you look at the big picture what's a trillion dollars when we're talking about twelve or thirteen trillion dollars in the deficit i think we'd still have the same arguments today regardless right you know measure before the contractors and i think that that's the heart of the cause of this war go beyond combat and reconstruction better and are going to get health care for the years and years to come and to this day as you mention the contractors are still on the ground there in iraq so do the long term costs outweigh any short

term economic benefits are you i mean you have to look at the numbers again we're talking about three point seven trillion dollars by some estimates and we have these wounded veterans who are coming home and they have actual physical wounds and they have psychological wounds and is a cost justified in the end my own personal opinion is no we still have one hundred nine separate private companies over there and thirty six thousand people who are not really under the aegis of the government itself but these private contractors so the cost to this war are going to. we felt for a long time in there by no means over thanks for weighing in there that was our producer bob english. lantern a giant google is always finding ways to be tech savvy and ahead of the game but their quest to do that has landed them in some hot water its street view feature allows users all over the world zero in on a specific address this review images are captured by google special street cars

you see there but thirty seven states say bees cars improperly collected data per month secured wireless networks across the u.s. beyond data some folks are not happy about being photographed by the google cars are going to take a look at some examples there so now google has agreed to pay seven million dollars in fines over privacy concerns but will really deter the search giant from infringing on people's privacy to discuss i'm joined now by downer of s.s.p. welcome hemo great to see it is so what kind of information did google capture with these street cars exactly well google was actually capturing the information that your wireless networks unless you were using fast words to protect normally put out such as your e-mail content of where your computers are located all of the kind of stuff that it wireless network that's public is capable of delivering out to whoever is driving by so it wasn't so much that google had fancy special technology

it was more about the fact that wireless networks push out information unless you use passwords to protect them and i think one of things we should point out right at the onset because i think people need to understand this who are watching which is google didn't she admit to any legal wrongdoing this is more of a balance of what happens when consumers and citizens are expecting something in relationship to their privacy and what companies who have technological prowess and technological knowhow are capable of doing with information interesting that you bring up this expectation of privacy because the connecticut attorney general said quote consumers have every civil expectation of privacy but i mean in this day and age should they have that expectation. well i think you should always assume that there is information that's going to be public about you that i think everyone understands today it's more of a question of on this particular item is there certain expectations of privacy and

i think because of the fact that that router sits inside your house people think well it's in my house it's mine my doors are locked of course it's private but the reality is technology is do not work the way your front door locked us and if there's one lesson out of this the lesson and it's the lesson itself is built into the agreement if you take a look at it it requires google to do two things one is raise awareness on privacy and on password protection of wireless networks for the public and spend lots and lots of money to do that the other is to raise awareness of its own employees in other words no as an employee educate them on knowing what technological what their technology can do how that palin says with privacy and what they ought to be doing in order to implement the right kinds of protocols and things like that so at the end of the day the lesson is education and awareness is key to today's society

because all too often people are going online and they're dropping their sense of privacy and safety and security even though those same people would never walk down york street alley by themselves would always lock their door the lock their car lock their front door and then when they go inside and they turn it on and they feel still comes out sounds like or so people need to need to take more action and protect their their private information and set those passwords there because they're susceptible as well as we've seen and i want to ask you though google has agreed to pay seven million dollars in fines but as an enormously profitable company that is chump change so is this of battle scene really enough to deter google from violating people's privacy in the future. well i don't i think it's not a question of whether something will deter google from violating a private people's privacy think there it was their intention in the first place if you think about what google is doing to google a loves to do one thing and that is innovate in

a place where consumers fit themselves into where google can fit them into people's daily lives they help you find places to eat they've helped you shop they help you get one point to another they do all sorts of things that people have integrated into their life and if there's one thing google obsessive lee does in a very good way frankly is innovate and i think the question really is it not so much are they going to continue to do something that's horrible their intentions are definitely good i think that's why the agreement itself is calling that out it's saying hey let's educate people because obviously there's a breakdown in what consumers expect what companies may know about what happens internally and not recognize the ramifications of their technological innovation in society overall and that's why it's not that google is intending to do something wrong or about the fact that google has walked into a world where those things intersect sometimes they collide and sometimes they go well you might appreciate our going to the end of the show now that. founder of ass

asked people and we are going to leave it off there we'll be right back here and half hour so that. it is easy to believe.

it seems. it's. the sound cock.