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 us safe and how to make government more open. plus the news is in the new efforts to bolster u.s. cyber defenses the pentagon plans to create thirteen off fence of teams while the obama administration wants to give all u.s. spy agencies full access to u.s. citizen financial data more in the cyber defense build up later in the show. 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 will look at the financial impact the war has had here in the u.s. .

it's wednesday march thirteenth pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. will begin on capitol hill where hearings were held today on the issues of cyber security and transparency the obama administration has placed cyber security on the top of the agenda there is a heated debate over how to tackle the issue while protecting citizens privacy and 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 really is for more on the developments on capitol hill today i'm joined now by our view producer adriano sorrow and r.t. correspondent megan lopez welcome ladies so going to start off with you are drowning because you were at this cyber security hearing today and of course it is becoming more of a priority these days what did lawmakers target as the biggest cyber threats that face the u.s. today you know it was interesting there was sort of i mean we're all used to

hearing the same. rhetoric of a certain state actors that are behind many of the attacks that are now currently affecting the u.s. however in this case it was interesting that was kind of dialed down in this hearing her say what we were talking about were seen more so was state actors versus domestic actors so in other words at the department of justice was actually warning against a local threats much more than those abroad so it was sort of interesting to see that it was sort of like a change of the script in that regard. interesting gavin we've seen a lot of cyber legislation trying to make its way through congress aimed at tackling cyber security here in the u.s. it seems like they're focusing more on state threats as you had mentioned but there always is this question of how to take this measured approach and how to balance security and privacy how did they address that today or did that they actually did

which was rather refreshing everyone at that hearing was willing to play ball both republicans democrats which is very interesting now that we're in sort of a such a bipartisan climate both camps were very much interested in taking approach of you know safeguarding your you know our freedoms our our liberties but also being able to get at the certain actors again the bad actors that's what being kept on referring to if you well get at those people that are causing all of these disruptions so it was very very interesting they still want to be able to keep those accountable that make all this trouble but also protect us in the process. i want to play because i understand that you spoke to. mr or and care a law professor from georgetown university want to take a listen to what he had to say and will weigh in on it right after then the government they think will we trust us we will do

a good job exercising this discretion the problem is those of us on the air. don't have that assurance that they're actually going to exercise their discretion what wisely and you never know one of mr ation 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 ok so going along with what mr karr was saying there can you talk about this fear of cyber legislation kind of going too far and possibly giving too much power to prosecutors i mean that was sort of the entire feeling throughout the hearing it was you know they're talking about that measured approach and a lot of legislators were worried that our existing laws are already broad enough that in order to you know having to introduce different types of legislation might not be the answer the answer might be to just limited narrow the scope of the things that already exist so that includes the computer fraud and abuse act that includes all the different types of legislation that already exist now and try to work within the parameters that already exist so that was very interesting to hear

interesting i want to make it now because you also were at a hearing on the hill today and this one was in relation to the transparency. this hearing was aimed at examining the open government act and here we are five years later after that act or that law was enacted. our agency is complying. there is cautious optimism on the part of the senators what they were expressing what we do know is that they said that the obama administration is going above and beyond this act and what it's requiring is actually an add on to the freedom of information before you requests act of one thousand nine hundred sixty six so they are saying that the obama administration isn't only complying with the freedom of information act requests we're actually going beyond that and opening up this information however a lot of the agencies actually are not complying at all so i brought a prop it is all the agencies there's one hundred agencies the ones that are in green are the ones that actually are complying with the two thousand and seven law

the ones that are in red are the ones that are not comply. with the two thousand and seven law and addition to this there are six more agencies that are not complying with the two thousand and nine obama administration. requests to add on to this open government act so we are seeing optimism but we're not anywhere near where we need to be yet i mean those drops at a good job of showing because we saw a lot of red there meaning there's a lot of agencies that are not complying and i understand that the justice department has taken some heat over its policies are how do they defend their freedom of information track record today they are actually the most egregious of all the different agencies and not updating their regulations and the woman that was actually representing the department her name is melanie put say and she took quite a beating from the senators today just one question after another and you know the d.o.j. they say that they comply to about ninety percent of the foyer requests that come in but that number is actually not accurate at all and that's only the number of requests that are processed that's not the number of requests that are submitted so

that the real action is actually a real percentage that is actually about fifty percent now the reasons that she gave as to why the d.o.j. is not complying because first of all she says it takes time and that's something that the senators down at rejected because as you said it's been five years since this open government act was actually introduced another reason she said is that the attorney general holder and the open government act itself actually don't require the agency to update its regulations and that's something that had the critics reeling at the hearing so i do want to play a quick clip from thomas blanton he's the executive director of national security at george washington university and he said that this cold war mentality is just not helping out so if we can go ahead and play that. we don't need this pervasive national security secrecy that we used to have in fact this studies of the nine eleven terrorism the tragedy all showed that one of the reasons that the government

was going to wasn't effective in dealing with al qaeda was the excessive secrecy compartment of it for compartmentation of information the lack of sharing the reality is that to be more secure we actually need more openness not less so was that something completely different than what we're hearing from others you know they say that in order to protect our security we need to keep our secrets he's saying that in order to protect our security we need to open up we need to be more transparent that's something we're not seeing from from a lot of these agencies interesting ladies appreciate you keeping us updated on what was going on on these two very important issues on the hill today that was our team producer adriano sarlin r.t. correspondent megan lopez well three out of ten that is the number of americans who currently put their faith in the government that's right according to a pew research center record low number of americans trust the government the dip is reflected across the board including bipartisan groups experience some sort of this and chant met archy's kurdistan quest 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 most of the time yes definitely i trust my government class why not why should i ok and why do you think that rates would be that low what do you think happened recently people an educated. you know most likely you know a bunch of rednecks in this country. tell me that about a 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. 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 but you know this immigration there's 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've got harry reid and boehner boehner telling harry reid to f. i'm self didn't know that. well 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 so that they disapprove of congress and they place the blame squarely on members not the system it 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 we're talking about cyber security moments ago when general keith alexander is the man that leaves the u.s. cyber command and the national security agency and just yesterday he told the u.s. armed services committee that by two thousand and fifteen forty online support teams will be ready for action thirteen of those units will be designed designated rather to attack other countries this after highly publicized cyber attacks on american companies and military computers talk about all this i'm joined now by andrew blake he is our web producer here at r.t. hi andrew so thirteen teams for authentic action what kinds of action are we talking about that's a really good question because keep in mind this is news coming from general keith alexander the head of the n.s.a. and the head of the u.s. cyber command the n.s.a. is the same agency that won't even tell americans if they're being spied on they

won't even admit how many americans are spying on their one of the most secret organizations within the united. government so we're not actually hearing a lot about what they're doing and on top of that layer of secrecy what we know about the u.s. cyber of this attacks goes back to an executive order not to the cybersecurity executive order but the policy directive cited by obama last year a public sorry presidential policy directive number twenty actually and it's been a few months and it still remains classified we really don't know what it says other than what we learned from a washington post report a few months ago that said it's the most aggressive cyber security directive ever signed by a president and so we know that the united states can and likely will do whatever they can and they have now soon forty teams that are going to be doing this for them thirteen offensive twenty seven defensive ones are they going to be sending out viruses like stocks that inflame or are they going to be just taking kind of like preemptive strikes against adversaries that could be waging attacks on the army you mentioned this preemptive strike strikes because just what we can glean

from the name thirteen off ends of actions that means that it is not defensive so the u.s. doesn't sound like they're going to you know planning on waiting around out for it for something to happen and strike back that this is this is taking an issue that sounds like us starting this cyber war that they keep saying we're going to get hit with we keep hearing that we're already in a cyber war and that the threat of a cyber war is more and more imminent and depending on if you hear it from president obama or someone from the house or senate or the n.s.a. you've been we're hearing all sorts of different information about how severe these threats are just this week last night actually speaking to a.b.c. i believe president obama said in an interview that hasn't aired yet that these threats are definitely being ramped up in that you are very serious and we need to do something about it and it looks like the way we're going to handle that is just to actually go ahead and not just nip it in the bud but to start striking these countries before they even have the opportunity to fathom attacking us like it's no surprise that we have a very very strong military

a very very strong cyber command the security i was. and you can see by this initiative it is on the top of the agenda and we're using that this term cyber war relatively new phenomenon you know what would that look like what would cyber battles look like what would it look like to be in a cyber war i mean we're already seeing some examples with flaming stocks now were the u.s. has allegedly sent viruses and malware to iran been intercepted inside of iranian nuclear facilities and those viruses have made those facilities go haywire we've actually been able to shut down parts of lake iranian nuclear enrichment facilities with just a little line of computer code we're seeing allegedly chinese hackers coming after us and stealing billions of dollars every year intellectual property iranian hackers are trying to ravish financial websites in the united states there's all sorts of things that could happen one example like if you take off the power grid

for one city let's say let's say you are able to take down the street lights of manhattan that have it right there is it can destroy a thing from there if you if you combine that sort of attack with any sort of biological warfare or any other you know not just a cyber nine eleven but can you imagine if new york city was shut down if there was if you were able to go through the streets if there was nothing but but stop and go from like us to kind of already happens but imagine if there were no traffic lights no street lights to laugh out of the new york city and then on top of that we had nine eleven happen again so really it's really destructive by itself if you use these cyber attacks to their full potential at least the way you can kind of hyperbole as to how drastic possible but when you combine them with other real life off the off the internet attacks in the end result could be truly devastating. sounds like pretty scary stuff now these teams are getting ready or they won't be ready until two thousand and fifteen i guess why two years what are they doing in

that time that's a good question and you know. president obama has been urging congress since he entered office in two thousand and nine to go ahead and do something he just passed the executive order recently which just sets up a framework so that the d.h. and the private sector can share information share threat information so that the government and private businesses can actually work together now that's just an executive order to really do too much other than encourage these places cispa this cyber intelligence sharing and protection act that's been reintroduced in congress if that comes to fruition these links are actually going to be solidified and the government is going to be directly sharing information with private businesses and vice versa no no we're running short on time but one really important thing that we should mention before cisco is even on the books or anything like that happens companies are already sharing this sort of information telecoms like she has signed up so has everything on it and lockheed martin so big defense contractors and big telecoms have already said we're going to share threat information with the

government so there's all sorts of privacy concerns over what kind of information is going through the web and who's going to receive it all right wow thanks for that andrew that was our team left center and you're blake. coming up nearly ten years ago the war between the u.s. and iraq began over suppose that weapons of mass destruction i had will look at the cost of the war and ask if the us economy would be in better shape today if that money would have been used at home. talking about the same story doesn't make good news new song no puff pieces some new tough questions . potentially deadly blizzard taking aim for the northeast it's expected to hit starting in a few hours from new york to maine we have team coverage of the storm. that

we're watching is the very heavy snow moving into boston properly or today it was very sticky you can see it's going to become much more patrie to be a good day and there's still a lot of snow out here a good place for snow ball play. dates and it is going to be pretty incredible day there and even record snowfall throughout much of it might still be laws regarding lists of emergency vehicles or exceptional. let me let me respond we're going to let me ask you a point. on this network is what we're having the thing we have i know you show. me the truth is this is a little surprising they're getting married at the rate we're being i didn't really talk about the surveillance really.

the worst you're going through only a lot out of the radio guy and. i want. to give you never seen anything like this. we are approaching the ten year anniversary of the iraq war and these anniversaries often serve as a time of reflection so we want to take a look now at the cost of the war when it comes to the euro when the u.s. invaded iraq in two thousand and three the bush administration estimated the war to cost in the ballpark of fifty to sixty billion dollars 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 well of across the board government cuts taking set to take over a factor are taking a fact to tackle the nation's debt and with 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 economy earlier was joined by r.t. producer bob english i asked him if the u.s. would be better off economically if they had not spent billions and billions of dollars on the 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 and 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 to 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 and this was commissioned by the by the british because they knew that they were going to be in the war for a long time in 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 good. out of the depression because of it we got out of the 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 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 the iraq war was deeply partisan issue and the deficit today is a partisan issue so i think the argument can be made that we spend 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 imagine before the contractors and i think that that's the heart of that the cost of this war go beyond combat and reconstruction better and they're going to need health care for the years and years to come in 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 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 be felt for a long time and they're by no means over thanks for weighing in there that was our t.v. producer bob english. 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 to zero in on of the specific address the street view images are captured by google's special street view cars but thirty seven states say these cars improperly collected data from unsecured wireless networks across the u.s. beyond doubt as some folks are not happy about being photographed by the google cars here are a few examples you can see why people may not be happy about being photographed

without permission now google has agreed to pay seven million dollars in fines over the privacy concerns but will that really deter the search giant from infringing on people's privacy or earlier i was joined by few months unni gone founder of s s p blue and he began by explaining just what kind of information was captured by these google street cars. well google is actually capturing the information that your wireless networks unless you are using passwords to protect the 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 actually admit to any legal wrongdoing this is more 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 know how are capable of doing with information interesting that owning out there you bring up this expectation of privacy because the connecticut attorney general sat 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's 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 technologies do not work the way your front door lock does and if

there's one lesson out of this the lesson in itself 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 by themselves would always lock their door their out their car lock

their front door and then they go inside and they turn it all on and they feel still comes out sounds like you're so people need to need to take more action and protect 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 so you're 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 and think they're 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 a group 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 times they go well you might appreciate you know our going to the end of the show now that was a founder of ass ass people. and we are going to leave it off there but please follow me on twitter alison walter i carried a pm.