coming up on our t.v. more protests over the police shooting of a teenager and brooklyn r t is in the community as residents demand justice for the sixteen year old gunned down by a barrage of bullets a prominent reuters journalist has been indicted by the u.s. justice department accused of helping anonymous gain access to a media conglomerate servers we will look at this case and the possible jail time this journalist could face. and it's the place where the u.s. government since those deemed undriveable get more holes all the enemy combatants for of us now there's a word of a hunger strike at the facility in cuba will look at why the detainees are refusing to eat. it's friday march fifteenth five pm in washington d.c.

i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. starting off this hour after three consecutive nights where clashes and chaos plagued the streets of brooklyn a relative sense of calm has swept over the borough possibly due to weather conditions for. police day no one was arrested last night during a candlelight vigil held for kamani gray but that's not to say the night didn't have trouble community members who attended the vigil squared off with members of occupy wall street the two groups had dueling messages for the n.y.p.d. that oftentimes drown one another around a number of community protesters also showed up at a press conference held by a city councilman john williams and once again they expressed their anger against the city. well it was. a. lot. like the people in the book that's. what

i still there's a discussion. here is about the stuff that our take correspondent on a stasia churkin i was out on the streets of brooklyn late last night covering the protests she brings us this report. oh. last saturday sixteen year old kimani gray was killed by police shot four times in the front and three in the back. the n.y.p.d. claimed the teen had pointed a gun at them however this remains uncertain that there was a weapon that no one saw and not his friends his family didn't know he had a weapon and there were a lot of witnesses who. were able to see that this individual may have a weapon on him as these candles burn in memory of yet another killed youth an entire community rises up night after night to demand justice and to police brutality for three nights in a row. chaotic clashes broke out. leaving one officer hospitalized

after reportedly being injured with a brick a total of forty six arrests were made wednesday. but no violence erupted thursday night tensions however still ran high. i mean this is. you know so it's like it's like another country a lot of people are just tired of the period with solutions to stop the violence nowhere in sight deeply seated issues between the police and the community remain unaddressed leaving many worried children parents. and our two new york well the deputy social media editor of reuters is facing some serious problems this week the u.s. justice department says twenty six year old matthew keyes conspired with members of the hacktivist group anonymous to break into computers of his former employer was a web producer of the local fox news station in sacramento when he was fired back

in two thousand and ten the indictment filed against says that he provided the hackers with logon and password information to fox for his parent company the tribune's master network now one of the headlines on the l a times web site was actually changed and. as a result so essentially it's an act of digital vandalism he's now faces three criminal counts that could land him in prison for ten years or more and he also faces seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in fines if he's actually convicted i was joined earlier by our web producer andrew blake who's been following the story he wrote it all down for us. yes you know this case has actually been going this investigation going on for a really long time we only really found out about everything yesterday so backing up a little bit when you seem to cover all the bases pretty well but keys was fired from his job at this small time fox affiliate in sacramento back in late two thousand and ten and after he left there supposedly two months later he logged on to a chat room that was frequented by members of anonymous and at some point whether

he was in that chat room once or twice or whatever he handed out the log in credentials username and password so that someone could just log on to a company computer and take a look around so what are not happening at least what we've been told is happening in nothing more than this was that someone changed a story on the l.a. times website for around thirty minutes and so under the computer fraud and abuse act he is now looking at upwards of a few decades and three quarters of a million dollars in fines because someone who wasn't supposed to access a. computer system did and so we his his attorneys are saying that he's pleading not guilty to the charges and it's going to be a really really interesting case because here's a person who who is affiliated themselves with this group anonymous and it means not some leak computer hacker or anything there's just some dorky journalist to seem like he was trying to fit in trying to cause some trouble maybe trying to seek

revenge on his former employers maybe just trying to make some cool internet friends you know that's what i was going to ask you and i mean we've all had those and jerry maguire kind of moments our thoughts where we thought about doing something really crazy against our bosses to extract revenge for something that they have done for making our lives miserable was this a case of just extracting revenge or is there is there something more to it will it depends on if anonymous did any more with this information i mean they already say that they gave access he gave access to the group and therefore open up the doors and that's enough to charge him with everything that has already been indicted for you know that that's right there about you know did it on this do anything else could they have done anything else and also why. e why exactly was on it was anonymous just interested in one really interesting aspect here is right when keyes was hired by reuters in early two thousand and twelve his first story for them actually was a profile of the group anonymous and he started talking about how he went into the group and he preferred to them he thought that the alleged ringleader actually

confided in him and trusted him and if you were to profile him right after it was revealed that this fellow was actually working for the f.b.i. so from what we know this. the ringleader of the united. he was arrested in two thousand and eleven started cooperating with the feds so that summer and in march two thousand and twelve his identity was finally revealed when jeremy him in brown and a bunch of other activists had their homes raided some of them were arrested and that's when this whole anonymous thing really started falling apart depending on which way you look at it and it was the interesting thing here though is he was cooperating with this fellow named sabu before who was cooperated with the f.b.i. at least that's what we're being told was the f.b.i. fishing for information do we think that this fellow was actually you know set up by the f.b.i. there's a lot of really interesting questions it fits into many pieces of the puzzle here not only did reuters hire someone who maybe they shouldn't have but also was the government trying to to set up anonymous there or set up someone try to bring down

a journalist like there's a lot of really weird questions here a lot of bizarre little twists and turns and we only have a short time left but i have to ask you how do we know for sure is there a way for the prosecution to prove that anonymous didn't go into it that they logged into it with the information that this person gave is there any is there any indication of how it actually happened or to say definitively that the information i think gave a link to them to the web site well when when he was profiled anonymous in two thousand and twelve and so with reuters he actually included screen shots of the chat room conversations that he was having at the time now ones where he allegedly handed out user names and password. all username and password but just you know what's what's happening and was just you know trying to have some fun with these guys so if you did hand over the information that's that's that's said and done right right there but what it's going to come down to is what else happened inside of these computers networks did did anonymous actually try to infiltrate try to

compromise any other data was just one single security breach which in my opinion isn't worth three quarters million dollars worth of fines but regardless it's going to be something i think as as it develops are going to hear more more about this case and it's going to get more and more confusing so i'll have to put those pieces together all very confusing we can trust that you'll be sticking with the developments of this r.t. web producer and you're like last month we told you about federal charges that were brought up against former blackwater officials charges that accused a group of conspiring to hide the purchases of automatic rifles and other weapons from the government of the five former blackwater officials former general counsel andrew howell former procurement vice president and a bundy and former weapons manager ronald sleeze act walked away scot free meanwhile former president gary jackson and former executive vice president william matthews pled guilty to some misdemeanor charges they were sentenced to four months of house arrest three years of probation and a five thousand dollars fine but new information is emerging showing just how tight

the ties were between the private security contractor in the cia it was after all the argument defense attorneys use to excuse the group's behavior to the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms but is it a valid excuse to write off the group's legal procurement of these weapons earlier i was joined by michael o'brien author of america's failure in iraq i asked him if he knew how close the relations between blackwater and the cia really were. we probably will never know but the whole trial that collapsed a month ago just where all those raise more questions. i have you know the the the fact is you know governor i'm very very familiar with government procurement now of course the cia does a lot of stuff black stuff that. you know it is unique i've never done contracting with or for well for the cia but i am familiar with government contracting in the

whole thing about it is if blackwater. is saying that we were we were working for the cia they've got to have something to back it up verbal doesn't fly if they say you know if there's a verbal agreement that doesn't hold water maybe they have one but it's not going to good enough to defend them if they had some kind of agreement there should have been something in writing that between procurement the cia because the cia has contracted officers the procure for goods and services just like any other federal agency so it would seem to me that they would have had some something in writing that if they're providing all this other information to acted could documents and stuff like that they would have had some kind of contracts roll. contract paperwork to provide as part of their defense the news stated that a couple of very high ranking cia officials spoke on their you know in a document wrote on their behalf. probably trying to help them help their defense

but the thing that really would have defended him and what backed up their argument would have said well where's the contracted you know where's the document that says you were under contract to the cia that was of course after the fact not not before so let me ask you this first of all should it be that surprising that they did have these close ties allegedly and also do you think that that didn't really branded academy has these kind of close ties with the cia well they probably do it's probably not a unique arrangement the sea. he has all sorts of people under contract it's incredible the number of contractors that work for the federal government but one of the things that i read in one of the articles was that their claim is that the. former congressman hawks said well we needed the cia needed blackwater at the time that was in its name at the time because they didn't have the resources to do the job themselves that that's really the main problem the problem is why doesn't the cia have the resources or the operatives that have the experience and the know

how and all that to do the job we're outsourcing to civilians to be operatives for the cia it just sounds kind of and the same things happening in the military with companies like blackwater were outsourcing soldiers the job of soldiers so the problem is that the government is outsourcing for everything in this particular case if black black war story is to be believed they were outsourcing to blackwater to do all sorts of stuff and they got caught and it's surprising that they said that they don't have the resources considering just how much of our budget actually goes to the department of defense and others let me ask you this does the fact that these two had close relations excuse the fact that they were possibly buying these guns under without a firearm tobacco and alcohol actually knowing well you know that that's a that's a tough one. who the heck knows they probably it seems to me is just my personal

opinion it seems to me that you know blackwater is kind of a rogue a rude outfit to do all sorts of stuff made it probably crossing the line on a search on a lot of stuff the the actual i mean a handful of weapons you know three pistols given to the prince of duel of jordan i mean in the scale of things it's not a lot it's like our interview when when i was here last month you know a sign of kind of like a slap on the wrist like the government wanted. they have to have something to go after blackwater on but i really think it's just the tip of the iceberg i just think there are so many things that the massacre in baghdad you know the nisser square massacre in september of zero seven dwarfs this thing this raid in north carolina i mean that's the big enchilada right there and let me quickly ask you we have a very short amount i want but it's important to know that not it's not just americans that work within these companies private contractors like academy have employers around the world and it's not just coalition allies so how can we hold these people

accountable or can we well here's the thing it says in this one article that i read erik prince you know is just involved but everything he does is for other countries all that erik prince is doing right now is contracting out for services security services and all that mercenary services to other countries so again i think the big question with blackwater z. now cold academy is is it is it ok for an american and an american firm. under another name or whatever to be contracting out mercenary services to foreign countries i think that's the big question when it comes to academy z. blackwater and all these others that are run by americans were or actually american firms and i have a feeling we're not going to get the answer to that question anytime soon any time soon michael o'brien author of america's failure in iraq thank you so much for joining me thanks for having me. with no other way to force one tunnel by officials

to hear their pleas for justice over one hundred detainees are putting their lives on the line with a massive hunger strike the protest is now in its fifth week and many are saying this is a do or die type of hunger strike it started when guards began confiscating the detainees personal belongings including their career ends one new york city based lawyer who is representing many detainee of all behind me says her client has lost at least twenty pounds since the strike began we've just gotten word back from the joint task force in guantanamo bay and this is what they have to say quote recent detainee allegations about incidents in the camps include outright falsehoods and gross exaggeration exaggerations the claims of a mass hunger strike in an incident in which the koran was mishandled are simply untrue first we take extraordinary care to respect the koran and categorically deny any claims of abuse describe desecration or mishandling the number of detainees

refusing all food has increased from six when the first allegation was made to fourteen today this is in comparison to two thousand and six when we had as many as more than one hundred hunger strikers it certainly is not widespread phenomenon as alleged detainees have colluded among themselves to fabricate incidents and claim misconduct where there has been none detainees have acted out individually recently slashing guards with various body fluids and excrement but there have been not there have not been any large scale incidents these are coordinated attacks specifically designed to attract media attention and they certainly attracted our attention for the latest developments coming out of cuba apart. join me earlier she's a staff attorney for the center of constitutional rights and she started off by listing what was wrong with the statement that i just read. the allegation that we're making is

a specific one it is that we have heard from every attorney who has visited the base or communicated with their clients in some fashion since february that there is a large scale hunger strike going on at guantanamo that affects most of the men there the trigger was what we have heard is that it was in response to searches of the men's korans and that is what we've heard and that's what we've reported so it is you know there is a specific there are specific reports that we're making that have been corroborated consistently by every single person who has has communicate with their client in some form and some of those attorneys have been down and seen the evidence of the physical impact themselves in terms of loss of weight of twenty to thirty or forty pounds let me ask you how grave is the situation there how much longer can these men really last before they are in serious physical trouble. well at this point the strike has been going on for nearly forty days and what we know from standards by

the world medical association for example is that by day forty two or forty five you start seeing serious physical effects like loss of hearing loss of vision and ultimately death can result so what we're reporting is is based on extreme concern about what will happen if the strike continues and denials by the authorities at this point are frankly not surprising they have denied allegations like this before there have been hunger strikes at one tunnel before that they have downplayed or denied the severity of so this is not actually that surprising but it is extremely dangerous and irresponsible and at this point we need to hear more from the authorities and that there is that all is fine at guantanamo obviously of obviously there's a lot of dissent formation and coming out and it's hard to really know what the truth is to because a lot of people are allowed in there it's very very much. close mouths when it comes to these detainees in their conditions no i do want to ask you what are these

men wanting what what would in this hunger strike or at the minimum stop them from from harming their bodies any more well what they have told us is that they want to surance is that searches of the korans will not happen again or in the alternative they're even willing to turn in their korans to prevent searches in the future ultimately though the way to the way to guarantee that congress strikes don't occur at one time always do is to close the prison so that is the bottom line and i think there are protests now can't be divorced from the broader context of eleven and a half years of detention of men without charge and that's another question i was going to to ask you is that there are a lot of these men have actually been cleared for release and they're still not they still haven't actually seen that release no a lot of people see these people in guantanamo bay as evil and actually trying to harm the interests of the united states it's hard to argue that all of them are

trying to do that but there certainly are some of them can you explain why these men haven't been released and are any of them part of this of this hunger strike. well as you said there are one hundred sixty six men who currently remain detained at guantanamo eighty six of them so more than half of them have been cleared by the obama administration to leave the prison and what that means is that every government agency with a stake in the issue has determined unanimously that those people do not belong at guantanamo the reasons why they remain are because of the continuing moratorium on all transfers of yemeni men back to their home country that moratorium has nothing to do with the individual facts or circumstances of those people it has to do with a blanket ban on repatriations because of their country of origin and there are also restrictions that congress has now set up that make it very difficult to effect transfers but that said if there were political will by president obama and

he is serious about keeping his commitment to close the prison it is not impossible to start transferring men home it's. hard to believe that the people that are clear to go home are trying to strike just to be able to have their grand party sekou bryce from the center of constitutional rights thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me well it's a simple answer of yes or no and yet the cia refuses to comment on one of the most basic questions about the u.s. drone program the question of whether or not the agency possesses any records of drone strikes whatsoever so to be clear the a.c.l.u. is fighting the cia just to know if such documents exist and what kinds of records they are or are not what kinds of records they are and not actually trying to physically acquire them but even that has cia officials on the defense the u.s. court of appeals doesn't agree though they unanimously knew nana miss lee wrote that the agency does not have the right to guard this information the judges did

not rule that any specific documents must be made public by the cia but in any case this is a step forward for the people seeking more information about this secretive pro. room. well don't mess with texas that's the message state lawmakers are saying to drone companies representative lance good and recently proposed house bill nine one two that would ban unmanned aerial vehicles from flying in the states airspace supporters of the bell say it's a matter of personal privacy but the true reasons for the bill might be a little more dubious than this earlier i was joined by r.t. correspondent ramon glynn no i asked him how likely this bill is to pass. the texas privacy act could be the toughest anti drone law in the united states now the author of h.b. nine twelve state representative good in there in texas has advocated for privacy rights and has sold this bill as anti police state so it's got the support

of civil libertarians and surprisingly enough it has gone support from legislators on the other side of the aisle democrats who see that their constituents are also concerned about privacy so it actually has done quite a bit of support it's out of the legislature there in texas right now it's only in a house committee so it's still a few steps away before becomes law now on the other hand there's a lot of criticism about this bill criticism that says that this bill will stop a lot more than just drawn scant can you explain. that's right well researchers at the university of texas including todd humphrey at the engineering department are worried that this law is too broad and that it's going to catch up people who are not inadvertently peeping toms it's lumping them in with these peeping toms and he points out that he and his team at u.t. they they use drones for research there's no journalists who are using drones for their own investigative work so he worries that

a lot of these people who are using these drone technology for legitimate purposes are going to be lumped in with these peeping toms who are inadvertently taking pictures or video of people on their own property now as i mentioned a little bit earlier there might be a little bit more dubious reasons for why this this bill actually came to being i know one example of how drones are actually acting as a public service was a case actually in texas a few months ago where a hobbyist spotted a stream flowing of blood can you go into a little bit more detail about this. right well capturing images and this includes all sort of data not just video and pictures but also sound and even odors under this law capturing all these sort of data with a drone would be illegal but there is a case where a guy who just likes to go out and fly drones over nice areas and take pictures he accidentally captured. a meat packing plant which was dumping blood into a river and the owners of that plant are facing federal indictment so in this case

drone technology is actually serving the public good but there's a section in this new bill which is being proposed which would make that sort of evidence not usable in a court of law so. in that instance people think that there might be some ulterior motives to putting this law into effect right now and i know that critics are saying that law makers in this case would be trying to protect some kind of corporate interests but i do want to show the other cities and states that are there actually following texas' footsteps as you can see here anti drug laws have already passed in tallahassee and charlottesville meanwhile california massachusetts illinois texas washington kentucky and oregon are all considering similar legislation are we starting to see a trend here well known well definitely and i just want to add that under the proposed texas police would still be able to use drones for search warrants and d.h. as would still be able to use drones along the border but as we saw recently with

rand paul and his drone filibuster and these laws that were seen in across the u.s. there's definitely a lot more. to the privacy issues and the safety issues of drones bring along with them and we do know that actually there's been a lot of times that texas was in the news the most recent one was that last year a group of researchers from the university of texas at austin actually proved that to the d.n.a. test that they could take control of an unmanned aerial vehicle and that just raises so many more questions about the way the program. and you know i can understand i'm sure others can understand why there's a lot of criticism and also questions about the good and parm that this kind of legislation can do. a correspondent reporting from l.a. for us thank you so much for mon you bit. for young journalists the opportunity to get real in the field experience is invaluable but one student got more than he asked for when he attended a domestic violence event featuring vice president joe biden attorney general eric

holder and maryland senator ben cardin university of maryland maryland journalism student jeremy barr was covering the event for a capitol news service when one of vice president biden's press office staffers demanded that he delete all of the photos he took when the student returned to school and he handed and explained what had happened the dean of the film errol college of journalism lucy dalglish who you see there wrote a heated letter to vice president joe biden's office saying quote rockville is not a third world country where police state style media censorship is expected i request an immediate apology to our reporter jeremy barr and to the editors and the staff of capitol news service i also request that your staff be trained in basic first amendment rights of citizens and media to ensure such tactics are not employed in the future vice president biden's office didn't send any type of official response back but the press secretary did call to offer an informal

apology but sometimes sorry doesn't cut it sorry will not unduly at the pictures that this young student took but if nothing else jeremy barr learned a valuable lesson about standing up to unfair media suppression and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we cover to go to youtube dot com slash r c america and check out our website r t dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez my question to twitter followers tonight c pac is going on right now and republicans are readying their ships for twenty sixteen so how do you think the republican party is shaping up having learned their lessons or are they doing to repeat the same mistakes of two thousand and twelve mitt romney spoke at today's today's thing and i want to know what scares and i want to know you guys think so send your responses and we will hopefully read some of them live at eight pm i'll see you back here then.