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

i'm mega 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 poor weather conditions. police say no one was arrested last night during a candlelight vigil held for the for kamani gray but that's not to say that the night was without 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 drowned one another out a number of community protesters also showed up at a press conference held by city councilman jermaine williams and once again they express their anger and frustration with the city. i think.

that's. what. we discussed. our correspondent on a stasia churkin i was out on the streets of brooklyn last night covering the protests brings us this report. that. 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 i'm certain 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 it that this individual. a weapon as these candles burned 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 few turned 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. like another country a lot of people 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 a party new york. the deputy social media editor of reuters is facing some serious problems this week the 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 hughes was the web producer of the local fox forty news station

in sacramento when he was fired back in two thousand and ten the indictment filed against key says that he provided hackers with the log in and password information to fox sports parent company that your view is master network one of the headlines on the l.a. times website was changed to 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 and more than seven hundred fifty thousand dollars in fines if he is actually found guilty i was joined earlier by our team web producer andrew blake who's been following the story since the beginning and he broke 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 i mean you seem to cover all the bases pretty well but keyes 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 on to 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 had 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 lead 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 well that's what i was going to ask you and i mean we've all had those in jerry maguire kind of moments or thoughts where we've 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 but 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 to the group and he befriended them and he thought that the alleged ringleader actually

confided in him and trusted him and he wrote a profile of him right after it was revealed that this fellow was actually working for the f.b.i. so from what we know this. month so you're the ringleader of the unanimous offshoot . 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 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 in the midst 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 website well when when he was profiled anonymous in two thousand and twelve with reuters he actually included screen shots of the chat room conversations that he was having at the time not ones where he allegedly handed out user names and password. well 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 these computers

networks did did anonymous actually try to infiltrate try to compromise and the other data was just one single security breach which in the my opinion isn't worth three quarters million dollars' worth of fines but regardless it's going to be something i think as the 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 the federal charges that were brought up against former blackwater officials charges that accuse the 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 sleaze that 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 probation and

a five thousand dollars fine but new information is emerging showing just how tight the tie is really are between the private security contractor and the cia or at least how tight they were it was after all an argument that defense attorneys use to excuse the groups behavior to the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms but is this really a valid excuse to write off the groups illegal weapons earlier i was joined by michael o'brien he is the author of america's failure in iraq and i asked him if he knew how close the relations between these two groups really were. we probably will never know but the whole trial that collapsed a month ago just were all those raise more questions and that's what 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 and 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 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 were backed up their argument would have said well where's the contract if you know where is the document that says you were under contract to the cia of course after the fact 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 the newly branded academy has these kind of close ties with the cia well they probably do it's probably not a unique arrangement to see. 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 hoekstra 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 stories 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 these guns under without a firearm tobacco and alcohol actually knowing well you know that that's a that's

a tough one you know 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 rogue 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 to. 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 the massacre and big did 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 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 our brit 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 or 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'brian author of america's failure in iraq thank you so much for

joining me thanks for having me. so i had on our t.v. hungry for justice if the place where the u.s. government says those deemed on trial will now get no detainee is are on a hunger strike in the golan tunnel of a detention facility well look at why the detainees are refusing to eat after the break. already in the field that you won't find it here if you're looking for a relevant story is unique perspective from time plus ten dollars. with no other way to force one tom obey 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 say it's a do or die type of hunger strike it started when guards began confiscating the detainees personal belongings including some korans now one you new york city based lawyer who's actually representing a yemeni detainees named gottlieb all behind me says her client has lost at least twenty pounds since the strike began we have just gotten word back from the joint task force guantanamo bay in regards to the allegations they say quote recent detainee allegations about incidents in the camps include outright falsehoods and gross exaggerations the claims of a mass hunger strike and an incident in which the koran was mishandled or simply untrue first we take extraordinary care to respect the koran and categorically deny any claims of abuse 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 a 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 splashing guards with various bodily fluids and excrement but there has been no there has not been any large scale incidents there are coordinated acts specifically designed to attract the media's attention and it certainly attracted our attention but for the very latest developments coming out of cuba. joined me earlier she is the senior 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 communicate 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 mare 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 had communique with their client in some form 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 of trouble. well at this point the strike has been going on for nearly forty day and what we know from standards by the world medical association for example is that by a 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 has been hunger strikes that guantanamo 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 office already and that there is that all is fine at guantanamo obviously of obviously there's a lot of this information coming out and it's hard to really know what the truth is to because a lot of people are allowed in there is very very much close mouthed when it comes to today's detainees of their conditions now i do want to ask you what are these men one a what one would in this hunger strike or at the minimum stop them from from harming

their bodies anymore. well what they have told us is that they want to sure insist that searches of the koran will not happen again or in the alternative they're even willing to turn in their korans to prevent searches in the future ultimately so the way to the way to guarantee that hunger strikes don't occur at one time always 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 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 now a lot of people see these people in guantanamo bay as a lawyer 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 act one ton of them 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 would have to do with a blanket ban on repatriation 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 that 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 sticker price from the center of constitutional rights thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me well the f.b.i. is at it again looking for new ways to skirt around laws and the need for warrants it turns out the f.b.i. has issued hundreds of thousands of super secret national security letters to private businesses in order to obtain sensitive information on clients without having to wait for a warrant or a subpoena so essentially the agency was going behind the courts back all along but a u.s. federal judge is fighting back today u.s. district judge susan bilston declared these letters to be unconstitutional and as ordered the f.b.i. to stop sending them out after making a ruling judge bilson i also granted a ninety day stay to allow for the f.b.i. time for them to have time to ask for an appeal the electronic frontier foundation is celebrating this issue the foundation is currently representing

a tele community. nation company that's fighting in in a cell letter that actually received back in two thousand and eleven for more on this story go to our web site r t dot com slash usa. well things are warming up in washington d.c. and i'm not just talking about the weather it's sunshine week and for many journalists that means a chance to have a dialogue about the importance of government and freedom of information throughout the week numerous events have taken place in our team has been there to convert them one of the major advocates for the open government is in a say whistleblower thomas drake hailed a luncheon today to talk about how important the free flow of information is to a democratic society are to correspondent liz wahl is there and brings us the latest it seems that secrecy is actually strengthening the national security. in order to hide from accountability and oversight he's a former national security agency executive turned whistleblower thomas drake says he gave information to journalists exposing government waste and corruption within

the n.s.a. he says none of the information he leaked was classified i knew too much truth and expose government illegalities prosecutors charged drake with the espionage act a felony offense that could have sent him to prison for decades we can effectively bring forth hearings particularly questions like yours we cannot advocates for open government as someone that risked everything to expose government abuse drake remains a vocal critic of the n.s.a.'s domestic spying program which has massively expanded in a post nine eleven world drake says the program puts our freedoms in jeopardy the mechanisms are already in place for that type of control and monitoring and some say you're overdramatizing all you have to do is look at what's happening drake speaks at the national press club as part of sunshine week it's a national initiative to highlight the need for open government and watch our group say with the government keeping more and more information private now was the time

to bring the issue to the forefront to mark sunshine week the white house says quote sunshine week is about the importance of transparency and the public's right to know what its government is doing that philosophy has been at the core of the obama administration from day one and over the last four years we've let a lot of sunshine in but drake says actions speak louder than words i see it getting far worse it's all it's total hypocrisy as far as i'm concerned he tells us that these days government officials are afraid to speak up and blow the whistle on wrongdoing what do you think it will take for this culture of secrecy that you that you and others point out to change just exposing disclose it but with the administration aggressively going after whistleblowers exposing government secrets as a risk few are maybe willing to take and washington liz wall r.t. . 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 on

drone strikes whatsoever so to be clear the a.c.l.u. is finding the cia just to know if such documents exist and what kinds of records they could hold and not physically acquire them but even that has cia officials on the defense the u.s. court of appeals doesn't agree though they unanimously ruled that the agency does not have the right to guard this information the judge did not rule on any specific documents or say that they need to be released to the public by the cia but in any case this is a step forward for people seeking more information about the secretive program and that's going to do it for the news for this week but be sure to tune in next week we're working on a whole new lineup of stories for you first up water of the very sort of source of life that everything needs to survive it's in short supply these days you'd think this would be a public good for all but think again as the threat of global water depletion continues to build more and more of it continues to be privatized by corporations

next week on our t.v. we'll tell you more about a problem that'll make you stir steve for more information and the u.s. is adding another country to its list of fears north korea now u.s. defense secretary chuck hagel has announced that it will create fourteen new interceptors by twenty seventeen they will be added to the west coast to supposedly deter north korean missile attacks upon the u.s. will it have that effect or maybe something else entirely more on that next week. and on tuesday next week it'll be the tenth anniversary of the u.s. invasion of iraq and anniversary that a lot of the rockies won't be celebrating even after the withdrawal of u.s. troops or rock continues to experience more insurgency bombings and more chaos because that started only after the invasion began our team will take a look at the many costs of war when we return those are just a few of the stories we have a story for you next week along with more news and in-depth interviews so keep it

tuned in right here to our t.v. and that's going to do it for me for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash america check out our website or to dot com slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez my question to twitter followers tonight c pac is going on right now when republicans are already gunning for twenty sixteen so how do you think the republican party is shaping up having learned anything from the past your responses are already starting to come in kyle said quote as in they have they learned from the past what happened in november i see little evidence of that same people espousing the same views and philip wrote not with this meltdown they haven't keep tweeting and have a great night and a great set patrick's day weekend i'll see about here on monday.