well after the passage of the month santa protection act the company is now seeing a new increase in profits while today fast food workers in new york are going on strike for better pay and better wages we'll tell you more about these developments in the food industry and one of the fathers of the internet will join me to talk about google will explore the current state in the future of the internet when it comes to cyber privacy copyright and much more coming up on our tech report. and the shield of justice may soon be raised to protect whistleblowers a gallery of activist and attorneys pledged to stand up for anyone brave enough to expose both the corporate and government corruption more on that coming up. what's thursday april fourth four pm in washington d.c. i'm margaret how well you're watching our t.v. . and at the top of today's show a follow up to

a story we've been covering the so-called month monsanto protection act signed into law more than a week ago by the president this was a little noticed provision of a larger bill to fund agricultural spending over the next six months it essentially gives more genetically modified crops and the companies that make them immunity from court intervention even if they become a public health risk since we started following the story as some other outlets have followed our lead let's take a listen. let's at least hear some of congress is no doubt robust discussion on this controversial amendment critics are angry about how it was passed into a huge agricultural bell without review by a committee. there's no charges attached this language protecting genetically modified food makers into a bigger unrelated bill. so rachel talk to me about what's happening with these protesters sure so one other thing that's been going on is beyond month santa and

beyond beyond all of the things going on in the ag business is that fast food workers in new york have decided that they actually would would like to strike and they have done so today they walked out of their jobs over four hundred over four hundred protesters walked out of their jobs in places ranging from mcdonald's to burger king to k.f.c. pizza hut all of these different places they've decided what are they wanting yes what they're looking for it's a couple of things the first thing is higher wages they're currently making seven twenty five an hour now the new york state legislature has decided or they just passed last month a bill that would actually increase that number to nine dollars an hour by two thousand and sixteen with these workers are saying is this isn't enough they want fifteen dollars an hour and in addition to that that bump in wages they're also looking for the opportunity to unionize they want the right to be able to unionize without fear of without fear of retribution from their employers so we see that the

fast food industry itself you know they're grossing two hundred billion a year well they're paying their employees the average salary i think it's eleven thousand dollars a year why are we saying this disparity well you know that's a really good question and i think it and another number i think that we might want to add in there is that the average daily salary for. for an executive at one of these huge fast food organizations is twenty five thousand dollars a day right that's more than double what a lot of these people are what a lot of their workers are near in a year exactly so but the question is even if they're employed even if they're executives they're still beholden to their shareholders and their shareholders are looking for a bottom line profit as opposed to say more equitable treatment of employees so it comes back to who really owns these companies and how they're not looking for instance. to turn this into a moral argument they just want profits say so why do you think that the american

people because this has been going on for a long time why do you think that this is you know it's been a non issue for such a long time and we're finally seeing it resurface why do you think our society doesn't seem to you know we haven't made this a central issue of paying people essentially a living wage yet that's a really good question and i think it comes down to this i know that president obama had mentioned the minimum wage as something that he would like to raise in his state of the union address this year and i think what it's become is a lot of people are recognizing that at long last i mean there's no question that people who make minimum wage are living under the poverty line and as more people are living under the poverty line i think the new question becomes if we can't grow employment then we need to make sure that the people who are employed are making enough money so that then they can go back and contribute to our economy so it's not only good say for those individual workers but what the argument is is that it's also better for the economy as a whole i say so these people you know who are essentially protesting right now are are they making any headway you know their demands being heard do you think that's

a really good question so this isn't the first time that fast food for the organization that organized all these protesters has has staged a walkout like this the first one was in late november and the four hundred people who are protesting now is more than double the people who came out last time so in that sense there is certainly an improvement another thing is that they were joined by occupy wall street so at five thirty today are all going to park in harlem and they're going to meet there and discuss and you know they're going to protest so in this sense being joined by by another we're going to buy another loosely affiliated group of people. in itself occupy wall street is certainly good at garnering headlines so that's a good thing and another thing is that the head of the a.f.l. c i o richard trumka has also joined them and he's and he said you know i am i'm very empathetic with their plight and i believe that these workers should also be able to unionize say so they are making some progress so. you know anything going on in that maybe you know we should know or be aware of about the scroope you know

in terms of what we can do watching it is there a petition circulating yeah i'm really glad you brought that up so there is a petition last i looked it had around two hundred eighteen thousand signatures so you know that's certainly what the question is always whether people who have these signatures you know people could sign something online it doesn't necessarily translate into real world action but certainly the fact that two hundred. two hundred eighteen thousand people now are aware of this is is more than say was going on before you see so definitely a lot of things going on here and a lot of information at play and certainly we will keep following the story and in studio with me that was rachel perseus produce security thank you rachel thanks so much for having me. well it's thursday so all although we know what that means it's time to talk technology from internet privacy to cyber security and the future of google glass we'll be covering a lot of this ground on this week's round up here to help me get right down to it a man who is known as one of the fathers of the internet.

that this chief internet evangelist of sorts he's a slash vice president of google his name is ben surf then he joins me now in studio so great to have you so i think you might be providing you thinking well first things first that you know definitely a lot going on with google glass that we've seen from google. a lot of issues with google. a company or a bar rather in seattle they're saying that they're banning google glass you know as a means of violating their privacy they consider it sort of harassment what's your take on that well first of all evan seen anything that the objection and the details of the objection i have the sense that you can always say people should people please don't turn the google glass came around. this is kind of like may i smoke or may not smoke so i would think that we will evolve social norms around

these kinds of technologies just as we've had to evolve social norms around texting and e-mail to use your mobile and the new your table or not. this wall involved would come in and say so definitely a lot of issues at play here we've also seen coming out in terms of internet privacy in cyber security the future of google glass and other issues like it you know help me understand what privacy issues are play here you know for people who may not know well but i think there are a number of them a lot of misconceptions about how the internet works how google systems work lead to concerns over privacy that in fact don't necessarily have substance except to people who don't understand how things work for example people imagine that we information about people's behavior and then we sell it to somebody else it's not our business model so no question that google has been at the forefront of a lot of the sort of ation and a lot of these recent projects here's an example of some tweets that we have that

people are sharing about google glass i'd like to like to give them to you now one of them says. of my eyes and every second i would be able to share inside view a flash of mobs i take part in i follow around high performing people criminal saints and scientists alike for three days each morning tonight so it started quite a bit of controversy and even raise some eyebrows certainly with with what's going on in terms of that privacy issue but i'd like to transition out intellectual property if i can it and google has been a company there coeur you know innovation is at their core they've been you know an open source of technology certainly for us and i just would like to ask you. situations like ken dot com for example where people are giving a platform to dissent and having dissenting opinions what are we seeing in terms of technology you know i p a law is coming for are we going to see them deterred by

these laws well first of all every time a new technology comes along that somehow threatens old business models there are all kinds of concerns raised you may look back in history and see the invention of the video recorder creating huge amounts of concern in the intellectual property community only to discover later the sales or rentals of videotapes generated more revenue in the box office did so i have the sense that every time you technologies come in people worry about their impact eventually things settle down and turn into something that everyone is able to work with to see so building off that many experts seem to believe that the cooperation between the public and private is key to the future of securing the internet itself is the role of government when it comes to the internet you know what is that role and is it defined in there and i well i think there are several possibilities clearly the government has a responsibility for national security and i don't think anyone would disagree with

that the sharing of information and the development of new technology for securing the net is something the government can invest in and make available which is how the internet was created in the first place the defense department created that network funded its creation and then released it openly and publicly and made it available to everyone without any intellectual property constraints so i see a very good opportunity for government and the private sector to work together to improve security in the net for one thing all of the computers that are in fact need to be disinfected it's your machine in my machine not the machines in the business that are part of the bottleneck problem we need better operating systems we need better browsers and we need people to be much more aware of the things they can do to secure their systems better cease. so i want to talk to you now about the case of aaron swartz if you don't mind and just explain to me kind of what was happening with him you know in terms of of the computer fraud abuse act which his

case has really brought to light for us and the stiffer penalties that are starting to be imposed for people like aaron swartz so aaron i think felt very very strongly that the information that was available in this case in j. store ought to be freely available to everyone and he went out of his way to try to make that happen unfortunately he chose ways to do that that turned out to run afoul of the law and so whether you agree with him in his intent or not we still have the problem that there are laws on the books and those laws are being enforced it may very well turn out that in the long run we learn from that sad incident and we discover that we need to rethink what intellectual property how intellectual property should be treated particularly in the environment where it's digitized it's easy to replicate and it's easy to distribute i say so i want to

take you back to those issues of privacy and transparency google has started publishing personal data you know we've been seeing a lot of the government specifically the u.s. government has been requesting more of google for that personal information can you talk to me about that well first of all the assertion that google was publishing personal data cannot be true i don't believe that's a correct statement what google has been publishing is what governments have been asking it to devolve so you're saying that government is telling google explain that to me so the governments ask google as they ask others for information that google has about its users google often pushes back unlike some of the information providers what we've been publishing is which governments have been making demands for information how many of those demands we actually responded positive. we to we insist that we won't release information unless there are proper legal procedures have been undertaken warrants have been presented justifying the request and say

sir have you seen the government ratcheting up this request for information i don't have those statistics in hand to be quite honest but i think on the average yes the governments are realizing that there's information available about people that they feel they have a right to know and so they make more and more demands but google pushes back when we consider them to be over bearing and then we won't tractate legal means to try to resist that demand thank you so much for this information that has been sort of joining me in studio chief internet evangelist and google vice president or even being stung by ever been stung by jellyfish yes that can hurt but maybe useful that's what researchers at virginia tech college and engineering are betting on they've done fell and failed ever bought a jellyfish yes you've heard me correctly they have nicknamed this creation cyro

and get this it's over five feet tall and tipped the scales at one hundred seventy pounds and a news release the school says that this robotic jellyfish is a larger model of a robotic jellyfish of the same team of researchers that was unveiled in two thousand and twelve both robots are a part of the project funded by the u.s. naval undersea warfare center and the office of naval research the purpose for these robots you ask the surveillance and monitoring of underwater environments this includes the studying of aquatic life mapping ocean floors and monitoring ocean currents so is this amazing technology only going to be used for quite a life only time will tell however not only do we have to worry about the jobs on the beach now we have to worry about the government's new robotic jellyfish also lurking in the water. now in the arkansas were an ugly oil spill continues to wreak havoc as oil continues to flow through the small town of mayflower cleanup efforts have begun to take shape however there may be one catch according to the exxon

corporation artie's correspondent marina important explains. the federal aviation administration they say that the indefinite no fly zone which they're calling a temporary flight restrictions was put in place as a hazard warning officials say this is so emergency support are able to respond to the disaster immediately now the f.a.a. zz online posting noted that only relief aircraft operations on operated under the direction of mr tom sawyer all are committed in the area now according to his linked in profile mr sir off list himself as an aviation adviser for exxon mobil he is not an emergency expert or a safety officials this of course has caused many critics to speculate that the real reason behind this indefinite no fly zone is to minimize news coverage that can further damage the reputation of exxon mobil r.t. recently spoke with a fellow mayflower resident chris harrell now mr howard told us that he has not received any indication of any kind of compensation or settling settlement offers

from exxon mobil mr harrell said that on sunday when he went home briefly for easter here in the states he received a letter on his front door from exxon mobil that apologized quote apologized for the inconvenience mr howell said of those have that have been evacuated are being provided the hotel rooms paid for by exxon mobil but at a community peak a meeting that took place over the weekend with some exxon officials mr howell says that very few answers were given and all those in attendance were very frustrated very angry exxon mobil has not indicated how long cleanup will take mr howell told r.t. that the major concern for many people in the neighborhood is the longer term impact of from the spill both environmentally and financially what will this circumstance do to property values in that area of course this oil spill taking place in arkansas is not as big as the one that took place in the gulf of mexico

a few years back but the concern for many people especially residents the that. are directly affected by this oil spill is that it's not going to receive the coverage that it needs to receive to find those responsible for this oil spill accountable this is still a very disastrous oil spill that's going to harm the community harm the environment and if the media is not and is not given access to cover this oil spill to cover the extent and the damage and the circumstances of it then there may be less accountability that is the major concern and at the end of the day those that are affected by this and i think citizens all throughout the united states want to know why it took place what could have prevented it and if someone's responsible for this they should be held accountable well that was our ts marina. if there's something strange you don't feel good will who are you going to call well that would be the whistleblower defense league that's you as critics of the

current administration approach the clamping down on government leaks that continues someone decided to do something about it and we'll see what their prosecutorial over iraq means here to tell us more is jay lederman attorney lederman divine and part of this group today. good. you're welcome so first question what's behind all this. well what's behind this is the. administration's unprecedented prosecution model of whistleblowers people that would seek to shine a light on the truth and expose that to the public are getting prosecuted why never before in history so actually it's a it's a crisis and a massive demand for this so that's what you know give birth to this organization see so the whistleblower defense league that you and others have launched seem to challenge government prosecutions of whistleblowers what do you expect to achieve with this j.

. well what we would hope is that the government backs off you know allows people who do know more than try to expose the truth to actually do that. information is importance even more important as we get into the digital age and it's this massive commodity that doesn't belong to the government belongs to the world and as long as the government keeps keep trying to clamp down and make it so that people can bring information in truth to light there's going to be a dire need for our services well there are certainly been a record number of people charged under the espionage act and act that comes out of world war one in fact a total of seven people under the a bomb administration alone many of those that were on this list gave information that journalistic outlets not foreign governments do you think that this approach will the turret anybody who is trying to report these abuses within the government. well i think that's part of the

reason behind the prosecutions is to show the next person that would have these ideas that this is not something that you can do and and you know with impunity however our presence in the presence of other organizations like us and the basically the fact that there are voters out there willing to give backing to before that would stand for the truth would i would hope encourage people to do that these people that have been prosecuted under this act should not have been the john kiriakou and thomas streaks of the world are not criminals these people are heroes and i see so you know building on this just in yesterday documents released by the partnership for civil justice fun they reveal that law enforcement agencies like the f.b.i. for example have been actively monitoring activist i'm not sure if you've heard about or not but what does this mean for

a journalist covering these stories to cover movements like occupy well it's so i see it as a shot across the bow for those journalists little warning shot saying listen we're we're here we're surveilling you're not going to know we're here but if you do something if you publish something we don't like if you get too close to these people if you are truly embedded with them we're going to see a prosecution and you see that with with matthew key is that's a case that i'm representing prior to the formation of this who was a journalist and who was embedded in in. anonymous chat rooms i mean should they be worried cheo i mean is this something that actual journalists should in fact be worried about. well yes and no i would hope that journalists wouldn't be worried about it because if you worry about it you're not as effective and as carefree in doing your job the way you need to do it we give you the support that you need we

hope or at least we seek to give you the support that you need just simply do your job which is to report the truth to report what's going on however the reality of the situation is that journalists and everyone it's a natural thing to be concerned with the federal government come sniffing around what's going on so we hope to kind of put this back in balance and what the journalists get back to work doing what they do best which is journalism and see well jay i have to ask you are there any are there any interesting calls or tips that you'd like to share with me. well. so far the only thing that the whistleblower defense league has been working on publicly is. is the government in connection with the barrett brown case issued a subpoena. to an american company for his essentially one of his journalistic projects that he worked on called project b m where they're now in addition to

prosecuting him prosecuting his mother and and getting a conviction they're now trying to go after his his work his journalism essentially and the people that that assisted with that so you know we've only been real short while we've only been talking about this project for a couple of weeks we've only really been public or just since the beginning of this week this motion was filed and already we're seeing in action the government trying to suppress journalism project pm the subpoena density works on trying to just bring it's a wiki which just brings information about public and private partnerships with respect to security. you know spying snooping and those things was a very important area for the people to know about and we're glad the. w.b. deal has gotten involved and that i'm not personally involved because of my

previous relationship representing barrett. you know i hate to stop you there we've run out of time but that was jay lederman thank you lawyer lederman divine l o p even though axia a whistleblower john kiriakou is sitting in jail for having described to us interrogation techniques such as waterboarding as torture us back during the bush administration his supporters just aren't having it and they are demanding that he bets he be set free they're taking it up with the white house by way of petition asking president obama to pardon him for his actions now carry out who spoke to us here at r t just a few months ago and now that he's in prison where he's serving his thirty month term started back in february twenty thirty a friend to carry out coups offered to deliver the petition to the white house chief of staff the petition started by a progressive online action community firedoglake and already has more than sixteen

thousand signatures since it was published on wednesday morning now the online group hopes to deliver this powerful message through this petition and all the petition may not be as powerful as torture itself which forces someone to do or say something the online community has valid to not stop fighting for him and the name of quote fair justice in this case. an eight months pregnant and tasered by a cop for refusing to lay on the ground those events unfolded late last night in a parking lot in springfield illinois and it was caught on tape let's take a look. oh you know that that i don't think oh yes. she's trying to. get. back to.

the police say listen the wife and her boyfriend frederick thomas were resisting arrest and actively fighting officers white told a local t.v. station in st louis that she never touched the officer a witness to the scene said that white requested not to lie on the ground face down because of her pregnancy now the police were initially calling this they were called the parking lot for a minor car accident and a dispute between drivers i guess we'll have to wait and see for the some failings video to determine before who's telling the truth in this case but here's a bigger question should an officer even use a taser on a pregnant woman police in the community that manufactures tasers say using the device is safer than other alternatives but is it safe enough now this pregnant woman and her unborn baby are fine so far but one says she felt her baby shaking for several hours after being tasered well that's going to do it for now for more stories we've covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america we'll see you here

five pm. crew. does is trash to get rid of. but it's also a treasure. worth fighting for. and the trap was no way out. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like you think you understand it and then you glimpse

something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. of. the.