well just today wiki leaks has released the kissinger cables the searchable database of over a million diplomatic records delves into the u.s. support of a certain seventy's dictator we'll speak with a spokesperson of wiki leaks straight ahead. while the guantanamo bay detainees continue their hunger strike the u.n. human rights chief now calls for the closure of the prison camp she claims the camps indefinite detention of prisoners without charge of trial violates international law more news developments later in the show and a new bill in california is introduced to protect consumer data now this bill calls for companies to inform customers when their information is shared with third parties and even give customers access to their own data pull this bill passed details i had i. was monday april eighth five pm in washington d.c. i'm margaret howell you're watching r t starting this hour the latest from wiki

leaks earlier today the whistle blowing web site released one point seven million diplomatic cables ranging from nine hundred seventy three to nine hundred seventy six and these cables reflect the u.s. state department's interaction with other countries and these cables also shed some light on the u.s. political goals of the era now this codger a of documents also includes communications between then top official hillary kissinger and other governments wiki leaks founder julian assange was on hand somewhat joining the procedures remotely from inside the ecuadorian embassy the only thing is they said that he controls the president controls and he controls the post controls the future and that is because of the vital role that history plays in deciding our own interpretation of what is happening in the world. the u.s. national archives since it owns search is to the wood where he weeks following

that revelation we looked closely at what else was going on and in fact as kristen said from two thousand and six. it became apparent that the u.s. national archives had reversed course of the case over fifty five thousand pages of material that in the great analysis done by the national security archive say a group run out of george washington university we have pulled together two million documents two hundred fifty thousand documents from our previous release cable guy one point seven million documents pulled from the national archives and put them together. into an integrated format so he who controls the past will does in fact control the future i was told by wiki leaks post percs spokesperson

kristen robinson earlier today and i asked him to break down what these leaks actually mean and why they're so important take a listen. well i mean they are declassified in these documents but they are very hard to access so they are defacto kept secrets because it's only you need expertise to actually be able to get in get access to them and find it in your interest so what we're doing of course we're unearthing them bring us to public light and make you know so simple to the general public so it's a it's a question of semantics but i would. call it a leak is ok so what do they mean essentially for journalists who. talk to me about does it actually change anything well i mean for me as a journalist this is this is so important to have a database like that you can go back to would of reference again and again that this is this is i do that frequently with every news story that comes up you go to

cable gates now you have one point seven million all the documents just i think some pulled market decides there's a lot of mission about markets in those early cables or in the documents from the seventy's so there are information about the new pope etc etc you can go to these documents very important too to use it as an essential to tool for journalists so you know the speculation or the rumor would be that they came from the national archives can you tell us where they came from well i mean these are the most you know archives and. you know hidden there in many ways that's one form of secrecy and that is the hiding hiding information behind a wall of complexity i say so you know project came was released to the national press club held a press conference about this today talk to me about the significance of that and if it actually impacts anything well let's see what happens we are we're working

with about eighteen media partners who have been. mining this information for news stories. and it's already front page material some places i mean the hindu in india reduce a story based on this material about the involvement of the. steel in world in sweden back in the seventy's that's you know cause you know per another example for example that is the year. the year like this year it's on the u.s. involvement in dictatorship regime so in latin america good friend a journalist in brazil has told me this is so helpful for the newly set of truth commission which finally was reconciling with the the period of the state of ship in brazil so it's not that far away these cities in history it has as strong relevance to certainly so project a project kissinger if you will certainly has some relevance here we actually have

a sought from r.t. interviewing henry kissinger would like to play it now. and they have to remember that for and probably for country. influence. right three. the objective situation and. the major thing so you can never start something totally new. in which case you have normal human. so the state department just released a statement saying that they can't comment on the authenticity of the declassification of these cables what are your thoughts on their statement well i mean we have we have. never used anything that. been called not us or something so. you can really say why they are denying

your authenticity of this interesting to hear kissinger's warriors here there is an interesting document in the from one nine hundred seventy six. minutes from a meeting in turkey. where he actually is quoted as saying. when it's legal and we do it immediately when it's unconstitutional it takes a little longer it's supposed to be a joke but. an element of truth about its neighbor but the truth is that. well that was kristen robinson wiki leaks spokesperson well he's been called one of the fathers of the internet partially responsible for the invention of the internet last week chief internet evangelist and google vice president served spoke with r.t. producer of you know gray now serves spoke about what anonymity means for certain people who live in places where they would otherwise risk personal safety for worthing their opinions let's take a listen. the fact that you've been quite outspoken about at least online

protecting user names in countries like iran and china and saudi arabia that has enabled people to almost have experience freedom and otherwise tyrannical so that society has talked to me about why you've been so adamant about protecting people's identities a lot of the rhetoric we do hear from me on this point is less aimed at the google properties as it is generally aimed at using the internet right don't actually i don't believe that someone needs to identify themselves in order to use the internet and for the reasons that you described there are times when anonymity is really important we all understand that anonymity can sometimes be abused someone will say things in an anonymous way that can be very harmful you don't know where they came from you can't defend yourself the closest you can come to defending yourself is to say well why it isn't true but then that sounds very defensive so there are two sides to this picture for the cases that you're describing as we understand and appreciate the tension there but the company i think appreciates

that there are circumstances in which that particular model is hazardous in a way it sounds like you're really clarifying the things that made me well i hope so it has been misunderstood in both dimensions both. for people who are accustomed to using real names in their social networking environment and don't realize that sometimes that's not the right idea or it's not say on the other side of it is being able to choose and identifiers of that are convenient for you that don't necessarily real reveal identity well that was then surface president and chief internet evangelist at google. now on to an update to the ongoing issues at guantanamo bay detention facility today marks day sixty two of the detainee hunger strike and as the process continues conserver prisoners have become an issue most recently coming from the united nations you know un human rights chief now people a call from the u.s. to close the deal. mention camp now she's called the indefinite incarceration of

detainees a breach of international law a she went on to say that she has great concern over what's classified as the systematic human rights abuses that have left many in such a desperate measure forcing starvation but one of those effects according to dr sandeep burroughs who spoke to us earlier to talk about what's happening during the hunger strike you know if you look at fasting. you know the word hunger strike is kind of a misnomer because after about forty eight to seventy two hours what happens is you start breaking down the fatty acids and you get she towson's and as these ketones are floating around in your body it actually takes away the sensation so you're actually after a couple of days you're not hungry so the word hunger strike is actually a misnomer for your body still continuing to breakdown. earlier i was joined by r.t. correspondent and associate church going to from new york and i asked her what exactly

did the human rights chief have to say about guantanamo bay well i'm margaret you know some scary things going on a growing time of course is that dr just described what we have coming out of the united nations human rights chief navi pillay life she is of course. it's for having failed to shut down guantanamo prison camp for years after barack obama signed an executive order saying that it would not take longer than a year and what their former u.n. work crimes judge says is that the indefinite detention under which the prisoners are being held is of course a violation of international law she says that the hunger strike that has been ongoing for the last two months is no surprise because these people have lost complete hope of ever seeing a fair trial or an appropriate kind of treatment while being held there for course we know that while the military and guantanamo says that forty people have been on a hunger strike lawyers are actually saying that the majority of those one hundred sixty six prisoners being held and certainly pillai has also underscored that it's

very important that the prisoners be tried in civilian courts instead of military commissions and this is a major concern i want to take you back to those human rights issues what are the major human rights concerns here. well it margaret the first one we have to talk about is of course the lack of due process we have to remember that out of one hundred sixty six detainees only nine people have so far been charged or convinced with or found to be responsible for a crime and this is something that's just an outrageous number the hunger strike again has underscored the inhumane treatment lack of due trial and it will have an associate but what what type of standing does the u.n. actually have here can they actually compel any change any policy change in washington margaret that's the trick here unfortunately at the united nations there's only one body and that's the security council that can have any kind of tangible impact on events taking place around the world and those events have to be

somehow related to issues of security and this is of course is not seen as such a case so for anybody else at the united nations to come out and say this is wrong that the u.s. is still has open there's really nothing of a huge kind of impact that we can be see because the u.n. simply does not have that power and say so president obama if you remember he vowed to close the detention facility right after taking office he hasn't done it what message is this sending to the u.s. president which you know how can they press this issue he hasn't done it he promised to do it what can the u.n. do at this point. well you know like i just said the united nations there's really not much they can do and except for continuing to underscore the importance of shutting down you know taking over media headlines by pressuring barack obama but the only thing that can happen from here is the u.s. can either ignore or hear this message which certainly doesn't seem to be the case like you said obama signed this executive order to shut it down four years ago he

said he then a year later said that the prisoners would be transferred to illinois that never happened he then said that a year later again that a proper review process needs to take place that never happened because of blocking by congress so in this particular case analysts are really becoming wary they're saying that one of the first promises barack obama's made could be the last one he actually makes reality well that was our t. is an associate going to from new york. on line probably privacy it's a topic that continually comes up these days and relationship between consumers and companies contend used to evolve one california lawmaker wants to make sure that that relationship well it stays on the right track a california assembly member body low in fall has introduced the right to know act a piece of legislation that would. require any business that has consumed customers personal information as to find to provide no charge with thirty days of the customer specified request

a copy of the information the customer as well as the names of the contact informations for all third parties with which the businesses share the information during the previous twelve months regardless of any business relationship with the customer. well couldn't remember low and fall but but actually pass to talk to more about this i was joined earlier by he munching a guntown or of asked us blue now he started explaining what this means for businesses and their customers let's just start by putting it out there in the front this law is really really serious from a business perspective and it's very powerful from a consumer perspective and let me just give you a quick on why the law actually expands the definition of personal information to not just information you have given yourself to a site so you may go to a site register some information but that site may also be collecting your ip address may lower your location may no other information about you. do you think

that people are going to be surprised when they find out how often their data is changing hands here. well i think a lot of people in the world are not aware of the power of technology what they're not aware of is how is it that they get relevant advertising sent directly to them on something they're actually interested in buying and a lot of that happens from the data that's collected that third party that it's shared with so initially i think absolutely if somebody makes a request and says i want to know what happened in the last twelve months they may be looking and saying oh wow i did not know that and at some point people get used to that concept and realize that the companies have already been telling you that they're collecting information and that they're sharing it in their privacy policies which california was the one of the first states to actually require that on their websites and have it posted and easily accessible and now what they're saying is not only do you have to have a privacy policy you have to disclose what you're collecting who you're sharing it

with in the thirty days that you have to turn it around when a consumer makes that i for he said do you think that these companies are they crossing the line when it comes to the most basic privacy rights. you know i think that's actually a really interesting way to put the question the reality is this companies have to disclose what they're collecting that's all about transparency they're doing a great job in terms of saying when you come to our website here's our privacy policy if you don't like it you can move on to another site if you do want to do business with us this is what you need to know now what this law is saying is what is that list of people you have actually shared it with and i want the contact information i may as a consumer may want to reach out to it i think the impact to the business is going to be huge though and that is something that we should talk about it's going to be huge whether you're a big company or a small company because at the end of the day you only have thirty days to respond

and if you don't either the california a.g. the district attorney the city attorney civil lawyers can actually file a lawsuit or claim that you have injured a consumer and that's a statutory violation that can have significant impact on your company as well as on your reputation when it comes to privacy of consumers and ultimately that affects how you do as a business in the marketplace i think so could we see possibly other states follow suit if california forces these companies to disclose when they're selling people's private information what kind of you know what kind of issue could come up here with other states i mean if this passes we may see this across the board. i think if this does pass in california absolutely every legislator out there in every state is going to be saying what about me i should do something here as well i care about the citizens in my state in the privacy of their data and what they know and

given that right to know california has done this in the past they usually start to step up first when it comes to privacy when they do other states follow i would predict that that will happen so if i'm a company and you're listening right now the number one thing you should be thinking about and this actually applies to wherever you are in the country can sooner or later in asking and see things are going to be we would have to see these companies essential we reorganize if this law passes to comply with this law is that right and that's where that's exactly exactly right that's the impact so what that means is how are you collecting it where are you storing it do you know where all the little pieces of information are coming if somebody has to call it are you technically capable of bringing that information to the forefront and saying hey consumer here you go and if you can't do that in thirty days you will run into a major problem so company a cyclist that's what we do for a living we go in thinking of that out and that's something that you should know i had to cut you off there saying that with the mansion

a gun founder of assets people who well if you think the concept of a debtors prison is a thing of the past wrong the practice of imprisoning people who owe money to the state or in private enterprise was outlawed in eight hundred thirty three the supreme court reiterated this in a number of rulings in the twentieth century well they say that it's unconstitutional to jail people for fines that they're unable to pay but more than a third of the states allow borrowers to be jailed either because they can't pay or won't pay off their debt the latest and stents the american civil liberties union of ohio has just released a report saying that its state still has debtors in prison and her own county ohio for example the second half of two thousand and twelve more than twenty percent of all bookings had to do with failure to pay fines to discuss this further i was joined earlier by r t producer rachel currency s. the ohio a.c.l.u. came out with a pretty bleak report called the outskirts of hope and it paints a picture that shows that essentially one in five as you said prisoners and your own county are essentially there because they continue to zero money on

a debt whether it's a public debt for instance court fines or whether it's a is a private debt that they owe for instance something like of furniture pay manner or some other form of private debt in one and a half months in summer two thousand and twelve so from need to live through the end of august they found that forty five defendants and karma municipal court were there because they weren't paying their debts and seventy five people had say and at the sandusky municipal court so we see that this is actually a relatively routine practice this isn't one where you can say oh here's one aberration that they have going on there so you're telling me that there are certain you know certainly people can i'm assuming legally at this point be jailed for not paying fines or other debts in certain states when it legally is an interesting question right so technically it's illegal and the and the reason is first of all as you mentioned in your introduction it was made illegal in eighteen thirty three this was reiterated by the supreme court in one nine hundred seventy again in one hundred seventy one where they said listen the fourteenth amendment for equal protection essentially extends to make sure that people who are

impoverished people who can't pay these fines and that's the key here right is that people who aren't able to pay these fines shouldn't be jailed for their inability to do so because otherwise the law is more punitive against the impoverished people so it's not equal protection ok so what are the certain legal implications for jailing somebody over debt will essentially it's illegal so in ohio for instance it's both against federal law that eight hundred thirty federal law and then the state constitution also has a clause that says that that prisons are not legal and and furthermore that in either to do that in order to determine whether someone could be jailed say for not paying a fine you first need to have a hearing to figure out whether they're actually capable of paying that fine so you'd essentially have them go into court and have a look through their finances and say oh look you actually have this nesta. so the fact that you're not paying the furniture company the fact that you're not paying say this ticket for keeping your dog off of the least you could be paying that what they're finding is in a huge percentage of these cases no one is having that hearing in the first place

so these people are put in prison ok so do we think that these people have legal representation and if that's a problem well that is the problem what they found was that eighty percent of the people who are jails are eligible for public defenders meaning the first of all they're impoverished so they don't have any meaningful way to pay these these fines and debts are levied against them and when they do have legal representation they don't have those hearings themselves so you know you can have a lawyer but if you don't have a hearing for which the lawyer to speak you're in trouble now certainly in terms of people reaching out to them the a.c.l.u. is a legal defense fund and it seems like this is something that's very much on their radar and and even in their report though they were they were they showed a lot of people who essentially were in prison for for many months at times and and ended up the cost of arresting and imprisoning these people was much higher than the debt that they owed so the question here is let's say states like ohio for instance do have budgetary problems this doesn't seem to be a meaningful way for them to fix these problems because they're essentially paying

more money to prison than they would save by using a civil case to get to get this money certainly seems like etc aren't these courts breaking federal laws by jailing these people i guess that's the bottom line right it certainly seems that way they're breaking federal law in the case of ohio they're also breaking their state law as as well as as countering a lot of supreme court cases that have come out relatively recently thank you so much rachel for joining that was our two producer rachel courteous and studio. still ahead here on our t.v. today's protesters gathered in the streets of eat and against monsanto of a demand of the genetically modified foods the labels and the interest of all consumers hoping for transparency among other concerns our t.v. will take a bite out of that story when we return. i'd .

say. let me let me i want to know what all let me ask you a question from. here on this network is what we have in the bank we have our nine south facing. this right space staying there again here in disgrace will be i going to talk about the surveillance. worst for the most famous. white house of the day the radio guy and for minestrone click. i want you to watch closely because if you've never seen anything like this i'm cold.

well food labeling advocates hard out the occupy month santer group organized an eight in protest in front of the f.d.a. center for food safety and applied nutrition in maryland today to over one hundred protesters showed up with super bowls and picket signs some even bust down with forest massachusetts to join in on the action are to correspond mega lopez bring the a some food for thought. it's an angel tale with lessons that extend to modern life. today the story of stone soup brought a group of protesters activists and food advocates together but instead of hungry stomachs these protesters are taking a bite into the issue of genetically modified foods by confronting the two entities they say are responsible for food secrecy the food and drug administration and the biotech giant monsanto with him owes you have to try very hard to not g.m.o.

food in this country it's not labeled and people are demanding that the g.m.o. foods are labeled so the story of stone says goes like this never a long time traveler who entered a village and he was hungry but none of the village very somber had anything to eat really go to the middle of the city and he put them on to their money at the problem to stones and the whole point is that the people from around the village that were serious actually came in and added their own ingredients they added mushrooms into conference lattice carrots and potatoes and soon enough the entire community listen around one pot so obviously this is a fairy tale but the moral of the story is that the entire community actually came together to surround initio and to make a stone soup like what you see here today that's our intention is to show the community building of eating together and that we can share a meal with each other we can share a meal with the f.d.a. and it can be just this this symbolic community building and relationship building

another issue the group drew attention to today the revolving door between the government and private sector meet michael taylor he's the former vice president of public policy from on sam. oh that was until he became the deputy commissioner of foods at the f.d.a. and those close ties between the government and the biotech industry are something food activists can't stomach of course now that we have a food regulator that used to work for monsanto is a bit of a conflict of interest so i really want to help popularize the idea that we need to close the revolving doors and get the monsanto minions out of the food regulating. portions of our government over one hundred protesters showed up today with bowls and picket signs in hand but the f.d.a. says these foods are safe for consumption a statement released today by the agency says quote in general foods derived from genetically engineered plants must be the same requirements including safety requirements as other foods such as foods derived from traditionally bred plants the statement went on to support voluntarily labeling g.m.o.

foods but wouldn't force the issue despite the fact that california's proposition thirty seven which was the first public vote on g m a labeling failed despite the fact that the new federal budget includes the so-called monsanto protection act these protesters say the food labeling movement is just beginning we're really in the infant stages of a worldwide food movement that's been on the rebound in the end these protesters say they can have their cake labeled any it to report in college park maryland meghan lopez r.t. . it does appear now for more on these stories we've covered go to youtube dot com slash our to america for the latest and greatest information coming to you from around the world check out our website at r.t. dot com slash usa our digital producers are always working hard to connect you with the world the news stories you can also follow me on twitter at am underscored say underscore how all wealthy ways.