has this numerous homeowners found themselves wrong probably foreclosed upon by the big banks now the details of a settlement are emerging and it reveals how much homeowners will be paid is it enough details coming up. the obama administration has claimed that drones only target high ranking members of al qaeda and allied groups but a new report tells a different story we'll explore who is actually being targeted. and today protesters throughout the nation rise up against the guantanamo bay detention facility they want the facility to be closed and twenty different detention sights and sounds from this national demonstration coming right ahead. it's thursday april eleventh eight pm in washington d.c. i'm megan lopez and you are watching r.t. . well homeowners who were wrongfully foreclosed on are about to get the big payout that they've been waiting for

a payout that is literally worth tens of dollars in compensation for all of their struggles to fight the big banks and prove that they are not in fact delinquent on their payments the majority of these homeowners will be compensated just about three hundred dollars the office of the comptroller of the currency announced that it had reached a settlement for how to break up the fees after regulators decided that the review was such a mess that it was time to call it quits so here's how the money divides this chart shows a breakdown of how much each family will actually be paid for their troubles of the four point two million people affected nearly two point four million of them will actually receive just about three hundred dollars but even the way that the o.c.c. decided upon these categories is up for debate now let's turn to look at where the money is coming from so the thirteen companies that you see here were involved in this case over wrongful foreclosures they include the bank of america wells fargo citibank h.s.b.c.

and many others in total these banks were forced to pay a combined three point six billion dollars in reparations to put that number introspective for how much this will actually put the companies back financially the estimated quarterly revenue of j.p. morgan chase alone is twenty five point nine four billion dollars so to help bring down the story i was joined earlier by alexis goldstein she is the former v.p. of merrill lynch and deutsche bank she's also a contributor now to the nation where she just wrote an article about the issue she began by explaining why she believes these people are not receiving the compensation that she says they deserve. it's a slap in the face right so if you're someone for example who receive what's called a loan modification so that means the bank said ok we're going to work with you we're going to lower your monthly payment and you were still foreclosed on you get between three hundred and five hundred dollars for your troubles and your tragedy and that's about sixty percent of the people who will be receiving money for this so it's just a paltry amount and explain and put gotten that kind of money into context how much

more these people actually out. well there out you know they were foreclosed on they lost their homes so it depends on the value of their home but we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars you're talking six strikes being made homeless because of an error that a bank made right these are not people who didn't make their payments there's another line in this report about people who work totally current on their payments they made every single payment they were not in default and they were still foreclosed on those people will only get five thousand dollars in spite of the fact that they lost their home and they're not getting their home back as a part of this settlement fluently and i read that these these estimates for how they were broken down actually doesn't talk about the emotional toll that was actually put on these people when they had to move out without cause meanwhile the consultants the the o.c.c. actually hired to review this process they were independent consultants now they received a combined two billion dollars for their efforts right so alexis put this into

context for us who are these people and how much to each individual enormous so these are groups like prominent tory financial group below eight pricewaterhouse coopers these are consultants who are hired by the banks in spite of the fact that most of these consultants have done prior work for the banks and want to do future work for the big and so there's this conflict of interest rate they don't want to make the banks look bad because they want to get future business from them these consultants were paid on average two hundred fifty dollars an hour spent an average of forty dollars per foreclosure files so they're looking at your foreclosure fiasco they're spending forty hours on it getting paid two hundred fifty dollars an hour they walk away with an average of ten thousand dollars and if you're one of those homeowners who only got three hundred or five hundred bucks you should know that one of these consultants who looked at your tale of tragedy is walking away with ten grand well and let's put it into perspective you did a pretty good job on your tumblr page how much these people were actually what they can actually buy with the money that they will be receiving the majority of them

anyway and if we could go ahead and bring up that graphic first up we have a store. facility you can buy a storage facility for just about two months without three hundred dollars next up use a tent if you are one of the lucky people who actually receive five thousand dollars and you can get this wonderful luxury tent and who needs a house when you can buy a tent exactly you just need to worry about a place where you're actually going to plant that tent and finally we have these pitchforks that you are so kind to her that you can buy just about ten of those so any other examples that you can give us a things that you can buy one thing was that you could buy three hundred boxes of kleenex to dry your tears and you could buy about what hour's worth of legal advice because as a result of getting this settlement they don't give up their right to sue so they could sue but most of these people have any money left and five hundred dollars isn't going to really give them enough money to pay a lawyer to sue to get some more money out of it so alexis let me ask you this is this case closed in this instance i mean obviously there were sleaze that were

going on on the hill today but is this the maximum amount of money that these people actually can on so senator elizabeth warren senator sherrod brown pushed really hard for this there's a lot of contention about how they arrived at this settlement there's some question about how did you figure out what the right magic number was i think probably the case is closed as far as the o.c.c. is concerned but we have a lot of people on the hill like representative maxine waters representative elijah cummings who would like to push the o.c.c. harder and say is this the right number because one of the things i talked about in my report is the o.c.c. told the media that the error rate per bank was about four point two percent meaning and only about four point two percent of cases where there are errors and that was a law they made that up this was something that they just pulled out of state air that was something senator elizabeth warren push really hard on in the hearing today and they will continue to push hard on and so i don't know if the case is closed or not but i certainly think that the o.c.c. is trying to sweep this under the rug and it's up to us to make a bunch of noise about it absolutely alexis goldstein former v.p.

of merrill lynch and deutsche bank she's also a contributor to the nation thank you so much for giving us your insight thanks for . having me well ever since the american public began to understand the scope of u.s. drone operations abroad we've begun questioning how often these u a v's are accused who they target and where they operate up until this point there have been more questions than there actually have been answers we've essentially been forced to take the obama administration at its word particularly when it comes to who these drones target here's how president obama explained u.s. targets back in september it has to be pressure that is serious and not speculative. it has to be a situation in which we can't capture the individual before they move forward on some sort of operational plot against the united states but copies of top secret u.s. intelligence reports obtained by a mcclatchy newspaper discovered that the scope of drone targets is much larger

than top al qaeda officials it also includes low level members and a new york times article over the weekend said that the first u.s. drone strike in pakistan was not to attack al qaeda but instead to kill an enemy of the pakistani government all of that in exchange for access to pakistan's airspace to break down the story and give us some perspective i was joined earlier by stephen miles he's a coalition court nater for win without war and i asked him what these reports tell us about the obama administration's claim that only high level al qaeda leaders are actually targeted. well meaning the first thing to highlight is that these reports absolutely indicate they confirm with a lot of us have long suspected that these attacks are not in fact eliminated to only senior al qaeda operatives and once again does highlight the need for full accounting full public transparency of the program the american public really does have the right and deserve to know what our government's doing in our name exactly who we're going after and exactly what this program itself and it's not necessarily

the fact that they are using drones it's the fact that they are killing these people that we are not necessarily at war in a war with they're going after the hakani network which is never actually proposed posed an imminent threat to the u.s. interests other then pakistan so how is the killing justified in terms of these low level people first of all how are we finding them do we have that information closing the short answer is no we don't have that information it's very complicated issue obviously the u.s. is at war in afghanistan we have tens of thousands of troops there and presumably some of these attacks are related to that but i spent simply a number of these taxes you showed that clip of the president are also related to this larger issue of al qaeda and al qaeda operatives and now we're finding out that a lot of these attacks have to do with pakistani taliban and we have questions about even who else might be involved but the fundamental answers lie in secret government documents that we haven't yet seen and that's about time that the administration releases publicly and as i was mentioning the hakani network among others now the obama administration has come out at numerous times and said we are

targeting al qaida and we are targeting specifically when we say al qaeda affiliates the one place they've actually said was the afghanistan taliban but beyond that we don't really know so who is defining the enemies at this point again we don't we don't fully know you know the president himself in a state of the union said you should not to take my word for it we should have a full public accounting of this and today we haven't had that the administration has said some of its information with some members of congress who does not share all of its information with any members of congress and hasn't shared even less with the american public. about time we have a full accounting of that and that will allow us to answer some of these questions and allow us to have the strategic debate that we need to begin to have as well about what are we doing and is it actually making us safer sure and there's no code of conduct up until this point for how drones should be used as i mentioned kind of have to take the obama administration at their word but they're attacking in countries like pakistan and now in northern africa the administration as well as

cia director john brennan have said different things in regards to these public strikes. should we be surprised that they are attacking these low level people and since we don't know the scope of the drugs the only way that we know what the scope of the drones is with these leaks that's right i mean it's a little troubling that with what information we've gotten whether it was the white paper that was out previously that we've talked about or it's these memos that now come out there mcclatchy it's all been information that has not been publicly released by the administration it's hard to know it's impossible to know the scope of the program and in fact impossible to know what's being done by the cia what's being done by our military and pro and elements like a sock within the military we simply don't know and we can't have a full debate about the merits of the program we can't have a rational debate about the strategic implications of this and the american public has a right to partake in that debate these things are being done in our name and the only way that's going to happen is with the full public accounting now one of the

groups that has been fighting for more drawn transparency is obviously a lawmakers that because of the public outcry the lawmakers actually outright but senator dianne at a committee chair one of the senate intelligence committee chairwoman dianne feinstein actually said that her group is given all these details shortly after the drone attacks actually happened but is that too late to actually make your opinion about any of them well it's not even a full of a full answer as well because senator feinstein may be given all the cia drone strike information that would necessarily entail the drone strikes done by other parts of our government and one of the things that we don't know is how much. well there footage out there how much footage you know lead up to the drone strike for example if the drone has been there for twenty four hours recording and the intelligence to the intelligence committee only sees the five minutes around the drone strike that's the five minutes is out of context and we don't necessarily know the totality you know the one thing that senator feinstein and others are very interested in this they're trying to do oversight but their ability to do full oversight is never going to be possible unless the administration is fully open

with what it does not just with congress but with the american public right steven miles a coalition coordinator with win without war thank you so much for your opinion thanks for having the guantanamo bay hunger strike has now been underway for over two months a reported one hundred sixty six the detainees are participating in this hunger strike some of whom are now in critical condition many of these people have been held in the detention facility for over eleven years now was no formal charges and no trials it's a protest that started at the facility and has now spread to numerous cities in today's day of action r.t. is covering the protests in new york and washington d.c. more important i actually visited the scene in new york today take a look. times square is considered one of the best places in the us to advertise a product or message for our brands and that is why civil rights attorneys human rights groups and many activists and protesters are out in the streets of times

square right now to raise awareness about the hunger strike taking place at the guantanamo bay detention center and it is clearly garnering a lot of attention to what those are saying that have been turning out on the streets they're calling on the obama administration to immediately address the ongoing hunger strike that began in early february at the island's prison according to attorneys representing the detainees there they say more than a hundred men are participating in this hunger strike they say it began when when they detainee's their say that u.s. officials mishandled at their core and stirring up a cell search and that's what sparked this ongoing hunger strike according to a u.s. u.s. military officials they say only forty one men have been on a hunger strike and at least eleven are being force fed they say nobody is lives are in danger but that is not what lawyers are telling our take

a listen i saw men who have dramatically lost weight the people that i met with had lost over thirty and forty pounds what they told me is about men who are too weak to come out of the prison they told me of men who are skeletal that's the word they used who are near death who are so weak they can't move based told me about pressure tactics right now within the camp by the authorities to try to break the strike things like withholding the delivery of clean drinking water these are people who have been refusing food for over sixty days they need water to survive or they will die and they talked about tactics like the withholding of bottled water to drink and being. forced to drink from the sinks in their cells which are attached to trial it's now this new york rally is part of a nationwide day of action to close guantanamo and and indefinite detention protests are also taking place in over twenty six cities including chicago l.a.

and washington d.c. i think that anything to show obama or the government is wrong and that people don't support it is a good thing i don't think is a legitimate. vehicle for for for trying these people i mean because they're not being tried is a problem last week organizations including the center for constitutional rights amnesty international and the united nations called on washington to immediately shut down the guantanamo detention center the u.n. human rights chief released a statement saying that america's failure to close the controversial prison and release detainees is a violation of international law currently there are one hundred sixty six prisoners being held at the island prison and at least eighty six have been cleared for release reporting from new york. r.t.

. still ahead here on our team looks like a digital television service is making big broadcast companies quake with rage we'll tell you how the service of your average home and tana plus an update from the world of cyber security the tech report is next. looking for pretty tough stuff in the field that while you won't find it here if you're looking for relevant stories unique perspectives from top class cans to antarctica. well it's thursday and that means it's tech talk time my guest today was derek

khana he's a visiting fellow at the yale law information society project first topic a new program called aero this is a digital television service that claims it allows users to stream all network channels to all homes with a web connection but without a broadcast television subscription here's how it works anyone can watch live broadcast t.v. for free off the air with an internal aerial is taken that it indeed unbelievably small small enough that hundreds of thousands you can see. where you can access them from the internet and watch live broadcast t.v. as it is so you can choose the t.v. you want. you can even record that live t.v. you please back with the d.v.r. without the bugs this is the real deal folks this program has the potential to reconfigure the television experience television viewing experience as we know it and the four major networks are taking notice why well because they get what is

called every transmission iffy on top of the normal fees that they charge their customers so if this program works the television waves they and the money that goes along with those waves could start flowing toward aereo and away from those networks so i asked eric what he thinks about this program. absolutely not i think that this is what they call in the industry a disruptive innovation some of that comes along every once in a while really throws technology ahead and that's what it's doing it is helping consumers it's leading to greater innovation the markets. and what happened here is that the broadcast stations fox and a.b.c. and n.b.c. that you can get for free over the airwaves they want to charge money to cable providers and satellite providers to use those channels and they actually charge quite a large amount of money and so area was able to do is utilize a interesting legal reading to kind of circumvent that to provide for customers for less than ten dollars a month a limited network television in the d.v.r.

service that many customers are flocking to in new york where it's available sure now can you explain that a little bit more about why these companies are so threatened and how they're actually reacting and thinking about ways to get around this sure so fox recently said if this ruling was to stand that they may get out of the broadcast industry altogether. my response to the technology guys will that would be true effect these companies are basically wasting the spectrum is extremely valuable so i think it's an idle threat ten percent of the american people receive their programming through broadcast i don't think that they're going to give up these these these they're valuable spectrum. something's going to happen ten percent meaning about fifty thousand fifty million people now this has failed these networks brought up this case in both the lower court as well as in the u.s. district court and they failed because they thought they couldn't prove that a copyright infringement can you explain that a little bit more sure so it gets a little bit of the weeds here but put simply if they were able to in their

warehouse to have a an antenna for each customer so if they have fifty thousand customers and they have fifty thousand and ten of those and they're all kind of in the same location so each customer has their own little box and as a result you're basically just outsourcing your antenna through them. which means that just as if you have an antenna d.v.r. you're not going to pay anybody for that service you're not going to pay n.b.c. or fox for that service they should have to pay either and that was what the second circuit held in their decision recently however the ninth circuit in a similar technology called aereo killer they held the other way so it's still it's still up for the courts to decide exactly how this is all going to shake up and we know that this is now moving in to capitol hill as well and that they might actually be deciding a lot of this as well but let me ask you very quickly how is this any different from hulu or netflix or amazon or apple television how is it different sure so you

know hulu and apple television all the rest of them. who in flicks in those guys are negotiating with fox and with n.b.c. for their content and coming out with a contract between the two areas just recording the broadcast over the airwaves so there's no contract there which is why they're able to provide it so cheaply for customers all right let's switch topics question or go to this but now now the house intelligence committee overwhelmingly approved an updated version of this test by bell on wednesday the bill is now headed for a full house vote next week now this newer version of the bill does a lot of things can you start breaking them down for us short of the main point of suspicious device information sharing so companies can share information about their customers and perceived ongoing threats on their networks with one another and also with the government and the privacy groups are very worried about this because the provisions as far as producing private information what they call personally identifiable information for sure those provisions are very they're not

very well written and so you're having a lot of personally identifiable information potentially given to other companies or even given to the government and there's no liability there for the companies so the incentive is for them to be sharing more information but at the same time they've kind of they've drawn. the so called national security provisions they've broaden the definition of cyber security they're requiring the government to remove personal information from shared data so in some ways is it moving toward kind of the center and to quell some of those privacy advocates concerns or not i mean it hasn't called the concerns of any of the privacy organizations most language that says that you should reduce the personally person identifiable information does that you should not that you have to or there's a penalty to not doing so and so the onus is on actors to reduce the personal identifiable information on their own no all the tech companies that you would ask on this issue are either against the issue or were indifferent on the issue so

about thirty thousand websites have come out against says this bill companies like facebook and have said some issues with the privacy and microsoft which was an initial supporter has started back off of their initial support so the the real tech experts in the industry have not been the full throated supporters that you would expect which leads us to believe these privacy issues are more serious and they appear sure and there's always something in the underbelly is of these bills that we just don't understand fully because we're not the ones that are in there are writing creating them but finally let's talk about this plane that was allegedly had hacked now a researcher in germany says that he knows how to successfully hack an airplane system and no longer requires guns in order to hijack a plane you can do it with a computer so obviously hacking this airplane over writing a pilot is a huge technological accomplishment but is it also a justification for cessna i don't think so i think this is a clear vulnerability we've seen this with airplanes but also with you a viz g.p.s.

jamming for example but that is different because people are in that if they if they just do a drone it's just a machine this is people that are in the air currently sure but i mean there's been no demonstration that system is actually going to lead to greater cyber security or deal with these type of problems and the hearings have been held behind closed doors than the intel. committee held a closed hearing so we need to be presented with the evidence on why you know our personally identifiable information should be given to the government the government have to demonstrate that we should just assume that they should have this information and we only have about thirty seconds left but can you explain to us how this is going to affect our day to day lives when we notice it affecting our day to day lives if this book goes through i think the jury's still out we're going to see exactly how some of the privacy things are implemented it's unclear if the is going to pass this legislation so we'll find out all right there kind of visiting fellow at the yale law information society project thank you so much for joining us and breaking that all down for us well get ready we are days away now

from tax day it's a time where everyone here in the u.s. deals with the drudgery of tax forms an attempt to keep as much money as they can of course some of us are better off and the richer than others actually get the biggest tax deductions the residents laurie harshness takes gives us her two cents on our tax system. it's tax season american time to get all your paperwork in order about how much money you made last year so that we can all make sure everyone is giving the u.s. government a big chunk of money so that they can continue to give our money to weapon makers

and drug companies it's just like christmas only it's the exact opposite of that theoretically now in the u.s. many folks don't like to pay their taxes a lot of people don't even bother filing with the internal revenue service and a lot of other people find ways to cheat by abusing deductions using loopholes hiding income or other bad practices the i.r.s. knows and now they have a new tool to catch cheaters when they see a person's tax form that the monk writes they can now check that person's facebook and twitter account to see if there are any pieces of evidence there that supports their suspicion of any tax cheating the i.r.s. has denied that they are using social media to target taxpayers for audit discrediting the idea as a rumor and nothing else but the bottom line is the practice could be perfectly legal and very easy for the i.r.s.

to do if your tax return looks even remotely a little questionable like you've claimed a deduction that doesn't really look legit and then you post something on facebook that is inconsistent with that deduction that could be enough to make the i.r.s. dig deeper for example say you did ducted a new computer for work but then you post on facebook that your mom of the. because she just bought you a new great computer the i.r.s. might be inclined to start taking a closer look at your tax returns we all know by now that companies mind data and social media sites on a regular basis and if you don't know that guess what companies my data on social media sites on a regular basis ok now we all know that companies track what people write on twitter and facebook to see what people think about their products get ideas for new products and god knows what else they're doing who knows but the idea of the

iraq being able to mine data and social media sites and other government agencies that directly affect your life that should make you stop and think a little bit or allow a bit depending on your propensity to cheat on taxes it's no longer about you being tracked so you can be better marketed to it's now about you being tracked to make sure you stay in line the bottom line is there are so many reasons to be careful about what you post online especially about your personal life and now you have one more tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the president. but doesn't for now follow me on twitter underscore lopez have a good day.