coming up on r t and response to the guantanamo bay hunger strike president obama restate his promise to close the detention camp down so what options does he have to act without congress' help find out just ahead. and for decades the u.s. has been seeing an expansion in the prison industry but what's a life to be one of the people locked up within the system words from the other side coming up. plus charges were recently dismissed in a case against an animal welfare activist who recorded video of a utah slaughter house but that is not the end of this ongoing clash between transparency and private interests we'll tell you more in today's show.

thursday may second five pm in washington d.c. lopez and you are watching r t. starting off this hour new information is coming out this week about a federal public defender who was actually found dead in his apartment investigators say that thirty eight year old andy hart committed suicide he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound earlier last week hard left behind a suicide note as well as a thumb drive that some drive reportedly contains case files for his clients and some of those clients were actually one ton i'm ok in the case over the years he represented low level al qaeda operatives like mohammed accused tunisian extremist keamy and most notably mohamed afghani that's the man who was actually thought to have been osama bin laden's translator meanwhile the hunger strike in guantanamo bay has no end in sight one hundred of one hundred sixty chaney's are starving themselves twenty three of those people are now being force fed by personnel this

is happening despite president obama's renewed pledge to close down the detention facility in cuba there are a lot of questions right now in criticism over why president obama obama has made these promises time and time again but has actually failed to follow through some believe that the president's hands are tied by congress while our chief political commentator sam sacks shows us what measures the president can take without congress' approval. this week the hunger strike at the u.s. military detention facility in guantanamo bay grows with more than one hundred prisoners now involved in the president once again pledge to close get mo down it is not a surprise to me that we've got problems in guantanamo which is why. when i was campaigning in two thousand and seven and two thousand and eight and when i was elected in two thousand and eight i said we need to close guantanamo i continue to believe that we've got to close guantanamo now congress. determined that

they would not let us closer. now it's true congress has thrown roadblocks they did not funding for a new facility in the u.s. to replace cable they forbidden any prisoners from being tried in the us in civilian courts they forbid the transfer of detainees to nations in unrest or that sponsor terrorism and they for bin the release of any prisoner until the administration can confirm with absolute certainty that these prisoners won't pose a future risk the united states something that's well it's impossible to guarantee so yeah congress hasn't made it easy and with the latest poll showing seventy percent of americans support keeping give open well don't expect congress to budge any time soon but it sounds like the president foresees a moral crisis is the facility stays open so what can he do right now to close it well first he can certify the release of more than half of the current detainees by claiming it's in the interest of national security there are one hundred sixty six men only nine have been convicted or charged with the crime another twenty four

could soon face prosecution and forty seven are considered threats the united states but aren't facing prosecution mainly because the evidence obtained against them is not permissible in court like if the authorities got a confession but they used waterboarding to get it so that leaves eighty six other prisoners cleared for release yet remaining get no block by congress but congress does allow for an individual to be released if it's in the interest of national security. so right now right now the president can order the pentagon to use this loophole to get those eighty six prisoners out of get most now fifty six of those eighty six prisoners cleared for release or transfer are from yemen a country barred by the administration from receiving detainees so the president would have to lift this ban next the president and let the courts do his work for him there have been more than one hundred habeas corpus cases filed on behalf of good no prisoners by groups like the center for constitutional rights so he the president can instruct his justice department to not fight these court cases

essentially giving the give no plaintiffs a win that would lead to either their release or an actual trial and finally the president can actually make closing gitmo a top priority all these blocks by congress expire on september thirtieth when the national defense authorization act which contains these provisions expires to congress will likely try to keep these provisions in place but the president can tell congress that he'll veto any bill that prevents him from closing gitmo it was through the veto before but never actually went through with it of course this would require the president to use a lot of political capital but if he really considers giving away moral stain that it would cost him and the nation a lot more to keep it open in washington same sex party well from detention centers abroad to those right back here at home let's turn now to the state of prisons within the u.s. remember that story that we told you about last week where thirteen female corrections officers in baltimore had actually been indicted for helping inmates

run a drug operation while the union who represents those officers have now responded representatives say that they have identified several systematic weaknesses apa detention facility they say that a lack of staff might have contributed to that problem meanwhile governor martin o'malley insisted that the indictment of the end mates and correctional officers was quote a positive achievement in maryland fight against violent gangs he also defended his prison. chief but let's talk about the prison system more broadly if corrections officers could get away with that what else are they getting away with well earlier i was actually joined by mack gaskins he's a community organizer and prison rights advocate mack was a prisoner for fourteen years in the virginia department of corrections many of those years was actually spent in the red onion supermax prison in appalachian where the quote worst of the worst are held in confinement we talk to him about the prison industrial complex and what it means to him the prison those are complex i

mean there's different differently pieces to that group like we can only talk about prison talking about. the judicial system right like how folks so i herded into a prison and prison is like on the back end of it i'm someone that went to prison at the age of seventeen and came home when i was almost thirty two years old fourteen and a half years. and. six of those were spent in solitary confinement in my opinion two of the worst presidents in the country because of the isolation of these presidents like no publicity. where i would like to be tortured in these presidents like all the other prisoners that were there like the beating but beaten by the guards like that by dogs shot with rubber bullets that they shoot from a twelve gauge shotgun and. have our mills refuse on a daily basis. they're like all the horror stories that you've heard before it's like indoor i'm a witness no leak. just wake me thought about the prison industrial complex i get

an idea of like what prisons where what the true role the function of a prison is in this country. and prisons like i have always in this country like represent it a place it does represent like one of the chief impression institutions like in a society like this is where you put political prisoners people who like commit acts that directly challenge the government are like the moral fiber of the government and the way society is structured right and then wants i like to like expand that to what is a political prisoner me because almost everyone is in prison and some sense of the political prisoner in the south of in the sense of if you are a politicized prisoner like you or someone who comes to prison for not for political action but you go to prison and you become politicized the treatment is pretty much the same as like a political prisoner in terms of like ever getting released from prison like your jack and all the politicized prisoners one of the most famous prisoners ever being out of prison for a political act but imprisoned he became politicized on the black panther party and

he never got out of prison but all the folks are in prison for a property crimes and most crime. property crimes are like spam from that robberies and theft. crimes of poverty right like there are some exceptions but for the most part most prisoners like are in prison because of a political basis like the war on poverty is political cold war on drugs is political it's not like a coincidence certainly an interesting argument and let's talk about the justice system do you think that people are treated differently within the prison system based on race or based on class or anything like that definitely house and well i think that most laws are. are a way to avoid what they get at certain communities or certain people they will definitely is an equal across the board based on class based on race right like but when they get within those at a correctional facility do you think they're treated differently. the law is

a kind of blurry there but only because most people in prison are poor and you don't have rich you don't have any signs of the waltons like in prison you have poor people in prison with a white flag latino whatever. these presents up in the appalachians in that region a. very unique because when i came there came there. and two thousand and four i believe and it was almost like an office where you ship this like it's permissible to talk to in the same breath. because these why folks that live in that region they had never interacted with blacks or latinos before and all of the folks that were on that bus were black and latino social tension was very high. so it was like racism right like that. mentality that singling them people through institutions right had nothing to do with like the whole argument of whether a person is humane or not but to talk about your personal experience and these

alleged torture that you suffered so the day i got to run a state prison there what we were met by like fifteen guards at the gate and they had helmets on they had on jack boots they had dogs no guns and they had a checklist and also anyone on the bus of all the folks on the bus that needed to be trained and i was one of them i was sent there for allegedly assaulting an officer and i've been involved with a work stoppage at sussex one state prison so they drag me off the bus and bring me inside and begin. this process of humiliation like stripped naked then over and i refused so they beat me unconscious stripped me naked they dragged me across the yard i still have scratches on my feet from that incident and they took me through the super segment where they torture and i can creased the internet today as they have this practice called five point restraints where they put you down on the bed and they lay there for days. and fortunately only have

a very short amount of time left but i want to ask you. do you think that people are listening to you when you say that there's torture going on and the president do you think anyone's listens and why when they listen to a cell called hardened criminals. yeah well that's you know part of this like. people being like first of all ignorance rightly people not really knowing what the two role the function of a prison is like what actually happens inside of a prison there was there's a guy around the angelo and he was like the director of corrections in fishing at one point and he was doing an interview and he was asked why how can you justify keeping these men locked in their cells twenty three hours a day and his response was that we didn't bring him up here to rehabilitate him we brought him to die so i call the money for programs have been cut and these prisons want to get college degrees in prison i call it that like prison is totally punitive no very interesting as the way that the prison system functions and that gaskins community organizer and prison rights advocates thank you for joining us at

the american law personal story thank you. well in the aftermath of nine eleven the american liked and congress came to a consensus that sacrificing some privacy was actually necessary in the name of national security never again we told ourselves and indeed a terror attack of that scale has not happened on american soil since but how do we strike a balance between protecting the public and security overkill and with the massive budgets that the d o d a d h s have at their disposal why weren't the boston bombing suspects actually caught sooner r t international correspondent mary enough ny and takes a look back at how america's insecurities are fueling today's security complex september eleventh two thousand and one terrorism claims the lives of nearly three thousand americans and the construction of a super sized to u.s. security paradigm begins surveillance technology has become the driving force behind washington's counterterrorism strategy bodies scanned at airports faces

filmed on the streets and social media closely monitored in cyberspace there has been a severe denigration of civil rights and civil liberties and the anger a geisha power by federal government authorities and by law enforcement against individual since two thousand and one around seven hundred and ninety billion dollars has reportedly been spent on cementing america's homeland security apparatus a platinum wall of defense easily shattered by inexpensive pressure cookers ball bearings nails and a free bomb building manual that could be found on the internet you just can't prevent terrorism in the current model with these surveillance technologies are can go into a right and walk with the makings of a bomb. build a bomb in my own house put it in a backpack. put it on a street corner and kill fifteen or twenty people three people died and more than

two hundred seventy were hospitalized last month after twin bombs exploded near the boston marathon finish line i terrorist attack in broad daylight that no camera or law enforcement official was able to prevent i believe this was a massive failure of the city the surveillance state that we've created in america since nine eleven we have spent over seven hundred billion dollars on national security and a lot of that is surveillance with the help of surveillance video the f.b.i. was eventually able to identify the boston bombings suspect however the best images did not come from a public camera the video was reportedly filmed by a private camera belonging to the department store lord and taylor every publicly installed camera for every camera that the n.y.p.d. puts out a bloomberg kelley puts out or or some security agency puts out there's anywhere

from thirty to fifty privately installed cameras they're being installed everywhere it's a pen optic on everywhere you go you're being watched in new york city the u.s. capitol of surveillance four thousand security cameras are mounted just in lower manhattan alone official recognition has become the new normal in the big apple and recently city officials proclaimed privacy to be off the table the attacks in boston and the news that new york city was next on the terrorist list shows just how critical it is for the federal government to devote resources high risk areas it also shows just how crucial it is for the n.y.p.d. to continue to gather spanned its counterterrorism capabilities and legends gathering activities at the u.s. president is questioning whether his administration needs to apply new strategies to tackle domestic terrorism more than they do in its. engaging in engaging with

the potential for self radicalization of this of this sort. is there work that can be done in terms of detection detecting terror in the homeland eleven and a half years after america's global war on terror began marina port r.t. new york well the latest now on the first ever prosecution of a person under utah's twenty twelve agag law prosecutors have now dropped all charges against twenty five year old amy mayor mayor face a class b. misdemeanor charge for allegedly interfering with agriculture operations when she filmed practices taking place at the draper slaughter house on her blog she describes seeing counts struggle to be free piles of horns flesh being spewed from the shoots on the side of the building and six cattle being carted away as if they were rubble but after dominating headlines of publications across the country the case was dropped so is this a win for animal rights advocates well earlier i was joined by will potter he's an

independent journalist and author of green is the new red and i asked him if the latest news out of utah suggests anything as far as ag gag laws go moving forward. i think it really reflects that the biggest way and most effective way to fight these bills around the country is just like the most effective way to expose abuses on factory farms and that's to shine a light on it and expose what's happening what happened in utah as soon as news of this prosecution broke out people were outraged i mean it may have literally went viral and got hundreds of thousands of views and just twenty four hours later the prosecutors dropped all charges and to me that really reflects the state of this legislation the industry wants in on the books but when it comes to enforcing it i think there is can be a difficult road ahead so let's break this down into two parts first of all let's talk about this case specifically i understood this case is a little bit more unique in the fact that she was actually on public property does the prosecution use that as an excuse to to drop these charges in the midst of

unpopular press absolutely i mean if you look at utah law which is still overly broad and very vague it doesn't include this type of activity like filming from the side of the road or filming from public property specifically says you have to be trespassing among other things so the law clearly cannot apply i mean this was a losing battle there is no way that amy meier could have been convicted in court for this but the real danger is the chilling effect that says i mean prosecutions like this being arrested for being prosecuted for filming from the side of the road makes other people afraid and that's why these bills are so dangerous well let's talk about the other kaviak to this the owner of that meat packing factory was actually the mayor of this you talked out of he is currently so isn't that a conflict of interest absolutely but it's the same conflict of interest we're seeing around the country in iowa where the very first ag gag law that was passed in the last legislative session the sponsors all have close ties to the agriculture industry we're seeing a similar pattern that with that in pennsylvania in tennessee which is now

considering a veto industry is in close ties with politicians on this matter really should make everyone pause and how do you think the media actually claim into this do you. that this case would have gone through a have the media and those negative headlines actually come out about this case i think it's very clear i mean if this media attention hadn't been there and the prosecutors were to move forward i don't think she would have been convicted i don't think that would be impossible hopefully but she could have been tied up in the court system for a year a year and a half going through this process having no way over her you know every day facing potential jail time and fines and i think exposing this and writing about it helped shine a light on them but let's talk about the bigger picture here now dropping this case is obviously good news for any mayor but is it dropping this case does it necessarily make for good for the battle overall when it comes to these ag gag laws i mean obviously it's shine some light but in a couple of months this story is going to be forgotten right well in the last still

on the books i mean six you know it was a victory to have this prosecution dropped but the utah ag gag law still exists so does iowa and missouri and other states and right now the tennessee governor is considering signing another piece of legislation pennsylvania more legislation is about to be introduced in north carolina these bills are still a threat i think what you talk shows is the importance of fighting them tooth and nail and exposing what's actually happening and without once that happens the public overwhelmingly opposes them well let's talk about all of those other states that you just brought out this is something that isn't contracting if this expanding right what it's expanding in unique ways i mean the industry has been met with the severe of backlash against this legislation that criminalizes photography idea and what we're seeing now are new bills being introduced that don't even mention photography and also don't even mention factory farms and agriculture in north carolina the bill is called the commerce protection act clued every industry

not just farm i mean this is people who are working on auto assembly lines or tobacco plants that includes all workers what do you think that this says about the current state of interest. in this country i think what it really reflects is that the biggest threat to business as usual for any corporation industry is an informed public and that's why the industry that's why the agriculture industry is trying to shut down opposition and keep consumers in the dark. potter thank you so much for joining us that was well potter independent journalist and author of green is the new red was thursday and you know what that means time to talk some technical or on the docket this week possible optics to an outdated provision in the electronic communications privacy act the computer fraud and abuse act becoming mainstream and what companies have your back when it comes to keeping the information private joining me now our own andrew blake meghan thank you for joining us so a lot is happening here and your let's start with the electronic communications

privacy act better known as the e.c.p.a. as we all recall this was a provision in this law that actually made it possible for the f.b.i. it's of gather former cia director general david petraeus is personal e-mails this stirred a lot of talk on the hill what's the latest with this you know it's sort of the talk on the hill but people so quickly forgotten about it since then but this is actually something that people have been asking for for years we're going to talk about right now there's actually a bipartisan effort in the senate right now to update the e.c.p.a. the e.c.p.a. has been around since one thousand nine hundred six and it's very much the standard for how long for some and deals with requesting online storage communications now e-mail today is different than e-mail in one nine hundred eighty six as you can imagine i mean for one thing the internet is a million times faster so the e.c.p.a. has really been updated during his twenty seven years so what has happened is that senator patrick leahy a democrat from vermont he's championing this legislation that would add on to the

e.c.p.a. new provision that would say that law enforcement if they want to go and obtain e-mails your private e-mails stored in g. mail outlook whatever the they're going to need a warrant and you might think that's actually crazy but know right now if there's e-mails. that are older than one hundred eighty days just half a year all you need is an administrative subpoena which is kind of a document that you just go pretty much anybody can just go sign off on it you don't really need to have probable cause so it's really easy right now for the government to just obtain old and some relative word but obtain all data e-mails without really really needing to do that much so they're looking right now to change that so that you will actually need a warrant if you want to obtain someone's personal correspondence and it's interesting to watch this law that was actually being used against a lot of american citizens be used against you know generals and the army as well but let's speak about government surveilling your electronic correspondence now a report released today confirms that the first there was a five point eight percent bump excuse me and information requests through five of

the foreign surveillance foreign intelligence service act and second that all of the one thousand eight hundred fifty six requests were actually granted and so on one hand we have the e.c.p.a. being reformed but what does this say about fights and the fact that it's not being reformed it's pretty dangerous actually even though the people who are fighting against e.c.p.a. there's a couple of them in their argument is well you know if we have to go and we have to go get a subpoena if you actually get something beyond this ministry of court order that's going to hinder our investigation what if a terrorist is e-mailing someone the other day you know we we have to be able to go in there we don't want a warrant but but the foreign intelligence surveillance act if i so what that does is it says that the government can just go and collect intelligence and those people never even have to know it's completely completely secretive and that's exactly you said there's been a five percent increase during the last year or so compared to the year before the government is five percent more willing to go out there and say here's a person we think he did something we want to wiretap then we want to know

everything that we know about them that we can know about them and we want to make sure that they don't know and you know also today is crazy timing because. there's actually the obama administration submitted. brief i believe saying that they want to make sure that doesn't get changed if if they actually start saying like oh no we have to make some adjustments here it's going to be dangerous is going to explain our counterterrorism measures apparently we only have about a minute left but the people at the e.s.f. electronic frontier foundation have just come out with an yearly review of companies and their privacy practices who has their back. sonic dot net their internet service provider from california they famously were the internet service provider that was subpoenaed by a believe a federal grand jury investigation for the eastern district court of virginia because they wanted internet records of jacob appelbaum who is a american affiliate of wiki leaks and he sonic actually stood up for him and

really tried to fight back for him in court but what this. new report says is that places like google places like twitter even though they say that they're who google the place that has all those emails that it's actually giving up to their requests ninety percent of the time in the grand scheme of things the f.-f. says that google gets a five out of six because even though they comply with all these requests they try to help out same with twitter they will actually tell you if your doctor if your information is being requested we'll try to help you out so interesting hearty web producer andrew blake. well atoms are the building blocks of life and they're also the building blocks of a new film a team at i.b.m. made this a non stop motion movie using carbon monoxide atoms the i.b.m. laboratory and silicon valley normally experiments with atoms to figure out new ways to store data but in making the smallest film ever the company is breaking movie making boundaries the atoms you see here are under

a magnifying glass that makes them one hundred million times bigger than they are in real life and then not like claymation actually frame by frame the scientists move the atoms by poking and prodding them with a needle point that is the size of an atom itself maybe these atoms will become the new alternative to actors though with all the work it takes to get them in the right form they're kind of like divas themselves well do you love your job deal of it enough to get a tattoo of the company's logo what if you were offered a pay raise in return well that is exactly what the owner of rapid realty in new york is actually offering his employees one tattoo for a fifteen percent pay raise at least forty to forty employees have reportedly taken c.e.o. anthony lolly up on his word to ink themselves in return for some green the company currently employs about seven hundred fifty people and is in the process of expanding here's how the owner explains why he decided to come up with this

incentive for his employees credit doesn't go to rapid realty owner anthony lolly he says he got the idea from a loyal employee who wasn't doing it for money so he calls me up which is a and the i'm getting a logo on the show but the shop i'm like this is cool how can i repeat. well no word on if the owner plans to pay for tattoo removal if the employee leaves the company or is forcibly removed but in a tight bell's economy like this one it just goes to show that people are willing to do what ever it takes to make ends meet which reminds me misha i'd like a pay raise please the but not just fifteen i think i'll take thirty percent and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories they covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america as.

well. technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future of coverage. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so 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 parker is a big.