we are now at the one hundred day mark for the guantanamo bay hunger strike critics continue to question the obama administration's lack of action in closing down the detention facility an in-depth look at how the strike is progressing and its possible future just ahead. with news buzzing about the a.p. phone tracking scandal there's still more tell uncover did the department of justice even meet its own standards with the subpoenas they process to do the phone tracking will answer that question in today's show. and it's thursday and that means it's a trip to the digital world in tonight's tech report we'll talk about apps that can protect your privacy or help you boycott certain products certain the circuits and bits of your digital privacy coming up.

it's thursday may sixteenth eight pm in washington d.c. lopez and you are watching our t.v. while the hunger strike out the guantanamo bay detention facility is now entering its one hundredth day and still there is no end in sight of the one hundred sixty six people being kept at that detention facility one hundred two of them are reportedly participating in the strike to various degrees for a look back at the last one hundred days political commentator sam sachs reports. this is gone tom obey settled on a picturesque caribbean island. the place is teeming with iguanas they're protected under the endangered species act meaning if you kill one you pay a ten thousand dollars fine unfortunately for the one hundred sixty six prisoners still left at the guantanamo bay detention facility they don't have legal protections like the iguanas and so for the last one hundred days they've committed

themselves to a hunger strike it's the largest hunger strike yet of to when it comes more than four years after president obama promised to close down the facility one hundred days in more than one hundred prisoners are involved in the strike nearly a third of them kept alive by force feeding which the american medical association says is unethical and the united nations says is torture or demo guard brandon neely describes the process what they did they didn't sit in the. middle to. pull fluids or whatever the congress has made the task of closing gitmo harder using last year's national defense authorization act they passed into law several bans on where good mo prisoners can be transferred but despite congress's restrictions the president can still close get on his own at least fellow democrat senator carl levin says yes he can as the hunger strike hit three months levin sent a letter to the white house reminding the president he had

a way to bypass congress on closing gitmo more than a year ago levin writes i successfully fought for a national security waiver that provides a clear route for the transfer of detainees to third countries in appropriate cases this is the president's first option using this national security waiver senator levin included the waiver in that same defense authorization bill allowing for the transfer of any prisoner out of give mo if quote the transfer is in the national security interests of the united states and the president did specifically say that go. toronto is against our national security interests and that keeping it open it serves as a recruitment tool for extremists yet in more than a year since this law was passed in this waiver created the president has not once used it to release a single prisoner from guantanamo even while four prisoners have died there since he took office u.s. army captain and give mo turn to jason right questions whether these men should be prisoners at all worst of the worst who have done nothing wrong so i think in the

first instance we need to actually address the root of the problem which which is in fact that the majority of the detainees are the wrong place wrong time detainees who may have been turned in based on family feuds based on and that is just based on economics so if the president is really committed to closing down guantanamo why hasn't he used any of these waivers activists and former cia officer ray mcgovern has a theory a lack of moral courage president knows what's right. he says it all in his speeches and so we can and then he says i've instructed my staff to look into ways that we can get these people over the east come on mr president you know and if you don't know if you fire your staff you know that you have the authority to release these eighty six at least like this but should the president find this moral courage his next step will be lifting the prisoner transfer ban to yemen which his

administration imposed on itself in two thousand and ten more than half of all the get most prisoners including nearly two thirds of those eighty six cleared for release or transfer are from yemen another option more than two hundred hippias corpus petitions have been filed on behalf of guantanamo prisoners the president could immediately stop challenging these cases in court and then there's going back to capitol hill in fighting with congress but going the congressional route again means the president will have to wait until later this year when there's restrictions inside the national defense authorization act expire in other words another one hundred days at least of force feeding us we just sent forty new medical technicians from the army down to put these stiff to down these people noses down to their esophagus instead of stomach so we can i mean if the president's only concern is that they don't die maybe no problem they keep him

alive you know they can't resist the only part the only option to them to escape these conditions is to die and we won't even let him do that. kind of america and we've become when the president was asked why they use force feedings continue he said i don't want these individuals to die so with that we'll continue keeping them alive for as long as he can until he decides to go it alone on closing guantanamo and leave it for the iguanas to room in washington same sex artist for a closer look at. one tunnel away and the actions both the president and congress can take i was joined earlier by human rights lawyer david remes well i have compassion for every single man at guantanamo we've been fighting the legal fight for nine years and the courts haven't been responsive that's the forum where the government has succeeded unfortunately the courts have pulled out but right now we're in a situation where the detainees have exercised the only power that they have after

all other. avenues have been exhausted and that is to engage in a hunger strike at the logic of a hunger strike is death. and some of the the hunger strike in the force feeding themselves many call that force feeding torture so let's talk about the steps that congress could take to fix the situation at guantanamo bay and then we'll talk about some of the steps that president obama himself can take to fix the situation let's start with congress nothing would satisfy us more than having congress act here they would lift the onerous certification requirements that they've imposed on obama before he can release detainees of course he has the power to go outside those rules but if he does it might cause it might cause some flak that might be blowback on that. the congress could allow the president to bring men into the

united states for trial in federal courts or. border tension once convicted by military commissions but congress has made this a political football especially the republicans and the democrats simply fall in line with them so we're not placing our hope in congress but in president obama and meanwhile president obama oftentimes has said that his hands are tied when it comes to this as a result of the actions that congress is taking so let's talk about what president obama specifically can do in order to close our start the process to close this starting with the end of the moratorium of shipping in germany citizens well that's the most important of all because out of eighty six detainees who have been cleared for transfer by the administration fifty eight of them or fifty six now are proof for transport yet the president for political reasons is refusing to return

yemenis to their home he has to start by lifting that ban and he can't do it in ones and twos he has to start sending groups back he's his own greatest stops to go to closing guantanamo after that. he he should exercise the power that he has under the national security provision of the law to release these men and others again that takes political strength and courage and leadership which he has not demonstrated in the case of guantanamo so far that was human rights lawyer david remes. well there are precious few things in the world that could have fox news m m s n b c unite except when it comes to the protection of the fourth estate so naturally media outlets band together to blast both the u.s. justice department as well as the obama administration for going after the associated press as phone records are to correspondent liz wahl takes

a look at the backlash that the administration is facing as a result of this caesar of phone records. amid the justice department scandal perhaps more than ever before journalists and citizens are raising questions over the freedom of the media to get news and talk to sources in private while details remain murky there are very clear guidelines when it comes to the justice department getting subpoenas of the news media because our standards the d.o.j. sets for itself let's take a look at them now. according to the rules the investigation must be as narrowly drawn as possible as of now the a.p. isn't convinced that this is the case that all the facts point to the opposite we know now that the justice department traced incoming and outgoing calls and twenty telephone lines in three separate bureaus and the capitol press gallery this includes private and work lines traced over the span of two months the a.p. believes that over one hundred employees could be involved with this in mind it

appears the investigation was quite broad and not at all narrow another requirement is to first seek information from alternative sources the justice department says it did in fact try to identify the person that leaked the information to the media through other means the deputy attorney general said quote in this case that apartment undertook a comprehensive investigation including among other investigative steps conducting over five hundred fifty interviews and reviewing tens of thousands of documents before seeking the toll records at issue but considering the scope of the investigation the a.p. and many others are not convinced that tracking reporters' phone calls was a last resort now there is also this obligation to inform and negotiate now reporters apic associated press were clearly not informed about the investigation because they had no idea that their calls were being scrutinized by the justice

department but there is one exception and that's when doing so is a threat to national security president obama today said he had confidence full. and the attorney general and the justice department's decision. leaks related to national security. can put people at risk. they can put men and women in uniform that i've sent into the battlefield at risk. they can put. some of our intelligence officers who are in various dangerous situations that are easily compromised at risk. u.s. national security. is. dependent on those folks being able to operate. with confidence that folks back home have their backs but the a.p. maintains they held off on publishing the story until they were sure doing so would not put anyone's life in danger interestingly enough within hours of the a.p.

publishing the story in question john brennan who was the white house counterterrorism adviser at the time gave even more details to the press on the foiled terror plot then discussed in that a.p. report including the fact that the u.s. had an inside source and the guidelines dictate that any subpoena requires the approval of the attorney general but it's clear that this did not happen because attorney general eric holder seems to be unaware of the details pointing his finger at the deputy attorney general here he was facing questions from lawmakers yesterday. there are exceptions to some of the. pointed out and i. have faith in the people who actually were responsible for this case that they were aware of the rules and that they followed them. now with such a broad secret investigation into the media there is unprecedented scrutiny over government transparency this after president obama promised his administration

would be more open than his predecessors but this scandal has many members of the. media and the public questioning just how transparent this administration really as in washington lives of all parties now want to the story of a young man who could be heading to jail despite the fact that he did not commit a crime jerico could face up to eighteen months in jail for refusing to testify in front of a federal grand jury about an incident that happened all the way back in two thousand and eight the new york grand jury subpoena the twenty four year old to question him about a conversation that he overheard in a bar authorities are trying to uncover who detonated a small bomb outside of a time square army recruitment center the so-called bicycle bombing shattered a window but did not result in any injuries the grand jury believes that the suspect was identified during the conversation at the bar a claim that jerry denies and this is not the first time that he has actually been

called to testify about that event once again he is refusing to cooperate and he's not very talkative with the media either. we have to say to your supporters. they're here. but thank you it means a lot because it's not been more than. yes usually yes. they hearing happened at three pm the today the new hearing has been scheduled for tuesday may twenty first and our team will bring you the latest. well it has been a busy newsweek and the tech world is no exception for my i phone apps designed to keep your mobile communications private and help you keep tabs on cocoa owned enterprises to end encrypted tip line that lets people give journalists an inside track without being traced we've got a lot to cover this week so let's get right to it joining me now to help me break it all down is our t. web reduced their answer blake andrew thank you so much for joining me so let's start with these few unique products that we're going to be talking about secure it

communications and one of them helps consumers boycott certain products that go against their moral standings so let's start with the g.g. app it is a little innovation that is meant to provide a secure network to community users so that they can communicate with their e-mails their tax their chats and whatnot this is how the creator of one of the creators nikki preston explains it. it's a whole privacy environment basically you can send a text messages e-mails word document pictures anything you want and you're guaranteed that it's going to be sent safely and securely and the person you're sending it to you can copy the mash things they can't save the message and you have complete control so and you can you talk a little bit more about this product i mean we just learned that the product snap chat which shares pictures and it's supposed to be secure isn't really all that secure there's no deleting it off of your cell phone is there ever such thing as something being completely secure or. quantum internet maybe quantum physics which

we were going to get to a few days ago but actually having a method of transferring one piece of information from one node to another that just by definition cannot be interfered with would actually be the only truly secure way and what well there are applications likely key and there's a handful of other ones one's called wicker and we heard about snap chat where so-called ways of having complete secure communication and mistrust and then it could be just watch she said you know this is guaranteed one hundred percent but really nothing is guaranteed one hundred percent when it comes to security because everything is really just a deterrent there's very few things the side of actual quantum physics that can actually prevent something from being completely one hundred percent immune to outsider attacks so even if something is being billed as a way of ok you can be able to share e-mails and real shell photos and videos you know that's great you know you're secure as the weakest link in the chain as they

say i think that's what they say something like that so anyway you know it's depends on your own operational security how you actually keep track of things if you're going to have a product like this in you're going to use it properly yeah you might be able to share things with people but if you don't take care of yourself and you don't take care of the product then what use is it at all it's certainly a step for. in terms of being able to move with these privacy kind of secure internet things things that people have been dreaming of but that's just not the case right now so let's move on to the new new yorker on line anonymous tip box it's now in a strong box some people are actually calling this aaron swartz his last gift to the internet right before he died it's something that people are particularly impressed with go ahead and explain it aaron swartz was actually working on this up to a few weeks before he passed away in january of this year but it's pretty much this whole intricate model about a wanting to stay anonymous and you know according to erin and kevin polson if you

had people who worked on the you know it's a very secure method of doing so you can go onto a website by using the tor my eyes or browser which is already the going through that your traffic is routed from place to place to place and kind of covers up your tracks but from there you go to a special website where you have to use this kind of. excuse me to to upload files that can then be sent to new york or journalists know from there or upload it to a completely separate computer and it goes through p.g.p. or g p encryption it is just a way of actually providing something like what we had and they haven't for a few years now and this is come out as such an important time given the fact that these this a.p. d.o.j. phone scandal is coming out the last product i want to focus on today is known as by caught here's how the marketing video explains this product. very difficult thing for people to remember all of the products they're not supposed to off so

let's make it easy on. it if you've ever seen one of these devices and carried it in a grocery store what is we had an application. that you could use to scan the barcode on any product. thank you terry you know how good it was on issues we care about i want to bring in ivan prado he is the founder of the product that you just learned a little bit more about i didn't tell me about this product how did you come up with the idea. well the idea of in my mind for a little bit but what convinced me to make it was the backlash that we saw early last year in two thousand and twelve for sopa there were a number of companies that came out in favor of having the legislation passed and a number who wanted to oppose it and figured that there ought to be. express their position on the issue. of their purchasing decisions and why is that important that

the consumer have this type of power well i mean people are more interested now than ever in knowing what goes into. making the products out there buying and. whether to revolve whether we're talking about the source of raw materials that go into making a product or how that affects the communities that are involved people are interested in knowing more about this and we're trying to help connect them to that information well it is a very exciting day an error here in the internet age the digital age that was our t. web producer and your blake and i've been proud of the founder of buy caught well remember when president obama promised to go hard on the banks after the financial crisis never again he said would american taxpayers bear the brunt of the financial sector crash at the hands of bankers making risky trades it's

a sentiment that was reiterated by attorney general eric holder this week. but let me be very very very clear banks are not too big to jail if we find a bank or a financial institution that has done something wrong if we can prove it beyond a reasonable doubt those cases will be brought but if we look at the sheer statistics behind the number of criminal prosecutions for financial institution fraud you'll notice a shocking trend data released by the u.s. justice department shows that over the past twenty years the number of federal prosecutions for financial fraud has gone down significantly there were thirteen hundred sixty five prosecutions during the height of the financial crisis in two thousand and nine and only twelve hundred fifty one in two thousand and eleven now i was trying to earlier by kevin whelan he's the campaign director for the home defenders league and i began by asking him if financial institutions have committed fewer crimes since eric holder has become attorney general. not at all.

too big to jail policy isn't that there's no financial crime to prosecute indeed you could argue that the period since the financial collapse the last five years or so has been a record banker crime spree it's you know fairly well known if you only have to read the papers to know that they crashed the world economy and continue to be used regulations big and small i represent a group of folks who are struggling homeowners around the country fighting foreclosure who continue to be affected not only by the policies and financial dealings and predatory lending that brought down the economy and brought on the mortgage crisis but by violations large and small of all kinds of settlements laws and agreements that banks have made to treat their customers more fairly and yet five years into the crisis this crisis not one prominent banker or financial executive has been prosecuted for crimes that arguably are the largest

dust and destruction of wealth in world history so are you do you think that there are these financial crooks are getting better at covering their tracks or are they literally just too big to jail. i think they are big enough to be too politically powerful to have jail. so eric holder in one clip said that he thought these institutions were not too big to jail but this march testifying before the senate. he said that one reason they hadn't brought cases against the big banks and financial institutions was that they were simply too large and too important a part of the economy and that they thought it would hurt the economy if they prosecuted them and that we think and lots of economists think that's not true that actually running an economy with honest dealings in the role of laws is important to restoring and rebuilding the economy we don't have too much time left but can you talk about some of the cases where we have seen prosecutions are the

punishments harsh enough. we have not seen anybody who's really responsible for the shenanigans that brought on the mortgage crisis in own. economy put in jail or seriously punished it's been more sort of settlements were being skin pay out of a small sliver of their profits part of the money that they took but if you are still one hundred dollars from a bank or a store and had to pay back twenty as our other spend it would it really provide a great incentive not to do it again it is just quite an interesting case when we have people like the people that you represent who are honest homeowners struggling to make their way being prosecuted and others who are committing major financial crimes and not seeing a day in court on a day in jail kevin whalen commit campaign director for the home defenders like thank you so much for joining us thank you well vice president joe biden has been an honest face in the public sphere whether he is making off color statements about

republicans putting people back in chains or calling president obama's health care law a big effing deal or even getting frisky with the family members of lawmakers he certainly isn't one to hold back his opinions for more on v.p. biden's blunders the residents laurie harf announced. that your. seven year old boy recently sent a letter to vice president joe biden which said i think guns should shoot out chocolate bullets and then no one will get killed and no one would be sad and because he's just a regular joe the vice president actually sent a note back to the kid writing i really like your idea if we had guns that shot

chocolate not only what our country be safer it would be happier people love chocolate you are a good boy a. whenever i hear gosh golly stories like this i immediately want to vomit because it just reeks of a publicity stunt it seems like some white house insiders use to this story to promote gun control using a cute little kid in a dumbed down way to me it just reeks of another example of politicians using the media to deliver asinine stories to control how the mindless masses think well maybe not maybe joe biden does think chocolate bullets are a great idea it certainly wouldn't be the first asinine idea he's put out there in two thousand and six while he was still a senator from delaware he proposed portioning iraq into three separate regions he thought that would give each state room to run however it wanted great idea right

i'm sure they would have gotten along as well as israel and palestine do and recently has been the lead voice behind the idea that the us should adopt what's known as the zero option in afghanistan that means that after twenty fourteen the us would provide no military support to the afghan military and only a handful of special u.s. forces and drones would remain there to target al qaida on their own so the us would essentially be leaving afghans to fight the taliban and al qaida with zero support. as it stands today there are no u.s. led combat operations in afghanistan and last year for the first time the taliban failed to launch an offensive during the summer campaign season biden's zero option would jeopardize all of that. i'm no fan of war games and would love to see no

american military anywhere in the world but the world doesn't work that simply and certainly not in that ganas badman which has been a breeding ground for violent forces for decades so for vice president joe biden to promote an incredibly simplistic one note possibly devastating solution is just embarrassing he might as well suggest that we give the entire afghan army some got a scholarly chocolates boas that'll make the world happier and safer against the taliban right so tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter asked the resident. all right old man does it for now for more on the stories we cover go to youtube dot com slash our can america follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez and have a wonderful night's. good

afternoon and welcome to prime interest i'm harry and boring here and the washington d.c. and here's the stories that we're keeping up with today. they start targeting bloomberg after new revelations emerge about reporters improper use of confidential data j.p. morgan itself is under fire for a lapse in the rest control of last year as as bloomberg to provide confirmation of its controls allegations are swirling that the london whale story itself what the bloomberg broke last year may have been a result of an improper delivering of the data and goldman is using the opportunity to turn the screws on bloomberg broker dealer operation will be discussing bloomberg gave a link to.