coming up on r t the pentagon has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an anthrax antidote stockpile all in preparation for future bio terrorist attacks but there's a major conflict of interest when it comes to who was awarded that contract more on that straight ahead. plus google is bringing the digital world into focus with its google glasses is just the latest example of how intertwined the internet giant is becoming with our lives but lawmakers on capitol hill are asking google for an eye exam they want to know if this product compromises privacy and if you thought the a.p. d.o.j. scandal was the only case of the government going after journalists think again fox news now says it's white house correspondent is now facing potential criminal charges for his story

a look at the chilling of the fourth estate later in the show. it's monday may twentieth five pm in washington d.c. lopez and you are watching our t.v. well we begin this hour with yet another look at the close sometimes conflicting times between the government and private interests over the weekend the l.a. times printed an investigative piece that talked about numerous government purchases of a drug known as. this drug is an antidote to an antibiotic resistant anthrax drug in the wake of nine eleven the government dedicated huge sums of money to creating and stockpiling biodefense drugs but here's where the conflict of interest comes in the presidential adviser who played a key role in pushing the government toward this decision also was profiting off of these drugs he was the director of the human genome sciences incorporate. ition and

that company actually earned three hundred thirty four million dollars in the government contracts as a result so how did this former navy secretary richard danzig get away with this well earlier i was joined by michael brooks who's a producer at the majority report and he explained more about this alleged conflict of interest it's very hard to understand how it wouldn't be best case scenario if you have these sort of dual roles of the public policy adviser and then you have direct financial interest in what you're devising about you would disclose that fact and he vaguely disclosed his interest on certain occasions and on other occasions didn't disclose that all in fact some people at the l a times spoke with who had been advised by him had no idea even up to the point of the article being published on his financial stakes in this vaccine in this drug use now u.s. intelligence agency. bush that

a nation or terrorist group has ever made or shown any interest in making an antibiotic resistant anthrax based weapon so why would we spend three hundred thirty four million dollars of government money on this medicine to cure of this antibiotic resistant anthrax if no one has shown any interest in creating it. i think you know there's a couple of different aspects of that you know this is after september eleventh and the kind of shock of the terrorist events and then following that there was anthrax not answered by a biopic resistant anthrax letters sent to different congressional offices so there was a lot of fear at this time in the you know around two thousand two thousand and three two thousand and four a round the development of chemical biological weapons by terrorist groups so that's the context and then we turn to experts like mr danzig who said this is

something that we realize in his capacity as a policy adviser without disclosing his financial interests so we kind of rushed headlong into these really unskillful and strategic spending choices based off of the fear of the moment and the conflict of interest driven advice of policy experts like dan and it is something that the government continues to spend money on but the government isn't done is the only customer for this drug for this particular company which mr danzig was the director of and the purchase was the first major purchase for that company in our company is human genome sciences inc as well so how does this play into the conflict of interest allegations i mean obviously you have to play something into it. very directly and look that's a good i think most startup entrepreneurs would love their first cell could be to a single customer for that type of figure i think it's incredibly questionable in the whole. diluted policy process of having

a guy who serves on advisory boards who has a lot of policy expertise and then directly having an undisclosed financial stake that just can't be driven home enough it's incredibly questionable and the contract reflects just how problematic it is like you say absolutely can you go a little bit more into detail about richard danzig and his qualifications to be an adviser to the president on these matters. well i mean this is part of the problem right his qualifications are great he has served as he was secretary of the navy i believe under president clinton he also served in the carter administration he served on a number of policy boards related to bioterrorism vies then senator obama when he was first running for president so he is a well trained successful guy with a lot of credibility on these issues which he used to cash in on and of course that's very reflective of d.c. as

a whole there's nothing unique to him about this now three hundred thirty four million dollars might sound like a lot of money to you and me but to the government is mean it's really just a drop in the how they spend trillions of dollars after every year after all can you talk about the impact that this money actually means to the federal government . i mean i think you're right it doesn't really mean much in and of itself in the context of the entirety of spending and i could see some people saying you know why not invest this type of relatively small so even if there is just a fraction of the chance of something as horrifying as answered by resistant anthrax being released on the other hand this is symptomatic of so many relationships like this and so many ways that policy is skewed. that even it's a real symbol of a larger problem do you think that this is just an example as you say as an example of a larger problem are there things that we're just not learning about right now that keep happening and we're just it takes a digging in order to discover these kinds of conflicts of interest. there is

a culture in washington d.c. people talk about lobbying that's a very clear example of the kind of revolving door of government but there's also people like mr danzig who are real policy experts and they sell their wares in the private market and are still moving in the public sector seamlessly and you see this across a lot of policy areas including several other security areas like cyber security and other things like this it's very common it's very typical of the sea and it's certainly a systemic problem well a systemic problem that's not even to mention all the question is absurd rounding this type of antibiotic resistant antidote to anthrax michael brooks for a producer of the majority report thank you for joining me thank you. and if you're one of the five hundred million google users around the world then you know how

injured trying to climb the company is becoming with your online life one company holds the key to your internet searches your emails your chats your connections and much much more that is all for all only beginning google is continually inventing new products to make your life easier and it's becoming more a part of it in the process correspondent margaret howell takes a look at google by the numbers is google trying to take the world over all the multinational corporation has become an active part of the average internet users digital life but just how much has this company become ingrained will let's break it down by the numbers four hundred twenty five million now in june of two thousand and twelve that's the number of users google and now it's to use g.-mail the company's e-mail service during google's annual io developer conference and this year one hundred ninety million people are active on google's new social media platform google plus now take a look at this number nine hundred million well that's the number of activated

android smartphones so far. google's four way end of the smartphone arena has quickly gained user traction now to put that into perspective the company also announced an active smartphone user base of one hundred million all downloading custom apps so what's the catch will those buying those apps from google for their android purchase do it directly from the developer now this means that their personal usage information is recorded with every buy but only for billing and tax purposes of course. seven hundred fifty million that's the number of people using google's web browser chrome an incredible number on its own but coupled with the company's newly launched google now and a new feature that scans your e-mails and tries to keep up with your online why if keeping it straight will it might be a bit too much on the privacy front which brings me to this number twenty two point five million that's how much google was forced to pay in two thousand and twelve

after being accused of violating a user consent order by placing tracking cookies on safari users despite them telling those users that they would be opted out of such tracking while the company called that an honest mistake so that leaves us with one question as a user is are we vulnerable and are we ok with how much we're giving up for convenience sake for all this cool new technology on their part google's been pledging privacy and transparency for years releasing those quarterly transparency report saying transparency is a core value of google as a company we feel it's our responsibility to ensure that we maximize transparency around the flow of information related to our tools and services so as the company can ten years to expand we'll see just how they get to know us in washington margaret howell r t and it doesn't only the virtual world that google is taking by storm the mega company is now working on ways to bring your digital experience into the physical world but that notion has put privacy advocates and congress on high

alert lawmakers from both sides of the aisle wrote an open letter to google c.e.o. larry page asking him to a dress concerns about the google glasses product the letter laid out eight questions the group wanted answers to they included how does the company plan to prevent google glasses from unintentionally gathering data about users and non-users without their consent and does the product employ facial recognition technology well earlier i was joined by pete paschal he's a tech editor at mashable he actually brought a pair of google glasses to the studio to demonstrate and he spoke about the privacy concerns surrounding this new product. sure i mean google glass is basically the internet and it's on your head it's basically there all the time obviously there's a camera attached so you can take photos and videos and share them immediately to any other networks like facebook and twitter but one of the most powerful things it does it gives you access to the internet through your voice so you can basically

say ok glass google and basically ask for close by restaurants factual things like you know who is the prime minister of canada. basically anything you want so it's a basically a lot of things that you would have had to look down at your cell phone to do you can now do just by saying a few commands now one of the major questions the group of lawmakers had was about wearing these glasses and gathering information about other users are people that aren't using them the user of course has to agree to the terms of service of this product but a person that he is passing that is drinking coffee outside or just another person that's just walking by them is there any indication of the type of information that these classes can gather about them. you know right now glass is fairly bare bones i know one of the questions has to do with facial recognition technology to my knowledge that isn't built in the glass now i don't think it is but you know who knows what developers are going to cook up so that is coming to the point where you

know you're going to be able to have facial recognition technology built into something like this or at least built into the network it connects to but that's equally a concern with cell phones a lot of the questions they ask we've kind of already passed. the point of sort of the answers to some extent with cellphones in terms of having cameras can connected cameras around in public all the time in the same concern with my cell phone it just happens to be on my head right now sure and but how much information can this device store in comparison to your cell phone about the same i believe glass is about twelve gigabytes right now that's comparable to modern cell phones which are usually sixteen or thirty two. but the the i do agree that it definitely changes the dynamic by having everything so excessive or you know there's a convenience of having everything right here obviously which is a big promise and plus i've caught so many moments particularly with my kids that i would not have been able to catch with a phone camera because i would have to unlock the phone and do some other stuff but

here i can just quickly even say the command and get something but with that of course there's well it's so easy to take pictures now what does this mean both sort of for privacy and society and even technical issues like storage all these things are coming and we should ask these questions although again i think the answers are going to be fairly mild and we've we've kind of already answered some of them just with phones and cell one another question pete is that the allegations that google and other kind of hackers can actually turn your computer on turn your camera on they can listen to dogs barking and then advertise for a dog food no dog bark collar things like that who say that they can one day turn on your google glasses and see what you're seeing when you walk. yeah well anything can be hacked and that's possible it does run android which you know probably has some security concerns with glass themselves with this particular edition of glass which is the developer edition it's not a product yet i know google has as kind of a kill switch of some sort so i mean basically they they can keep tabs on glass

more than they can keep tabs on with android phone no that's that's not as early as today with the software just as a google is actually making this gadget will be the same will have the same kind of feature in the product the consumer product i don't know it sounds a little big brother i don't know they're going to do it but with these privacy concerns maybe they should just in case when i was thinking about when it comes to targeting certain as for individual consumers versus for a general audience let's talk about these these ads and how this google glasses could make google in general more a part of your life because it will do that inevitably right yeah oh absolutely and i think having used google glass for the last few weeks the promise of the technology is incredible like i say not just catching moments but you know having that ultra convenient connection to the internet right there all the time. with ad targeting yes that's probably going to happen but i think most of this stuff i

think we've sort of learned through a lot of digital technology the past couple years that needs to be off did you have to agree to the terms of her service you have to approve the app and then it should be an easy way to opt out and if any any developer who develop something that doesn't have those conditions does it at their own peril so then the question becomes should one company have that much access to your personal life and on the other side of that token don't users actually do that willingly hand over this type of information. yeah i mean the thing is if you're really concerned about privacy i definitely say that google glass isn't the kind of device for you quite frankly because it is one of the sort of wonders that are logs. it needs to know about you need to know the data used to actually know what direction you're facing the maps work beautifully but it does sort of know what you're doing so i mean this is not a gadget for anyone who is who is concerned about privacy and if you are you should either not buy it or just don't wear it during those times that you are so but yes

it does mean you know google is can you could get a lot of a large amount of data i mean it's it's they say it's anonymized they say they're not going to be evil you know to a large extent i do think they're being truthful in that sense but if you have concerns about it i mean it's it's you don't you can't paschal tech editor at mashable thank you for bringing those google glasses then my pleasure lawmakers are back on the hill this week debating new versions of the agricultural reform foods and jobs act of two thousand and thirteen better known as the farm's bill the house and senate are taking up separate legislations but both plan to cut billions of from this bill's budget those cuts would mostly come from supplemental nutritional assistance programs which provide a food credits for the poor being that congress is penny pinching could hit the pockets of americans on food stamps in a major way the house bill would cut some twenty point five billion dollars from food stamps over the next decade while the senate version would cut just about four

point one billion dollars a report by the center on budget and policy priorities says the cuts in the food stamp program what eliminate two million people from the program or two hundred ten thousand children to be exact also on the chopping block the so-called monsanto protection act senator jeff merkley has promised to introduce an amendment to repeal the special exemption ranted to the biotech industry in last march is continuing resolution on the spending bill the farm bill hasn't yet riata. i've been reauthorized since two thousand and eight and lobbyists and big agribusinesses are working hard to make sure that they get their fill from the trough but we'll keep you updated on the story as it passes through the halls of capitol hill. well when you think of police shootings and the excessive use of force most people tend to picture cases like that of oscar grant but a local houston station discovered an alarming number of dog deaths sexually caused by police shootings that o.u.

eleven news. that there have been a rash of police killings of dogs. boss was shot twice and i actually tried comforting him as the blood eventually today you know when they say it out of the man's best friend. we really are in the in the houston police department will the shooting was justified just as the department of old one hundred eighty seven dogs shot by each p.d. officers since january first two thousand and ten the houston police department authorizes officers to use any force necessary if they feel that they are an imminent danger of an attack however animal cruelty prevention specialists actually attribute that high number to death of deaths to untrained officers many departments do not require any training on how to handle animals want soever meanwhile the city of minneapolis has agreed to pay one family two hundred twenty five thousand dollars for the shooting death of a dog during a house search this case is obviously the exception to the norm but animal rights

advocates argue that it should be the standard procedure to actually pay those families since many pets are actually considered members of the family themselves and perhaps hitting the city in the pocket will force the police departments to take the deaths of these animals more seriously and speaking of police overkill take a look at this video this is what we found over the weekend it was posted by the new york answer coalition and it actually shows dozens of police officers rushing into a new york city subway station all to detain one man that one count said that as many as twenty six officers took part in this arrest now the circumstances leading up to this arrest are still very unclear all the same. while still ahead on r t the government snooping on journalists goes beyond eighty other journalists have also received extra scrutiny by the u.s. government we'll tell you more after the break.

it's impossible to navigate the economy with all the details and to stick some misinformation and media hype to keep you up to date by decoding the mainstream states and it's in your rank. the worst you are going to say the only white house to give it to a radio guy and put up a minute. i want to watch what we're about to give you've never seen anything like that i'm telling. 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 picture. let me let me i want to order let me ask you a point. here on this network is what we're having the baby we have a new name so. we brought you this story with us today saying there are big areas where it will be an ideal way to talk about surveillance. well a little over a week ago the associated press discovered that its phone records were actually

taken by the justice department and an investigation over leaks of classified information in the weeks sense of viewers and readers have witnessed a media blitz in defense of the fourth estate that battle is far from over it turns out that this was not the first time the government has actually taken media phone records back in two thousand and nine fox news's chief wife of washington correspondent james rosen had his personal e-mail searched by the state department for a story that he wrote about north korea to discuss the a.p. d.o.j. scandal along with some of the other cases and what it means for press freedoms in the u.s. i was joined earlier by gosh josh gerstein is the white house reporter for politico and i started off by asking him why the a.p. d.o.j. case is getting so much attention when it's not the first time that the government has actually gone after journalists. well in the case of the justice department peace situation i think the reason it's gaining so much attention is primarily the breadth of the search that the justice department you know spanning something on

the order of twenty phone lines used by the associated press which they piece says may have been used by as many as one hundred journalists there's reports that it included their main phone line or one of their me on lines in the house gallery at the house of representatives it could be used by just about any journalist in the a.p.s. washington bureau maybe even some from other bureaus so i think it's the breadth of the search and it's also the manner in which the government went about it to just go in take the records and then tell the a.p. afterwards it's a pretty unusual step when the government is trying to do these things in the past they have sometimes sometimes but not always notify the news organization in advance and given them the opportunity to fight the issue out in court now just yesterday the c.e.o. of the if he appeared on face the nation condemning the d.o.j. as investigation and he says that he is he has already experiencing some type of a chilling effect in that his reporters are experiencing that as well with potential sources as well as regular interview we is there hasn't to speak to him

are we seeing the future of journalism here. yeah i think there is no question that we are seeing a chill put on journalism by these activities though i have to say experience sources or knowledgeable sources would not have come to learn about this or been chilled by what's happened just in the last few weeks the really sensitive sources have known for some time that there's a very aggressive campaign going on with the justice department within the obama administration to root out those who are leaking into to kill or ossified national security information and they would have been well aware of that fact long before these stories broke out in the press in the last couple days so let's talk about the case that i was speaking about earlier that a fox correspondent james rosen who is facing potential criminal charges as a coconspirator for what seems like normal journalistic practice he spoke to a source inside of the government to obtain information the investigation resulted in rosenstein e-mail and correspondence records being polled by the d.o.j.

and even has movements at the state department were tracked via his key card this all happened back in two thousand and nine but the washington post reported on these potential problems just last night so talk about this event in particular well what's really interesting here is what you said at the beginning it's not so much that i think anyone thinks that rosen is likely to be prosecuted in connection with this episode but the justice department did make that as an argument in trying to get into rosen's telephone records to get a search warrant from sorry for his e-mail records they made the argument that he had potential criminal liability in this case he could be considered a coconspirator with the individual who worked at the state department who was allegedly his source he could also be considered to have aided and abetted a crime by sort of encouraging this person to provide him with information and what's troubling about that argument is as you say the tactics that he used many of them are very typical for reporters i think the affidavit here talks about the use

of flattery towards the source in order to get him to give up information and as some reporters have been saying today that's. and we're all guilty there's also the allegation from a k.m.o.v. anchor or by the name of larry connors he alleged that the i.r.s. was targeting him after he had a rather contentious interview with president obama about the economy but his sense back track to say that the i.r.s. started auditing on him actually two years prior to that interview the question really isn't over his case specifically but do you see something like this like an i.r.s. audit as a possibility to freezone journalists no i really don't i mean i think that what we're seeing in the ira scandal up to this point is really a lack of supervision by sort of higher authority possible a low level official to take action for any reason but in terms of it being directed by the white house the problem that may have developed with my arrest here was actually that the white house wasn't doing enough to make sure that this was being responsibly managed and not that they were micromanaging these sort of unwise

decisions being made by lower level people there and finally josh where did journalists go from here do we buy pay as you go phones and adopt a more secretive approach of handling sources and information in general and if so is that ethical i think journalists when they're dealing with very sensitive information are going to have to do that they're going to have to rely on in person meetings are going to have to take account of the fact that when you swipe in or out of a government building that somebody may be able to track that you know from other cases that the government has told journalists credit reports that they've told journalists travel and probably their frequent flyer records so reporters that are covering sensitive information do need to be aware that they're going to have to take pretty extraordinary precautions to protect their sources and i think the sources need to be aware that as well thank you for taking the time i had a to give us a little bit more insight on that that was political white house reporter josh bernstein. well it's been called the world's oldest profession but one social media

site is not ready to bring it into the twenty first century linked in the social networking site is boasting that boasts over two hundred twenty five million users is designed to keep you connected with people across different professional fields but it's now changing its terms of use to ban the promotion of prostitution the policy changes aim to at ensuring that sex workers and escort services are unable to advertise such services even if such services are actually allowed and perfectly legal in the country or city where the profile is located so linked in is still the place where professionals meet to connect with other contacts in the industry just so long as those connections are not physical and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and for the latest and greatest information on all the stories that we covered in a few that we just did not have time to get to check out our website r.t. dot com slash usa don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez

see you right back here at eight pm eastern. on the same use of going to the polls in elected the new parliament what will the new government do domestically to change in the area of foreign policy particularly washington's drone with growing economic dislocations in a very threatening taliban ok and shoot pakistan and will the military continue to watch the sidelines.