coming up on r t attorney general eric holder has seen better days the justice department's tracking reporter e-mails has soured relations with the press now there are calls for eric holder's resignation as a result of at some of his past decisions ahead has monsanto struck again the federal government wants to know how unapproved genetically modified wheat gone into an organ field more details later in today's show just days after president obama's speech on u.s. counterterrorism tactics launched yet another deadly drone strike inside pakistan so what does this mean for his drone policy moving forward will explore that issue today.

is thursday may thirtieth five pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching r.t. . u.s. attorney general eric holder is running short on friends these days he certainly hasn't had luck with republicans since the fast and furious mexican gunrunning scandal democrats are also distancing themselves from the attorney general in light of the fact that the deal jay was monitoring the media's phone calls and their e-mails and that holder not only knew about the d.o.j. media monitoring but that he actually signed off on it he also lost the media support as a result numerous news organizations turned down an off the record meeting with the attorney general today to discuss the justice department's guidelines on governing and governing security leak investigations that involve reporters c.n.n. the associated press the new york times reuters and huffington post have all refused to participate so long as that meeting was off the record and that does not bode well with a man that is trying to revamp his reputation with the press political commentator

fan sachs takes a look at the man who no one seems to want to be associated with with regard to the potential prosecution of the press for the disclosure of material that is not something that. i've ever been involved in heard of or would think would be a wise policy that was eric holder on may fifteenth a week later news broke that holder was directly involved in the prosecution of the press personally approving a search warrant against fox news reporter james rosen house republicans are now looking into whether or not holder lied under oath holder is survived previous controversies including being censured by the house of representatives in two thousand and twelve but this time it was fifty years attorney general of the united states is under more pressure than ever and there are three reasons why you might not be on the job much longer reason one suppression of the press holder's investigation of james rosen may be the most egregious example but it's really just the latest in a long string of attacks on the press holder's department of justice carried out in

unprecedented subpoena the use of. he did press collecting phone records from twenty offices affecting more than one hundred reporters but eric holder has been most aggressive in going after sources going after whistleblowers department of justice has prosecuted six whistleblowers under the espionage act that's more than during any other presidential administration in history one of those whistleblowers former cia officer john kiriakou who exposed torture talked about the d.o.j. chilling effect on the press journalists will tell you that their national security sources have just dried up since my prosecution i think that's what the government's point was i think i think this case is much bigger than just john kiriakou it goes to freedom of speech and freedom of the press and i think there's a there's a real war on free speech right now kiriakou is now in jail serving a thirty month sentence which brings us to the second reason why it might be time

for holder to go prosecutorial overreach in january of this year internet activist aaron swartz killed himself as us facing several charges of computer fraud and abuse carrying with them a thirty five year prison sentence aaron's family blames overly aggressive d.o.j. prosecutors for hounding aaron to death and then there are the current prosecutions of internet hacktivist jeremy hammond in bare brown both could be facing wildly disproportionate prison sentences for the crimes they've committed. plus the d.o.j. is currently fighting a four year lawsuit by the electronic privacy information center demanding to know if holder's d.o.j. illegally surveilled on wiki leaks supporters and of course there's holder's overzealous prosecution of drug violations conducting roughly two hundred raids and nine medical marijuana states resulting in at least sixty one federal indictments since two thousand and nine these actions alienate people on the left and the right

side of the spectrum leaving holder with very few friends and while the department of justice has been so eager going after activists and whistleblowers and marijuana users and putting them in jail for a very long time they've been less enthusiastic going after real criminals which brings us to reason number three their election of duty. this month protesters camped out in front of the department of justice in washington d.c. demanding to know why eric holder hasn't put one in jail for foreclosure fraud yet also despite throwing john kiriakou the guy who blew the whistle on torture in jail holder has refused to charge anyone in the bush administration for committing torture or any other war crime so today holder is in trouble and if he does end up resigning it won't be just because of this latest controversy with james rosen in the press but it will be because of a long history of missteps a history of siding with the strong over the weak and

a history of skewing the rule of law itself in america and washington same sex r t torgan now where i federal probe has been launched to find out how as an ethically modified strain of wheat began sprouting up on a local farm genetically modified wheat has never been approved for by the agriculture department for use with and the last one santo tested versions of its roundup ready week between one thousand nine hundred eight and two thousand and five but retracted its application from the u.s.d.a. as regulatory approval process so imagine the eastern organs. farmer surprised when he discovered that the wheat was growing on his farm to discuss this federal probe of the financial implications this discovery could have on the wheat market i was joined earlier by andy's to paddy and he's the co-founder of sparrow media dot net and he started off by explaining why this week was never approved. well monsanto is applied on several occasions for various products various crops to be genetic meal

modified or prepared as roundup ready to run in conjunction with the system of herbicides that they also put out on market now they did not do this with we because canada turned around i believe in two thousand and five and said the european union as well as japan would not allow for imports of wheat that could be contaminated with genetically modified organisms and therefore threaten the economic. products that we're now producing to send to those countries and so for that decision alone is why they no longer decided to approve these products for market is kind of questionable that now you know over seven years later they're appearing in the wild people's farms now as a result has spoken a little bit about this economic impact as a result of this discovery we've futures drop point five percent today and japan has stopped imports until the problem is investigated and dealt with so it's hurting our economy it's eroding international trust in our products what does this say about the a potential impact that monsanto and biotech businesses can house on the country.

well it's tremendous and it kind of speaks to the larger hypocrisy in certain lawmaking bodies will favor businesses that they're in line with or businesses that lobby them over the economic incentive an economic prosperity of our country and so their constituency should be the american people it shouldn't be an individual corporation see it louis missouri like monsanto and so monsanto along with many other organizations have lobbied significantly throughout the years members of congress and also in local states to get legislation that has their interests so there was a spending bill recently this year that introduced a piece of legislation that would not require labeling of genetically modified foods because the imposition would create for monsanto and that is something about fast tracking their products to market it's favoring the business. and almost all of americans would like to at least know where their food is coming from where their food is sourced and especially folks in europe are particularly bothered by

the idea of having these g.m.o. products now mixed into the market and that's not to mention the so-called monsanto protection act that made its way into the agriculture appropriations bill now let's switch the conversation just a little bit meanwhile in north carolina journalists will potter discovered a new proposed legislation that would make it illegal for whistleblowers to expose all corporations including monsanto and how they could potentially affect the environment and public health we've talked about agag lies in the past but can you briefly explain for our viewers what an ag ag law is and whether or not this proposed legislation qualifies as one. well we'll potter has worked tirelessly to bring the issue of gag laws to the forefront he's done that through his blog green is the new red dot com i encourage everyone to go there and view multiple stories related but essentially get bills were penned by the american legislative exchange

council they were a model bill that was passed on from state to state and different states have appropriated either all or pieces of these legislations that essentially say that if you blow the whistle on a factory farm that's a brutally abusing animals in the case of some factory farms chickens being abused or down cows being moved with backhoes and other types of heavy machinery if you videotape this if you photograph it if you blow the whistle on these corporations and thus resulting in these corporations being brought up on municipal charges what will happen is that you could be charged underneath these laws and the penalties vary from state to state because they're state bills but in north carolina in particular the language is so broad that it could say that if you're doing this with any company not just an animal enterprise not just a factory farm but monsanto if you blew the whistle on monsanto you could be charged as a felon for. porting on their misconduct so andy yes or no is this one part of an ag gag law. well because the american legislative exchange council pens what they

call model legislation states adopt either all or part of it so the language of the bill is inserted into a larger bill imagine as a bundle there's eight different things in the bundle one of the eight things is analogous to all the other states gag legislation so i would go as far as saying that what is going on in north carolina is an gag bill it's bundled with other things it's masked it's veiled but it's a gag bill and the language there is even worse because it's more overbroad and again check out green is the new red dot com in the reading of will potter because he's covering this extensively and we have a very short amount of time left but what is the chance of this bill actually getting through we've seen one after another of these and gag bills be struck down or repealed. it's really hit or miss i think that there's been a tremendous public outcry in part to the work of will and the humane society united states mercy for animals and compassion over killing they've really brought this issue to the forefront in solicited mainstream support from individuals like

carrie underwood when she tweeted out governor house and that resulted in the bill to be repealed in tennessee but unfortunately it's on the books in iowa and in other states india to india is also extensive but it's been struck down we need to make sure that this happens in every single state and it doesn't keep popping back up unfortunately the world of these lobbyists they're going to keep hacking away at it to make sure that they're. because their their clients are going to have to leave it there and they step on and co-founder of the sparrow media dot net. thanks so much it was the first drone strike the u.s. has conducted since president obama's national security speech now pakistani officials as well as the taliban have confirmed that the drone hit its mark while the arrest man was the pakistani taliban and number two commander and six others were killed in the strike he was accused of helping coordinate the two thousand and nine suicide bombing on a u.s.

base in afghanistan that killed seven americans as well as hundreds of bombings and shootings across pakistan without missing a beat the pakistani taliban announced that today it has a new and new deputy commander to replace a deceased deputy restaurant successor is thirty eight year old khan saeed he was allegedly involved in a two thousand and eleven attack on the pakistani navy base in karachi where eighteen people will killed and he was also involved in a two thousand and eleven jailbreak where some four hundred militant inmates had escaped i was joined earlier by marcy wheeler she's an investigative reporter with empty we'll dot net and i asked her what really came out of this drone strike and did the president follow through on the guidelines that he laid out on thursday. president actually did although only if you look at the fine print in his speech in it he actually said well the afghan theater is exempt from all these rules and will

be exempt until we withdraw from afghanistan so what he was if what he was you know whatever rules they have imposed and it's not at all clear what rules they have imposed. don't apply focus on the cia will still run the pakistani strikes the cia can still do signature strikes in pakistan and cia can still strike people as they did in this strike the pakistani taliban who are technically our enemies pakistan's enemies based on the logic that we're preventing the pakistani taliban from letting troops rush across the border into afghanistan and hurt our own troops but marty as in that same speech he also said that it would only attack al qaeda and its associated forces and that they would rather detain them and that they would respect state sovereignty so is it true though really what you just said that he is abiding by what he said and that just because it's outside of the afghan theater that kind of negates everything else right i mean you know he's not abiding

by the rules about state sovereignty one of the really interesting things about this strike is that. it's clear the pakistani military i.s.i. their intelligence services would approve of this strike because they've been going after the pakistani taliban for a long time but as mcclatchy reported i think a really good wrap up on this what it did do is not why sharif who just was elected in fact a stone had been talking about making peace with the pakistani taliban and sense the strike so the pakistani taliban have said no peace talks are off and so when we talk about sovereignty are we just talking about the military in a country that has a sense of leave democracy because that's what it looks like with regards to the strike. and something new and something very interesting to bring up and during this this talks of pakistan and possible reconciliation with the pakistani taliban is that right mom was said to be the one that was really trying to push for this

reconciliation with the afghani guy with the pakistani government excuse me but beyond that i want to play a part of president obama's speech from last thursday here is him talking about how these strikes have haunted him for me and those in my chain of command those deaths will haunt us as long as we live just as we are haunted by the civilian casualties that have occurred throughout conventional fighting in afghanistan and iraq. but as commander in chief i must weigh these heartbreaking tragedies against the alternatives. to do nothing in the face of terrorist networks would invite far more civilian casualties so here we hear the president talking about how tough of a decision every each and every single one of these drone strikes as this most recent one had six other people killed some of them or in the taliban some of them were not and we have seen a reduction in the number of drone strikes this year what should we make of this is

this the obama administration changing its ways or is it just still very early in the year. well i mean i think what obama's just trying to sell us on on drone strikes that's the argument that harold koh has been making which is we're going to strike you know the you know in his speech obama also talked about maybe we should be putting more money into into support but you know ultimately what the speech was about was trying to sell us on the drone strikes he's already shown he's already engaged in as the most humane option because we're not going to talk about nonmilitary options and so on that basis it's not clear that much is going to change anytime soon and finally marcy we have a short amount of time left but the president in that speech has said that there will be more transparent say when it comes to drone strikes now the white house has not said anything in terms of this drone strike actually having taken place and in terms of the enemy actually being killed so are we seeing that transparency or

should we expect that in the future we're not seeing transparency what we're seeing is a list of a very fluid rules with some giant copy outs that you could drive you know twelve drones through and you know the administration still doesn't want i mean they're not being transparent about the pakistani strike they're not being transparent about when they gauge you know they're not being transparent about the rules so i'm not holding my breath for more real transparency well we know this isn't the first strike that has happened in pakistan this year there are thirteen others and i certainly won't be the last marcy wheeler investigative reporter with m p we'll dot net. last thursday and that means it's time for our weekly tech report on deck for today the commission on the theft of american intellectual property has sent congress a wish list on the top a law that would attach malware to different forms of media so that if pirates try to illegally rip the content a computer virus would be implemented into that computer also hollywood studios is

demanding for google to delist to dotcoms website mego from its web search dot com says that this is censorship and to round out this discussion we will go into texas where the strongest e-mail privacy bill in the nation is on the governor's desk awaiting his signature joining me now to discuss all things tech is brian doogan he is a technologist for the new america foundation thank you so much for joining us thank you so let's start off by talking about this now where that i had alluded to can you explain how it would work and if it would be effective so it won't work or be effective because mao where in turn in terms of how content producers want to use it is akin to what we call a back door in software so allowing a third party someone who's not you the owner of the computer access to your computer for whatever reason the inherent problem in the system is that the mao ware or the backdoor involves creating more keys to the locks the protect your system to protect your system from attackers as well as anybody else who want to

get in your system like content producers the more of these keys you produce the more likely it is that someone who isn't intended to have the key will get a key or that someone who. wants to break the lock can find out how the lock works and break the lock open so in the end it doesn't matter who is supposed to have access to the lock creating a backdoor will allow eventually allow anyone access to the log into your computer and as i understand it this isn't the first time that something like this has been tried so why try it this time. in two thousand. sony b.m.g. actually installed malware or a root kid they put it on a lot of c.d.'s. that they that they sold users who installed these who attempted to play these c.d.'s on their computers had root kids installed on their computers which allowed sony b.m.g. access remote access to their computers eventually security researchers found out

what was going on and in their apology letter sony b.m.g. not only apologized but they also admitted that this back door could have allowed anyone besides sony b.m.g. if they had the right they have the right skill in the motivation to gain access to your computer so let's talk about the fact that who someone is going to have access inevitably to your computer first of all do we know who it is and what potentially they could access well in two thousand and five when sony intended it or when sony implemented it it was actually sony b.m.g. the content owner when we talk about coming regulations are i mean potential regulations that the government could implement like the f.b.i. intends to. one day install back doors and services like google like facebook to gain access to facebook chat or twitter direct messages it would be the f.b.i. or some arm of the government that would attend that were to gain access in one

thousand nine hundred three when another system was almost implemented or actually was implemented by the cia it was the cia that would have gained access now excuse me the n.s.a. pardon me so in your opinion does this violate privacy of all those users who may or may not actually be stealing this content absolutely not only violates privacy by allowing a single third party the designer of the backdoor access to your computer but the fact that that access is there the fact that that access is indistinguishable from any security flaw will eventually or could possibly allow any other. party who has the crisis skills or. the steals keys to the break the lock or otherwise get into your computer so let's move on to this chem dot com and the fact that it's back in the news so kim dotcom they these two big hollywood companies want to block is that censorship. so kim's argument is that it is impossible for any automated

system to distinguish what is infringing content from non infringing content so there is a system on you tube google employees that detects when a video supposedly infringes on content that movie producers put out that song producers put out and the effect on youtube video producers is that legally fair fair use content is being taken down all the time. and sometimes content that has no relation to any copyrighted material at all so that's actually very very difficult to develop a system that automatically detect infringing content and google hasn't done it successfully and they won't be able to do it successfully for kim dot com and we have to spend thirty seconds left but very quickly can you explain this monumental privacy piece that's coming through texas. so texas privacy bill will put

a higher requirement on law enforcement for gaining access to e-mails right now the f.b.i. only needs a subpoena and the d.o.j. argues that you only need a subpoena to gain access to his for example g.-mail the texas bill would require a warrant which is fantastic and fantastic coming from a typically conservative state so this could be a huge change in terms of the e.c.p.a. brian doogan he is a west fave technologist at the new america foundation thank you so much thank you . well if you do the crime you do the time and that hard time extends beyond the length of your prison stay some states for big felons from partaking in their civic duties things like voting in elections or running for office or jury duty but that may no longer be the case in virginia for felons outgoing governor bob mcdonnell says that he will restore the voting rights for non violent felons virginia currently has a rule that these felons must wait for two years and file a petition directly to the governor to have their voting rights restored under the

plan the governor's office will weigh the felons on a case by case basis to determine if they should vote right when they get out of prison and the timing is a bit convenient this decision would enable thousands of these people to vote in the upcoming gubernatorial election to talk politics i'm joined now by myra she's the deputy director of democracy program at the brennan center for justice thank you so much for joining us so governor bob mcdonnell has called this a streamlined process that would actually help nonviolent felons to restore their voting rights this is a move that you and your organization has applauded why is it so important. it's important because we live in a participatory democracy and if we want a robust democracy we need to have all of our citizens and be able to have a say in the laws that govern us and currently we have four million americans who are living and working in our communities who cannot vote because of

a criminal conviction in their past virginia was one of a number of states that imposed restrictions on people who had gotten out of prison and were living and working in the community making it impossible for them to get the rights to vote back unless the governor specifically decided to individually provide clemency or pardon for that particular person and that is disruptive to the re entry process if we want people to be productive engage citizens we should be encouraging them to be engaging in pro-social behavior like voting and it is just dropped of public safety because it doesn't fully give people a stake in our society and doesn't make them engage in the sort of norming behaviors that boating does at the same time there have been a lot of critics that have come out speaking out against this first of all they spoke out about the fact that it's only for a non violent felons and second of all they spoke out about the fact that it does not apply to future governors so in your opinion does this go far enough i know

that it's going to take a constitutional amendment on our side get for janet to actually change its ways but is this a good first step we definitely believe that this is a good first step and that virginia has more improvement that it should undertake if we want our democracy to be free fair and accessible we need to make sure that people who are living and working in the community who are eligible americans have access to be able to cast a ballot that will count law enforcement folks agree people in the criminal justice system agree it is a very important move to make people who have spent time in prison successfully reintegrate by allowing them to vote now in government donald discuss the bill today on m.s.n. bases morning joe here's what he had to say. we're trying to get a constitutional amendment passed this session with republican and democrat support to automatically restore the rights and that failed and so because of that joe i'm

using all the power i've got as the chief executive out of the constitution to automatically restore rights out and individualize basis for violent felons and a lot of more people that will be able to vote you know to republics and hold office and have their gun rights restored in virginia but i do want to bring up the timing of this whole thing i mean as i had mentioned it wouldn't go beyond this governor on less cuccinelli or his contender to agree to to bring it up so does that have potential to affect the gubernatorial run because i know with that it did have a potential to affect the presidential run if it had actually been applied before the the two thousand and twelve election well you've raised a number of interesting points in that one statements i'll try and break them apart the first is the reason that there needs to be more movement on this or one of the reason there needs to be more movement on this is precisely because it could be changing under another governor's position one of the problems that we saw in

florida and iowa was that we had changes of administration in the states and they rolled back some progress that had been made so it is important for there to be a continued effort to try and get a constitutional amendment but in terms of when people can register to vote it's important that we have people participating and registering to vote and if this is a farsighted in a program that they're thinking that this might be a good time to have incentives such that people will try and get into the system in and be excited about this i think that that is a good thing but what is not being alleged and what's really important to remember is that this governor is a as a prosecutor he comes from this from a background of knowing what it takes to make our community safe and secure and what we need as a. mafiosi and out as more people voting more people participating we're going to have to end it there unfortunately we're out of time on a prize deputy director at the democracy program at the brennan center for justice

thank you thank you that does it for now i'm maggie lopez see you right back here at eight pm eastern. when you take three. four three. three. three. three. three blog video for your media. free.