this is the truth this is what's happening you should decide whether we need to be doing this. the source of the n.s.a. leaks reveals himself to the world edward snowden is now in hong kong with plans to seek asylum in iceland we'll tell you more about this n.s.a. whistleblower and the latest developments in this explosive story and edward snowden supporters are out in the streets of new york they rallied today for the n.s.a. whistleblower to show their support over the growing surveillance state over you sights and sounds from the rally ahead and a milestone in congress representative john dingell becomes america's longest serving congressman but that raises the question should there be limits on how long a person can serve will look into that issue later in the show.

it's monday june tenth four pm in washington d.c. hi meghan lopez and you are watching r t well it has been in the extremely busy past couple of days for the news so let's get straight to the story that is dominating the headlines over the weekend the guardian revealed the name of the man who leaked documents detailing the n.s.a.'s top secret surveillance program of american computer networks this is the leaker twenty nine year old edward snowden he is a high school dropout who was a former employee of the cia snowden worked in a security for the n.s.a. for four years through different private contractors he recently worked as an employee for booz allen hamilton living with his girlfriend in hawaii and it making a six figure salary but he gave it all up and here's why. i'm just another guy who fits their day to day in the office watches what what's happening and goes this is

something that's not our place to the side the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong and there's more we've also learned this week about a program known as boundless informant that catalogs the trillions upon trillions of computer communications the n.s.a. collects from around the world so are people surprised about this revelation artie's chad boyle hit the streets of d.c. to find out how would you feel if the government were tapping you know i'd be very disappointed i'd prefer that they were reading my e-mail but as i feel like google is already reading them i would like it but the biggest thing is about government is that governments are respect private liberties and privacy rights we have the right to privacy but if they're tapping into all of our stuff then what happened to privacy i think everything should be private it's my business and government should have any reason to be in it since i don't know exactly what they're accessing it's hard for me to know but would they be ok with the government seeing your e-mails if

it was for the sake of protecting the u.s. according to a c.n.n. time poll from april of this year over forty percent of americans are willing to give up some of their civil liberties to fight terrorism in forty nine percent are not are you surprised at all by the obama administration gave themselves involved in all this not really i mean only trust the government so much on has been surprising for them they're really missed its people now not so much because the obama administration yeah i'm really surprised that not really with all of the. other scandals that have been coming out recently i think from sort of from the patriot act on it seemed pretty clear that something like this was going on whether the government is tapping into your phone records were e-mail account it seems that most people agree they wouldn't be surprised either way in washington i'm chad oil . so people aren't exactly surprised but should we be ok with it joining me now to talk about all of this is sharon bradford franklin she's the senior counsel at the constitution project as well as david cole a pinko david is

a legal director of the national whistleblower center thank you both for joining me so david let's start talking about edward snowden as a whistleblower put this into context with me with the whistleblowers that we've seen in the past the john kiriakou the daniel ellsberg is the bradley manning's how big of a leak is this this is probably the biggest whistleblower disclosure since daniel ellsberg leaked the pentagon papers and individuals like mr snowden who work for contractors of intelligence agencies or even intelligence agency employees have no place to go to make this type of disclosure so it really shouldn't be a surprise to the obama administration that someone has again chosen to communicate grave problems with this surveillance system to a member of the news media should we be surprised at how snowden out it himself was

that a smart move on his part it was a smart move for him to stay alive number one it's a very dangerous thing that he's doing for his own family's own safety and to come public in this way i think is a very admirable thing all right sharon i was able to catch up with n.s.a. whistleblower bill bennie about the prison program which allegedly allows the n.s.a. to access online data from nine of the largest internet companies in the country this is what he had to say. my personal view is that the intelligence community is bamboozling congress and the administration they are telling them that we have to do this in order to find the bad guys in the networks and they're just absolutely false you don't have to do that there were ways and means to do that and i left that ability in capability with them and they just threw it away so instead they opted to collect everything they could about everybody in this country and one of the reasons is that the they would want to do that the only one i could think of is

they want to be able to leverage anybody in this country so essentially what bill binney is saying there is that the government chooses what is and what is not legal and sometimes it can be to the betterment or detriment of the person and really just depends on how that wants how the government wants to use it so do you agree with that kind of analysis and talk about the use of the prison program as a leverage against a citizen well the prism program has been linked to the amendments act that the authority the government is citing and we already knew with the passage of that act that the standards for the government collecting all sorts of information about communications are fairly low they are supposed to be targeting foreigners located abroad so people who don't have fourth amendment rights but they can collect communications even if they're it's really unlikely that an american is on the other end of that communication and what's particularly troubling or one of the items of particular troubling with this disclosure about the prism program is the

standard they're applying is just a fifty one percent likelihood that the targets are actually foreigners located abroad that's not a very high standard and that's something that bill bennett brought up again so let's talk about this first of all n.s.a. spokesperson judith emmel told the guardian that the n.s.a. can't identify the people communicating by using their metadata and that is something that bill benny laughed at so take a listen to this. on the one side you have phone numbers now these phone numbers whether they're whether they're your landline phone or your mobile phone or your satellite phone all connect into this public switch telephone network and those numbers are unique in the world and you're talking about switches that are routing these communications from one point the earth through another and they have to know exactly where to send it so you know exactly where it went and exactly where it's coming from so there's no question that you shouldn't have fairly ninety nine point

nine nine nine percent accuracy on a. so you pointed out holes in that fifty one percent accuracy he pointed out holes in that fifty one percent accuracy talk about being able to identify people well this is something that very centers like senator wyden and udall have been asking the government to do for some time now they're saying we know there's a possibility you can intercept communications under the five amendment acts that have americans on one end tell us how often this is happening so we can make sure to incorporate safeguards and the director of national intelligence has said we don't have a way of estimating that and so this is obviously calling that into question and we should force the government to look at this more seriously and to build in safeguards to prevent the collection of americans communications to the greatest extent possible under this program now david let's talk about whistle blowing whistle blowing is defined as bringing government illegality into the public eye it's all these programs have the courts and the legislatures backing them is why to

edward snowden is doing is that a legal. if you read the transcript of his interview to the guardian which was published over the weekend he explains actually he was asked what is it about these leaked documents that what's in them what's it going to show and his response was they're going to show that the n.s.a. routinely lies to congress and that the n.s.a.'s response is to senator wyden and to. mr udall were wrong and false that is whistle blowing now sharon paid backing off of what we just heard and then as senator a brok obama back in two thousand and seven in talks about warrantless wiretapping let's take a listen to what he had to say i will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our constitution and our freedom that means no more illegal wiretapping

of american citizens no more national security letters to spy on citizens who are not suspected of a crime no more tracking citizens who do nothing more than protest a misguided war no more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. now president obama is a constitutional law professor much like yourself the sooner a fresher course on the constitution ours what he's saying in this program constitutional well from what we know so far there's certainly been an aggressive interpretation of the statutes the surveillance laws on both the section two fifteen of the patriot act that's been cited for the horizon order and the amendments act and particularly with regard to the five amendments act when you have an interpretation that is so broad so far reaching it certainly. intrudes on americans fourth amendment rights and it's very hard i think to argue otherwise and under section two fifty the patriot act that horizon order program

it's hard to see how the ellens that they're doing collecting these phone records on millions of americans is relevant to a counterterrorism investigation the that this relaxed standard under section two fifteen so it's stretching the statutory language and it is threatening conservation rights as well and finally david what's next for edward snowden will you mentioned in the beginning the there's discussion about him possibly seeking asylum in iceland or elsewhere and we just don't know what's next for him if he is apprehended extradited to the united states he faces prosecution like bradley manning and others under the espionage act sharing bradford franklin senior counsel at the constitution project and david cole of legal director for the national whistleblower center thank you so much for weighing in thank you you thank. the n.s.a. whistleblowers identity has not only been only been out for just a little over a day and already had word snowden has become

a household name the contractor has earned a large showing of support from former whistleblowers as well as transparency advocates some protesters gathered in new york city today to show solidarity with the man they believe to be hiding in hong kong for more from new york the residents laurie harkness joins me now hi there laurie so what happened today in new york. well that's just a people gathered as a protest in union square to stand in solidarity with snow day to kind of preemptively beat the other media to the pines about all the dirt and the bad stories that are going to come out about him or any kind of smear tactic that happened people want to show that they're with him and support him now and what was their main message well that's just it solidarity you know they they all feel very strongly and strongly enough to get out there in the rain and you can hear what they said this is but the. i think that word snowden you started a conversation regarding privacy in the age of new media and that these problems

are architectural problems are structural problems in our government right now this is probably the biggest national security leak in u.s. history where we're finding out that the u.s. has literally back you up every moment billions of bits of data is an american citizen understand it's a difficult choice between security and privacy however i think the american people should be aware of what is going on and should be allowed to have a voice in that choice so obviously laura these people are very supportive of edward snowden and they're touting transparency do you expect there to be more rallies like this in the days ahead. i hope so there should be a lot of angry people this should be our big moment to stand up and say we're sick of this and we want our privacy valued as much as we value it so i think that people have started organizing and we can only hope to see the outrage that this story deserves and laurie can you talk a little bit about some of the social media aspects of the story i know that there

was a couple of hashtags saying i support edward snowden and can you talk about some of the social media response to this i think it's indicative that people are indeed aware that this is a big infringement on their privacy and they are willing to take it into their own hands that's the beauty of social media it gives it into your hands and you have the effects you have the ability to make the effect that you want so we don't have to wait for the mainstream media to do it for us the residents laura harshness from our new york city oh thank you. fun one hand this twenty nine year old n.s.a. whistleblower has earned support and respect from people around the world but he's also made a lot of enemies along the way the justice department has announced that it is launching a criminal investigation also numerous lawmakers are demanding for edward snowden to be extradited and prosecuted for leaking national security favorites some of those lawmakers went to so far as to call the former n.s.a. contractor

a defector and then american enemy but while all eyes are trained on the man who leaked this information to the guardian relatively few are focusing on the director of national intelligence james clapper leaked documents prove that clapper lied to while he was testifying in front of the senate intelligence committee in march when he was asked whether or not the n.s.a. collects data on the american public so why are authorities looking into prosecuting snowden while they keep their hands off of class for political commentator sound sex looks at the man no one else seems to want to question if you have a contractor that has been hired who is then hired this twenty nine year old who's now holed up in some hotel room in hong kong claiming to be the defender of democracy somehow in the people's republic of china if anyone were to violate the law by releasing classified information outside the legal avenues certainly that individual should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law that's house majority leader eric cantor already turning up the heat on n.s.a.

whistleblower edward snowden the man behind a series of leaks laying bare the united states's national surveillance complex the chairman of the house homeland security committee peter king has chimed in to releasing a statement saying the united states government must prosecute snowden to the fullest extent of the law and begin extradition proceedings at the earliest date and then the two chairs of congress's intelligence committee's representative mike rogers and senator dianne feinstein weighed in is dangerous to us it's dangerous to our national security and violet it. it's the oath of which that person so i absolutely think they should be prosecuted if i say i do snowden is now promising more leaks about what exactly is going on within the n.s.a. and while lawmakers have harsh words for these leaks they seem to be ignoring the consequences of the revelations were namely that top obama administration officials have been routinely lying to congress about what's really going on at the n.s.a. this was director of national intelligence james clapper testifying in the senate

back in march could give me a yes or no answer to the question does the n.s.a. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans. no sir it does not. not wittingly and then snowden's leaks broke showing that the n.s.a. was indeed collecting data on millions of americans using verizon networks and that a top secret program known as prism has the n.s.a. plugged right into the servers of leading internet providers capable of siphoning off information about what individuals including americans are doing online snowden's latest leak is about an n.s.a. tool known as boundless informant which records in analyzes all the locations around the planet where the n.s.a. is gathering data and just how much data they're collecting it revealed that just in march of this year the n.s.a. collected ninety seven billion pieces of intelligence all around the world

including three billion pieces right here in the united states but last year when the n.s.a. was specifically asked by senators to give information on how many americans had their communications reviewed the intelligence community's inspector general responded in a letter saying quote obtaining such an estimate was beyond the capacity of the n.s.a. and dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the n.s.a.'s mission snowden's revelations have rocked the intelligence community they've exposed the lack of oversight congress has given to the white house's domestic spying operations the question is will congress use this new information to rein in the surveillance state and hold white house officials who lied to them accountable or will they go after the messenger and make sure snowden pays a high price for blowing the whistle in washington sam sax r t with france in the middle of a troop withdrawal from mali and u.n. peacekeeping forces still deployed bare the country is facing an uncertain future

and it's not just security that's on people's minds many fear about international involvement might not be limited to military operations with one of the country's a few thriving industry is apparently being by foreign corporations parties maria for an ocean of drugs into the story. little mina and attains herself while her entire family is at work have mom dad brothers and sisters are all miners at one of molly's many so-called traditional gold mines will make a hole the size of a body with this and then we dig deeper and deeper the industrial mines with serious investment from big foreign companies work with machinery although often referred to as government mines they're all in fact private with only twenty percent of their revenue being paid into the country's coffers those who work in traditional mines don't have to pay the authorities but at the same time they don't

get any help either the hello is narrow and deep they dig until they strike gold or so the mines here go down to death of sixty meters they go and over fifteen or a twenty story building the tunnels are so cramped there is barely any room for movement here and no support structure it looks like nick loves it and it all was scary here for some mysterious about i can use all those embassies. i took this man to tell me what is spent here working underground for hours and it was a great hardware knocking that if you minutes brydon becomes difficult with a lot of oxygen this is the hardest part of a very long process rocks are extracted before being pounded they fitted and washed i'm not happy as i work more hours than i get for it having spent around five hours here we are dirty exhausted and terribly the hydrated people here usually work from

ten to eleven hours per day every evening they're paid but not in cash they are given rocks taken from the mine this may contain gold if it doesn't they just left empty handed. this game of luck is for many mullins and their only way of getting paid but it seems their dreams of wealth in one of the poorest countries on earth could be dashed as the government moves to ban traditional mines it's on a huge scale we lose a lot of money the black market is growing there is no proper tuck system and we don't get a penny from it molly's gold experts have more than tripled in the last decade yes mullins indeed seem not to be among the beneficiaries but not all believe the authorities intentions will diminish poverty he only care about big corporations are going to come in and take over our country's mineral wealth suddenly they don't care about ordinary people this november

a joint mollen suisse venture will start operating the country's first gold refinery with a monthly capacity of half the country's enrolled production it will require a huge increase in exploration at least seven chinese geological agencies have already arrived in the country with many more likely to follow the future of these people remains uncertain like their income and is to have even their meagre place on the african sun. from ali. still ahead here on r t on milestone in congress representative john dingell becomes america's longest serving congressman but that raises the question should there be limits on how long a person can serve well look at the issue after the break. well

it's a big week on capitol hill for one over the hill lawmaker has reached a major milestone john dingell a u.s. representative from michigan's twelfth district has become the longest serving congressman in american history they had a seven year old has served fifty seven and a half years and counting but with this celebration comes the question of whether someone should be able to serve for that long or to correspondent margaret hell looks into the idea of term limits. the currently longest serving member of

congress is now congressman john dingell dingell took office in one nine hundred fifty five holding on to his congressional seat for the past fifty seven years meanwhile a gallup poll from last week said that seventy one percent of us think that congressional term limits are a good idea remaining relevant to constituents after spending so long on capitol hill it isn't clear what is clear though although times are changing congressional seats are once members are in office in most cases they can win re-election after reelection easily nine out of ten times according to open secrets dot org the public's dissatisfaction and distrust of congress in general is reflected in a recent rust musim poll conducted that said only six percent of us think that congress is doing a good job and a five to four decision in one thousand nine hundred five the supreme court ruled that term limits for congress are unconstitutional looks like for now if you land yourself a seat in congress it is yours until your district decides to throw you out last

week senators dingell surpassed senator robert byrd for congressional longevity you remember byrd died in office after holding his feet in the senate from the one nine hundred fifty nine to two thousand and ten or do you remember strom thurmond age ninety eight who died in office there was an actual ambulance parked outside the capitol for several days on standby seemingly waiting for senator thurmond to expire and earlier this month senator frank lautenberg died during his second round at office just after saying he wouldn't seek a sixth term with little to no congressional turnover this could be one explanation as to why politics in our country don't change either congressional stagnation a theory coined by political science author david mayhew at the attempts to explain that high rate of incumbency reelection to the u.s. house of representatives in recent years this rate has been over ninety percent or higher the stagnation attribute to preserve. being the status quo may use theory

was coined in the one nine hundred seventy three cycle house still has an eerie element of truth to it doesn't it thirteen years ago in the two thousand elections arguably the most controversial presidential election in u.s. history congressional quarterly put out a list they stated that three hundred fifty nine of the four hundred thirty five members of congress were saved i.e. guaranteed reelection safe and stagnant are two terms that seem to coincide with congressional incumbency in washington margaret howell r.t.e. well a swat team in buffalo raided the wrong apartment last week while searching for crack cocaine whoops no harm no foul right well not if you're this dog two and a half year old chocolate brown pit bull cindy or her owner iraq war veteran adam arroyo according to the buffalo news a royal claimed that cindy was chained up in his kitchen during the police raid he was not home at the time but came back to find his apartment torn apart and city

shot multiple times but buffalo police claim that they did in fact shoot cindy however they say that the ball was not leashed in any way when they entered the apartment the buffalo police department has promised to open an investigation into the matter but as we've covered in the past these investigations don't throw the dogs a bone in our view of one hundred eighty seven officer involved shootings of dogs bison used in the houston texas police department since two thousand and ten has resulted in a report that said these cases are so fall out so far called puppy side and that all of them were justified and that's going to do it for now for more on the story as we cover go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t dot com slash usa follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez and stay tune prime interest is next. d.h. of pill popping to what degree is big pharma hijacking captures the western medical

establishment what is the real aim of the pharmaceutical industry to make people healthy or to generate healthy profits for themselves and is there anything we can do to break loose on the coast be addiction. more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are rooted a clue. it

was.

good afternoon and welcome to prime interest i'm perry and boring in washington d.c. of kids who are headline. so apple is not snooping on you they promise along with google microsoft and other tech giants this is after the now infamous security leaker edward snowden went public over the weekend allowing his name to be revealed we were ported friday that nine at tech companies face the whistle blowing allegations and the press and they allowed director government access to their servers are they now strenuously denying snowden that the twenty nine year old booz allen employee has drawn support from some unlikely that such as michael moore and glenn back and microsoft's former chief privacy officer advisor at cal.