we're now in the second week of the bradley manning trial the whistleblower could spend the rest of his life in jail for showing the true face of the iraq war to the world an update from the trial just ahead. this is the truth this is what's happening you should decide what we are doing. and the source of the n.s.a. leaks reveals himself to the world edward snowden is in hong kong right now when plans to seek asylum in iceland we'll tell you more about this in s. a whistleblower and the latest developments in this explosive story and a huge milestone was reached 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 welcome to that issue later in the show. it's monday june tenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching our t.v. well we begin this half hour with the trial from our army private first class bradley manning he's in fort meade maryland right now today's hearing resume just as the news broke of yet another whistle blower that was a blower has been identified as edward snowden but before we get to that story today the prosecution in the manning case was slated to focus on the specific video the private first class bradley manning had leaked to wiki leaks the video showed an airstrike that happened back in two thousand and nine in afghanistan at least twenty six civilians were killed in that attack however in reality the court spent the majority of this morning talking about computer forensics are to correspondent liz wahl joined me just minutes ago with the very latest information coming out

from that trial take a look. pay their lives so what new information came out from court today. that's our bag and it is day four week two of the bradley manning trial here in fort meade maryland and today we heard testimony from a number of witnesses mostly in relation to computer forensic analysis first up on the stand today was a man by the name of steve buchanan he is a contractor for the n.s.a. he was also trained at security for something called intel legs and what that is is a web based search enduring used by the u.s. intelligence community and it allows users to find all kinds of information including top secret information so the point of this testimony is to authenticate evidence proving. what bradley manning searched for in terms of the information that is this weekend we also heard from another analyst. a man by the name of david shaver he is a special agent for the computer crimes investigative unit he provided some more

parental canalis says he was able to verify that they were in searches did in fact happen he says that bradley manning searched the terms of wiki leaks a sauna and iceland those specific terms back in december of two thousand and nine so today mostly mostly details in regards to evidence computer based forensic evidence and as i understand it lives they were supposed to talk about examining a certain video today that showed the deaths of twenty six civilians in afghanistan did you hear anything about that today. that did not happen today they did go on recess at two pm a very lengthy recess they said it was they went on recess excuse me at that news were supposed to resume back at two pm didn't resume back until two forty five up until that point that we went on recess it was mostly all talking about a computer forensic analysis they did not discuss at that as of the point that i

left that you did not discuss that video but there were reports circulating that that. was going to be one of the main highlights of today's testimony reports circulating that there is another video separate from the now infamous collateral murder video in baghdad of two thousand and nine the apache helicopter. u.s. military forces shooting down an innocent civilian to the ground this is something separate according to reports. of a helicopter shooting down on civilians resulting in mass council casualties in afghanistan now this did not happen but we were told you were provided a list of protected witnesses. and i do know that at least at some point whether it's today or some point this week we do have a pilot in apache helicopter pilot slated to testify as of today but that did not happen now this trial has been overshadowed by

a new whistleblower that is and i say leaker edward snowden so i want to talk about this because also julian assange about edward snowden on sky news if we can talk what he said he said quote edward snowden is a hero who has informed the public about one formulation of a mass surveillance state what other countries need to do is line up and give their support to him everyone should go to their local properly titian's and press and demand they step forward and offer mr stoughton asylum in their country it will be telling to see which countries genuinely protect human rights and genuinely protect the privacy of the public so lives talk about this was anything said about edward snowden today. well not in the trial but i can tell you up on the media there. yeah it's impossible not to draw these parallels between bradley baiting edward snowden they're both relatively young they have bradley manning who

admitted to one of the largest military leaks in u.s. history snowden now accused or it also admitted. to one of the biggest leaks and the national security administration's history so of course we did hear from snowden trying to that apart from adding saying that he scrutinized this document a little bit more or it was very very careful in terms of what information he released and released the information to kind of drawing that distinction between him and bradley manning but i did speak to the press spokesperson of the bradley manning support network today and he was very quick to point out the similarities saying that both bad did it what they did in the interests of transparency and the public's right to know marty correspondent lives while reporting from fort meade maryland thank you so much liz. now over the weekend the guardian revealed the name of the man who leaked documents detailing the n.s.a. is 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 and in i.t. security for the n.s.a. for four years through different private contractors most recently he was an employee for booz allen hamilton living with his girlfriend in hawaii and making a six figure salary but he gave it all up and here's why. i'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office watches what what's happening and goes this is something that's not our place to decide the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong and there's more we are also learning that there is a program named boundless informant that catalogs the trillions upon trillions of computer communications the n.s.a. collects from around the world as a result of this massive intelligence leak the justice department has announced it has launched a criminal investigation also numerous lawmakers are demanding for edward snowden

to be extradited and prosecuted for leaking national security secrets some of those lawmakers went so far as to call the former n.s.a. contractor a defector and an american enemy but while all eyes are trained on this one man who leaked the information to the guardian relatively few are focusing on the director of national intelligence james clapper the leaked documents prove that clapper lie while testifying in front of the senate intelligence community in 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're keeping their hands off of clapper political commentator sam sachs looks at the man who no one else seems to want to question you have a contractor that has been hired who is then hired this twenty nine year old who is 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 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 it violates the oath of which that person so i absolutely think they should be prosecuted that if i think 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 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 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 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 a lack of oversight congress has given 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 has a high price for blowing a whistle in washington sam so our t. for a deeper look into the n.s.a. phone and computer surveillance program as well as the leaker edward snowden himself i was joined earlier by sharon bradford franklin she's a senior counsel at the constitution project as well as david cole a piece so david is the legal director of the national whistleblower center and i began by asking david to talk about edward snowden's leak and how it compares to other leaks in history from people like john kerry aku bradley manning and daniel ellsberg take a look. 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 that 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 is doing for his own family his 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 president 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 i 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 everybody everything they could about everybody in this country and one of the reasons is that 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 could be to the betterment or detriment of that 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 prison program has been linked to the amendments act that the authority of 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 a fourth amendment rights but they can collect communications even if they're it's reasonably likely that an american is on the other end of that communication and what's particularly troubling or one of the items it's particularly 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 where 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

the communication from one point the earth to 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 and i don't like that. 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 x. 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 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 illegal 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 going to show and his response was they're going to show that the in a city routinely lie to congress and that the n.s.a. is responses to senator and to. mr udall were wrong false that is whistle blown now sharon paid backing off of what we just heard then a senator or

a barack 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 war 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 board nor in the law what is inconvenient now president obama is a constitutional law professor much like yourself this is neither 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's certainly intrude on americans fourth amendment rights and it's very hard i think to argue otherwise and under section two fifty the patriot act of 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. well you mentioned in the beginning that there is 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 or extradited to the united states he faces prosecution like bradley manning and others under the espionage act sharon bradford franklin senior counsel

at the constitution project and david cole a pinto the legal director for the old national whistleblower center thank you so much for weighing in. so we now know how some of the experts feel about what the n.s.a. is up to but what about the american public how are average americans reacting to the news of the prison program and the obama administration's actions regarding surveillance artie's chad boyle hit the streets of d.c. to find out why would you feel if the government were tapping you know i'd be very disappointed i prefer that they were reading my e-mail but as i feel like google is already reading them i don't 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. for them to really make it to 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 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 or your e-mail account it seems that most people agree they wouldn't be surprised either way in washington i'm chadwell r.t. . the n.s.a. whistleblower his identity has only been known for about a day or so and already edward snowden has become a household name and contractor has earned a large showing of support from former whistleblowers as well as transparency

advocates some protesters in new york city gathered today to show solidarity with the man believed to be hiding in hong kong from or from new york city i'm joined i was joined earlier by law residents laurie harnessed and i asked her what happens today. well that's just a people gathered as a protest in union square to stand in solidarity with snowden to kind of preemptively beat the other media to the pint 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 you know they they all feel very strongly it is strongly enough to get out there in the rain and you can hear what they said this is but at the fact. i think that word snowden you started a conversation regarding privacy in the age of new media and that these problems are architectural problems they're 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 vacuumed 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 and choice so obviously laura these people are very supportive of edward snowden and they're counting 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 effect that 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 lori harshness from our new york city oh thank you. still ahead here on r t 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 you can serve look into that issue after the break. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you're seeing some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't have time for is

a big. well it's a big week on capitol hill as one over the hill lawmakers reaches a major milestone john dingell a u.s. representative from michigan's twelfth district has become the longest serving congressman in american history the eighty 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 along allowed to serve for that long or to correspondent margaret howell look something idea of term limits the currently longest serving member of congress is now congressman john dingell dingell took office in one thousand 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 isn't clear what is clear though although times are changing congressional seats art once members are in office in most cases they can win reelection after reelection easily nine out of ten times according to open secrets to out of work the public's dissatisfaction and distrust of congress in general is reflected in a recent ross musim poll conducted that certainly six percent of us think that congress is doing a good job at 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 senator dingell surpassed senator robert byrd for congressional longevity you remember byrd died in office after holding his seat in the senate from one nine hundred fifty nine to two thousand and ten or do you remember strong thurmond aged 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 quine by political science author david mayhew attempts to explain that higher rate of incumbency reelection to the u.s. house of representatives in recent years this rate has been over ninety percent or higher this stagnation may attribute to preserving the status quo may use theory was coined in the one nine hundred seventy three cycle has still has an area

element of truth to it doesn't it thirteen years ago and the two thousand. actions 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 safe i.e. guarantee reelection safe and stagnant are two terms that seem to coincide with congressional incumbency in washington margaret howell. well a swat team in buffalo raided the wrong apartment last week while searching for crack cocaine and it's not the first time that this has happened but hey 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 or royal according to the buffalo news little oil claimed that cindy was chained up in his kitchen during the police raid he was not home at the time but he came back to find his apartment torn apart and cindy dead with multiple bullet wounds and her

body buffalo police have confirmed that they did in fact shoot the dog however they claim that the pit bull was not leashed in any way when they entered the apartments the buffalo police department has promised an investigation into the matter but as we've covered in the past these investigations often result in excuses and few times result in actual repercussions our view of one hundred eighty seven officer involved shootings of dogs by the houston texas police department since two thousand and ten resulted in a report that said that of all of these cases of puppy side none of them were unjustified 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 check out our website r t dot com slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez stay tuned breaking the set with host abby martin is coming up at the top of the hour.

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