cross-talk the most recent u.s. surveillance scandal i'm joined by eugene per year in washington he is a national organizer with the answer coalition also in washington we have sharon bradford franklin she is a senior counsel at the constitution project and in new york we cross the coral grossman he is an investigative reporter writer and professor of journalism at the state university of new york ok crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage you to share and if i can go to you first in washington how is mr obama been truthful with us and has his national security team actually perjured themselves and it comes to these programs well we're certainly very concerned about the director of national intelligence clapper is responses to senator wyden recent health testimony where senator wyden asked directly is the n.s.a. gathering any data about americans and director clapper responded no and we now

certainly know that's not true and he's defended this is being the least untruthful answer which doesn't make any sense at all but my only highlights i mean it's not like you know a little bit pregnant to you perjury yourself or you don't come on. well i haven't honestly seen the tape so it's hard for me to make fun of the we're going to let him go under oath and listening to him but it's it's it's certainly very very troubling and i hope there will be severe consequences and that's going to be on troubling eugene what do you think about that is the is obama being truthful with the american people and to the world and the world by the way. i mean i think it's quite clear that they're not being truthful and they're depending on the fact that they're trying to keep every single document secret i mean they want you to believe that they've done this they've done that that they're stopping this they're stopping that but they did every single turn and they want to keep their hands in the documents about these programs away from the american people away from the press away from any sort of oversight or scrutiny that could show whether or not

they're telling the truth and i mean if you're going to have that kind of behavior if you're going to be so secretive and want to keep everything in the dark with the lights off it's hard for me to believe anything they say i think it's almost definite that they are and we have revelations going back to two thousand and six with the electronic frontier foundation of a t.n.t. handing over information to the n.s.a. and other authorities and with the revelations released by edward snowden in his heroic acts i think most certainly they're lying and being misleading about almost every aspect of this program and it karl at the same time the obama administration says these programs will continue well i'm sitting here in manhattan just a few miles from where the world trade center stood and. there's some justification for for surveillance in the wake of that event of some surveillance just some of the what some me well in this context i think what we have here is an extreme overreach an extreme overrated. in manhattan

now there are there are cameras all over the place and when i grew up in this town i don't think there was a camera on the street and the boston marathon situation showed well maybe these surveillance cameras can be very helpful however. governments many governments most governments tend when there is no firm check and balance to to overreach and here we have i view i see it as an enormous overreach ok sharon all of us are suspect now aren't we everyone is suspect it's amazing. it is amazing and but if i can get just get back to the transparency and secrecy point you were raising earlier i think it's very important to distinguish the facts and evidence that the government officials may be showing to the court to justify some instances surveillance those may legitimately be kept secret but the

rules of the program the administration's understanding of what the scope of their authority is that should not be secret there should be no place for secret law in a democracy and that is a very troubling aspect of these programs and something that i sincerely hope will change to some degree as a result of these rebels what do you think about that you know everything is a secret you can't just can't we can't do it you know go ahead we can't discuss because it's secret go ahead. right i mean the five the court is secret law and for example we know for a fact that there is at least one ruling of the fisa court that showed that the united states government they even ruled that the government's actions had violated the fourth amendment rights of americans and yet we don't have any access to the content of that ruling and i think that most certainly if the u.s. government is building a file on every single american and not just on your communications and on your e-mails and all that i mean they've also been centralizing these tag readers around the country so they're keeping track of people's movements as well and i think we most certainly have the right to see what kind of violations what kind of powers

what kind of things are being used in this fight as a court i mean this whole idea that there's all this information out there that if all of a sudden it's released is going to you know cause this massive collapse of u.s. security i mean i just don't buy that plain and simple i mean right after wiki leaks they said oh well the problem with wiki leaks is all these people are going to die because all this river mation has been released indiscriminately and the u.s. government has never backed that up with any sort of claim in any sort of venue because the fact of the matter is so much of this secrecy is really just smoke and mirrors the fact of the matter is as we've seen from the nine eleven. that almost all mean there were warnings being raised it wasn't as if there was some major thing that the united states lacked and so this idea that there's some sort of you know correct way to keep things secret from the american public i think is ridiculous i mean you can't have a democracy if people have no ability to know that these programs that are surveilling all of us in every aspect face a court are not facing court if we can't know that we can't evaluate it and we

can't even say whether or not it is or is not a security issue or keeping us safe when you think about the kind we can't even have a conversation about this because they say it's secret sorry just trust us just trust us. yeah and i don't think we can i don't think you can trust anything is as well not transparent as the set up that we have here as i say checks and balances absolutely critical to a democracy and in this now vast area of intelligence gathering there is really no i mean congress might be a check but it doesn't seem to want to do the balancing most members of the united states congress seem to be well rob for the process very defensive about it what do you think about that i find that very troublesome as well both parties. i do but we are seeing some greater level of concern and really bipartisan concern we have congressman sensenbrenner writing to the attorney general saying i'm the author of

the patriot act and i'm shocked by this interpretation of section two fifteen of the patriot act i don't understand how you can use this you justify something as broad and sweeping as the order to horizon to turn over all americans phone records so that's encouraging that we're seeing more education members of congress about how aggressively the administration is interpret its surveillance authorities and how it's a real serious problem when those legal interpretations are kept secret that needs to change there's a distinction between secret evidence and being developed in an investigation and secret law which should not exist you know you what's happening here isn't it legal actually the interpretation that's even more troublesome. well i think it is more trouble so i mean i guess whether it's legal or illegal seems to just depend on the whims of the obama administration and they just decide what's legal and then say

they'll keep everything secret so that they never have to justify any of it i think that you know whatever the letter of the law they're trying to apply here the spirit of the constitution the spirit of the fourth amendment that people who have not are guilty of no crime should not have their their their their rights abrogated they shouldn't have to be subject to search and seizure has been completely wiped away and i think you know in fact i feel that the cunt congressional situation is not encouraging in any way shape or form i mean very what we've seen by congress is a bipartisan effort where under the centrally scare tactics of terrorism being used by the administration a bunch of people in congress just voted for things like the patriot act in the fly's amendments act without really fully knowing what was in there what it was and now they're all claiming what we didn't know they could do this well it was so unclear in these broad things like section two fifteen any tangible thing section seven zero two reasonable suspicion i mean these are extremely broad phrases if having no idea how these could be used you then went ahead and voted for it anyway it shows that both parties of congress are completely complicit in this national

security state that is really abrogating the constitutional rights of americans and i don't think it has anything to do with security at all to be honest with you i think that they're building this massive machine to monitor all these millions of americans at the same time they're saying the threat from terrorism president obama says is at fort mcnair the threat of terrorism is massively degraded al qaeda in the arabian peninsula doesn't have the same capabilities there is lone wolf one of the biggest threats and yet and still there yet again on the island records is that they need your phone records total they need your phone records to fight terrorism if you like that idea. well. the situation with bin laden where he cut off internet communication he cut off. phone communication suggest that in fact al qaeda is not that busy these days when these conventional routes now conventional routes of communication let me just add here

that one of the other extremely disturbing elements to this but congressman speaking to members of congress p. they can who is from from from new york he's been talking about the journalists involved in and reporting what snowden the whistleblower is saying are also libel to you suggesting even treason might be involved in pointing get at glenn greenwald of the guardian i mean the ultimate check and balance in the united states is that it's a free press which is supposed to be a check on the whole kit and caboodle and he go have a very influential member of congress. pointing the finger at journalists investigative reporters doing their jobs and this in my view as a journalist all my life my working life and as a professor of journalism is just utterly outrageous ok i'm going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on u.s. surveillance of citizens stay with our team.

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you were discussing the most recent u.s. surveillance scandal. ok sharon i'd like to go back to you in washington i guess not surprisingly snowden's name is being defamed right now and that's north popular story not what's gone wrong but none of us should be surprised right. i guess not you know i'm not in any position to justify what mr snowden did but i will say that this very system of excessive secrecy and over a classification of information does create more pressure where some people feel the need to take matters into their own hands and leak information and just yesterday we had general alexander the head of the n.s.a. testifying well i guess we do need to declassify some aspects of this program and educate the american people well that should have happened

a long time ago it shouldn't take a crisis like this someone leaking information for them to realize that they need to have more transparency with the american public eugene what do you think about that you know it's a lack of education meets a lack of honesty on the part of the authorities well i think it's certainly a lack of honesty on the part of the authorities i mean i think edward snowden is unequivocally a hero i mean what we if we look at what the government has done here i mean they've. they've gathered amongst themselves an unbelievable amount of rights i mean with the drone warfare they even redefined the english language so imminence didn't mean what imminent actually means in webster's dictionary so they could kill more people they've given themselves to right to detain any citizen around the world to kill people and now they are the you have the ability they claim the ability to look at every single e-mail you write look at your scripts look at your listen to your look at them edit the information from your telephone calls i mean this is an unbelievable amount of power they have brought amongst themselves they've said they don't have to explain it to anyone and so i don't know how you

know that you could do anything else but what edward snowden did if you were a person of conscience i think he's taken a massive amount of risk massive amount of heroism but he shouldn't be the one whose character should be defended it should be these people who created the mess of machine to control the american people and people around the world you know killing detention in surveillance would you think about that karl is the government taking on too much. why the extreme again the extreme nature of this this is big brother is watching this is like a like out of nineteen eighty-four if not even worse and worse this is. for the for the united states which has the idea ideal of freedom of speech. or prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure and so forth this is very bad stuff and it cries out for all full public debate and some sort of handle some sort

of public control public control of a situation that's gotten totally out of hand you know car how can this all make us safer what they're doing how does it make us feel safer because it makes me feel more suspicious. that that's a big question the guardian just a couple of days ago had an article debunking the claim the the surveillance was very important in terms of grabbing some terrorists and this is big that then the big defense. has this system worked this is huge dragnet is it necessary. checking not just about. e-mail messages and phone messages and visits to websites and i mean we're talking about. millions deleon is not trillions of pieces of information gathered by the

government and the u.s. government is setting up a new facility in utah and now because the information is gathering it's just become so so overwhelming i mean what is going on you know sharon one thing that really bothers me is that i might add today if i had just been you to go ahead go ahead please do. you know and we know from the official white house review of the underwear bomber case as well as the official government review into the fort hood shooting in two thousand and ten i believe it was that they were saying one of the key things that inhibited their investigation leading up to these events was this massive amount of data so this idea that you know there's some sort of consensus that this data mining method of monitoring people is more effective than other forms of monitoring is in fact not true but that's how it's being presented by the government and then when you ask what what's your proof of this well we can't show you because it's all secret you know it's exactly my point sharon go ahead and go ahead jump in please do this is crosstalk. sure so we do want the government to

have some surveillance powers to conduct surveillance on people where they actually have reason to believe that they're connected to terrorism or engage in terrorist plots but the legal standards are so low and the justifications under those laws are so forced and stretched that they're scooping up information on people where there's no reason to suspect anyone of any ties to terrorism whatsoever and not only does that infringe on some the rights of so many innocent people but it also increases the size of the proverbial haystack and makes it that much harder to the needle in the haystack and it can't possibly increase the efficiency of their searches they should focus these surveillance programs where they have real cause to look at individuals you know here and if i can stay with you one of the reasons that you could use this data for is that if somebody in the authorities don't like someone they have plenty of information to connect dots to create a story

a narrative about you or me ok not bothers me a lot right there is the historical risk of a user that we've seen that the church can be looked at to. learn that in the church committee my goodness i'm glad you brought it up going well and that a lot of that was swept away post nine eleven with all of these new legal authorities and we're seeing again we need to build in really robust meaningful safeguards into these programs and the government's interpretation of the scope of their authority needs to be public that while we wouldn't say get rid of all surveillance programs this sweeping. this sweeping surveillance that they're doing now really undermines their credibility on what they need to have in terms of government powers carl what is the state of the fourth amendment in the united states right now in your opinion. i believe it's under threat i

think this is. this is a very serious clearly found but do agree people understand here let me read to do so i mean we're talking about it we understand it does the average citizen understand it that well it's not guns i'm afraid not yeah i say i'm afraid not the the the washington spend machine has been hyperactive since the disclosures and the defense of what we need this system as vast as it is to deal with the terrorist threat i think. to a large degree that's having an impact with a lot of americans on the other hand i've looked at poll results a lot of americans are very very concerned because. american citizens don't like this sort of thing they're not used to this sort of thing this is not supposed to be a surveillance state this is not supposed to be

a page out of one thousand nine hundred eighty four and as for the democratic claim well it's ok with obama ok charge for him making finalist obama wonder i mean ok eugene go ahead ok but the fourth amendment under threat but it's ok because obama is president it's pathetic. well i think you know sadly there are people out here there are doing that and i think you know if the people don't understand the fourth amendment it's a do a group called the media spin machine is having an effect but i think it's that the rhetoric coming from the obama administration and you know sort of it's handmaidens in congress and also in the media is that you know ok hey yes we have a constitution and yes these rights are strong but these terrorists they're out to get us and there's nothing we can do to stop them unless we violate our traditional understanding of constitutional rights and so they're trying to make the people in the united states complicit in this really sort of read to finish an of what the constitutional rights the basic constitutional rights not just fourth amendment but first amendment rights really mean and i think it also plays into this strange idea

that the united states government does nothing to cause terrorism i mean we talk about that leverage is so lengthy to get me there is that it is if the united states government wasn't around the world in one hundred twenty countries and waging wars and killing millions of people and interfering in the political processes maybe we would have less to worry about ok you don't have you on another program on that topic and i don't know if you go ahead and jump in on the fourth amendment yes. that the threat to the fourth amendment in the digital age is something that we have a constitution project are focusing on in so many contexts and too many times we hear people arguing oh americans don't care about their privacy look at what they're putting up on facebook but there's a big difference between what people are willing to share with their friends even maybe their broad circle of facebook friends and what they want their government to have in its files with their names on it and so we do need to draw those distinctions and i think why hope that with these disclosures people will think

twice about government surveillance and the need to protect privacy and that situation carl gives here a way back because it seems like the state wants more and more power ok and they're going to surrender at some point say oh we've gone too far here it doesn't happen very often well i think. i'm a journalist and i believe in an activist free press and. an investigative reporter reporting has been my specialty i don't think many there are a few members of congress who are are trying to do something or but they're calling for a wide public debate and they're talking about revisions and the patriot act but i think this is going to require a press challenging as the press is supposed to do power us governmental power in this regard but i must tell you i just don't see this happening much i i see so much of the mainstream us press just falling into line

and going to these these off the record briefings and washington about this and cozying up to power and not taking on challenging authority challenging power again in the u.s. system that's the ultimate check and balance we have an executive in a legislative in a judicial branch they're supposed to check on each other but then a free press which is supposed to check on the head count making it we've got twenty seconds eugene cernan seconds you get the last word go ahead. certainly well i think if we want to take a road back then the american people have to demand right away that all of this information just be completely release something similar to the church committee because i think it and even broader than that because there's really no way we can trust the government in terms of what they're doing i mean we know that when the government was surveilling the occupy movement and sharing the information with private corporations they were often referring in official f.b.i. documents to a peaceful protest movement as a criminal enterprise so how do we know that all this i have to jump in here it's

a fascinating discussion but we have run out of time many thanks to my guests today in washington and in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t.c. unix i mean remember. you. thank you thank.

you thank. you. thank you. have to hear to. be. who you are giving. back to. the. well i'll pull over my language of all but i will only react to situations i haven't read the reports so i'm likely to push for a no i will leave them to the state department to comment on your latter point a month or so it's six am a car is on the docket no. way to

go no more weasel words. when you have a direct question be prepared for a change when you're throwing a punch be ready for a battle freedom of speech and little doubt the freedom to question.

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