we look. for you. coming up on our new poll shows what americans really think about the n.s.a. it turns out most support the government's surveillance programs but they also don't consider edward snowden's leak to be criminal extensive coverage of the n.s.a. leak case ahead and a new report looks at the number of f.b.i. shootings and how they are almost always considered just to find uses of force but is that really the case a deeper look at the numbers coming up and it's thursday so it's time for our techno ports in memory of aaron swartz a new bill is introduced to protect consumers by microsoft is offering a big payout to hackers for finding security flaws all of that and much more later in today's show.

it's thursday june twentieth five pm in washington d.c. i'm maggie lopez and you are watching r.t. well more information is coming out from the guardian today detailing the types of information the n.s.a. can and has collected in the past when it comes to american citizens here's what we found out while the prism nucleon and mainway programs are mostly used to collect information on foreign entities and not american citizens u.s. communications can still be collected retained and used for five years if it contains useable intelligence information on criminal activity threat of harm to people or property if it's encrypted or if it is believed to contain any information relevant to cyber security model as for the matter of transparency both past and present n.s.a. officials argue that the process is as transparent as possible. we want to keep the operation itself secret we felt it was sufficient to brief five hundred thirty

members of the american congress in both the senate and in the house of representatives when it comes to transparency you know look i would love to tell three hundred twenty million americans exactly what it is we're doing to keep them safe because i frankly think almost all of them would be really happy about it but i haven't figured out a way to tell three hundred twenty million of my countrymen without letting the people we're trying to catch find out about what it is we're doing too and that becomes a serious tradeoff here but even without that information it looks like the majority of americans are in fact happy about it take a look at this new washington post a.b.c. news poll and when it comes to the intelligence gathering programs it turns out fifty eight percent of americans are supportive of the government overall democrats are more accepting of the snooping than republicans and independents when it comes to what to do with n.s.a. leaker edward snowden the public is split down the middle about charging him with

a crime but if one thing is obvious most americans might be ok with the surveillance program but they do want to know more about it sixty five percent support a public airing to find out exactly what the program does. now one thing we have learned from the house hearing on the n.s.a. surveillance methods is that only twenty two people are allegedly authorized to approve which phone numbers will be surveilled that's according to general director general keith alexander however it is also true that millions of other employees have access to confidential and secret materials in fact it's four point nine million people that currently have that kind of clearance now and all of those people one point four million more have access to top secret information because the amount of information going into and out of that agency is constantly increasing the number of people needed to go through all of this information needs to mirror that expansion and that could open the door to even more secret spellers

like edward snowden in the future political commentator sam sachs explains. when daniel ellsberg blew the whistle in one thousand nine hundred you want exposing the secrets of the vietnam war our government was put on notice they didn't just have to keep their secrets safe from spies within but also from whistleblowers within men and women trying to bring the truth to the american people it would take another thirty years until after nine eleven for the government to learn the lesson again when a new batch of truth tellers stood up to blow the whistle thomas drake john kiriakou bradley manning edward snowden those are just a few of the high profile whistleblowers who in just the last few years have exposed some of the american government's darkest secrets from warrantless domestic surveillance to cia's torture programs to war crimes. and it's left those agencies in our government that depend on keeping secrets scrambling to find a way to better keep their secrets but that task is very difficult today mainly

because the national security state has grown too large to control now since nine eleven the size of the national security complex and all of its secrets have grown considerably there are now nearly five million people in the united states with security clearance that's almost two percent of the entire population of those five million roughly twenty eight percent of them have top secret clearance and about ten percent have top secret clearance and don't work for the government but instead work for a private contractor like booz allen and most frightening to the government agencies in charge of keeping these secrets any one of those five million people with security clearance could be the next edward snowden or the next bradley manning former n.s.a. and cia director michael hayden believes one way to stop the whistle blowing is continuous monitoring of those who have the secrets i actually think what we need is a different kind of security structure perhaps not fewer security clearances but a better way to go about clearing people for sensitive information right now we

load up an awful lot on the front end lots of in. yes a geisha and polygraph examinations and so on perhaps that's not the best place to put all of our energy maybe we should put our energy in terms of continuous monitoring another approach the government is taking toward whistleblowers excessive punishment the obama administration has attempted to prosecute more whistleblowers under the espionage act than any presidential administration in history combined but as just one radek a whistleblower herself an attorney for notable whistleblowers argues this strategy hasn't worked the more they crack down a whistleblower is i mean they cracked down on tom drake but manning still blew the whistle and i mean manning's been treated horrible ways been incarcerated for three years including torture during part of that time yet snowden still blew the whistle so who will be the next whistleblower in the last few weeks we've learned of

massive snooping programs like prism nucleon and main way to collect quantities of data on american citizens that are in comprehensible but there's still a lot more to learn about the inner workings of the national security state and snowden himself is promising more revelations in the days and weeks to come the question is what effect will more truth telling have on the american people's view of these top secret programs i think historically yes we will look back on this period of time and i. think it's horrible and completely antithetical to a present open democratic society i have no doubt in a couple decades that will be true with five million people holding security clearances we know it takes a lot of manpower to maintain this level of surveillance and that ultimately is the main weakness of these programs if they're dismantled they won't be from without but instead from within thanks to what can be described today as

a whistleblower revolution in washington same sex. now even though the newest polls show that the majority of americans have no problem with the n.s.a. surveillance program there is a vocal minority that is still fighting against the government one of those groups is called the world can't wait group and they say enough is enough when it comes to government overreach the group held a rally in new york city and artie's own ana stasia churkin attended she brings us a look at their demands. all right. america's privacy and freedom versus the u.s. government if you have a government that claims to be for the people then secrets in the interest of national security are kind of like an oxymoron a group of new york activists come together in reaction to the n.s.a. spying scandal that shook america to the core can we tolerate letting these same people. who regard really telling the truth as a capital offense to steal everything there is to steal about our lives our

thoughts and our feelings they say now is the time to act out against the abuses of power carried out by america's governments including the unmet promises to close down the guantanamo bay detention facility and what they call the war against whistleblowers in america are certainly seeing an escalation of the government's response in terms of social control as well as persecution of people who are speaking out against the system speaking truth to power these americans are demanding that u.s. officials keep their hands off edward snowden the twenty nine year old former cia contractor who revealed the n.s.a. surveillance program that collected phone call metta data of a sweeping number of people and spied on searches e-mails and file transfers through its prison program it's not only the citizens of the united states it's billions and billions of people who are having all their data vacuumed up by the national security administration and whatever other agencies and programs have not

been revealed yet snowden is currently hiding in hong kong hoping to get asylum in iceland and while the spying revelation he exposed was shocking some still go about business as usual you know with what snowden now still enough people believe what snowden did should have been done by the media a long time ago he didn't reveal anything. as a spy or a prankster or anything if he's he's really press he's really newspaper a growing number of americans i am bradley manning i am bradley now i think are also demanding fair treatment of twenty five year old army private bradley manning currently on trial for leaking classified documents to wiki leaks now facing up to life behind bars the obama administration has prosecuted more people for d.s.p. an espionage shall. and all the previous presidential administrations combined and that's just horrifying many see it as no coincidence that the n.s.a.

documents were leaked at the start of the bradley manning trial when you speak truth to power there's a very heavy price to be paid in this country activists say the so-called war against whistleblowers is on par with the abuses happening at guantanamo where hunger strike over one hundred detainees has been going on for more than four months i will not eat until they restore my dignity. i've been detained at guantanamo for levon years and three months i've never been charged with any crime while the u.s. government tries to convince americans that mass spying is done in the name of the good and should be considered did new norm and that places like one ton of modes this to benefit national security it's people like manning and snowden as well as their supporters behind these walls and throughout the world who continue to defy the system and fight back the only way they believe is right and. new york well it's official the u.s. is turning a corner in the afghanistan war according to government officials the u.s.

has agreed to engage in its first formal negotiations with the taliban about how to achieve peace and a decade long war this is quite an about face take a look at how quickly the u.s. has a evolved on the taliban united states of america makes the following demands on the town close immediately and permanently every term. the taliban regime. is coming to any. day she respects the people of afghanistan after all we are only its largest source of humanitarian aid but we can taliban regime. our nations to a reconciliation process between the government and the time we read this passage should be advanced by the opening up. to facilitate talks the first meeting will take place in doha qatar that office after washington dropped his longstanding demand for the group to renounce all qaeda as a precondition for talks it's all part of the peace process president obama has

alluded to as he looks ahead to twenty fourteen now it should be mentioned that we have seen these peace talks fizzle out before they came into fruition in the past and that very well could happen again but this is the closest the u.s. has come to negotiations in quite some time the taliban has also offered to free u.s. army sergeant bowe bergdahl who has been held captive since two thousand and nine but they are asking for the release of taliban leaders from guantanamo bay in return we do not know how much of a role afghanistan president hamid karzai will actually have in any of these talks . well in the hunt for the boston marathon bombers local and federal law enforcement officers pulled out all the stops in order to track down the killers even after that fateful night where once or now a brother was killed and the other was apprehended the f.b.i. continue to follow leads a chechen man who is friends with us are now i am brothers was questioned soon after for an unrelated event but was shot and killed by f.b.i.

agents but even to lash out is not the first person the f.b.i. has opened fired on in recent years and his death was considered justified however according to an f.b.i. spokesman since two thousand and eleven there have been no findings of improper or intentional shootings what's more internal f.b.i. records obtained by the new york times through a freedom of information act request discovered that out of the two hundred eighty nine deliberate shootings only five were described as quote bad shootings and agents were deemed faultless and one hundred fifty others for more on these numbers i was joined earlier by j.d. to chile his managing editor at reason twenty four seven and i started off by asking him if all of these shootings four really justified but even theoretically suppose in a perfect world to be great if every shooting the if the engagement was justified i doubt that's the case we do know that. the few cases that involve nobody actually getting injured. is maybe i should have been disciplined but look at sort of the

five of the last forty years or so whatever anytime somebody has been actually been shot or killed if you do the trigger is given a pass on that. the magic phrase here seems to be to tell you the circumstances of the you know we look at the totality of circumstances so that the matter what anybody else might think the issue did was justified you know are there any reason instances that we know of where the shooting was not justified. oh absolutely it was a cave first of all it's very rare for anybody else to look at it and yet shooting except for the f.b.i. itself so i very often it's difficult for us to see you even to have a second opinion of what went on a kid on a very rare occasion somebody else does look at it we know there was an instance where the f.b.i. was looking for a seeking out bank robber and somebody who matched the description that they were looking for showed up was an innocent man who just was dressed the same way in a similar vehicle as a person they were expecting they ended up shooting him not fatally fortunately

ultimately he was awarded one point three million dollars in damages and the case was ruled the shooting was ruled justified now your civil court awarded one point three million dollars in damages to an innocent man who was killed was very explicitly not the target of the f.b.i. stakeout you think that would not be a righteous shooting if you had decided otherwise so if we take this case where somebody outside the f.b.i. a very rare circumstance looked at the f.b.i. and came to a different conclusion what the f.b.i. and so it imploded and spread that across the other cases it's highly likely going to find that some of this other one hundred fifty incidents probably were not justified either now in jail some of the possible explanations that the f.b.i. gave for why all these shootings were justified or that agents tend to be older and more sperry and stand better trained also they are generally involved in and they only on the operations where x. sense of planning has happened and they tend to go in with quote overwhelming presence and or in some minimize the chaos the shootings and things that could

possibly go wrong now in your opinion to these arguments hold weights. some of these are valid and you should be trained at a higher level agents are better educated or better trained are older than your average city city police officer but that doesn't mean that there's absolutely no flaws and how the human beings who staff the f.b.i. go about their actions that some really unbelievable and we know from the address of schwarz case that there have at least been some incidents where outsiders have come to office you conclusions from the f.b.i. and it's really hard to believe that human beings with all of their flaws even at a federal level or engage in no mistakes whatsoever so no i mean overall our the f.b.i. agents are working at a higher level than a city police officer probably at least most cities but at a perfect level no nobody operates at a perfect level that's not believable so finally j.v. what's been happening here for something watching over the f.b.i. . what is happening is that is really what happens.

but the m. basically agencies should not be investigating the cells and the i often agent is engaged in the shooting the f.b.i. should not be a law agent so that f.b.i. agent should not be the ones to investigate and determine whether that agent was engaged in an erection shooting this thing of course goes for police officers police departments the f.b.i. tend to set the tone for the city police departments around the country and it's become notorious for police forces to sign off on the shootings of their own police officers even when local journalists and many residents who live in the area in the same jurisdiction know for certain that this that the circumstances were bizarre and really didn't match the official story the f.b.i. is setting a tone police officers this is a larger matter than just the f.b.i. itself because the f.b.i. creates the you know the the protocols by which other police departments operate so some but it is outside of the f.b.i. should investigate their shootings just as outside agencies should investigate police department shootings hate intentionally menacing editor reason twenty four

seven thank you so much for writing and thank you for having me on. to brazil now where protests continue to grow both in signs and severity what started off as a demonstration against added transportation fees has swelled to massive underground anti-government demonstrations these protests continue even after us already some rio de janeiro and sao paulo promised to reverse those extra costs r t correspondent liz wahl brings us some background on the brazil protests. massive protests persist in brazil they're the largest demonstrations the country has seen in twenty years it started out as a small protest against raising public bus fares but it turned out to be much more demonstrations have been going on in rio de janeiro paulo brazil yes salvador and other cities. though this is the scene in sao paulo tens of thousands of people flooding the streets the huge demonstrations have been mostly peaceful but at times turned chaotic with

protesters throwing objects and setting cars on fire police have responded by shooting rubber bullets and tear gas into the crowds of protesters at a protester organized mostly by college students the majority of those taking part have higher education and more than half of them are twenty five years old or younger brazilian say they're angry over poor government services high taxes and splurging on sports stadiums millions of dollars are being spent on preparing for next year's world cup and the two thousand and sixteen olympic games in rio de janeiro protesters say funds should instead be spent on critical services like education and health care here's a breakdown of what exactly they're protesting against fifty six percent are protesting increased fares forty percent against corruption thirty one percent against violence and oppression twenty seven percent want a better transportation system and twenty four percent are demonstrating against

politicians they see as corrupt as you can see some protesters are taking to the streets with more than one grievance government officials have criticized the lack of a unified message among protesters but the president of brazil has praised the demonstrations and since the protests sparked authorities have announced they are backing down from raising the bus fares but at this point it seems that's not enough there's no clear end in sight with. testers saying the biggest demonstrations are planned for today in washington as well r.t. well as thursday is that means it's time now for our weekly check reports on the docket for today a new build up to aaron's law after computer prodigy aaron swartz that would update the computer fraud and abuse act meanwhile microsoft is offering hackers money if they can find a way to break into the new windows eight point one preview and finally in the internet company has now decided to offer users a do not track option by default for its firefox browser here to talk all things

tech artie's own like i am here our tech guru for all things in this nature yes sure let's start out by talking about aaron's law before we get to what aaron's law will do let's give a quick backgrounder on aaron swartz and what exactly he was up being prosecuted for aaron swartz put simply as a computer genius he passed away earlier this year at the age of either twenty six or twenty seven and he was being prosecuted under the computer fraud and abuse act or the cia a it's federal build it goes back to one thousand nine hundred six it was written by ronald reagan's administration and it pretty much established the bulk of the computer laws that we have in the country today in terms of breaking into a computer or bypassing jurchen securities it's pretty much the law that you use to go after hackers you know in this case he was alleged to have used his kind of brilliance to access a bunch of scholarly articles academic articles from

a website called j. store he did it in a particular way that the government wasn't very happy with and they wanted to swim away to prison for a couple of decades for that he committed suicide earlier this year and erin's law was first started around capitol hill a few days later in an attempt to finally reform the cia so let's talk about the c.f.a. in a little bit more detail as i understand it numerous people have spoken out about antiquated ness and two of the problems that they have with this is number one is a. magnus and number two they were done the provisions what else is there a that's wrong with us along with those two things are actually so wrong that if you just if you just focus on the vagueness itself that should be enough to actually to make leaps and bounds in terms of actually bringing about a law that makes sense in my opinion so so the c.f.a. right now has a lot of things that are quite clear for instance the reason mr swartz why it was targeted was because he was charged with unauthorized access of a computer system and the thing about unauthorized access to a computer system is that term isn't actually defined anywhere so if you can. got

onto a website by lying for instance you know that the lawmakers who proposed this today actually said if you break the terms of service agreements with a website let's say when you sign up for facebook if you lie about your age so you're old it's still your you're lying you're breaking in terms of service agreement and you could get a felony charge for that it's kind of ridiculous but that's how big this law actually is so one of the things they want to do is they want changes provision and to actually more accurately say ok this constitutes breaking into a computer this is actually what you have to do in the system and i understand one of the other things that you could get in trouble with something that a lot of us here at r.t. i'm sure kelsey of is checking a personal e-mail on a work computer so let's go into what exactly aaron's law will do it would actually just kind of bring some sense to this for once and for all the other thing it would do was it would get rid of all of these redundancy provisions that are in right now like you can just get charges logged on top of one another under this you just because you know if you broke into

a computer shop broke into if you access the computer system without proper authorization twice you could be charged twice so we're talking like really really have two sentences here so this is just trying to actually bring reform in a way to bring this legislation up to up to target with up to par with what computer technology actually is today could mean this was written twenty seven years ago its computers as we know them today in every regard vastly vastly different and there goes the same with the legislation and one of the really interesting things the part about this bill is that the lawmakers that are really trying to push forward are using the internet and want to get people to support it in order to get more feedback on it senator ron wyden actually wrote part of an article he coauthored an article in wired and he wrote quote we post a draft of the bill on reddit to solicit public feedback he also spoke with a number of computer experts and what not so obviously this is an innovative way to look at an innovative bill is it not yet they actually started crowdsourcing the

development of this bill on reddit a website that mr source actually credited. helping create and i'm going back to late january actually started asking suggestions from computer users hackers. computer attorneys all spore sorts of people use that's what the internet is it brings everyone together and how can we make this work and they went through draft after draft after revision and it was finally introduced into congress today it's very interesting to see how this whole thing comes and makes an about face it makes a whole circle with them and sorts dying and then ron white and using aaron swartz as creation one of his creations reddit to create a law and favor of supporting as c.f.a. changes let's move on now let's talk about microsoft paying at these hackers is this a one when for microsoft. i don't think it's a win win for anybody and what's happening here is microsoft made an announcement today or this week rather that they're going to start doing something that other big silicon valley companies have already been doing whereas if a hacker can break into their system if they can hack into microsoft or they can

find some sort of exploit they will reward them with that financially. now that's great if you're a hacker and you're smarter than microsoft you can find these exploits but i am a bit weary of anyone actually even revealing these exploits we just found out actually a few months ago there's an article in bloomberg about how the u.s. government was actually getting exploits from microsoft before microsoft could patch them so what the government was doing was they were finding out how to target the computers of adversaries and exploit them by discovering and detailing going to infringe on every single part of these hacks before it's actually revealed so if a hacker goes to microsoft i found a way to explain your system microsoft can pay that happier than microsoft can also tell the u.s. government oh by the way you know there is iranian computers over there they're running windows eight point one this is how you break into and then the government can do that for a few days of hacker catches his paycheck and then microsoft goes and says hey everyone here's how we fix windows eight point one in the meantime though the us

government is using these exploits called zero day exploits because there is zero days to pay. and it's according this bloomberg article from around march i believe this year. microsoft and other silicon valley companies are actually giving just hand it out to the government so i wouldn't necessarily say you should go ahead and start get taken to pay for exploits that's that's just me that's very interesting and now finally we have one more topic to touch on and that's our firefox offering this do not track option by default first of all talk about what cookies are and talk about what this will shut down when you go on the internet and you go to a website there's a little file you get stored in your computer it's called a cookie everyone's been talking about it for the last twenty years there are very very tiny bits of information that are relatively harmless it just gives basic information back to the website about what you were doing on that web site what you claim what you clicked how you got there whatever but the only reason these exist are to track people whether it's for good or whether it's for bad cookies only exist to keep track of what people are doing on the internet it's how retailers

find out what you're interested in buying what you've been looking at what websites you've just over and stuff like that so. the fact that firefox is actually saying that we're going to start rejecting is by default is great but that every website you ever go to not everyone but most of them automatically just send cookies anyways so it's a great step if you use firefox but there are no matter what it's still people being tracked so very interesting andrew blakers he web producer thank you so much 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. today on politics the conflict in syria and mourning means for the president of the united states and the world the former ambassador to morocco marc ginsberg weighs in plus our politicking panel tackles the latest news you need to know that's next on politics with larry king.

well. it's technology innovation all the least of elements from around russia we've got the future covered welcome to teal one out here you can feel it's home. to fifty there are three choices in life but first used to work in a mckillop live on a miserable way like a slate. the second is to jump the wall and catch the american dream the most.