or are. a way. i coming up on our new developments in the n.s.a. surveillance scandal along with phone metadata government agencies also tracked e-mail meditate on american citizens over the past decade or more in a moment stuck in limbo n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden is still grounded in the moscow airport and american politicians are putting pressure on any country that might offer him asylum an update from moscow coming up and it's thursday so it's time for the tech report even if you're not a member of facebook you may still be in its shadow we'll tell you how later in the show. it's thursday june twenty seventh five pm in washington d.c.

i'm meghan lopez and you are watching r.t. while we begin this hour with yet another guardian newspaper revelation about the n.s.a. surveillance program for weeks now we have known that the n.s.a. collects phone metadata on millions of people including americans well it turns out the government agency was also collecting e-mail mehta data and had been doing so from two thousand and one to two thousand and eleven that's according to a top secret draft report by the n.s.a. since spector general now the government says it has since stopped those practices but documents obtained by the guardian reveal that the n.s.a. has the ability to start new programs to essentially do the same thing we are also getting more insight into the american public's reaction to the surveillance scandal according to a recent rescues and poll seventy two percent of likely u.s. voters think it is somewhat likely that the n.s.a. a monitor private communications of congress military leaders and judges now of those forty five percent believe that it is very likely meanwhile fifty seven

percent of voters believe it is likely that the n.s.a. data will be used by other government agencies to her. asked political opponents and finally sixty eight percent of people believe it is likely that government agencies are listening in on private conversations of american citizens so there you have it most people polled acknowledge that this information is being collected and they also say that it could be abused so take that for what it's worth. let's move on now to latest details on the man who revealed this treasure trove of information to the guardian edward snowden the n.s.a. leaker is still in the moscow airport and a second flight headed for cuba left today but snowden was not on board meanwhile president obama is finally speaking out about both snowden and the cooperation that he expects from other nations take a look my continued expectation is that russia be the other countries that have talked about potentially providing mr snowden asylum recognize

that they are part of an international community and that they should be abiding by the international law. and we'll continue to press them as ours as hard as we can to make sure that they do something. about the military but when i say because you have a final question no i'm not going to be scrambling jets. to get the twenty nine year olds you see. for more from moscow i was joined earlier by r t is lucy caffein off i asked her can still going into russia without a valid passport or a visa. you know of course not i mean without a passport you can't enter russia the thing is this is all a techno technicality in a matter of political well for example of people who are wanted in the in the united states technically has been pulled off planes and arrested in transit so theoretically if the russian government wanted to they could arrest or take snowden if they were to want to do that of course that's not

a position that russia is willing to take at the moment snowden is in a quite tricky position here is really flew here on a on a flight that he was booked to to go to have an essence there's no direct flights to ecuador where he's presumably trying to seek asylum he missed the flight to havana and now he's stuck here now there are several problems with that in order to get to cuba in order to get to ecuador he would need to buy a ticket the u.s. as you mentioned revoked his passport so he is unable to do that on top of that there is a separate issue with the ecuadorian saying that well legally technically if you want to apply for asylum he would have to do that on ecuadorian soil he can't get to ecuador without a passport many can't get to an ecuadorian embassy here in moscow since as you mentioned he doesn't have a passport nor can he get a visa in order to do that and at this point in time the russian government has not indicated that they are willing to transport him or do anything beyond essentially keeping him in limbo in the transit area at the airport where we're standing and i as i understand it says he doesn't have a passport since it has been revoked he also can't get

a ticket out of there so can't listen can you characterize the response from russians to snowden being in the moscow airport. i mean the russian response to the response has generally been look we're not going to get too involved in this of course it is a bit of a political game but the russian position has generally been you know we don't have an extradition treaty with the united states the u.s. has asked russia to expel him president putin has said that he is not willing to do that at the moment there have been cases in the past where the two countries have swapped people of interest but again no indication that that's going to be happening at this point right now and the. russian position has generally been ok he's here we're not really going to get involved in this issue but based on what president putin said several days ago the position generally is look you know it wouldn't be so bad if he gets going and gets on this way because it seems that at this point although the russians are sort of willing to play some political ball of this they're not willing to get involved to the point of actually taking matters into their own hands and actually influencing the situation beyond keeping him or

allowing him to stay here in this transit area unless that at this point but again really unclear where he could go and some people have raised questions whether this is going to be julian assange type situation where of course the wiki leaks founder had sought asylum in the ecuadorian embassy and remained there for over a year now hopefully snowden will not be stuck in this tiny transit area the share image of our airport i was actually there earlier it's a really small area there's like a little airport hotel where you can say with a bathroom there's a coffee shop or you can buy a cappuccino for eleven dollars not really the kind of place that you want to say long term but again not many options that he has at this point in time and lou so we do know that he has filed for asylum in both iceland as well as aqua door however we do know also that the united states has tried to pressure about south american country into rejecting that request doesn't seem to be having an effect on ecuador's decision. while at whatever it is not likely to bow to u.s.

pressure and in fact the government officials from ecuador had a press conference earlier today where they said several things first of all they said that they have not officially granted him asylum as i had mentioned earlier in order to do so they want for him to apply on their soil absolutely unclear how he would be able to do that given the fact that he's stuck in this transit area and it's also a process that is going to take quite a bit of time at the same time some of the threats for example that we've heard from capitol hill from certain lawmakers the senate foreign relations committee chairman had threatened to for example put at risk several to. the deals that were at stake with ecuador well the ecuadorians had preemptively decided to cancel those deals even though they're due to run out in about a month and so it looks like ecuador is not likely to balata u.s. pressure anytime soon but at the same time they're not exactly taking over steps to try to rush by any means to get snowden on their turf and it's unclear whether he'll actually be able to reach their charter and there's an added problem here too

because there's no direct flights from moscow to ecuador even if snowden was somehow able to get some sort of paperwork that would put him there he'd have to go through cuba and because of a small sort of following and relations between the u.s. and cuba there's questions as to whether he'd be able to get in safe passage through that country as well and that could be perhaps some of the reason for the delay and for his being holed up here at the share made to the airport and it is just another day of a very long limbo that this man might find himself in are to correspond to losing half an off in moscow thank you so much well in the days and weeks since information started coming out from the guardian newspaper about the n.s.a. spy scandal we have seen lawmakers first deny and then defend the use of this program as well as the agency and the court that overlooks the surveillance we have seen an international hunt for edward snowden and a diplomatic standoff between the u.s. and numerous nations now we could be seeing some of the economic fallout from these leaks here's how we how is prime interest producer bob english and political

commentator sam sachs gentleman thank you so much for joining me thank you it's great to be sitting next to mr snowden himself was somebody who has been getting a lot of your labors. so let's start with you is the n.s.a. surveillance scandal having any noticeable effects on u.s. markets and the way that other countries do business with the u.s. markets i think it's a little early but definitely how other countries are relating to the united states i mean just the whole issue with hong kong the reason why hong kong the wild snowden to leave was because of the snowden's revelations that the united states had been. hacking into hong kong's computer infrastructure i mean that was in the press release that the hong kong government. put out when snowden left so. you know as far as diplomatic relations it's having an effect from those diplomatic relations i mean that's how we can all make relations are built now lawmakers like robert menendez and others that have been threatening some type of proper conscience to other countries that deal with snowden specifically robert menendez

said that if he is granted asylum by president correa in the ecuador that they are going to stop the renewal of ecuador's duty free access under g s p they're going to block the renewal of the andean trade promotion and drug eradication act so obviously it's having an international effect right sure certainly i think the greatest international fact that we have yet to see here is rising interest rates and that gets back to the policy of the federal reserve snowden is causing a crisis of confidence and not just in this particular instance but incidents like this it's like you have your dropping grains of sand until they they form a pile of sand and then you have these fingers of instability and all it takes is one grain of sand to cause this mountain of sand fall down and that's we never know what the incident is going to be but we have rising interest rates and there is going to be a crisis of confidence in the u.s. dollar and anything like this could be that incident i mean is probably saying the

sand has been building for several decades now what has the decline of the united states as a economy is long been speculated now we used to be the world's biggest lender now we're the world's biggest borrower of money are you going to manufacture now we we import more stuff that export so countries depending on the united states that's a thing of the past and you can see that in the way that first off whether it was hong kong china or russia or cuba or ecuador these countries saying look we're not we're not going to really do. he favors for you here anymore we are not afraid of the united states anymore in ecuador saying no we don't need these trade benefits is just the latest example of it and let's move back here at home obviously is a fence contractors still play a huge overall in american industry so first of all let's talk about how big of a role that is sam and then can you talk a little bit about whether this is a boss for them whether it reveals way too much about their practices or whether to

potentially new creation right so when we think of massive industries we think of wall street well let's let's take this number the top five the executives of the top five defense contractors here just in arlington virginia here made one hundred seven million dollars in two thousand and twelve the top five banks in wall street they made sorry bankers they made seventy five million dollars so this is a bigger industry than than wall street really did seventy percent of the intelligence community secret budget goes to these private contractors when we're talking a hundred thirty million dollars spent in two thousand and twelve by these defense contractors massive industry the private sector is deeply invested in the surveillance state and now the surveillance state is exposed their role is going to be exposed to the american people are going to decide whether or not they're taxpayer dollars should be funneled through our government into the hands of these very wealthy defense contractors across the potomac very interesting and what about consumer confidence bob i mean a back here at home obviously consumer confidence is a little bit shaky and also abroad it's

a little bit shaky is it possible that trade secrets are being stolen using these n.s.a. surveillance programs i think the consumer confidence is not going to be shaken by this event i think it's just raising the level of awareness and that's an important debate that we can have about it is this event going to be a cataclysmic moment that has yet to be seen but in terms of consumer confidence i don't think people are asking the right questions here and they need to be asking questions about who is exactly space nipping on who and why is this not a bigger problem why have we not talked about this before because these issues have been out here for a. long long time now on one hand sam you have bob saying that consumer confidence as invent shake it on the other hand some of the biggest companies that are really in the us are companies like facebook and google companies that were the nine companies that are now known to have given away that information to the n.s.a. and they probably tell that they are protecting companies protecting consumer interest and privacy so is this going to have

a huge impact on those companies bottom line is done companies at least i mean these are the ones who've been named it could be a lot more companies it could i think if you look at the way people have reacted to this news of the american people have reacted to this news it hasn't been with the sort of outrage you might expect people seem to be accepting that this is necessary this is necessary for this american life nowadays which is a bit which is a bit troubling so whether or not people look at these major internet service providers who are named in these prism documents who are cooperating with u.s. authorities in handing over personal data belonging to their customers whether or not american citizen would be like look i want to use different service providers that i can be more secure with that remains to be seen but if they do choose that could have significant effects on these major industries to provide it provided that there are alternatives because if all these big companies are involved i mean who's left i mean is there really anybody who can escape the reach of the

government in this instance i don't know what sort of penalties the government will put on those companies that choose not to hand over their data exactly very interesting thank you so much for joining me gentleman sounds a little commentator and bob english host of one of the hosts of the prime interest show on our t.v. well back here in the u.s. the court martial of private first class bradley manning was under way again today this morning prosecutors focused on evidence contradicting the government's claim that an iraq war video manning released to wiki leaks contained classified information or to correspondent was wallace at the proceedings in fort meade and brings us this wrap up. well the trial was on recess for much of today as the prosecution and defense worked on written testimony to be submitted to the court and we heard testimony from special agent mark manders the prosecution called into the disc and to discuss two tweets that appear to be sent from the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks one of them is requesting military addresses the other of it is

looks like it's from the whistle blowing web site announcing that they have possession of this a video a classified encrypted video now mander testified that he took a screenshot of these tweets he said he found them by doing a simple google search the defense then cross-examine him and question the authenticity of the tweet they say that there's really no way to prove that these tweets are in fact authentic because he found them through a google search and did not find them directly feed the twitter feed of wiki leaks they say the only way to verify the authenticity of these tweets is to have somebody from the wiki leaks organization themselves testify that these tweets are in fact real now why do we care about these tweets while the beer there significance of a prosecution and possibly proving that manning was a working with wiki leaks to get all of this top secret classified information on to the internet also this week we heard testimony in regards to the two hundred fifty thousand state department cables that manning admitted leaking to wiki leaks

now so far based on the evidence it appears that manning did not hack or steal from any government database while manning has admitted to leaving the document the burden is on the government to prove the more serious charges of computer fraud espionage and aiding the enemy a charge that carries with it a life sentence without parole here in fort meade maryland liz wall. well it's thursday and so that means it's time for our weekly check report today we are focused. in on all things facebook first up even if you aren't a member of facebook and you don't care to learn about it the social media site just might be learning all it can about you we are now learning about a shadow profile the company creates on internet users compiling phone numbers and birth dates and much more information from various websites as well as from facebook's friends with facebook accounts that is also for those of you who do have

a facebook account if you ever lose or forget your password the company now wants you to send them a copy of your id as a verification for them to be able to walk you back in but tension allowing the company to collect even more information about you here to discuss all of this r.t. producer and your blake right there andrew so let's start off with this the shadow profiles what do the profiles collect and where are they getting all this information pretty much everything and from everyone but the good thing is these things are gone there's nothing really to worry about it only affected roughly six million users over the course of a year but as far as we know no one actually discovered this little vulnerability until last week everything's been patched up it's actually kind of really interesting it actually seems like facebook was just kind of silly and for. code their website properly will pretty much happened is there's a function on facebook that allows you to go ahead and compile everything you ever put on that website i need your wall posts in your pictures or whatever you tell

facebook to compile that for you couple hours go by emails you a link is cool you download this you can get all of your information super and what it does inside of that there was also gives you your i think called an address book which would be contact information for all of your friends but thing is that's not contact information that your friends necessarily uploaded at least it wasn't what happened was let's say i made a megane profile i did make a mega profile but i uploaded a contact information for meghan because we're friends you know and i want to call you later so i'm going to add your contact information to my facebook thing now let's see you know meghan lopez. i don't know your email address is clearly not that good friends but i'll put that in to facebook and someone else is looking for meghan lopez later and they decide to download their archive things and when they get their address book which facebook does this facebook would match up one identifier with another and they were like wait this is the meghan lopez that we already have an email on will so and so said that her phone number is this so if that so wouldn't have been was facebook was sharing all sorts of personal

information with other users now these are. information about your friends like it's nothing craziness information that people have already put live but it's not something that you put online personally as contact information other people uploaded and it just fell into the wrong hands essentially assembling all these different pieces and bringing them together to make one big narrative about a person but the problem is that there was a bug that released this information so first of all who had access to that bug and to facebook eliminate this program altogether or just that bot so we don't really know if this vulnerability was exploited over the course of the last year it very well could have someone could have easily easily it's own could have hacked this information accumulated all these profiles used to harvest and then what about doing whatever the hell they wanted to do with it but let's just say that didn't happen and it's already taken care of everything is gone but you know it was it was you know not not a big to do it just some phone numbers over that you know here's six million people and your own code it's not you know you actually had to go through a very very strict ordeal in order to get information on every single person you

know i would have to upload contact information about someone and then that person would have to or someone else would have to want to compile one of these archives and they would want to extract it and they want to so it's not like a very. you know crazy hack it is really just a mistake and that's what's facebook saying and so far people are pretty much agreeing with them saying yeah it looks like you do kind of screw up but oh well in so i mean people still have you know a billion profiles so that's probably not going to change anytime soon but it's all it's something i really have to get to know that i think there's a point here that maybe we're going to get to you and i just jumped the gun but the important thing here is that this information was being compiled whether or not you know it was going to someone whether i was going to you or there was going to me it was personal information that is being put on facebook servers without the person who owns that information's knowledge so that these databases were being created not necessarily for evil purposes but they were still out there sheriff so let's switch topics

a little bit and let's move to this topic that i did two earlier about it. if you lose your password for whatever reason facebook wants you to send a government issued i.d. it can block out some of the more critical information but what kind of information can they galloped with that and what about those people that have fake names because they're trying to protect their privacy from their boss or their mom or their coworker they should try really hard not to lose their passwords facebook's been doing this for a little bit as instagram which is owned by facebook a couple other companies were just locked out of your account how else are you going to get in and you know i'm sure i've once had this problem before where they they lost their a.o.l. screenname and they couldn't sign on and talk to all their buddies in eighth grade right i'm sure you were there you didn't know what to do you can't just call a bail well and say no i'm andrew blake let me on please please please so the initiated some sort or they implement some sort of program they would actually make it so that people would be able to prove who they are but at the same time facebook is asking for information that you might not think they really need do they really need our you know driver's license pictures and stuff like that they say that they

got the information but it raises all sorts of other questions if you look into justice department databases are being compiled right now the f.b.i. is actually collecting biometric data from d.m.v. databases everyone with a driver's license is having their irises their lips their nose their is all being scanned into a computer that law enforcement is going to be able to use to match up potential suspects in the future now if you're getting those government pictures if you're putting those on the same database as a private company it's a little fishy obviously we can assume that there are safeguards there but there's a reason for that for this but the best thing is just not to lose your password and the best thing would be just delete your facebook account really sure how to our secrets our web producer and your plate thank you so much. well in the wake of the n.s.a. surveillance scandal that only seems to be growing bigger by the day many many internet users as andrew just alluded to are left wondering if there is any prepaying they can do to protect their personal communications short of turning off their electronic devices altogether the answer is yes but it also requires time

training and diligence are to correspondent margaret how will tells us more. with those ever unfolding revelations the national security agency has been collecting phone and e-mail data on millions of people more of us are real was saying what they thought was private just isn't concerned about the security of my own private e-mails facebook page of metal data i set out to find that security expert who could help me safeguard my own online privacy as well as help me disappear what i found data encryption is the single most effective way to arm yourself against online snooping we provide. a service applications that encrypt your conversation with another person so that if it's intercepted it just sounds unintelligible. this incursion is done with cryptographic keys that are negotiated between the two parties that are talking silent circle protection very specific

everyday conversation tools like these we encrypt phone calls. text messages. file attachments to those text messages we also have an encrypted e-mail service and your i chat a common form of online communication for users of apple devices now housing correction software specifically designed to protect those conversations i created i work on computer software called career took out which is a browser extension that aims to make it easy for people to have private conversations so that they can chop each other in privacy and there's been something that's more private than facebook chat or talk or regular services we use exceptions to that even facebook conversations may be encrypted but only with a special secure browser like tour and only if you're communicating with someone who is also using a tor browser it's in christian applications like these that can complicate attempts to track what you're saying online unfortunately these services aren't

touted as mainstream staples yet with all the encryption software that's available for those willing to do a little legwork the n.s.a. and their massively sweeping surveillance programs just may have met their match and washington carver hello r t. to new york now where the city council is going head to head with mayor michael bloomberg and police commissioner ray kelly over the controversial stop and frisk program late wednesday night the fifty one member council overwhelmingly approved of two bills increasing oversight of the police department and expanding the public civility to sue over racial profiling by officers the two bills are half of what is collectively known as the community safety act they were introduced by councilman johnny williams and brad lander here's what they include the first establishes an enforceable ban on profiling and discrimination by the n.y.p.d. it broadens the categories of communities protected from discrimination to include

age gender sexual orientation immigration status disability and housing status along with race ethnicity religion and natural origin it will also make the n.y.p.d. accountable for practices such as the stop and frisk that disproportionately impact communities of color meanwhile the n.y.p.d. oversight active science responsibilities to the commissioner of the department of investigation creating an outside inspector general that oversight would include reviewing and auditing in why peavy operations policies programs and practices finally it would improve transparency and accountability reports would be made public and revisited annually to see of recommendations have been followed now both the mayor and police commissioner warned that this community safety act would constrain police from performing their duties and it could lead it to a dangerous spike in crime councillor jim williams who took the lead on these bills

said the following before voting began. really. in the city of new york to cleveland if you have never been to the city of new york it was if you had never been the people trying to help and were doing with the issues every single day. listen to all. your vote on matters that don't really affect my district that affect the district that i don't know much about but i listened. and i think. i'm asking for the same courtesy you it seems that most of the council listen to williams because both bills passed with a veto proof majority here's the interesting thing about linking stop and frisks to safer streets hillary released police statistics show that the number of people questioned under the stop and frisk policy dropped by fifty one percent to ninety

nine thousand seven hundred eighty eight in the first quarter of two thousand and thirteen that's compared with the same period of time last year when the police stopped two hundred and three thousand people in five. new yorkers perhaps more interesting that same data shows that the total number of shootings this year is down twenty to two point four percent despite the fact that officers confiscated forty nine percent say your firearm mayor bloomberg has still vowed to veto the bills despite the council's ability to override that veto because he thinks he can change some minds in the interim by the time the bills would be law a new york mayor of new mayor would actually be in office in new york so wouldn't be mayor bloomberg problem after all 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 web site r c dot com slash usa and follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez syria right back here at eight pm with more news and in-depth interviews.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. i would rather ask questions for people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now.