it was a bad year without a train. we couldn't plods anything didn't want to move there was great hunger and some. always it didn't help comes too late and without good intentions. charity diplomacy and business on l.t. . real damage and complexity of this oil spill was not something you can grasp just by looking at dirty birds we have between four to five million people in this directly affected area of the coast and it's pretty clear why it's not being reported because b.p. can't afford to have a reported all along the gulf coast are clean they are safe and they're open for business if b.p. is the single largest oil contributor to the pentagon the us war machine is heavily reliant upon b.p.

and their oil this is a huge step backwards for democracy it's a step forward oligarchy carex it is toxic as it looked a lot like spraying in vietnam it was it was not a picture that either the government or b.p. really wanted to have out there i don't want dispersants to be the agent on. this bills. we've been meeting with. times and. welcome back to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle to mind you we're discussing global information dominance.

ok t.j. in new york i'd like to go back to you and say director general keith alexander says his agency is incapable of determining how many americans have their calls and e-mails invaded by the agency without warrants i mean isn't do you find that troublesome i mean here's the head of this agency and he can't tell you you know the ease dropping without warrants i mean shouldn't he know that ideally sure it would be nice for him to know that it's a number so that he has you know that i think you know where it's so big i mean i don't know maybe it's too again we can speculate everyone from their own bias can speculate in their favor as jim just said you know we don't really know if the government is listening on everybody's phone calls by that by that same logic though i can't say you don't know if the government has foiled fifty major attempts to have dirty bombs go off in major cities and if it weren't for this program we would have dirty bombs going off everywhere in major american cities so this this logic of saying well because we don't know we're going to assume the worst can work

both ways ok jim but that's why we have checks and balances don't we that's why we have government and society we're going to trust ultimately that word trust and this is what this is all of really about who do you trust. yes there are two things if firstly the american government has been shown to be keeping the method dates or calls who used to talk to that starts what we do know we also know that the u.k. government is recording everything that it can get its hands on as it traverses between the u.k. and the united states and that will include a lot of people's calls and e-mails and so on being recorded for at least three or four days now. on the question of trust the only way we can really have trust is by being completely transparent about what these programs involve the problem we have with the american. act is that it just says we all have secret programs to gather information about foreign people for foreign intelligence purposes or in

the case of the patriot act we all secretly seize information but here's how you know how security letters and nobody's are going to know what these things are about eight knots why that's why. nobody knows exactly what's going on in the companies aren't allowed to tell ok what's going on i will not go in companies are saying here nation t.j. jump in this is jim how jim how can you possibly be a government trying to foil the secret attempts of terrorists trying to have to cause a secret attack on a country how can you possibly be transparent on that if you are transparent you make it easier for terrorists to do what they need to do that's the whole point of having these things a secret jim you want to reply yes this is this is the confusion in the debate we have a question about the broad nature of the programs do we take everything we can get

our hands on and put it in a massive database or data center in the middle of a desert that's one kind of question the other question is are we putting under surveillance eisa civic group of people. who we believe may be plotting to do something criminal now a lot of thing i agree you can't discuss that in public but the former thing you know do we build some massive data center to warehouse everybody's information or do we put taps on cables running across the atlantic and just store everything we possibly can for up to a month yet we can have a public debate about that and in fact it's essential that we do because if we don't have that debate before these programs start people like edward snowden will come along and reveal that information t.j. good point there i mean if we don't have a real debate here we're going to get more snowden so you think. well we definitely need to have a debate and i think jim hit on important point of

a matter of trust and again this depends on where you sit if i were someone who lived in the middle east or a leader in the middle east or central asia i would be very distrustful of the u.s. government i would not like this policy at all but i can tell you as an american as other people who live in america when it comes to who i trust more even though i don't love everything the government does i fundamentally do trust the government not to listen to my conversation and then call up and say hey we heard you doing something perverted or nasty so we're now going to extort you for your entire network i trust the government not to do that whereas i do not trust terrorist and other people who hate america do you resent do you to not attack america you know that's why that's why i'm in favor of using the government to try to track these people and try to figure out and before they launch bombs or attacks ok t.j.

do you trust. do you trust mr clapper he lied to you perjured himself and everyone wants to go after snowden ok but at the same time clapper perjured himself in front of congress he should be removed he should be fired immediately but what does that have to do with the bigger issue in the united states we are a big targets where the most loved country in the world but we're also the most. people who want to go will tell me to this does that give him the right to lie because like give him the right to lie nobody has nobody has the right to lie and nobody has the right to dismantle the entire security apparatus of a country because you don't like what one person said either that's for sure that is irrelevant to the certainly hang on that second that you're going to some of the . and there is zero there is it that is irrelevant as me saying you can't trust

snowden because he's a libertarian he's now aligned himself with totalitarian regimes and going to places like china which are natori as well mr clapper and someone negligible research for us to transfer point. we've got to go we've got to go back to the point about do we trust intelligence services or do intelligence services abuse their power and i think the simple to the answer to that is yes they do from time to time they absolutely do and the more power they have the more potential they have for abusing it the more that we don't know about the power the more the potential is for them to do it on the quiet you know we have seen you know richard nixon in the states you know it's not obvious example but in the united kingdom right now we've just seen the idea of the police defining for themselves what a domestic extremist is using essentially kind of terrorist kind of powers against these people and they're just environmental protesters and they've been put under directed surveillance for

a number of years and number of those individuals doing the surveillance of children with these people and very very innocent people who've been. mishandled by the police they've also been put under surveillance by the police in order to discredit them to put the people with surveillance powers abuse them it does happen but also in the u.k. we've seen collaboration between these kinds of covert operations and the media to hand over information to them essentially to sell newspapers we're all vulnerable to this kind of abuse once the powers that they're that's why they should be restricted and used against people who are genuinely serious criminals who are plotting dreadful things rather than sweeping up everybody's information on the off chance because then you're putting everybody at the we don't know you know is there any evidence we hear but we don't have any evidence in the united states of this information is be. being used other than trying to go after criminals in terror is

that this is in stark contrast to a lot of the history of the united states where you had a j. edgar hoover head of the f.b.i. putting the technology of his time a tape recorder under the bed of martin luther king jr to try to work stuart him in to try to have pressure over political opponents this is not the same thing as a teacher who wanted to do you want to you're going to have a lot you're absolutely you're absolutely right you're absolutely right on one thing that when you give surveillance power to the government there is absolutely the potential for abuse it is a question of balance what do you fear more do you fear the government more or do you fear abuse from terrorists and that is this particular moment it's very very significant particularly in history go ahead general. this is the you're not you're putting forward a kind of dark cult to me that doesn't really exist the question is we do fear terrorists we do need to investigate what are the ways that we can do that are

appropriate they don't hand huge powers that are necessary to the people doing the surveillance that would open people up for on unwarranted peace the question is being targeted and understanding why you're investigating people and what you need to do that rather than saying let's just sweep up everything because we might find some stuff that's the approach we've got there and it's not reasonable ok t.j. what do you think i mean what you don't know jim that it's not necessary you don't know what's necessary i don't necessarily know what's necessary the inherent to the nature of intelligence is you gather as many facts as you can and then you try to piece things together to try to foil a terrorist plot so you don't even think it's necessary for an intimation that gathering is completely irrelevant we know most of this information is computer all right well maybe it's ninety nine ninety nine percent. you know exactly

all the information is of no use whatsoever of why we can't bring it i really seriously don't think that that information is never going to be put to any use or isn't even being put to use that that we wouldn't appreciate the laws in the pfizer particularly extraordinarily broad they're there to for the u.s. to use for any foreign policy reason and that means that legally the position is that if i am doing something that the united states doesn't like like complaining about their foreign policy like saying that i don't think that the u.k. and the u.s. should get involved in a new war somewhere that puts me on a potential target list and if the united states wants to gather information they have the legal powers to do that there is no bar whatsoever i don't feel i'm a terrorist and i don't feel that i should be placed in that position ok t.j. twenty seconds you get a lot of. against twenty seconds go. you're saying you don't know if

it's necessary and it very well may be necessary ninety nine percent maybe irrelevant sometimes that one percent is the intelligence needed to stop terrorists all right on that gentlemen thank you very much many thanks they might get to new york and in london and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember. these. wealthy british.

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because. breaking news on our t.v. bloodshed in egypt at least three people reportedly killed and several injured as the cracks back because of the else did president mohamed morsi. five months of desperation in guantanamo bay the hunger strike drags on with prisoners failing to win changes to their plight as jail stuff press on with force feeding. and south american leaders unite in support and condemnation lashing out at european countries for grounding the bolivian leaders plane with president moralities claiming the us pressured them to do so.