technology. developments around russia. coming up on r.t. n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden stay in the moscow airport may be coming to an end so will he be staying in russia or headed elsewhere an update on the case ahead and it's not only members of capitol hill who have a bone to pick with the n.s.a. over a dozen organizations are now filing a lawsuit against the n.s.a.'s expanding surveillance program more on this developing story coming out also protests continue still days after george zimmerman received a not guilty verdict efforts are also being made to repeal stand your ground laws and to limit racial profiling that story later in today's show. it's wednesday july seventeenth five pm in washington d.c.

i'm sam sax and you're watching our team and we begin in an airport in moscow which has been n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden's home for more than three weeks now but his stay there may soon be ended in an interview with r.t. one of snowden's lawyer suggested snowden could be leaving the airport transit zone in the next few days if he receives the necessary paperwork from the russian government while his asylum request is being processed however according to his attorney snowden still doesn't think it's safe to leave russia and to travel to south and central america where nations have offered him political asylum snowden has shown an interest in staying in russia and even applying for russian citizenship of course all of that hinges on what snowden plans to do with all that information his c. still has on the n.s.a. russian president vladimir putin has put conditions on snowden's refuge in russia saying any more leaks that harm the united states won't be tolerated and today

putin told reporters quote we have warned snowden that any activity. that could damage us russian relations is unacceptable for us for the latest i spoke earlier with our culture in moscow and i first asked her what documents noted needs right now to finally be able to leave the airport we've just learned from the attorney who has a representing the former n.s.a. contractor adverse no event that actually russia may become his new home for its least one year now if he does receive a temporary asylum it will allow him to live and work in russia freely for as i said a period of one year and after that we were actually told by his attorney that he may actually apply for the russian citizenship now the lawyer added stad average snowden has been quite down after he has been staying and transit zone for the last

three weeks and he also said that mr snowden has the average chance to gather a temporary asylum here in russia as basically the main reason why he applied for asylum and the first place was that he was afraid of his life and his security if he returns back to the united states so in the coming days so we should he should receive these documents that would allow him to finally go through passport control to come through the ads as at the share of major international airport which is based here in moscow and sad food on the russian soil because as you know now he is incapable of doing that now he's past where it has been revoked by the u.s. authorities and he has no russian visa but this documents should ever wrong have within the next five days in while his asylum application a will be person asked on

ballots approach that should take somewhere around three months given the president putin has put conditions on. russia saying that he can't keep harming the united states does that put snowden in a position where he has to choose between continuing to leak documents or staying quiet and being safe in russia. well it really seems that he has already made up his mind as according to his attorney adverse node and said that he would not freeze lease further documents which could damage to u.s. interests while he was on the russian territory now his lawyer also sandbags mr snowden said that this is something that he could actually do and that is a very important point as basically these are the conditions that were a voice by president which in a couple of weeks ago the main conditions on which russia could actually grant mr snowden asylum now if he stops any activity which are. harming the

u.s. interest and again according to his attorney our snowden said that this is something that he could actually do by just depends on how many documents certains already handed over to journalists that are still in the pipeline about to be released here they are in states senator lindsey graham floated the idea of the united states boycotting the olympics in russia in the state department is accused russia of providing a propaganda platform distorted with just about thirty seconds left how is moscow reacting to some of those talk. right world present we don't see this in this ongoing saga russia's role as humanitarian and the actions that are taken should not be regarded as hostile towards the united states he actually said that mr snowden's actions were in defense of human rights now president putin said that human rights work usually bear some costs for those who are involved in it and when

this work is done under the auspices of the united states government now with us financial and political support as quite acceptable. but when someone criticize washington the situation becomes more complicated but again he said that it's all these actions that are taking place now in russia should not be considered hostile towards the united states thanks for the report that was our key correspondent. from moscow. moving on now from where in the world is edward snowden to what we should all be doing about his leaks members of congress are now stepping up to rein in the n.s.a. republican from mississippi michigan justin ammash announced over twitter his plans to defund the n.s.a. spying program this week during consideration of the defense funding bill a mass tweeted most important bill this week d.o.d. a propes we can defund n.s.a. is unconstitutional spying on americans if house leaders allow amendments but leaders in the house are hesitant to even put a mashes proposals up for

a vote but that hasn't deterred democrat rush holt who announced he's drafting legislation this week to repeal both the patriot act and the pies amendments act now off the hill the courts in recent weeks have been inundated with lawsuits also challenging the n.s.a.'s newly exposed mass domestic surveillance operations the electronic frontier foundation has brought together several organizations to file suit together against what they are calling the obama administration's illegal and unconstitutional domestic spying program also since last month the american civil liberties union has been in court fighting the government's collection of americans phone metadata as revealed by edward snowden's very first leak regarding verizon and the electronic privacy information center epic has also been involved in overturning legal decisions that have paved the way for mass warrantless surveillance of americans now earlier i was joined by a good dear abbas's

a staff attorney at the council on american islamic relations which is also taking part in the lawsuit against the obama administration. i asked what he hopes this lawsuit will accomplish well we're trying to restore n.s.a.'s traditional function and i say was set up to not to spy on americans and their communications it was as part of the military it was seen as a agency that was foreign walking and what's happened in the years since nine eleven is has dramatically shifted to now where we can see from the recent revelations that an essay is pursuing and receiving orders to collect a vast amount of information from the major telecommunications companies and so we want to see that that practice ends and one of the ways that the lawsuit seeks to accomplish this is by revisiting a fifty

a half century old decision and p. versus alabama alabama had passed a law forcing the disclosure of membership rolls that. maintained and the supreme court said that that was unconstitutional because when we know who we associate with when the government knows who they associate with the government is in a position to interfere with our constitutional rights to say when the government knows who associate with with a lawsuit it's referred to as the associational tracking program observer language and we've been hearing of just metadata where you see associational tracking program that seems very deliberate deliberate to show people what exactly is going on here precisely and that's really the way that the government views the i don't need to know that i don't need to know the content of your communications if you're calling a doctor it's probably because you're sick or you think your sect and if you are calling

a organization it's probably because you're working with that organization so the associations themselves are able to. be determined from this matter metta data and we feel that that's a constitutional violation one really interesting thing about this lawsuit is how many different organizations have joined part of it carries on this the first unitarian church of los angeles the bill of rights defense committee there's a federal firearms licensee group there's a marijuana reform organization what does it say about this issue that all these groups from all different parts of the map can come together and join in this lawsuit. makes it clear that the tense is not a proper policy objective and that as the government continues to pursue and that that seeking effects all americans whether they're conservative or liberal wherever they fall on the political spectrum no one wants their associations to be forced divulged to the governments your organization and

others have been focused on what's going on with the n.y.p.d. the mass surveillance that's been taking place in muslim americans in new york now that it's been revealed that this is what opened up. this is it taking place on millions of americans all across the country. do you think that's going to help your cause and what you guys have been talking about what your organization has been talking about for decades now yeah it's definitely van why and why p.t. program. and i say programs are symptoms of the same disease and we've been saying for years now that the surveillance policies that have disproportionately affected the muslim community will inevitably be applied to other americans and that's i think what we're seeing now that provides us the opportunity to do is to. demonstrate that the policies are misguided and that many different types of

americans have an interest in pushing back against them today there was a hearing the hill over the pfizer. orts. the deputy director at the n.s.a. chris inglis commented that use two or three hops to track terror suspects as a hop is if we find a suspect we're going to take one hop and look at the people he was looking at or talking to and then take a second hop and look at the people that that person was talking to now it's a bit of that they've taken a third hop and see who those people are talking to it's kind of like seven degrees of separation here given that the government is very much interested in communications coming out of the arab world. are arab american muslim americans are going to be targeted more so when they talk to family talk to friends now that we're going three hops away from the terror suspects absolutely and the testimony of two or three hops based on their previous testimony may lack credibility as they

have previously misled congress but absolutely the parameters that they're defining means that they're going to sop up all the communications of the muslim community and. finding needles in haystacks isn't accomplished by massively expanding the size of the haystack which is the policy that the n.s.a. is pursuing right moving on quickly from the courts to congress we've seen some members of congress stand up republican just sort of mash democrat rush holt rush holt they were introduced legislation to defund the n.s.a. spying program repeal the patriot act congress has been culpable in letting these programs grow so big is there still hope that principled members will step up and actually congress might lead the way in getting rid of these programs eventually there is always hope. we've seen a congress that has been too willing to capitulate to you as executive. of amounts of information but since the snowden leaks we have seen the. start of

a very narrow by. i was thinking from sense that something must be done about the n.s.a. spying program and hopefully that bipartisan consensus will sprout into something more substantial we'll see what happens that was good their boss staff attorney at the council on american islamic relations so we know of the federal government's interest in our telephone and internet communications but as you might expect the law enforcement is interesting just in what we say over the phone or send via e-mail they're also interested in where we drive our cars to today the a.c.l.u. released an explosive new report on license plate readers which the group says is the most widespread location tracking technology you've probably never heard of mounted on top of police cars or bridges in light poles license plate readers are in wide use in several cities across america capturing photos of virtually every

driver's license plate along with a timestamp and a location tag now all of this data these millions of license plate photos all of it was being used to track a legal activity but the a.c.l.u. alleges that this data is now increasingly being stored giving law enforcement access to location information of millions of anything will be in big black. meanwhile protests in response to the zimmerman verdict continue across the country and los angeles protesters have taken to the streets for days now and there have been reports of several arrests on monday night yesterday's protests that litter mart parking in l.a. were peaceful with bulked up security from los angeles police department and calls from community organizers to keep demonstrators lawful. now you might remember this disturbing video from two thousand and eleven showing u.s. soldiers urinating on the bodies of dead taliban fighters now one of those soldiers

you see here is speaking out for the first time on the incident here's what sergeant joseph chamblin told a local news affiliate about why he did it not like it was a conscious thought or decision just like you know what isn't and so i'm like ok now i regret maybe you know any repercussions might have on the marines but daryn. would you do it again you know. that chaplain was court martialed he was fined and he was demoted for his role in desecrating those bodies and he's now writing a book just in case you want to hear more of his own justifications for his actions and i want to the issue of drones on capitol hill this week senator rand paul said he would put a hold on president obama's nominee to head up the f.b.i. james komi until he receives answers from the administration regarding domestic drone use earlier this year senator paul used a filibuster dedicated to domestic drone use to slow up the confirmation of john

brennan to head up the cia and in this case senator paul wants the f.b.i. to reveal if they get a warrant before using domestic surveillance drones you may remember in june that then f.b.i. director robert mueller admitted to congress that the f.b.i. does use drones for surveillance on american soil. however a nother question that might be helpful for senator paul to ask is why are drones keep crashing for the second time in a week in an unmanned drone has crashed at tyndall air force base on the florida panhandle it happened this morning just after eight am and according to witnesses the four drone crashed on the runway during takeoff and exploded roads around the crash site were closed out of concern for fire since these drones are equipped with a self destruct charge triggered to go off when the aircraft diverts from its pre-approved flight plan. and now on to pakistan which is dealing with

a serious heroin problem as u.s. troops prepare to wind down the war in nearby afghanistan there's little concern about what to do with that nation's booming heroin drug trade a drug trade that's having serious public health effects on nearby pakistan r t correspondent lucy kavanagh reports from karachi. an ambulance rushes to kolaches largest more than other body is brought in to be identified there's no shortage of ways to die in this city target killings bomb blasts and drugs. was hoping it not to find his father here he's been searching karachi for more than two weeks as a last resort he checked this morning but amid the portraits of the dead a grim discovery and the familiar face of bill is father was addicted to heroin for almost a decade now he's another one of the drugs casualty. i don't know what they are doing to be hard to break the news to my mother but this is what happened and we

have to face it there will be tears at the room tonight. tears that abdullah believes could have been prevented he says his father tried to quit several times but in pakistan there are few treatment centers and plenty of temptation by just i mean that he's done this be flooded with heroin it's easy to get that it's even sold out in the open the police do nothing because they're also involved and just a few blocks away a drug underworld in broad daylight these heroin addicts don't even bother hiding their habit it's not that pakistan has more than four million drug addicts but fewer than eighty dedicated we have been a. help for these young people may be important but why there's no shortage of parallel to the problem they may be a problem the problem they share one thing in common with you there is that london armando and the heroin that deadly in. afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium heroine's main ingredient and it accounts for nine. eighty percent of the global supply roughly forty percent of it is smuggled through pakistan it's

a multibillion dollar industry fueled by years of war and instability opium production is up for the third year in a row and is predicted to grow even further and once nato leaves in two thousand and fourteen there are fears that the floodgates will open for the spread of the deadly harvest you are going to get rid of this wall of their school i suppose but you'll be inviting end of the war which will be very difficult. to win. and they're going to the wall off drugs jackets down the security experts want nato forces to take heed they have gone drug trade is the elephant in the room the biggest challenge was fox on his face to face that in all of. twenty fourteen post for troll strategy drugs has been left out by the united states nato and other european partners as an issue which is not to be considered. the port of karachi a key drug smuggling exit point the city is flooded with cheap heroin which addicts

here say is easier to buy than a healthy meal and near a busy highway this hole in the wall serves as a makeshift heroin takeout window money goes in and drugs are pushed out into eager waiting hands. i tell myself that i'll stop using this drug for the sake of my children that's what i'm thinking about but i can't help myself because my body needs it and the heroine's easy to get. to easy it seems pakistanis get through an estimated one point two billion dollars worth of heroin each year but rather excess just a dollar fifty is enough to get them high. i feel it's spreading now it's gone to my heart. straight to the heart from the heroin heartland of afghanistan a casualty of the poison spreading from the war zone next door the sea captain of our team karachi the u.s.d.a. is hot on the trail of a mysterious week crop that was found growing earlier this spring of an oregon farm the we was genetically engineered to be immune to weed killers like roundup but no

such crop was ever approved by the u.s.d.a. it was developed by monsanto a years ago but after several field trials monsanto never asked the government to approve the crop so how did get into a field in oregon well that's still a mystery but it's a fitting mystery since most of what we eat today as americans is also one big bioengineered mystery as well archy correspondent margaret howell with more on what exactly is in the food we're all eating on a regular basis is there any other decision we make that is more important than what we eat if you're shopping at an american grocery store chances are you're buying products placed with chemical petroleum even bromide you know that substance that keeps carpets from catching on fire and you may not even know it dr jason colton co-author of rich foods poor foods had this to say about bro mine one of the products is called be vo or ruminated vegetable oil this is

a big one in the united states and it's found in things like gator aid fresco mountain dew am so a lot of the a lot of the heat wave does is it's an oil that helps the colors stay saturated and as well as the flavor states that saturated throughout the drain now in the united states our government said that they would let b.t.o. come on the marketplace and on an interim basis they were pending review that this was over forty years ago that they said this it's been banned in over one hundred other countries and what this does is it causes a bromeliad the thyroid which means it doesn't allow your thyroid to absorb iodine which is essential an. well nutrients help with metabolism and in extreme cases it can lead to cancer of the thyroid famous american companies like post kellogg's quaker brand cereals as well as diamond nuts chex mix and gum brands like wrigley's and try to and are all allegedly made with products that have chemicals known as b h a n b h t these have been banned in food products and group in countries in japan

for their known health hazards but here in the states they get a rubber stamp for your consumption according to a two thousand and eleven national toxicology program report on carcinogens it can reasonably anticipate that b.h.a. causes cancer in humans but that doesn't stop it from entering our food supply. in a peer reviewed study published in the environmental health perspectives it found thirty six common food items in a dallas grocery store just have had detectable levels of bro mine the flame retardant but there's more than just broke mine now american consumers along with their global counterparts have something else to worry about genetically modified foods as it stands now the government doesn't require them to carry a label chances are you may have eaten them and not even known it one study from french scientist eric serra leni found a link between g m o's and cancer dr robert byrne hoff explained a fairly new study in this way then france there is a good study two years that it's getting to work or him to read but it's early and

he'd be this great goalie of rats and sure the standard cancer since his arrest as it has an answer institute uses and eighty percent of the government's got breast cancer i think that's significant oh sixty percent of the male rats got up on the cancers and the vets are giving after being fed months into his roundup ready g.m.o. corn the roundup herbicide for two years according to the sara lee new study female rats produce massive tumors on mammary glands and gulf in their body for male rats testicular and abdominal cancers occurred both sexes displayed on the liver as well as kidney failure and yet month santos was just awarded a major humanitarian award for its contributions to society food and drug administration declined to comment on dr sara lee new study as well as the effects of bromides found in common processed foods we're told here in the u.s. but the food and drug administration has our back right to look all the information coming out that they're allowing beef up some food in our food supply it just may

be time to get another option and washington margaret how old are seen then finally coming to a television or radio station near you good old fashioned american propaganda for several decades a federal law has been on the books that ban the department of state from. disseminating government made media intended for foreign audiences from being broadcast to americans right here in the united states the fear was that the government could begin using its media right here on americans as a form of propaganda but thanks to legislation passed earlier this year that longstanding law banning u.s. propaganda on american citizens has expired meaning the airwaves could open up to state department funded media reports intended to sway people's opinions of america around the world supporters of repealing the law say that this will help us media and other organizations gain access to material they were otherwise banned from sin

but others caution that this new open door to government media comes at a curious time right when public approval of our government in particular public approval of congress is out an all time low suggesting that when it comes to instilling more confidence in the american government a little propaganda may be what's needed. and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america and check out our web site r t v dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at sam sachs we'll see you right back here at eight pm.

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