the. coming up on r.t.e. los vegas was the scene of one of the world's biggest conventions on and about cyberspace defcon is a grand gathering of hackers where the tools of the trade are shared party goes inside the event. and relations between the u.s. and russia have hit a snag president obama has canceled a planned meeting with president vladimir putin in moscow this just days after russia granted edward snowden temporary asylum so is the reset in danger will have a full report coming up. and the t.s.a. is expanding beyond just airports the security agency is branching out to sporting events train terminals and much more but is this a good move considering the number of complaints the t.s.a. gets each year more on this later in the show.

hello there it is wednesday august seventh four pm here in washington d.c. i marinate and you're watching our t.v. . we begin today with hackers now you've probably seen them being represented in television and on the big screen as nefarious geeks wrecking havoc on the world from the safe confines of their parents' basement but this representation is misleading these days hackers are just as likely to find and fix security breaches as they are to create them artes web producer andrew blake just returned from def con two thousand and thirteen deaths on his one of the longest running underground hacking conferences held annually in las vegas where old school hackers meet with a new generations to discuss everything from hacking cars to appliances to pacemakers now andrew explains how and why hacking is much more about curiosity than if arius intent and that the real hackers to fear are the ones operating out

of the u.s. intelligence agencies they might look like an unassuming bunch of one we can hear their key people are causing unimaginable have it one of the busiest cities in america around fifteen thousand hackers and security experts descended on los vegas for the twenty first annual def time to discuss the latest and greatest exploits in vulnerabilities targeting seemingly anything and everything sure this computer could be hacked or this phone or this t.v. or care might just like this one at def con hackers go to learn how to which attacks on just about anything but more importantly how to prevent them there was a session on how to hack into those self driving cars. you know people like hacking into a.t.m. hacking into pacemakers happing hacking into you know refrigerators it's i don't think there's a limit to what you know some of these people with the creativity in the and the skills that they have you know i don't think there's any limit to what they can

reverse engineer but it's not just breaking into boring systems and servers at def con either xaus is an australian computer scientists whose life revolves around robots sometimes he builds them but it def con he discusses ways to break them at. it's a system that can be tinkered toward with at def con they'll do it this year i came to give a talk about hacking driverless vehicles because i'm really into autonomous robots i'm involved in autonomous robot competitions and i felt like now we're on the cusp of shared use acceptance of tribals vehicles on the roads shared airspace with you a visa and so it's time to think about adversarial relationships and how we can make sure we build these systems bulletproof yes driverless vehicles like this. and you avi's are on manned aerial vehicles like this one so as has been at def con is either an attendee or presenter going back to the one nine hundred ninety s. and this year a few thousand people packed a conference room to watch him show how drones and driverless cars alike can be compromised with just a couple of tricks like almost everyone at def con though says he has for good not

for bad people here at def con and my people there are people who are curious and they want to learn they come here to find out how things work and how they can you know use it fast and they can sometimes make things do things that they weren't supposed to do and in a good way often improvise and adapt and to learn from each other and to show off what they've done so this is primarily a conference with you will come to learn things and to engage to curiosity and so that's what i like about it so much because if you have something that you're interested in just the other people here that can be interested in it too in addition to hacking household appliances you wave and all sorts of other gizmos and gadgets security experts come to def-con to discuss exploits and vulnerabilities a pleasurable to just about anything john draper also known as captain crunch started compromising computer systems in the one nine hundred sixty s. when he used a homemade device called a blue box to make free phone calls around the world why did you do it it wasn't because you didn't want to pay for a phone goes. that wasn't the real reason the real reason behind my experimenting around the system wants to learn the system and understand how it works much like

what's happening today with people breaking into computers draper went on to show a few guys named steve and steve how to hack phones too and eventually they moved on to make millions then billions off their own endeavors but while you won't find the c.e.o. of apple computers walking around def-con in one hundred degree heat draper still shows up discuss his sordid past where his sheer curiosity usually kept him close to trouble he says he never wanted to hack for harm though and relied on hacks and exploits to explore systems that were still in their infancy and just to have a little fun back in the mid seventies we. we found this number by accident i mean hundred number because they were scanning for numbers. and it went into the white house was a way white house and cia crisis hotline number so we sat on that white house line for a while when we learned president nixon's main was olympus. so we couple weeks later i wrote down that and i had a cup we were a party in so we called the white house number and we asked for olympus and the

person who. like nixon came on the line and we said sir we have a national crisis over here sir we're out of toilet paper and we hung up. and we were the first people to nixon. of course hacking phone lines and prank calling the president our child's play compared to some of the other stuff that goes on at def con people learn how to hack high tech toys made for toddlers digital cameras drones and all sorts of other goodies of course what's perhaps the most frightening of the hacks being done by uncle sam compromising each one of our personal conversations i spoke today i gave. a one hour talk all about how the f.b.i. and local law enforcement agencies are now in the hocking business how they're knocking people into people's computers chris agoing is a principal technologist and senior policy analyst at the a.c.l.u. speech privacy and technology project and he spoke a number of times at def con this year about issues that aren't of interest only hackers civil libertarians likes to go and have long assumed the government was

getting communications from anyone they wanted but the recent revelations have confirmed the suspicions now as to going says he hopes people start to speak up they've been doing this for a while but they've kept it under wraps and i think it's time that we. public debate about whether law enforcement agencies should really be in this business whether we want local cops or the f.b.i. to have the capability of any computer anyone's smart phone i mean if cybersecurity is a national concern which i think it should be then i don't really think these tools to be floating around i think we should be prioritizing cybersecurity and you know this is just not of the bait we but just weeks after this guy gave the world a glimpse of what the government is actually doing that discussion is one that might fire. only be on the verge of making it mean stream from las vegas nevada and you break our chain. elsewhere the relationship between the u.s. and russia continues to cool after the white house confirms president obama has pulled out of talks with a lot of near putin that were scheduled to be held in russia next month during a bilateral summit this after moscow granted temporary asylum to n.s.a.

leaker edward snowden r.t. correspondent guy and she can brings us the full report. washington has been thinking for a while on how to best punish moscow for snowden there were rumors that president obama may not go to the g. twenty summit in st petersburg last night he confirmed that he is go away this morning we learned that while he's going to russia for the g twenty the white house has scrapped the bilateral summit with the russian president and here's president obama's advisor here's what he said it will still work with washer on issues where we can find common ground but he was the unanimous view of the president and his national security team that a summit did not make sense in the current environment so now as far as the current environment here is what we heard from the president last night a lot of what's been going on has been. major breaks in the relationship even though still help us supplying our troops in

afghanistan they're still helping us on counterterrorism work they were helpful after the boston bombing and in that investigation. and so there's still a lot of business that we can do with them but there have been times where they slip back in the cold war thinking you know that in a cold war mentality to russia's decision on snowden washington responded by scrapping the meeting with the russian president was to put tact moves like that it seems we are indeed slipping into a cold war thinking by the way there's very little doubt here that had the roles of being the reverse then had it being a russian whistleblower seeking refuge here in the u.s. the u.s. would do the same as what russia has done well as much as the white house likes to attack snowden and russia he's revelations certainly have put the white house on the defensive the majority of americans say edward snowden is a whistleblower not a traitor and this tuesday at a late night show with jay leno president obama tried once again to defend the

surveillance state by saying that there is no domestic spying program snowden as we remember has revealed that the n.s.a. has all the pro. as for domestic spying they're just not labeled for domestic spying but the programs in place certainly allowed to do that the president went on to say that the powers are there it's about whether or not the government has abused those powers on the other hand how would people know that when the programs are shrouded in secrecy one way or another there is no denying that the fact that we're even having this conversation is because of edward snowden's revelations the president suggested that snowden should have done it differently he said you can console were to come to the appropriate individuals and say look i've got a problem with what's going on here i'm not sure whether it's being done properly and those are the president's words there so you can imagine going to that big government machine and saying i've got a problem here people have done it before including some n.s.a. officials will remember thomas drake for example he tried to go through official

channels and ended up fired and was investigated for a violation of the espionage act so i do which snowden perfectly knew what what he was facing had he stayed in the u.s. after all the example of bradley manning was was there for him and the reaction of the u.s. congress has been very interesting for the past few weeks we've seen a number of lawmakers coming forward with initiatives based on edward snowden's leaks but at the same time to say lawmakers would criticize and condemn edward snowden so it's the same as saying thank you for your leaks but we still want to punish you. that was our tease guy and she took and reporting. in other news a small victory for the bradley manning defense team as the sentencing portion of the trial continues yesterday judge denise lynn agreed that some of the twenty counts the soldier was convicted on should be merged cutting down his sentence to a maximum of ninety years this is down from the maximum of one hundred and thirty

six years he was facing now manning was found guilty of espionage and theft in the largest leak of classified intelligence in u.s. history to transparency organization wiki leaks he was acquitted on most of those serious counts including the very most serious account eighteen the enemy still the twenty five year old soldier could spend most if not all of his remaining years inside a prison. now on monday's show we brought you the story on how the national security agency is not the only government agency with an advanced secret surveillance program the drug enforcement administration has a secret unit of its own which passes intelligence intercepts wiretaps and telephone records to authorities in the u.s. and this information is then used to launch criminal investigations on americans and foreign citizens as well now the department of justice announced that it will begin investigations into the d.a.'s surveillance tactics here's a refresher about those d.n.a. revelations reuters detailed how these special operative division the name for the

secret surveillance you know within the da works. that report said quote documents show that federal drug agents are trained to recreate the investigative trail to conceal the s.o.g. use involvement defense attorneys former prosecutors and judges say the practice circumvents court procedures for weighing whether sensitive classified or face evidence could be disclosed to a defendant now although such cases rarely involve national security issues the dea agents using the tips are trying to recreate the source of the criminal investigation to conceal its true origin from defense lawyers prosecutors and judges here's a clip from the monday interview i conducted with matthew feeney editor at reason twenty four seven about that program pushing considering the edward snowden revelations a lot of americans have probably been assuming it seems we're only that the national security agency is actually not just concerned with national scale and national security is actually giving information to the drug enforcement

administration for domestic. investigations and you would hope especially organizations like the cia n.s.a. would be primarily concerned with international threats to national security but it doesn't seem to be that way at all i mean i'm someone who doesn't think that the da should really be around at all but if we're going to have it if there's going to be this war on drugs then let's try and keep to the constitution as much as we can. now amid concerns from the public over the level and scope of the government spying activities president obama chose to address the issue live on jay leno last night we don't have a domestic spying program what we do have or some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or email address that we know is connected to sort of terrorist threat and. that information is useful now the u.s. department of justice will launch an investigation into the d.e.a.'s surveillance unit however considering that the d.o.j. has been accused of its own over steps regarding surveillance of journalists in

recent months it remains to be seen whether the investigation will change the d.e.a.'s way of doing business. now if you've ever boarded a plane here in the u.s. you're likely to be intimately familiar with the t.s.a. will get ready to start seeing a lot more of them now the transportation security administration is expanding its reach to sporting events music festivals road years and train terminals it's all part of the t.s.a. is intermodal prevent season intermodal prevention and response squad are bigger those teams are the name social. now however complaints about t.s.a. mix misconduct have increased by twenty seven percent in the last two years per a recent government accountability accountability office report so is this is really best situated to search americans everywhere they go joining me now to discuss the subject is danny zella a journalist at tru squad t.v. hello there danny. thanks for having me now what do you think this t.s.a.

expansion will mean for american civil liberties. well they're just taking the violation of the fourth amendment that they're currently doing in airports and they're expanding it all over the place the viper teams have been working on the borders which according to the federal government the borders are the first hundred miles from the border so they're really not the borders at all they've been on the u.s. highways in bus stations. sporting events music festivals basically anywhere where you have big crowds of people the t.s.a. is now conducting the fourth amendment violations of americans rights now danny do you believe this expanded t.s.a. presence could actually be a good thing and it's actually needed and it could possibly be a positive thing and an important measure and after an effort to keep us safe now well i would disagree i think that when you have a system that's based on intimidation i mean the viper the whole point of the viper

teams the first word is visual it's because they're looking to intimidate people into being good i think that all the great philosophers of that we know through history have have all agreed that people are either moral or they aren't and you can't scare people straight criminals don't respect laws they don't respect law enforcement they do what they do so this is really more theater and the viper teams even admit that it's theater it's the idea of showing force and hoping that that will keep people from trying to commit crimes. now will we start seeing an increase security presence and when will we start seeing it and does the t.s.a. plan to phase it in or will it just happen all at once well they've actually been phasing it in over the last several years. ago announced in two thousand and nine that they were going to be starting to put the t.s.a. and homeland security in sporting events and train stations so this is been slowly implemented over the last several years and now it's just starting to reach

a point where it's becoming so much more common that people are actually starting to take notice and it's no longer that the feds can say well this is just a drill we're just testing this out to see if we can make these law enforcement agencies work together because generally what they do is they include other local authorities local and state authorities because there's a jurisdictional issue so what they do is homeland security will will bribe a local law enforcement agency with a subsidy we'll give you this equipment all you have to do is invite us into your state or into your city to take part in these you know to help you fight terrorism and that's how they avoid the jurisdictional issue which is a constitutional issue but you know they've just use fear as a way to get americans to accept the fourth amendment violation now what can we expect in terms of the scope of the t.s.a. security increase like should we anticipate t.s.a. pat downs and metal detectors at the next yankees game we go to. well i think that they will slowly incrementally increase the security as americans are willing to

accept it so at first you know right now i'm a new yorker i'm in new york city and the t.s.a. is doing random searches in different train stations as people as they get people used to seeing the t.s.a. in train stations now they'll put them in more and they'll just it becomes commonplace and that's the way it has to be done with americans because the civil liberties unions will be up in arms they have to do it where the people accept it because we are quote unquote a democracy so therefore if the people want the security then i guess we'll give it to them and so that's why they do it in this way it's a it's a federal ization of really all law enforcement now according to the government accountability office the t.s.a. miss conduct rate increased by twenty seven percent from two thousand and ten to two thousand and twelve and with more t.s.a. agents searches going on in general with them coming out than already starting to be phased in do you think this number is going to increase oh absolutely they're not training these alleged agents they give them federal badges but they don't

receive law federal law enforcement training you know they're basically hiring people off the street they're giving them very little training you know recently there was a woman whose car was searched by homeland security because she valet parked it well the homeland security test the valet parking agent to search the car here's a guy who parked cars for a living and he's searching for bombs in a woman's car i mean if people don't realize the the ludicrousness of the situation and the people that wear the t.s.a. uniforms are no more trained in that parking attendant there you have it that was danny pans out journalist truth squad t.v. . and in financial news the justice department filed a lawsuit against bank of america on tuesday accusing the bank of defrauding its investors the justice department along with the security and exchange commission's says that the bank vastly understated the risks involved in its sale of residential

mortgage backed securities ultimately defrauding investors of eight hundred fifty million dollars now the lawsuit alleges that the banks made misleading statements to these investors and did not disclose important information about the details of the mortgages that comprise these securities now joining me to discuss the matter is anthony randolph director of economic research at reason foundation how are you anthony good thanks for having me now first off can you explain in layman's terms please what these mortgage backed securities are and how they played a role in the financial collapse well sensually bank of america worked with third party groups who gave out mortgages and then they bought the mortgages from those third party groups put them into packages allowed for institutional investors those are pension funds or big companies that have a lot of money around that they want to best to buy those pieces of those mortgages to get it every time you pay your mortgage some of that money would go through to

the investor so that's the mortgage backed security. was being sold to these investors now is this the first time the banks or bank of america has faced prosecution for its role in creating these mortgage backed securities. well given the number of lawsuits and a lot of the lawsuits and some and so far have been about what happened after the crisis particularly in relation to how banks like bank of america worked with foreclosures this is one of the first big lawsuits about the creation of a mortgage backed security and not telling investors everything about them or so the justice department and the f.c.c. claims and so the it what's what's big about this particular case it isn't in the addition to its size as to whether or not it's it can be proved that there was malicious intent on behalf of bank of america to defraud investors now b. of a they bought countrywide which proved to be a very bad financial decision do you think countrywide knew what it was doing when

it created these toxic mortgages. well it's clear that one country why it's individual lenders often were handing out mortgages oftentimes they were doing it knowing that people were going to be able to repay a lot a lot of mark which is were given without any sort of serious documentation this particular deal though was for mortgages that were the mortgage backed securities that were sold in january two thousand and eight so this specific deal and it is portent in this particular case is about mortgages that were given out and were sold after the housing bubble already starting to the plate banks had a lot of losses on mortgages in two thousand and seven so by january of two thousand and eight bank of america was well aware that there was problems in the housing industry and investors were well aware that there was problems in the housing industry particularly given the billions of losses that banks had suffered in late two thousand and seven this is not exactly what was going on in the heart of the housing bubble and so i think what's important to consider is did bank of

america have a consistent pattern and countrywide a consistent pattern of defrauding the institutional investors that were buying mortgage backed securities or was it just in this one particular instance as we see in department of justice can prove that there was malicious and not a non-disclosure of all the necessary important documents now what do you think this latest newest lawsuit we're talking about means for bank of america and what do you predict will happen. i'm not exactly sure what's going to happen because there's a lot of the paperwork that still needs to be publicly gone through i think that one of the problems with this case is that if you look at that as c.c.'s filing the first thing that they say is they put this in context of the whole financial crisis and this is a deal that was done in january of two thousand and eight while the housing bubble was already starting to deflate not the heart of it and i think that's problematic to try and go after them or probably that being said that what it does look like is that there were a number of disclosures that warrants issued properly like bank of america so they

might be able to prove that by the lot of the law they definitely violated claims but investors were investing in this because fitch gave eight hundred twenty two million dollars of this deal a aaa rating so investors and bank of america were depending on a credit rating agency to do a lot of the due diligence on this particular batch of mortgages that credit rating agency gave it a aaa rating for almost all of it and everybody was just happy and kind of went along with that so not it may be that they failed to follow the law and it wasn't malicious which given that credit rating i would be surprised if that's what happened but because this was two thousand and eight it would be somewhat surprising that they really didn't know what was going on now bad day they weren't alone in their sale of mortgage backed securities there were other banks that did the same thing do you think we'll see similar lawsuits against other big commercial banks. there's been a lot of talk of civil lawsuits against so the banks there was

a big settlement i believe it was at u.b.s. that came down this week about particularly defrauding investors in relation to the sale of mortgage backed securities in that particular case the bank did not get minutes or deny any wrongdoing and that which is ten tends to be the case they're bent on the number of these sort of instances i think the certainly isn't the last one how successful. the government is and proving its case with definitely suggest well they're not there will be more cases like this thank you anthony that was anthony randolph director of economic research at the reason foundation is reverent and finally the obama administration has in visually stated that its position on egypt is that it doesn't have a position on egypt. that's right during the state department briefing yesterday matthew lee of the associated press asked gen passkey to clarify the

administration's official position on egypt and she had this to say you remind us all what your position actually means. because as i recall your position was that you don't have a position and that's not quite so is that correct matt i think you know our position the position means taking a hit or taking a stance and making a determination and since you didn't do that you do not by definition have a position we have correct i would disagree with you matt you have position on whether what happened in egypt was a coup we have determined that we do not need to make a decision isn't that. that was jen psaki and it's good to know that the administration has determined not to determine its determination that's all for now we're going to evacuate five o'clock with more if you want to see some of the show some of the stories we covered in go to youtube dot com sports. and check out our web site r t dot com forward slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at our native state in prime interest is coming up.

here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot of money you. are a fool you know what kind of self you want to give us a feature is the on the ball and the crystal ball can securely slip out of

the. you know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because there are profit driven industry that sells a sensationalistic garbage because that breaking news i'm having martin and we're going to break this that.

good afternoon and welcome to prime interest i'm harry and boring and i'm bob english let's get to today's headline. any and freddie are told or are they president obama has outlined an exit strategy for the mortgage giants that by eighty percent of all new u.s. mortgages and while there's been talking congress i've been insurance giant alternative is to not mention the most important player in the housing market the federal reserve he's purchasing forty billion dollars a month of mortgage backed security he also said no more bailouts for fannie and freddie no we couldn't agree more in the below front but there is a problem with getting rid of the existing system then even for the are actually profitable no they recently remitted sixty six billion to the treasury which.