coming up on our t.v. while more is revealed about the expanding surveillance state here in the u.s. there are calls to rein in the programs look at what options lawmakers may have when they return from the august recess ahead stepping up drone strikes in the middle east the u.s. has carried out strikes in pakistan and yemen in recent days but look at what's behind these strikes coming up and later in our tech report in the world of social media likes in followers are worth big bucks but are people and organizations using web sites like twitter and facebook to show a false form of popularity that's later in the show. it's thursday august eighth four pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax and you're watching r.t. and we begin with the n.s.a.

the ongoing mass surveillance of americans speaking on a condition of anonymity intelligence officials are shedding more light on the actual mechanisms by which the n.s.a. goes about scooping up data belonging to american citizens published today in new york times officials explain that in targeting a foreign citizen with surveillance of the n.s.a. casts a wide net on all communications flowing out of the united states that may be in direct contact with a foreign target or simply referencing the target or information related to the target officials go on to explain the n.s.a. is temporarily copying and then sifting through the contents of what is apparently most e-mails and other tech space communications that cross the border the official said that a computer searches the data for the identifying keywords or selectors and stores those that match so that human analysts could later examine that there are many communications the official said are deleted the entire process takes a small number of seconds. of course this is just one component of the massive

surveillance apparatus that americans are just becoming aware of thanks to n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden's leaks also this week reuters uncovered a parallel data collection program run out of the drug enforcement agencies special operations division this division gathers intelligence from multiple sources including the n.s.a. to assist in drug investigations although dea agents are instructed to hide the paper trail of this intelligence while conducting an investigation it's since been revealed that the i.r.s. the f.b.i. the cia and the n.s.a. all cooperate with this special operations division now all of these revelations have sparked a fractious debate on capitol hill over the constitutionality of these domestic surveillance programs lawmakers are on the really on recess for the month of august but left on the agenda for when they get back are a number of bills to restrict the n.s.a. spying programs and shed light on these secret files a court that oversees the legality of the surveillance programs they range from

aggressive reforms like congressman rush holt surveillance state repeal act which repealed both the patriot act in the files amendments act to more modest reforms like ones floated by senate intel chairwoman dianne feinstein just to limit the number of years the n.s.a. can store collected data so while it does look like change is coming to the n.s.a. the question is who will lead the change and what will it look like joining me now to help make sense of all these reform efforts is heidi big ocean executive director of the national lawyers guild from new york and brian doogan technologist that open technology institute here in d.c. welcome to you both thanks so much for coming on it thank you i do you want to start with you do you think these leaks about the n.s.a. have raised enough attention in congress to actually pass some meaningful reform. there's no doubt that the leaks have changed the conscious ness of the country and i think that when the public is concerned hopefully that leaks up to the legislators i think it's useful to look at the overall picture which is where in

a state of perpetual war and many of the reforms that we're hearing about which it's a good thing need to be taken in that context thomas jefferson said that it's very difficult to preserve our freedom when we're in the midst of perpetual war so i think it's a great start but there are specific things that can be done and people need to pressure legislators to do them so how do you would say that this can be drawn all the way back to the a you a mess from two thousand and one that kind of sort of the ball rolling on on this expanded war and expanded surveillance. i think that the jargon of the war on terror has really preyed into public fears allowed hastily passed legislation starting with the usa patriot act and then the pfizer reauthorization act to warrantless wiretapping things that we don't know about secret legal interpretations to run amok in many ways brown i want to turn it over to you in

there's a number of options being floated around right now we have very strong options like what congressman rush holt is saying let's repeal the surveillance state by getting rid of the patriot act and the fai's amendments act what do you what you make of that i think those are good first steps i think the. acts that tend to address the authority of of the court to authorize you know all the way down to analysts to make that is to make the decision about whether or not data should be collected that's obviously you know we're way out of bounds that authority needs to be put back in the executive branch and the but there are other bills on the docket ors in being discussed right now the focus on government and corporate transparency and we've seen how that type of transparency has been limited in the past google has had a transparency put report for a couple of years now and that obviously did not include all of the data that was

being collected at the time so there are good first steps but i think that you know there are there's an entire history of privacy legislation going back to you know starting with. and through coolio before the patriot act was passed that actually mandates certain types of surveillance they should also be addressed but. there's lawmakers have suggested and this goes to what brian was just saying about not just government but corporations kind of retaining our data a lot of lawmakers have come forward and said the government should get out of the business of collecting data telecom communications companies or telecom companies are already doing this let the guy. it rely on telecom companies to collect the data in the government can go to telecom companies with specific requests should would reform like that put us at ease or is there still some uncomfortable ness about telecom companies storing all our data and being a rubber stamp for the government and handing it over to the. the fact that private

corporations in many cases military contractors conduct approximately seventy percent of united states intelligence should be of enormous concern to americans they are not held accountable to the same constitutional strictures that our us government is and the authorities who took an oath to protect and up hold the constitution are effectively being let off the hook as corporations do their big business for them and the partnership between corporations and the government is a very tight one because of course corporations produce the equipment and analyze the information that is being used to gather this data one of the big. motivators behind reform is that there needs to be transparency to these programs congresswoman zoe lofgren has introduced legislation to allow telecom companies to reveal how many requests they get and how many of their customers are being surveilled. senator al franken has introduced similar legislation in the senate

that would also require the government to disclose this sort of information heidi would just informing people of how broad these programs are. work to encourage more people to push their lawmakers to push for even stronger reforms to the to these programs i think it's important that in addition to some of the court cases that are already being brought forward the electronic frontier foundation for example is going to be suing telecommunications providers which listeners viewers should know was tried years ago but the government gave them immunity and also said that you couldn't prove with the certainty that you were being monitored now we know that's different i think that public outrage is very important as we saw in the seventy's with the church committee it was public outrage that called for a comprehensive investigation into cointelpro and covert spying on americans i hope that we harness some of that same outrage now. and put pressure on companies

and legislators to make things transparent breaded seems like that outrage is growing and there is a movement building on the hill but i'm worried that you have these reformers like rush holt and ron wyden who are pushing for strong reforms but then you also have people like senator dianne feinstein who are in mike rogers who are big proponents of these programs what sort of phony reforms might we see coming from that camp that might not really change anything like for example senator dianne feinstein says we should reduce the amount of years that davis say can hold the data from five down to two is that something that we should be happy with if that's all we get well so the what the usefulness of this data is as it goes into a type of machine learning database and even after the original messages are deleted or supposedly deleted. the your data all of the data that's being collected still remains in these massive databases that are used to make these decisions so

in some sense or rather that data will always be there and will always be used to make decisions about whether or not analysts should pay attention to a specific communication or not so on a technological level that only matters so much because names location information actual content will always remain in some form because that data will always be useful to the surveillance apparatus we had a former n.s.a. whistleblower russell tice on and he was talking about how the n.s.a. is basically surveilling everybody including senator obama several years ago and we heard there were snowden say that you know he could surveil the present united states from his desk is there a concern i want to get both you're inputs here in the last minute we have is there concern that the n.s.a. and the intelligence community has grown so large that it's impossible to rein in brian start with you yeah absolutely there are something like a thousand. and many many thousands of people in the united states with top secret

level clearance it is impossible to maintain a level of trust that guarantees there will be no one who betrays you know the trust placed within all those people as edward snowden did now obviously in the case of everett edward snowden and for whistle blowing this is a great thing but it's impossible to maintain that level of loyalty for so many people how do you just last thirty seconds i mean how do we go about kind of tackling this giant that's been created with the n.s.a. well i think the awareness that this has indeed become an information business it's enormous we've built a huge data center in utah to analyze to hold computers to analyze this information and people need to hold corporations accountable and i think the power that has been invested in this big business apparatus has been enormous and that's really once again in the hands of the people to say i don't want to do business with these providers if you don't pull rein back what you've been doing and you know for

example don't build back doors into your equipment so the government and law enforcement can plug right in and said that was heidi because an executive director of the national lawyers guild brian doogan technologies said open technology institute thank you both thank you you thank. meanwhile the white house and its intelligence agencies are hoping the utility of these spy programs may be enough to ward off efforts in congress to rein them in u.s. officials last week claim they intercepted in media it specific threats from al qaeda that led to a global terror warning in the closing of nearly two dozen diplomatic posts around the arabian peninsula in the gulf and into africa on wednesday details of how that threat was intercepted was leaked to two defense journalists cozy with the pentagon who ran an article in the daily beast describing a legion of doom conference call between more than twenty al qaeda leaders and operatives around the world that was intercepted by u.s. intelligence allegedly al-qaeda leaders use this conference call to discuss plans

for a pending attack now if you think it's a little fishy that al qaeda leaders would suddenly begin using global conference calls to plan their attacks you're not the only one after the story broke journalist with the a.p. the washington post in the los angeles times immediately cast doubt on it and argued that the government's account of what happened just doesn't add up but even if it does add up there's an even bigger problem which is that a critical intelligence operation against al qaeda was leaked likely putting at risk that entire operation moving forward and really isn't that far more damaging to our intelligence communities than anything edward snowden has leaked so far so the question is why is there no outrage or demand for espionage charges coming from the government today. now this alleged global terror threat that forced the closing of nearly two dozen diplomatic posts also set off a flurry of drone strikes in yemen and nearly the last two weeks several drone

strikes have been carried out against targets in yemen reportedly killing suspected militants but as we're getting used to seeing in our drone war campaign that exactly who's been killed on the ground is unclear the washington post reported on wednesday. officials said tuesday there is no indication that senior al-qaeda operatives in yemen have been killed in the drone strikes it's too early to tell whether we've actually disrupted anything a senior u.s. official said the renewed drone drone bombing campaign in yemen comes just as a new report from the bureau of investigative journalism alleges that one of the most controversial tactics of the drone war so-called double tap strikes is still in use by the cia now a double tap strike refers to a series of drone strikes against one particular target so that a second or third strike usually comes just as a first responders and rescuers are responding to the first strike un investigators have referred to this tactic as a war crime but the bureau of investigative journalism says that five such double

double tap drone strikes occurred in a single village in pakistan in the middle of two thousand and twelve and i discuss this more i'm joined by investigative journalist chris woods who has been involved in carrying out some of the leading investigations into cia drone strikes in recent years and is currently writing a book on the u.s. covert drone war chris thanks so much for joining me. i think a lot of people would be shocked if if this tactic is actually going on which makes me wonder what's the usefulness in double tap drone strikes and is it just about terrorizing the enemy at this point. my guess i mean i've been looking at these double tap strikes for a couple of years now they are definitely happening i have no doubt that at school working with the bureau of investigative journalism are carried out to major field investigations in pakistan illness i phone off coming back absolutely clear that these double tap strikes are happening this deliberate targeting of rescuers on the scene of a previous strike why are they doing it i think policy to ensure that the original

intended targets are killed and going back and making sure that anyone in addition is drawn into that strike is killed but i do think there is a significant element of terror here in these strikes it causes a profound level of fear in these communities and it's interesting tonight that we first broke your best bit of journalism first broke this story of the double tracked strikes in february twenty twelve not a single u.s. official has yet to deny that claim the best we've had is the deputy u.s. ambassador in pakistan saying we don't deliberately target civilians in these double tap strikes so no i didn't i was well i'm absolutely clear these dots that type strikes are taking place and they were going to get in last year there. has been a and there's been no increase in drone strikes in yemen here in the last few days is this attributed to this kind of global terror threat that we've heard of is there something else behind them what do you think. i am absolutely sure it's

linked to the global terror threat and he's worrying as well the u.s. has this rule book now and we're told a strict rule which is supposed to limit civilian deaths in places like pakistan and yemen but unfortunately the moment this this crisis came to light that rulebook of his to significant be thrown out of the window the washington post is reporting that many of these strikes that it's taking place in the yemen right now are simply buying time but the u.s. intelligence community while it finds out what's going home and be course the room because been thrown out because that's making less care over these strikes is a much greater risk of civilians being killed and that's what we're seeing c.n.n. reporting this morning that two civilians were among those killed in the early hours of this morning in a strike in yemen so the strikes are reacting to this outcry the terror threat we're getting a big upswing in attacks which in turn is generating more civilian deaths and the risk of civilian deaths which in turn risks most backlash i thinking on trees like

yemen where i remember it was just a few months ago that the president gave his national security speech and he announced these new presidential guidelines that would govern future drone strikes spread as you said it appears that those have been kind of thrown out the window here clearly there is a lack of congressional oversight over what's going on in the drone warfare that was revealed during brennan's nomination to head the cia. do you think members of congress are aware of double tap drone strikes and if not you know how do you think they would react to that and how could they not be aware of it if you're out here talking about it they are is no way that congress is is unaware of these double tap strikes i just don't think they're interested in investigating them i'm think they may have spoken with the cia and cia has assured them that this is a problem that he's a big problem in washington right now the senate and house intelligence oversight committees just doing their job in my opinion for example when. dianne feinstein

the chair of the senate intelligence committee said during john brennan's confirmation hearing as head of cia that she done most to find out the civilian casualties were numbers afterwards i contacted every single going to be carried out field work in pakistan into civilian deaths whatever the outcome of those investigations every one of them came back to me and confirmed they've never been contacted by congressional oversight committees there isn't any i decide. the u.s. intelligence community it's a self referential system of the bible and i think when things go wrong as they occasionally do oversight has to mean stepping outside your comfort zone asking some difficult questions and asking what's really going on where in the midst of the anniversary of dropping the nuclear bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki and at the time when we dropped those bombs we were completely unaware of the long term consequences of that sort of warfare here we are several years now into this drone

warfare program we have this issue of double tap drone strikes do you think the administration is fully aware of the long term consequences of carrying out this sort of global drone war all across all all i said global all across the globe. i don't think any of us are aware of the consequences we can look back on the invasion of iraq by the u.s. and u.k. ten years ago and some of the appalling consequences that were unleashed from that radicalization many young muslim men terrorists to try attacks across europe and many attempted terrorist attacks on the united states some of which exceeded as a direct consequence of that one can look at the drone strikes in this you might get some of the patterns of behavior there's mixed evidence on that at the moment what's certainly clear is how a whole pira these drone strikes on internationally not just in the countries that are being blown but all across europe u.s. drone strikes deeply unpopular among some of the united states' closest allies who is in deep discomfort. right we left wing newspapers here in the u.k.

for example there's a new difference when it comes to covering the drone strikes with meg's that this is a problem for the united states that i think isn't just about the relationship with the muslim world it's about the relationship to the u.s. and the international community so investigative journalist chris woods thank you so much there so what exactly does it take to reach a thousand followers on twitter or get ten thousand likes on your facebook posts or i should ask what exactly does it cost to reach a thousand followers and the age of social media in determining your influence by how many followers or friends you have there's a growing market for those who wish to buy their influence yes for a few bucks you can buy followers on twitter or likes on facebook in fact during his presidential bid in two thousand and twelve most of newt gingrich's twitter followers were fake bought and paid for and the u.s. state department shelled out six hundred thirty thousand dollars between two thousand and eleven and this year for facebook likes before twitter newspaper

circulation or t.v. ratings numbers made it possible to quantify the readership in reach of a particularly news organization but now when social media followers can just be bought do we have to throw the old metrics in determining influence out of the window let's do some tech talk with digital media specialist at mcafee strategic ashton moore here in d.c. and charlie ward still deputy editor of buzz feed forward excuse me deputy editor buzz feed forward from new york thank you both for joining me here so charlie i want to start with you do you twitter followers in facebook likes have any meaning anymore. well absolutely in or again extends i think it's probably it's difficult to estimate who is real and who is not but you can get a general sense especially you know online with a lot of journalists and people who have become personalities on twitter. and on facebook and those people you can. they get an idea that they understand and know

what they're talking about and that they're following have grown because they've learned them it's a little harder in the world of brands and with some of the offbeat celebrity types but yeah i think they still matter ashton do you think. do you think buying twitter followers is an acceptable acceptable social media strategy depends on what your strategy is a comprehensive targeted strategy will actually have a plan to organically build an audience because you're sharing valuable content to buy followers is to essentially say that you don't have enough valuable content to organically gain those followers i would say so to buy them not only negatively impacts you because you're already admitting that you're not going to take the time to build a strategy but it also means that when you buy them most of the time they're just

robots and drone and people who aren't real and so they'll never share and they'll never like and they'll never retreat if it's twitter the content that you produce troll is that. yeah i guess you're as said you're kind of conceding that you don't have anything when you start buying followers but couldn't doesn't that set off like an army quote unquote arms race when certain people are buying followers and you want to try and have influence too because let's face it when you're on twitter and you see them you don't know you look at their followers. is that a concern. there's a case to be made that actually you know a small brand starting out or a. really low level celebrity type could buy a small amount say go from one hundred to a thousand followers in order to sort of you know build that base i think that's frowned upon but i think the real question here is you know when you're looking at

buying a million followers for thirteen hundred dollars i mean you can't really buy influence at a price like that it just sort of doesn't seem to play out mathematically and people people are wise to this i think moving forward how are we supposed to determine the reach an influence of individuals i mean if you look at think of twitter each individual person is almost a journalistic entity out there trying to get their message across or whatever they're trying to do on twitter how can we determine the reach and influence if there's so many bots floating around people there it's a great question and when you when you're determined if you asked me if you said look at this accounts are they fake are they real we wouldn't have to go into their actual people and look at them on buy one but what we could look at is the kind of reach that they have there are things like klout that that tell people how many people are affected how many people read there are other things other social sharing tools online that will tell you how many people are just engaging on for example your facebook page and so quick an easy way to do it would be to say does

this person have a million followers if yes then does this is the person getting commentary are they getting feedback or are they getting input are people sharing their message and their brand and if the answer is no and it's a quick and easy way to make an educated guess that there's a million followers may have been bought. charley last question i'm picturing a time the not too distant future and we might already be there when bots are outnumbering actual people on these social network platforms what does that do to things like twitter and facebook does it affect them at all. i think that it's it all depends on the sophistication there are accounts they're not necessarily bots i mean some bots do re tweet and like things like that but. you know in general i think that that people people figure this out and you can look at an account that only retreats you know a certain person or a certain publication it's very obvious digital media specialist ashton more than

charlie wartell deputy editor of buzz feed for thank you both. now a criticism often leveled at our lawmakers is that they seem to exist above the law this criticism has particular relevance in colorado where a local c.b.s. news affiliate in denver launched an investigation into how special license plates allow state lawmakers to break traffic laws with impunity they do use license plates are issued to colorado's one hundred senators and representatives every two years but they are not put in this state d.m.v. database. so when dimmers photo radar cameras caught them speeding they never got tickets because denver could not electronically cross-reference their plate with a home address the city of denver has identified sixteen different law maker license plates that have racked up twenty one hundred dollars in fines and penalties that have never been paid for this immunity was exposed the city announced it would track down those lawmakers who have been paid tickets but now

the city says such actions would be too expensive and that does it for now i'm sam sachs stay tuned prime interest is next. my colleagues and i will never shake mr sarkozy and i consider him a war criminal in the. light of the world.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you. don't know. is a big issue. that

afternoon and welcome to prime time period boring and i'm bob english and let's get to today's headlines. your home is mine for the city of richmond california is saying to homeowners an effort to help those with underwater mortgages the city is using eminent domain to seize homes with homeowner consent then sell the homes back to them at a lower price but as usual all such well intended efforts have unintended consequences and those consequences are being expressed and escaping lawsuits by those who ended up owning the securitized mortgages that would include the pension funds which are no place in losses if this suit fails and several other cities are considering a similar eminent domain scheme.