big british brother is watching the middle east the independent newspaper says the u.k. is running a secret snooping station intercepting e-mails phone calls and web traffic. as russia refuses syria's opposition of hindering an investigation into an alleged chemical attack that's being blamed on the government looks at how terrorist groups are taking advantage of chaos in the region. braced for more on rest in egypt is gathered for a new protests a day after deposed leader hosni mubarak was let out of prison anger among muslim brotherhood supporters of top stories this hour.

international news and comment live from our studio center here in moscow were just turned eight pm this is. the u.k. has reportedly been operating a secret data gathering base in the middle east part of a one of the half billion dollar investment in global surveillance britain's independent newspaper claims it obtained this information from edward snowden's leaks but the n.s.a. whistleblower himself says he has not released any information linked to these allegations nor smith has the details. well the independent friday morning published an article that said for leaks made by edward snowden about this secret internet monitoring station the base in the middle east to intercept all sorts of internet traffic in the middle east and then tossed back home to western intelligence agencies basically what it does is taps into internet cables that run into the sea extract that they set and then passes it to g.c. h.q. here in the u.k.

and to the n.s.a. in the states is particularly valuable according to the independent because it can access cables that apos between submarines to very sensitive data and it's called the my dog to project which is designed to. intercept global digital communications or to the world email text to everything they wrote the whole a million miles old cable internet cable bill the fact that running under the sea all over the world would make our old world and i think that even though we. think will these countries every time you send emails when you want to work and work or they have to go we hate. the cable and make landfall at various points and we show you a map of how the cables lie you can see that a lot of them make landfall in the u.k. those transatlantic ones so the u.k. is very important in this operations need now says that this week didn't come from him atoll and glenn greenwald in the guardian says that it's the type of disclosure

it's exactly the type of disclosure that the journalists working with snowden have deliberately avoided given that it relates to middle east surveillance and the potential impact that that could have on surveillance operations that then did release that will snowden says that he thinks it was the british government itself he says that the government's trying to trying to make out that the leaks from snowden generally home full across the board not in the public interest across the board and that these they're doing that by deliberately releasing harmful information themselves and pretending that it comes from. him in order to discredit him and the journalist that he's working directly with greenwald says that at the very moment that there's this huge scandal over the detention of his partner. for the weekend and the government's trying to tell the court that the release of this information is not in the public interest it could potentially be dangerous here is a disclosure that could potentially be dangerous so it really fits in according to the guardian and to snowden himself with what the government's trying to do we're

constantly learning more about the massive collection of data but what exactly does it mean for the average citizen. you will know who this person is with and you will be able to identify all the computers partners and also the type of communications are to examine what exactly intelligence agencies can find out about your life a little later in the program. we're getting some news just in this hour that the syrian opposition says it will guarantee safe access for u.n. investigators to inspect the site of the alleged chemical attack now the statement follows demands from russia is following the allegations and the international reaction. the alleged attack supposedly supposedly took place actually happened and it's territory controlled by the syrian rebels so considering the fact that there are very severe clashes taking place between the forces and the opposition

forces it's incredibly unsafe for any team of inspectors to get there on top of that moscow is also decried the calls coming from some european countries who say that the u.n. should use force in syria if the claims of chemical attack are indeed proven true russian is your foreign affairs that is absolutely unacceptable to exert any pressure on the united nations considering the fact that all of these allegations are still not confirmed and so far have found no basis in reality on top of that the team of u.n. investigators who are already in syria are there in order to investigate earlier reports of an alleged chemical attack of by the assad forces on top of that russia's also cited its own sources in syria for claiming that a rocket indeed has been fired on wednesday morning but it also came from the rebel controlled territory and at the end it all comes down to moscow ministry of foreign affairs saying that this is yet another wave of anti government syrian propaganda

directed at discrediting the government of bashar a loss of. pressure on the syrian government is being they would spy in america are insisting that the rebels are capable of carrying out such attacks michael maloof he's a former senior security policy analyst in the office of the u.s. secretary of defense says the media is being largely distracted by one very flawed reports coming from the opposition. the syrian government has actually called upon the un to investigate but they cannot. open up areas that are under the opposition control they can certainly. ask that the u.n. come in and look at whatever documentation they might have so i think that this is a very serious development and that what's happening is that the regular media is just assuming that it's the it's the syrian government when in fact they're being fed information from the opposition so i think everyone has to be very careful

and certainly policymakers need to be very careful before they take any action it's going to be very very difficult to really get to the bottom of this latest episode the turmoil in syria and across the region is proving first solid ground for radical a screw ups and that is adding a new dimension to the u.s. war on terror is all she's going to run explains. while washington says he has crippled al qaeda in afghanistan and pakistan wising from the ashes of the arab spring is new all different affiliated groups metastasizing in the middle east and africa feeling more and more comfortable in countries torn apart by terror in the north of syria in the territories presumably controlled by the rebels the al qaeda affiliated is planning to announce an islamic state terror is not the only way they're winning support their exercising its soft power to somewhere between preaching terror here you see militants doing some ice cream diplomacy with

children and al-qaeda sponsored ice cream contests for kids what could be more innocent all kind of mind it or affiliated groups feel very comfortable in the post revolution chaos of libya in iraq after a decade of civil war still stages terror on a regular basis in less than a week more than two thousand prisoners many of them all qaeda fighters have escaped from prisons in iraq libya and pakistan those were violent raids around the same time washington closed almost two dozen of its missions in the middle east and africa fearing some major terrorist attack and yet at the same time washington says this as a result of the enormous pressure we've put on the group we've eliminated all of al qaeda senior leadership in afghanistan and pakistan and because the current leaders leaders of al qaeda core so worried about their personal safety they're far less able to plan attacks the question some ask is how can washington simultaneously be

so paranoid about the war on terror and be so dismissive of the threat of terror at the same time in different countries the u.s. has repeated we put the threat of terror on the back burner for some greater goal in of ghana's than the goal was to defeat the soviet union the u.s. directly helped al qaeda and bin laden there in iraq the goal was to get rid of saddam hussein there was no al qaeda in iraq before the civil war broke out follow . in the u.s. invasion now in syria the greater goal is to remove assad from power to offer what helping al-qaeda directly or indirectly become that trade off that the the west was willing to make to achieve a greater goal or whatever it was but having made the trade up the u.s. would then spend decades fighting what it had sparked in washington i'm going to check out. our current has been embracing the media to promote itself recently by launching an online magazine even allegedly attempting to advertise itself via twitter well earlier this month an account purportedly belonging to the terrorist

group asked its followers for p.r. ideas but the campaign was torn apart by trolls security analyst jim burgess urged social network is to bombard the account with mocking tweet now one of them included a proposal to release a film entitled dude where's my car bomb another advisor or another user advised al qaeda to use more cats in their videos and there's also a suggestion to open a fast food chain called jihad joe's among other ideas was to sell us on the bin laden's porn collection on e bay and all this trolling caused the account to be suspended but beyond the humor column cavell who wrote exporting made in america democracy believes the u.s. is paying the price for allowing al-qaeda to exist in the first place. al qaida is merely an instrument that the united states has. developed you know. facilitated. the argentines and afghanistan we've funded these foreign mercenaries

these jihadi us our security agency believe that they are so. they can manipulate these your heart as. to their own ends but it's a cynical paternalism that many of the jihad is should be aware of because they see them as easily manipulable but as we saw with the also general ought to those along the attacks on the united states and other attacks that is not the case . knife here most after this short break whole towns engulf lots of already broken two century old records but levels are still expected to rise we bring you all the latest from the stricken far east russia it's all coming up for you and all the stories in just a few minutes from now. there's

a media leader so we need to be. by the sea pushes to the other your party physical. issues that no one is asking with the guests that you deserve answers from. politicking. our team. choose your language. because we know if the materials when i say sell some of the . treatments that the consensus can't. change the opinions that invigorating to. choose the stories that imply life choose me access to your office.

continues here in r.t. islam is supporters of the else did mohamed morsi have gathered for more fresh rallies across egypt after friday prayers hundreds took to the streets in cairo for what the muslim brotherhood dubbed a friday of martyrs and army and police have been deployed these demonstrations come a day after the country's next president hosni mubarak was freed from prison and placed under house arrest in a military hospital over recent months egypt has suffered from the bloodiest civil unrest in its modern history muslim brotherhood calling for continuous protests against the interim military rule which took down president morsi and activists are mohamed believes the new army backed government destroy destroying all hope of

a democratic egypt. at the end of the day what we're seeing is nothing to do with the muslim brotherhood or morsi this is a country this is egypt it's bigger than any facts and it's bigger than any political or religious group we have about ninety million egyptians living in egypt and what the military coup in the military went to did they came and wiped away all our democratically elected institutions the people in power they're the ones that were ousted by the military rule were chosen by the people no some themselves what we are witnessing today is people who lost in elections coming back to to power on the back of tanks and anyone who came out to oppose them and say no this is not the right thing to do and this is not the egypt we want where ultimately either put in jail or killed. time now to look at some of the stories artie's online team has prepared for you today all inferno a monster blaze follows

a tanker in eastern siberia injuring some and causing devastation here much of this footage on in motion page right now. plus on the bound to defend freedom but apparently not freedom of the written word until the most prison bans detainees from reading bleak russian classic the gulag archipelago leading to accusations america is ignoring its own values on a whim one of more than r.t. dot com. right to see. her story. and i think you're. going to. instal.

late german security documents are showing the country doesn't trust the new windows eight system fearing it provides the n.s.a. with remote access that's according to one of the country's newspapers or the german government denies it earlier reports indicated the country was a major target for u.s. intelligence so let's remind you just how much data the n.s.a. collected there it's been more active in germany than in any other state targeting up to half a billion data connections every month phone calls e-mails mobile phone messages and web chat logs all of that data eventually made its way to n.s.a. headquarters in washington but it apparently allows this snowden's leaks indicate they work with the n.s.a. no questions asked on a regular day up to thirty million german connections are watched and that could double during particularly busy times when how much and how exactly is the average citizen affected by this. has been finding out. should the average person be concerned about their online information being stored

by security services you can analyze a person's social graph as it's called so you will know with whom this prison is in contact with and you will be able to identify all the communication partners and also the type of communications from and are to respect events in germany the country's highest court ruled that storing data on citizens was unconstitutional however leaked documents show very close ties between the german d.n.d. and the n.s.a. with information on germans being passed from one to the other all in the name of security says the woman at the top or not but since it's impossible to have security without inconveniences those involved in data protection say the inconveniences of now gone too far we had suspicions that such a scheme was in place but not the sheer the mere extent of this regular and

and. unwarranted and disproportionate measures that are taking place taken place by foreign intelligence services and we definitely need limits and effective and transparent controls the major worry for the individual is that a system that we are told is there to protect society has been used to keep the indiscriminate what we do online this is tim is not working for law enforcement this is now our catching rock to us this is about taking all of our communication and allowing to identify our communication. it's fairly common practice for an employer to check out a prospective employee on social networks to find out more about who they are about to hire however the level of information gathered by security services is in a different league entirely with this level of information you could see exe. do people call in email on

a regular basis see that's it doctor the employer may think this guy's going to have too many sick days and go elsewhere using information that's supposed to be confidential on social networking sites like facebook people freely give away information about themselves but long after you've clicked like on a web page or even search for something online that information follows you like a shadow they will know what you have been in the last three four or five years maybe what you have been interested in through all the time you might not even remember yourself would you have been looking on google but this is done we'll know peter all over r.t. early. back in the us those online resources who make privacy a priority are being pressured into sharing customer information with intelligence agencies we've been covering the shutting down of the i love a bit email provider which was used by edward snowden and my colleague matt trader

earlier spoke to the founder of another encrypted messaging service who told him that privacy just doesn't exist in america anymore what's happened is the spies have turned the companies like apple and google into spies themselves i think the whole n.s.a. spying has had seriously. negative impact on the trust and faith people have in the political and legal system in the united states at this point i think that people are looking at moving themselves their assets and their information offshore . one of your previous interviews you had said that you feel the u.s. could turn into electronic prison can you elaborate on a little bit well if everybody is watching everything that you do and you don't know where that information is going there's no recourse in terms of what happens with the information there's no recourse in terms of. how you can remedy things now for example the no fly list there's no way you don't even know you're on and so you go to the airport and they say you can't fly and there's no way to get yourself

off of it and you don't know what got you want in the first place so you know that's just for flying now we start talking about the electronic surveillance it's becoming a serious problem for a lot of people a lot of people are now starting to realize that the terrorists aren't the people they're after it's the people who are just ordinary people paying taxes and doing their jobs president obama has said some privacy could be breached in order to provide security where do you think privacy rights are headed in the u.s. where they're headed in the u.s. i don't think they exist anymore in the u.s. that's what i'm hearing from our customers they are you know they understand that there's been it's not just a privacy breach it's like the whole dike has to spin completely excavate in the oceans been pouring in for a new presidential hopeful roomfuls spoke to larry king on a new episode of auntie's politicking he shared his views on the real nature of democracy in the u.s. saying it's more about two policies competing than protecting people and their

freedom which interview in full later this hour but in the meantime here's a brief preview. we don't have much of a democratic process left you know we go overseas saying you're going to be good democrats and you're going to have elections and if you don't elect the right guy we're not going to support them. at the same time you know the competition here getting on ballots and getting credibility and getting in debates it's really pretty difficult and the process continues you really don't ever see any changes in washington and i think it's because basically the leadership of both parties in spite of all their arguing they argue over power i grant you that but they don't argue over the issues that i consider important i. got a king coming your way in about seven minutes from now here in altie massive flooding continues to devastate the far east with more poles expected is

a look at just how big the flood zone actually is it sprawls over three russian regions not to give you an idea of just how big this area is this area could fit the whole of france and germany in that space now there are pockets of voided flooding but many more have simply been engulfed the main city within the flood stricken area risks the same fate of these pools court has more on the situation there. well water levels in some parts of this region have already broken records that have stood since the eight hundred seventy thousand six hundred and forty two centimeters in all thirty say that at the moment the water stands out above seven meters and with the rain set to continue on the water levels continuing to rise we could push the eight metre mark which puts the city in real jeopardy now the problem is being caused by the river which you can see behind me it's bust its banks and the real fear is now that it's going to trickle in and start to submerge the city authorities are working around the clock to try and prevent that from

happening you can see the sandbags behind me dams have been built but the problem is the water levels continue to rise the dams need to rise with them so it's a twenty four seventh's around the clock job to try and reinforce the city around eight hundred fifty people have been evacuated from the city or all to be asked to leave their property some of decided to stay some have decided to go those that have gone but being housed in temporary accommodation centers in places like schools and sports arenas and sports complexes the authorities say they can house around four thousand five hundred from the city at the moment although that figure is expected to rise to about ten thousand should the problem deteriorates two planes of humanitarian aid are also heading this way from moscow including things such as food drinking water and medicine president vladimir putin is heading this way early next week along with prime minister dmitri medvedev and they're expected to assess the damage which at the moment is mainly the ruled remote areas on the outskirts of the city where entire communities have been submerged and destroyed

but the fear is with the water level still rising this city could be at risk in the problem could yet get a lot worse. now to some other news from around the world at this stage of the day in a world update two deadly blasts targeting mosques in the lebanese city of tripoli and killed forty two people according to authorities injuring three hundred fifty others onto the minds of worshippers of the mosque. home to a cleric with reported links to syria's opposition now here is c.c.t.v. footage from inside salaam mosque where the second bomb exploded the prime minister's condemned the attack calling it an indicator of just how dangerous the situation the country is in. the security forces have fired tear gas at protesting students in colombia's capital responded with homemade cocktails and black clad veuves are said to be part of the urban section of the fault terror group clashes come amid mass demonstrations of farmers miners and truckers of the country's

dismal economic state. iceland is thinking of dropping its bid for membership of the e.u. the country's foreign minister will consider dissolving the special committee which is working on the negotiations it's suspended talks ahead of parliamentary elections in january and the euro skeptic coalition which took power never restarted them. you know economics professor at the university of arsonists used to support the idea of his country joining the e.u. but to change his mind the issue is that iceland is a resource wealth the island in the middle of the north atlantic whereas the european union is a central european project to integrate central european economies into. a single economic area through institutions like the common courtesy and the common market now. the issue is whether fitting iceland in these news can be gauche asians is like putting a square peg through

a round hole. and that is the. source of the. what you call it the going backwards in the negotiations. now to bring us up to date for the moment i'll be back with a news team with wolf we just have a half an hour from now on the meantime as promised larry king talks to veteran congressman ron paul about the present and future of u.s. politics that's coming up after the break. they say geo politics is a lot like a schoolyard and while obama snubbing a meeting with the president of russia to in theory punish him for the stoughton incident sounds kind of amateur that is the kind of stuff the girl you did when

you're sixteen would do cancel date just to show you how much her feelings are hurt let's not mistake the cancelled meeting with cutting off diplomatic relations which is the total rejection of any form of discussion with another country which really sent a bold and possibly dangerous but a call message but obama did was more like a minor annoyance he knows that he will talk to putin again in the near future i mean how are they not going to talk in the next g. eight summit what is he just going to have to hide behind merkel the whole time and hope it works out or ducked behind the shrimp cocktail whatever here's a russian accent one could argue that to appease republicans he had to do something to look strong after the student but this grandstanding just comes across as silly passing something like a new jackson verda commandment yeah that is how you could shows people that you're really mad even if your anger is irrational because stone pretty much did the right thing but that's just my opinion. he was the father the tea party movement

a strong voice of dissent still captivates and leads a log american audience who called for change the former congressman presidential candidate ron paul plus daniel ellsberg the original government. you're forty years ago with the pentagon making and is now supporting n.s.a. leaker edward snowden it's all next on politicking with larry king. politicking on larry king we start the program with the former congressman and presidential candidate ron paul an old friend he joins us from clute texas where he does his shows for the recently launched ron paul channel on the internet and he's the father of the current united states senator and possible presidential candidate rand paul ron a before i ask you about your new program and everything attest.