coming up on r t the drums of war for syria grows louder as america moves warships closer to their shores while more u.s. politicians consider the idea of military intervention a large part of the u.s. public remains on persuaded the latest updates coming out. and a u.s. colombian free trade deal signed back in two thousand and eleven is now causing colombian farmers huge problems the farmers have been protesting for more than a week leading to clashes with colombian authorities more on this story coming up ahead. and an n.y.p.d. officer was indicted on charges of lying about it the arrest of a new york times photographer the officer claimed that the photographer was using a bright flash to interfere with another arrest but the camera didn't even have a flash more on this case later on today here today show.

hello there it's tuesday august twenty seventh four pm here in washington d.c. i marinate and you're watching our two we start our newscast today with the latest from syria u.s. officials have laid the groundwork for a possible military attack here's u.s. defense secretary chuck hagel speaking to the b.b.c. about the department of defense's preparedness device to say the options are there the united states department of defense is ready to carry out those options and if that would occur it would occur also according to asian with our international partners. now these latest developments are in response to a chemical weapons attack that occurred outside of damascus on august twenty first the united states and its international allies say it is undeniable that syrian president bashar al assad and his regime launched the attack now speaking from

damascus today syrian foreign minister walid them so that he rejects quote utterly and completely that syrian armed forces have used chemical weapons u.s. navy destroyers have already been moved closer to the shores of syria since the chemical attacks. however according to a reuters poll intervention in the sovereign country is quite unpopular with americans forty two point one percent of americans do not think we should intervene twenty eight percent believe we should and about thirty percent say they don't know . now despite these numbers n.b.c. news is reporting that military strikes on syria could begin as early as thursday. and now to colombia were agricultural workers are taking to the streets to protest the government's farming policies now what started as a peasant uprising nine days ago has quickly spread throughout the country at least two hundred thousand people have launched demonstrations and blocked roads all in

opposition to the u.s. colombia free trade agreement now protesters there are being met with intense hostility from colombian police tear gas shooting torture and even sexual assaults have all been reported colombia's defense minister juan carlos payan zone has claimed that the streaker the striking workers are being controlled by what he called terrorists from the revolutionary armed forces of colombia better known as far. yesterday colombian president of colombia one man well a cart scientist juan manuel santos said that his government will enter into negotiations with the agricultural workers but only if road blocks are lifted and after meeting with protest leaders from the three worst affected provinces santos said he is quote determined to confront the problems and work hand in hand with the farmers to see how we can get out of this situation a situation that many believe is create has created many believe was created by the u.s. colombian free trade agreement now that was an agreement which was supposed to eliminate

things like tariffs and other barriers on trade of goods and services between the u.s. and colombia but in practice it has increased the cost of items like fertilizer and fuel while simultaneously flooding the colombian market with cheap imports now to discuss the current unrest in colombia and shed light on to how this free trade deal is playing out i was joined earlier by neil martin executive director of possible internacional a colombian based labor solidarity organization i first asked him about the situation on the ground and what the protests look like. protests are principally taken for blockades. by pertain on an informer coffee growers in the dairy sector. roadblocks to prevent normal circulation throughout the country this is also been supported and added to by a workshop which is organized by truck drivers who aren't blocking but who are

refusing to transport produce and another project. has rebuilt and model x. throughout colombia. ten department i think apparently. they are luckily intended partner and this is been off the supported by indigenous communities unions student movements and. reaction part of the colombian armed forces have been what human rights organizations refer to as an excessive use of force. we've seen and military personnel being protesters there have been reported to sexual assault stealing supplies and the protesters are using to maintain a candidates. and it was carried out in private residence in private business.

a huge amount of unwarranted arrests and. leaking and credit fire on fire and protestors and we have reports that some people been killed at all that kind of activity the the old extremely boring phenomena is the best protest leaders. it's happened at the country and because particularly agent to the rest of humor status. position little leader and also a lot of the members of gotten good team team for the organization that were stricken he was arrested yesterday. and that for. four reasons you know alleged involvement with it's ok now now now can you tell me how long have the protests been going on. there more than a week old now started last monday and they've been growing sort of steadily

throughout this week and you can actually there were new blockades set up in unison tallies very close to bill and so the effect of the risk is congress is starting to be felt and very extremely. and the current situation is one of sort of tense calm because the government has endurance negotiations with leaders of the protests in various regions right now what are the agricultural workers what are their ultimate goal is would they like to see that the u.s. colombia free trade agreement be abolished. that is one of their demand they're starting to feel the effect free trade agreement very sharply it's going to trigger now and the cost of producing things like potatoes in coffee and milk in colombia simply can't compete with the prices of it for products that are coming

in from other countries and. one of the other demands of the hat is that. our cultural territories be protected by mental sandridge. and the truck drivers in particular are asking for a reduction in the cost of gasoline when we have one of the has got prices in the world and it's one of the largest producer of oil and some see this is a contradiction and something that the colombian government remedy now is that realistic or even possible to abolish this free trade agreement. well that's a very good question it's a question that a lot of people are asking. i don't think it's very likely that it's not just administration or go back on any differential you think more likely is. that the same thing will happen when sharon in the copyright if you want to belittle. large

. in which the government agreed to raise the subsidies their top firms receive and sort of you know the situation down for the time being in terms of real long term. agreement between the government and rural agricultural sector i think it's going to be a lot more complicated because you really see that these farmers are sitting tight literally trading him in without overturning a free trade agreement we don't going to be a real possibility for a long from dialogue between people now who are benefiting in colombia from this free trade agreement. well colombian landowners are benefiting from three share in the canadian unfasten general but in addition to that slaughter national corporations are benefiting hugely from the free trade agreement. at angel talk about economic policies a little bit more broadly as well in terms of what is effectively a liberal economic expansion in colombia which includes not only free trade but in

practice nation public services including incursion of huge amounts of foreign capital and investment coming in which to the formal mining oil extraction and agribusiness to be the sectors that are that are benefiting from the free trade agreement and frankly the clinton farmers have. reason to be concerned about the situation given that five million people have been internally just i think on the many of them in the last ten years and i think people are very you know afraid that this this could end up being their fate as well right now what do you personally believe is the best solution for both the farmers and the country of colombia. well i think. you know a. comprehensive agricultural policy that you know takes into account small farmers as well as massive agribusiness would be would be the best solution and i think things like the cost of gasoline are also italy would be really rarely.

worth what little is when you start to look at the end of the union they're involved in the strike now as well of who had almost a demand and many of which are associated with. opposition to the privatization of public services three levels of health care union the oil workers in lucille and student organizations emerge the student organizations and the biggest teachers' union for equality for all asking for you know the pride of place in education to be reversed so these are more difficult. right to address now i have one last question that i really want to get to can you talk about the relationship between the farmers and fark and it's important to know that fark is an organization considered as a terrorist group by the colombian government can you speak to to their relationship right there and it's a very important question because bichlbaum being in state tends to use this

rhetoric to not only to the legitimate. grassroots protest movements and and this kind of mobilization that we're seeing currently but uses it as an excuse to use this association as an excuse for you know repression of these movements and and in the public eye justifying even a lot of repression against protesters and they curse back is a very good example of the lack of substance to this as its argument because among other reasons that the reason in which this process the strongest explosion is not a region which is you know it's not a region which is which had armed conflicts not a region which has a very strong support for any of the syrian groups and again there is no evidence provided as to the links between the guerrilla groups and protest movement ok thank you very much now that was neil martin the executive director of passata

nothing out of. in new york city a bronx district attorney announced yesterday that an n.y.p.d. officer was indicted on three felony counts and five misdemeanors after lying about the circumstances that led to the officers arrest of a new york times photographer now officer michael ackerman is being accused of fabricating his reasons for arresting photographer robert stone loric now ackerman claims that while trying to arrest a teenage girl last year stelarc interfered by distracting the officer with the flash on his camera the bronx d.a.'s office has dispelled ackerman's account however after photographic evidence determined that the photographer did not use a flash and didn't even have a flash on his camera at the time now if convicted on the top charges our command would lose his job and could face up to seven years in prison here to talk about the case against ackerman and discuss the best policies for civilian officer interaction is steve selman executive director of flex your rights hayden steve i'm doing well if you have me on now let's start up with david entered how did they

discover that ackerman was fabricating his police report before we get to the first thing i want to mention and bring up is the fact that this sort of police abuse intimidation and violence is something that journalists in russia today are all too familiar with and this is something that whether it's the russian government u.s. law enforcement agents or anywhere any time they use these sorts of tactics against citizens who are simply trying to cover what their their governments are doing and record it especially when it's simply in public that's unconscionable and it needs to stop now with is specific to this case how did they discover that ackerman had fabricated his story i will since i'm here to talk about united states i'll talk about how to assert flex your constitutional rights while recording police in the united states no respect with this ackerman case was interesting because they simply found a discrepancy with the photograph apparently the officer claimed that. that they're

pretty used to flash photography though in fact they were quickly able to look and see that this was not true so the officer was clearly lying and the days where police officers can get away with with this sorts of abuse and straight up lying those days are simply over because cameras are now everywhere now is this case unusual in the sense that the officer was called out on his report and for his lie it is unusual and a positive thing that the officer is being held to account for his actions all too often people will see video of police doing agree just things in the officer simply gets to be away on leave and ultimately retains his or her job in this case this is setting a very strong message and it's up to police leadership to send this message that whenever police officers violate the law that they will be held accountable as far as the law will allow and how often do we see officers exaggerating on their police

reports or even outright line very regularly and so it's increasingly so where you simply police naturally it's not surprising that they are intimidated when when people are recorded they're sort of not used to feeling like celebrities and haven't pop or see taking their picture recording all the time so i can understand identify with that so they can they don't want to have another account of what happened they would rather it be exactly what they remember and what they say whether it's fabricated or not but with the recording it's impossible for a police officer to a lie about what happened the fact is when police are being recorded and when citizens are being recorded there's a new program in california where police have little cameras the number of police incidents and complaints it just drops you know like eighty percent because the citizens are going to be on their best behavior of course police are going to act within according to the law and are able to do their job just fine while remaining

within the law now as an average civilian. what can we do to make sure that the police are held accountable to the reports that they do and basically the truthfulness into their interactions with us the most i think technology in this is my camera right here and so imagine if i walk into somewhere there's a police encounter happening maybe i see a traffic in sin or something like that no one record it and putting in my past code very important to have a pass code to protect your phone. number and do have actually when you know when you're in that position you're going to you want to train yourself to do this because you're going to be shaking a little bit i'm hitting my kick it's called cue i case a great out and i'm recording this right now you want to turn your phone this way so you get in the vertical video and this is recording right now offsite so if you're a police officer and you don't like the fact that i was recording you right now you might want to snatch this out of my hand but if i'm getting a feeling about to do that i just turn the phone off i didn't turn it off i should put it to sleep and this is that automatically is uploading also it's my own i set my account to private and so you could take this you could smash it and i'm going

to have that recording to show to my lawyer wow now do you think that high quality recording devices that they've made officers more accountable obviously they have to be if they're being recorded but just in general the idea that these are more prevalent today's world that they've made officers more accountable for their actions when they're doing police work i think i salute lynn and i want to get into medical called seven rules for recording police you can find it through the flex your rights or website to really lay out exactly how you want to present yourself and exactly what you can do and how to use your technology in order to successfully record the police while reducing the likelihood of a bad incident happening that is the seven hundred thirty seven of the let's hear it only in the first thing that everyone needs to understand first is that you always have the right to openly record on duty police officers no matter what about these bad laws and in illinois and massachusetts the courts there have ruled them unconstitutional so first things first you need to understand you always have the

right to record on duty police off. so you give us the top three we got to just. well you always want to flex your rights too so police are asking for your id officer there my friend you go i don't need to show you my id and my under arrest ok officer i don't consent to any searches more tips like this. or you know i wish we could hear more we're going to have to have you back to have you back to fill us in on all seven but that was the silberman executive director of rights thank you steve thank you have. the highest officials of ohio's justice department are under fire today this after it was discovered that for more than two months state law enforcement have been using facial recognition technology without informing the public now on monday ohio attorney general mike de wine and mounts that the state's facial recognition system has access to an entire database of driver's license photos in addition to mug shots now the database has already performed twenty six hundred searches since its launch on june second and this is to muse's features

that are designed to analyze a snapshot or security camera image and then identify the person in that photo by matching it to his or her driver's license or police mug shot at least twenty six other states have similar identification systems already in place which was de wine's reasoning behind why he did not inform the public about the launch of his state's new system now officials also disagree about whether the system was in beta testing or fully launched. montana state representative danielle zona cough is one of the youngest legislators in the country he is also one of the most effective when it comes to protecting the privacy of his constituents are to web producer andrew blake tells us why his own macof is worth making note of when it comes to privacy the piece of technology we consider vital to the conduct over everyday perth one professional life although smartphone happens to be

a combination phone listening device location tracker and hidden camera we already know that the government is collecting sensitive information from the e-mails to your mom to the texts and calls to a significant other it's not that easy to escape the eyes and ears of the federal government on the local level however some people are looking to change that enter one of the youngest elected lawmakers in america i'm doing is on top of a mystery representative of the montana republican daniels' own a cough has made it his mission to keep government intrusion at bay or at least that's his ultimate goal only twenty six he's already proposed a number of initiatives focusing on montana residents right to privacy earlier this year he drafted legislation that requires the police to obtain search warrants and prove probable cause before obtaining a location data from cell phone service providers and even those on the cough is a newcomer in elected politics he's already making a difference any time your cell phone is on it transmits a signal to a local tower that can coordinate your precise location often within inches

throughout most of the u.s. law enforcement doesn't need a warrant to get this info thanks to cough montana was the first state to require probable cause that a bill basically. force persons use a search warrant to get soap on the christian nation so we're talking about policy and privacy and you were the two with the road that sounds simple enough but the force on the cost legislation and the entity with the right paperwork could go to a telecom provider like the rise in eighteen t. or any other cell phone carrier and request location data off in the address. even without ever needing to show probable cause once that info was collected it can be used to do a lot more than just pinpoint a location in two thousand and ten a federal appeals court ruled a person who knows all of another's travels can deduce whether he is a weekly church goer a heavy drinker a regular at the gym a unfaithful husband an l. patient receiving medical treatment an associate of particular individuals or political groups and not just one such fact about a person but all such facts as only cough found out though that information is

relatively easy to collect now that montana has become the first state in the nation mandating that police prove probable cause he hopes his message of privacy spreads and it's important for us the country because i'm using the past everywhere else i wrote that every state usually doesn't start with new legislation they see so most do it and copy it the states of maine in new jersey have passed nearly identical pieces of legislation following montana's lead and according to zona cough there are much bigger issues at stake so we're going to always try to see no games in security or is the balance we're going to say we give up all rights of all security now we have no right to actually live our lives so why don't we just want to be sacrificed that's real question and that's the biggest concern i think we have we cannot keep giving up rights seeing that we don't even know what security is in place when we give up our rights there's no transparency that's really the biggest concern of everybody not a safety but where's it going how is it being used and can it one day be using correctly i'll tell you what intent in government is always great but it tends to

always be misled and used the wrong way in recent weeks the fifth circuit court of appeals ruled that federal agency not apply for third fourth on the local level that doesn't hold true question now is will more states continue this trend reporting from washington and replace our t.v. . elsewhere any effort to provide more information about government requests for user data facebook has followed in google's lead and released its first ever transparency report and for many it probably. comes as no surprise to learn that the u.s. makes dramatically more requests for data than any other country in the first six months of twenty thirteen the u.s. made between eleven and twelve thousand requests for user data india came in second with three thousand two hundred forty five requests followed by the u.k. with one thousand nine hundred seventy five the united states was also the leader in the number of user accounts it requested the requests covered everything from basic subscriber information to ip address address logs to actual account content

now facebook provided additional data on the different types of accounts the requests targeted and it looks like the united states sure likes facebook. locking up inmates is not cheap that much has always been clear taxpayers have to front the cash for public defenders prison staff inmate medical expenses facility costs and the list goes on but a new report of new york city's jail system reveals just how expensive a prison stay really is in fact rikers island just so happens to be one of the most expensive it neighborhoods and all of new york city now according to the report by the city's independent budget office the city spent an average of one hundred sixty seven thousand dollars per inmate in two thousand and twelve bringing the total cost of the jail to just over two billion dollars now it should be mentioned that eighty three percent of the jail costs go to employee wages and benefits and yes new york city apartments are notoriously tiny but still one hundred sixty seven

thousand dollars for a nine by five jail cell tops the charts in order to offset the prisoner costs one jail in tennessee thinks it might have found a solution it's called pay to stay and it actually is and if he sees that it's exactly what the title suggests now prisoners at the anderson county jail in clinton tennessee will pay for just about everything they use nine dollars fifteen cents for pants six dollars twenty six cents for a blanket and a dollar twenty five per tell heck it's even twenty nine cents for a roll of toilet paper but the idea hit here is that it will save the taxpayers money the problem is that many people being held in prison do not come from money they also face court fees and many child support they might have to pay restitution to the victims as well and plus many of the prisoners in jails have yet to be convicted of any crime and if the person doesn't pay the prison officials say nothing happens to them meaning the idea of having prisoners pay might be

a good one in theory but it is not entirely practical. and now to virginia where one inmate is seeking a state paid sex change operation u.s. district court judge james turk is scheduled to hear a case of ophelia dillo into the judge has previously dismissed the inmates filed lawsuit in two thousand and eleven after concluding that the virginia department of corrections was adequately treating the launch as gender identity disorder now belong to was born michael a stokes and has served thirty years of a seventy three year sentence for bank robbery in the prison system the disorder i recognised as a mental diagnosis in which people believe that they were born the wrong sex now to low to has been receiving hormone therapy and psychiatric counseling in the men's prison however delong to argues that to nine her sex assignment surgery is a violation of her eighth amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment the surgery would cost twenty thousand dollars the case did get overturned in january when a three judge panel determined her claim was protected by the constitution the case

comes at a time when chelsea manning formerly known as bradley manning is calling on military courts to allow her access to hormone treatments in order to address a similar gender identity disorder i marinate we'll see you back here at five pm. technology innovations all the developments around russia. the future covered. wealthy british scientists and. the tireless. markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with mike's cars or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines two kinds of reports. claimed. it was a. very hard to take a look once again there is a pattern that has sat with the hair plugs. calling. those. lists

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