coming up on r t on capitol hill the debate continues over u.s. military strikes against syria lawmakers on both side of the aisle have come out against intervention ahead we'll speak with one congressman who says the u.s. needs to stay out of the syrian civil war internet hacktivist very brown and his lawyers are barred from speaking to the media about their case brown has been charged with threatening a federal agent and releasing information that was hacked from the defense contractor for a look at the media gag coming up. and a battle is brewing between the l.a.p.d. and photographers one camera man says that he was just arrested for taking an officer's picture from ninety feet away more on this battle later in today's show.

well it's thursday september fifth five pm in washington d.c. i'm maggie lopez and you are watching r.t. starting off this hour president obama is in st petersburg russia at the g. twenty summit today the topic on everyone's mind what to do about the crisis in syria a number of world leaders attending the summit have already made up their minds on what they want to be done it will be up to president obama to sway the minds of those who are still undecided now back here at home while makers on capitol hill are in a very similar position both the house and the senate the senate remain in a deadlock about whether the u.s. should in fact use military action and this is not a partisan issue congress members on both sides of the aisle have come out for intervention a number of others have come out against the idea now one of the strongest opponents of military action is congressman alan grayson he's

a democrat from florida and he has promised to whip his fellow lawmakers into voting against any action in the country and he joined me earlier to explain why he feels so strongly about this issue. well first of all it's not our responsibility doesn't involve any vital united states national security interests secondly i won't do any good third it's expensive at a time when we're suffering enormous deficits and forth it's dangerous that could easily spin out of control regarding a whipping efforts they're extremely successful the washington post just updated its with list found that in the middle of among the four hundred thirty five members of the house only twenty of them have now declared that they are in favor of resolution against this one hundred eighty three so we're closing in on the magic number of two hundred seventeen when you have a majority of the house that indicates it will vote against the president's resolution in addition to that the public response has been overwhelming many members both democratic and republican have indicated that e-mails and letters to their office are running

a hundred to one against intervention in syria militarily and in addition to that our web site that we've created called don't attack syria dot com has in no time attracted forty thousand signatures that's quite impressive now what you have just said and you've also said in numerous other media outlets that you believe that this is not our problem and that the u.s. is not the world's police so let me ask you who should be dealing with this problem the way that we've seen this with over and over again is through international bodies whether it's the united nations sometimes nato the international court of justice in the hague and so on we have multilateral means to deal with multilateral problems if in fact an international law is being violated there's procedures to deal with that but we don't allow international laws for one country acting alone to attack another country for virtually any reason at all except for self-defense and in this case no americans have died in the syrian civil war none of our allies have been attacked in the syrian civil war there's no case for self-defense and

congressman i can't help but to notice your time with peace signs on it now you are not the only person who is opposed to the idea of intervention pope francis sent a letter to the g twenty summit today begging the nation. come together and find a solution that avoids more death and destruction and then there's this rebels have taken over a small christian village called ma lao was in this is location is a world heritage site because it is one of the last places where people speak aramaic which is believed to be the language that jesus spoke now all news for a jihadist fighters are reportedly patrolling the streets there and many are worried that they could start killing christians there's also words coming out about these rebel groups actually fragmenting so what does this say about the conflict in the country do we even know who we are supporting at this point well it's becoming difficult still there without a scorecard the war's been going on for two years it's been a civil war up to this point but now it's becoming a proxy war between crazy sunni fundamentalists and crazy shiite fundamentalists

and we don't have a dog in that fight now let me ask you if the u.n. jumped on board with military action would you agree to it then well it depends upon the circumstances but i will say one of the primary objectives here is to make sure that america doesn't have to undertake burden or unfair to americans if something is not our responsibility alone and multinational forces step forward to take care of that that's a different story that hasn't happened currently is not going to happen and what about the idea of arming the rebels further if that was to prevent the u.s. from firing missiles would you agree to that well if the choice came down to one or the other in other words attacking a foreign country with u.s. military equipment versus arming rebels certainly arming rebels is the lesser of two evils. now you are an adamant opponent of the iraq war a wall street journal article i was reading about you back in two thousand and six six describe you as a fierce critic with bumper stickers on the back of your car saying bush lied and

people died on your law firm grayson inclusively worked on numerous cases of whistleblowers claiming that there was fraud by iraq contractors do you see any comparisons between. syria and iraq well there is one comparison which is when the case for war against iraq was made the administration went way out of its way and then talk of the bush administration to monopolize the conversation to the point of actually suppressing a u.n. report that raised questions about the administration's intelligence here what we're seeing is that the obama administration is doing what it calls flooding the field in other words tries to monopolize the conversation for dominate the discourse and provide only information in favor of an attack to members of congress and to the public i think that's unfortunate there's always two sides to the story when you talk about war and peace the public and congress definitely here is there to hear about both sides and president obama certainly providing that opportunity should we make something of the fact that donald rumsfeld just went on c.n.n.

this morning and said that he's actually against action in syria because it doesn't go far enough. well my goodness you know i had to think that i would ever agree on anything with donald rumsfeld but he was right about one thing in this case the great unknown on knowns from cells one said there are known knowns known unknowns unknown known and unknown unknowns the only thing you can be sure of when you're talking about war is that you can't be sure of anything and he deserves credit in that regard now in may two thousand and ten you introduced the war is making you poor act which is a bill that would require on the president to fund the wars found the dependent the department of defense is based budget you are also the same person that voted against the d.o.d. appropriations as authorization act and twenty fourteen so tell me how money plays into this well the people understand very well that's why we've had forty thousand people come to our web site don't attack syria and why there's been such an outpouring on the part of people who simply want peace we've heard over and over

again even from the proponents of this resolution that the american people are tired of war and understandably so the war in iraq cost america four trillion dollars four trillion. that's thirteen thousand dollars for every single man woman and child in the country it cost us one one tenth almost one tenth of our entire national wealth and for what for what there weren't even any weapons of mass destruction there so i think the american people understand that we should concentrate on our own health care concentrate on jobs concentrate on improving our economy concentrate on housing construct an education we can't afford to spend a billion dollars going off and being the world's policeman much less the world's judge jury and executioner now congressman you are a member of the foreign affairs committee as well as the middle east and africa subcommittees so in your experience being on both of those committees can you talk does the u.s. have a very good grasp on what is going on in the region and in terms of tribal.

differences and also in terms of sectarian violence well obviously our government does its best we spend fifty billion dollars a year on so-called intelligence that's the n.s.a. the cia and so on so we certainly do our best to learn about this but sometimes there are unknown unknowables there are things you can't possibly know or understand one of those is what the future would bring if in fact we conducted this attack there are so many ways that this can go wrong for us there are so many ways this could end up in the loss of enormous amounts of taxpayer money and american blood and that's why we can't just leap into this and assume they'll be no response whatsoever that assad will just take a pounding and somehow like it and since you brought it up i can't help but ask you about the n.s.a. and what's going on right now i do think that the syrian conflict is a distraction from the the overarching n.s.a. surveillance technique it's far worse than that we are three weeks away now from the government shutting down ted includes the defense department we are five weeks

away now from the government running out of money when we reach our debt limit and it's appalling to me that in this circumstance in these times we spend two or three or more. weeks deciding whether we should conduct what is left wing we refer to as a humanitarian war and he made that point clear very very clearly with different media outlets that you've had that humanitarian war just don't seem to go together congressman alan grayson a democrat from florida thank you so much for joining me thank you and as i mentioned before president obama is in st petersburg russia at the g. twenty summit he's there with leaders from france germany the u.k. turkey and a host of other nations now syria is obviously the main issue to be dealt with today leaders took an opportunity to discuss their views on the crisis and how it should be handled from or from the summit here is artes and he said no way. well day one here at the g. twenty summit wraps up with

a working dinner where host president putin said the leaders would talk about the syrian conflict it became very clear on the first day of the summit that most of the economies here at the summit in st petersburg were one way or another against military intervention in syria it's almost easier to name the countries that are blatantly supporting military intervention the u.s. of course turkey saudi arabia the u.k. not quite clear because of course david cameron spoke about support for it but then didn't receive the vote needed at home to join in and actually. support president obama in any kind of military intervention a lot of the economies including the e.u. have spoke out very clearly about being against military intervention saying that a political solution is the only way including germany italy very optimistic that the g. twenty could possibly be the last format to find some kind of political solution so if president obama was hoping that he would leave st petersburg with more support

for this intervention it might not be the case here on day one of the brics brazil russia india china south africa also met on the sidelines of this meeting some of those emerging economies perhaps a little disappointed that it wasn't so much the economy that was front and center at least on day one against syria was discussed at that meeting but also the recent revelations of course brought to the world by whistleblower edward snowden that many of these countries were being spied on and spokesperson said that the brics countries basically a lion this electronic snooping with terrorism and a violation of their their national security brazil expecting some kind of apology even from the united states for spying on them so certainly the mood here in st petersburg on day one a very tense one possibly day two and after we hear of what exactly came out of this working to enter. kind of perhaps a debate specifically in terms of syria were put on the table whether or not any

questions were demands were made of evidence of that alleged chemical weapons attack on august twenty first that will all come out on day two here at the g. twenty in st petersburg that was artie's and this is now way. well internet privacy activist barrett brown came on r.t. america numerous times in the past to speak his mind he also worked with hacktivist groups like anonymous he spoke out on issues from the trial of p.f.c. manning to cyber attacks but now a federal court has approved of a media gag order on brown and his attorneys pending his trial the thirty two year old has been in federal custody for about a year now he faces up to one hundred years in prison for a number of charges for his alleged role within anonymous but are gag orders like this common and is this is an attempt to prevent the media from covering this case while i was joined earlier by peter ludlow he's a philosophy professor at the northwestern university and i began by asking him if

there was some sort of a precedent for gag orders like this. well i don't know if there's a precedent for gag orders like this the people i've talked to said that this one is a little bit exceptional i'm not an expert in that particular area and how do you know if the how is it exceptional is that just because it's very brown is it because it includes bare brown and his lawyers. well the problem is not that it's just picking out derek brown or the lawyers or whatever but usually when there's a gag order there's actual some tangible threat of poisoning the jury pool or something like that and in this case that that's just preposterous or alternatively there might be some threat to individuals somehow coming out of this but again that's preposterous in this case i mean normally when you think about a gag order you think about a case where. you know like o.j. type case where it's going to be impossible to find a neutral jury but here we're talking about a case where for the most part what

a tenth of a percent of the population has ever heard of barrett brown so it's just ridiculous in this case so as you mention very few people have actually heard of this case can you go ahead of walk us through some of the some of the original arrest warrants an exception and it was up until this point. sure the whole thing started with. barrett brown's project pm which was a web site and a journalism project that he had writing where they would crowd source the investigation of private intelligence companies and what they were up to and the kind of psyops that they ran against the american public and then there was a hack that took place by a kid named jeremy hammond and it was a hack of a private intel company called strategic forecasting annealed and something like five million emails jeremy put those five million emails up on pirate bay somebody anonymous broadcast. the location of that data down to whatever

tens of thousands of individuals. and barrett took that link copied that link and then he pasted it into the chat channel for the ten or twenty individuals that work on project pm for him and because he copied and pasted that link and pointed his editorial board to the data he's been charged with a number of crimes involving various forms of credit card fraud access device fraud etc and all of that because somewhere is seeded in those five million e-mails were some on encrypted credit card numbers and validation codes that's the basic case now does this case have ramifications for journalists and academics especially those who are covering this. yeah absolutely it has tremendous implications for journalists because part of what journalists do is that they when someone comes

out with a story or claims that something is sitting in a in something on line a big database you go and look at it world turn a deadly you might want your colleagues to go and look at it so you could copy and paste a link and say here's a link to this database go and look at it and for journalists now they have to think twice and i know some of my colleagues who are journalist some of my friends who do investigations into this sort of thing they'll say well i actually i'm afraid to post this link i'm afraid to give you the link because i don't want to get b b that is to say i don't want to get bare ground and it's already created a tremendous chilling effect which is presumably you know why it was done now as i mentioned you're a philosophy professor and i know that you've a lot to deal with the active on the ethics of hacktivism what do you think the ethics of have to visit are. well when i teach the ethics of hacktivism the basic idea is to get students to think critically about different things that hacktivists

might do and where they think people might be crossing the line is it when you do denial of service attack or is that when you go in do a kind of intrusion are both of those things on ethical as it were are there certain kinds of leaking things like what bradley manning did is that ethical is it on ethical and the basic idea is to get people thinking critically about hacking and leaking and so forth because we live in a world where students have to confront these they're going to have to confront these issues for the rest of their lives it's about how do you behave and how do you act as a citizen in this this new world where there are all these secrets and ways of getting at those secrets and so forth and that is something that we are all going to be exploring together in this brave new world of internet privacy and with surveillance and whatnot thank you for coming on the show that was peter ludlow he is the philosophy professor at northwestern university. thank you. freelance

photographer sharni has been shooting the sights of los angeles for here is now but he has also been repeatedly detained for doing his job he has never been charged with a crime and in the latest incident police took me to the police station after he photographed them from ninety feet away they say that he interrupted them doing their jobs artie's among the lindo takes a look at the tense relationship between some l.a. cops and photographers. from a photographer i spend a lot of time in hollywood documenting my neighborhood. when shown me began taking photos around los angeles he never thought that his camera would get him into trouble with police there's been a number of times that i've been detained for taking pictures. for all different kinds of reasons most recently he was taken to a hollywood police station after photographing officers from nearly one hundred

feet away. body cameras that anywheres show how far he was from the apartment building police were responding to l.a.p.d. officers were so irritated with nice photography that they went through the trouble of coming down this long driveway hopping into their patrol car which was parked right out here and then driving down the street just to confront me officers then drove another half block where they met me here put them in handcuffs when the photographer was interfere with police work and i was handcuffed to a bench interrogation room. invoke my right to mean salary question my lawyer many times all of which were ignored this is not a nice first culture virtual detainment by an l.a. cop and he was taking photos at a subway station when he was confronted by an l.a. county deputy i want to know if you are. just what the sight of you was handcuffed by the deputy who in seemingly to the photographer could be complicit in terrorism

because he was. taking pictures of the subway me has filed a federal lawsuit against department claiming they violated his rights to other photographers are also part of the suit they say they were also detained while taking pictures in public places 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 then there's a case of tyson heater he was violently arrested by the l.a.p.d. during a raid on occupy l.a. the d.'s were police officers can get away with with this sort of abuse and straight up lying those days are simply over because cameras are now everywhere he would be the charges of resisting arrest and assault he is now moving forward with a civil suit against the los angeles police department if you have the right to serve we have a right to dock and then we have the right to share the true me no void so parts of

los angeles for fear of running into overzealous deputies a consequence of what some photographers call of violations of their constitutional rights. in los angeles in the party. all right well it's thursday so it's time for our weekly tech report now do you know the phrase brain power well it turns out that scientists at the university of washington are trying to hone that power and transmit it to another or rain researchers call it direct a brain to brain communication and they do it by passing a signal from one mind to the next using the internet none the less so does that sound a little sigh five star trek mind meld did i mind trick inception esque to you well it did to me too so i brought one of the researchers onto the show to tell me how it works dr andrea still co is an assistant research professor at the university of washington and he told me why this concept is not as weird as it sounds. it's not

so science fiction we printed in technologies to read. the brain patterns in a person and trying to meet them to another person and we can only do it with by simple. impulses right now like most commands to control the hand flying things so if science fiction we will step in the possibility as it goes that we would trust the tried hard so many want a little bit more detail about how specifically it works and what you need from the person and also what you need from wireless internet to make it come together yes it works more or less like this a person sitting on the chair and we coach person the first spring or the sender and is connected to a need to go out they just have the tech said i think i keep it all around to bring and he's capable of recognizing when the brain quadrants doors that a person produces when he's trying to move there i can't always thinking about moving there i can't do very about

a scientific american through there wouldn't control a second computer is connected over the internet and the second computer actually controls a stimulating call it produces when it gets to and he's given it use to it is eventually directed over the head in such a way as to reproduce the particular command selected by the brain in this case the part of the brain that controls the right then. the wireless connection and tourists only medication it into computers it's a computer can be in the same room when connected to think of the other can be in any price of the world and talking to a child. has a very interesting so what do you think the future of this is what kind of things other than moving hanley trying to add to transmit between brains here well that lost a possible development of this technology our main goal was to show that it was possible that we had the technology currently available and you know the technology that we would see so technology can happen but most all stick to us and most imposing that

can be done in that way that you know they see if we don't. why and should you go to keisha about that chosing for the brain for instance. to do actions developing most to get way to control most of the month so that a person can sink more complicated movements like playing the piano or a chair sort of jump or from what they can to get it sorted and they can be used to control another person that doesn't have a sense cues from the same movement and the other way in this technology would be to translate more complex information for a sense information about the people of c.e.o. here to another person's brain now when your colleagues have described this process as quote lending part of your brain to somebody else do you think that this could be helpful is something like maybe medicine where you have someone who has it paralyzed and the other person is telling them to move their hand. it is possible we are additional stickley about. geishas the fact is that from one of those up the cation in the wild the char associated with new or up to

a show or medicine gena we just don't. know so we cannot really gauge what addicting the jacoby house for or east is something that will do iti impossible in this two so we hope it will be but we don't really know how what do you thing overall it is that we are learning are we just learning right now that there's so little that we actually know about the capabilities of the veranda. well the brain is a. quite the bigger mistake fired by these what can we do it is the most complex system that does eyeballs everywhere in the universe probably cracking the code of the banks quite a child and we're learning that for by specific domains we have enough knowledge to start doing something quite useful and. think about us years ago electrons think pieces of information between two brains and we don't know where this would lead and their course the last a problem the splitting the logical sense if it could be so before it is for

something more useful than making a hand up and down but we believe that in the next. year or so maybe dozing or more dozing o.b.'s we'll be able to transfer information is useful like complex abstract information there e interesting dr andrea stocco i'm gonna use my brain to thank you right now thank you meditation is making my you're welcome to you through it thanks to us as a resource i swear at the university of washington thank you so much. all right well normally when you think of hunting licenses coming out of colorado you think about hunting for deer or for game birds or maybe even fishing but what about drone hunting licenses well that's exactly what one man in the small town of deer trail colorado is offering customers this is philip steele he's the founder of professional drone hunters incorporated and also the author of an ordinance that requires people to buy a license before firing their arms at u.a.

these and he's already gotten a lot of interest he sold more than sixty of these licenses online for about twenty five bucks a pop but if you do purchase one of those papers it does not mean that you can just go off willy nilly firing your gun at anything and everything overhead there are rules of course in order to get a license you must be able to read and understand english the drone itself must be flying less than one thousand feet in the air so good luck on measuring that it must be flying over private property and you can only shoot out a drone during the daytime now if you're thinking that selling these licenses is a bit premature you'd be correct the town board is split our know how to issue these and whether they should even issue them and the residents won't vote on the ordinance until early october but mr seale already has one major supporter aiming to get the ordinance passed this is a picture of deer trail mayor frank fields showing off proper or drone hunting

techniques now for the record philip steele says that he has never seen a drone flying on his property and that the move is mostly symbolic the f.a.a. is not laughing though if warned that shooting a u.a.b. could result in a criminal and civil action actually being taken against that gun slinger and by the way i went ahead and printed out my own drone hunting license this one didn't cost me twenty five dollars this would only cost me about ten cents so. oh well i have to see what i what i decide to do with that but that is going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america and check out our website r c dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter for all the things that i find interesting at meghan underscore lopez and don't forget to tweet me and tell me what you think i want to know what you think about the syrian war i want to know what you think about this brain to brain connection there so many things so tweet me and i'll see you right back here at

eight pm. technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future are covered. and. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question or.