coming up on our t.v. julia sobs the man behind wiki leaks remains in london's ecuadorian embassy but he's not staying silent from the n.s.a. leaks to much more arts he was able to interview the world renowned leaker that exclusive conversation just and according to a new report the obama administration has invoked a chilling effect on the freedom of press from the d.o.j. tracking the phones of journalists for the prosecution of whistleblowers concerns for press freedom are growing more on that coming up and it's the eleventh day of the government shutdown but the standoff between republicans and democrats continues republicans are pushing for a short term raise of the debt ceiling but obama demands no strings attached before saying yes to the deal the latest on this cold dead co-op deadlock later in the show.

it's friday october eleventh five pm in washington d.c. i'm aware of david and you're watching r t we begin today with an exclusive r.t. interview with whistleblower julian assange artie's sister spanish channel sat down with the wiki leaks founder in london a son she was granted asylum by ecuador last year has been waiting in the country's embassy in london for safe passage in the interview a song shared his thoughts on a number of issues talking specifically about the n.s.a. scandal and the relationship wiki leaks has had with former u.s. government contractor edward snowden artie's eva golinger has more. here at the embassy of ecuador in london he affirmed that exceptionalism that brock obama president the united states is defending is merely an excuse to be involved the last something used by nations such as united states with power to subordinate

others assigns also alerted to the necessity of developing sovereign technology and sovereignty in general in order to defend nations against the mass surveillance an espionage program of the united states that violates human rights and certain rights under international law look when that whenever you see a president talk about exceptionalism what he's trying to say is there are rules of civil behavior. doesn't apply to him. whether that's invading another country whether that's abusive laws. in relation to. barack obama's use of the espionage act against alleged journalistic sources. and journalists. that's something you see it's very important that people understand it that this is not just a bit more saying it's

a radical change. barack obama has prosecuted more people under the espionage act will journalistic sources and the espionage act than all previous presidents combined going back to nine hundred seventeen in fact he's prosecuted double the number so this is a deliberate conscious decision by the white house to create a chilling effect using the espionage act as opposed to some other mechanism he also thanked the russian government for giving asylum to edward snowden the whistleblower and former n.s.a. contractor and he thanked the countries of ecuador venezuela bolivia for offering asylum to snowden and also giving support and asylum to assign himself saying that they are the few nations amongst the few nations that had the courage to stand up to us power and aggression in terms of those nations that stepped forward it was left america and russia and not all of latin america either but in the square they

believe you and they quit or show you keen interest. that was our tease eva golinger speaking with juliana songe if you ever take a visit to the white house web page and type in government transparency you'll find a memo from president obama declaring his policy on open government he states government should be transparent transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their government is doing now while that's obama stated intentions his actions speak a little louder than words according to a report released yesterday by the committee to protect journalists president obama has fallen short of its promise to report details how the administration has been curbing routine disclosures of information and how the aggressive prosecution of leakers under the espionage act has created a chilling effect on potential government sources under the obama administration six government employees and two contractors including edward snowden have been charged under the espionage act that's compared to just three such prosecutions in

all previous u.s. administrations combined i was joined earlier by both the host and producer of breaking the set abby martin and men well below they shed some light on this discrepancy and talk a little bit more about the report's findings i started out by asking abby what she thinks have been the most egregious policies set forth by the obama administration while i was a little surprised to see this report coming out from the c b j because this is an organization that for the last thirty years has been really focused on war zones and journalists being killed in the line of fire so that for them to kind of take initiative on the home front shows you that there's a really unprecedented move a lot of president trends going on with the obama administration. and really you know the thing that's so tragic about it is that he campaign himself as a transparency president so it's just i think that that's really just so tragic the things that set up the most to me of course as you just mentioned the eight people charge of this archaic a world war one piece of legislation designed to prosecute spies under the

espionage act and on top of that you see completely ridiculous seizures of phone records under. stablish mint media organizations a.p. fox news i mean so when you're calling out fox news and a.p. journalists that are actually establishment journalists than you know that something's really in trouble here absolutely i think you hit it right on the mark there are many you know abby mention this but see p.j. does typically focus on war zones on countries that are outside of the united states this is actually the first report that they've done on the status of press freedom in the country in the united states what do you think that says i mean this is an organization an organization c p j that's been around for decades and this is the first year absolutely no issues on that i just would add the so this is absolutely unprecedented is focused on worsens countries and not just worsens become trees where it's actually very just dangerous in general to be a journalist for political reasons places like honduras egypt syria where these are regarded some of the most dangerous countries in the world to be drilled so why the

united states well that what that signifies at least to me from a journalistic point of view is the actual shift that we've taken from the bush administration to the obama administration were under bush what journalists were getting were getting were mere threats of like hey look we're not going to be persecuting you but you better stop doing this under obama that's all become a reality and like abby mentioned a people person cuter in the espionage act that's absolutely unprecedented this includes people like edward snowden and. the other folks as well but i mean i just want to read you one quote this is from jane mayer from the new yorker who said it's a huge impediment to reporting and so chilling isn't quite strong enough it's more like freezing the whole process so really what this shows you is that the obama administration may very well be the worst when it comes to press freedoms since the nixon years and it's amazing how many reporters came out in this report and really talked about how they've never covered a presidency you know with more secrecy and so that's that was really amazing but you mentioned edward snowden abbie i wanted to talk to you about him because he was

the latest whistleblower charged under the espionage act of course. he's not in the united states so he won't be tried at least not not yet what kind of effect would you say that snowden and the entire n.s.a. scandal has really had on the public's perception of their privacy their right to privacy well how sad is it that we have whistleblowers seeking asylum in russia and journalists who are covering the leaks hiding out in brazil and their partners in berlin i mean that's the state of the world today where they can't even reside in this country because of the fear of being persecuted it completely blew the lid off everything and it's something that we've known for a long time since nine eleven we kind of knew the overreach of the patriot act but really we didn't realize how far it went and even though we've been saying that for years and years we didn't have the proof in our hands so edward snowden really blew the lid off everything everyone in the entire country knows that not only are we being spied on not only is our meditative being collected but it reaches far beyond just the borders of this country and goes to spying on people in brazil with no

constitutional protections whatsoever sharing this data with israel and other allies of the u.s. so i think we are in a state of shock still recovering from the fact that we've kind of had all of our beliefs consolidated and confirmed i think it was a really pivotal moment but many i wanted to ask you about you know the administration's defense of this what they say is that you know we have for every four year request set that has been submitted to the government we have released that information we've been we've been as transparent as we can possibly be and i think that their reaction has been you know pretty pretty fair i guess so what do you think do you think the administration should be getting any kind of credit for the for this absolutely no i think that it's ridiculous and i think that the actual term that the users like we've been very speedy when it comes to this with the world they choose to use a speedy i don't know what method of time calculation they're using from the state department alone to get financial records from the previous secretary of state

hillary clinton it takes upwards of a year to get information that's from the state department let alone the intelligence agencies like this. b i n n a say who will constantly be bouncing back and forth oh you know this is an order of sticks you're going to need to do this for requests from from n.s.a. and this is like oh you know what we did away with those records you going to have to go check with the archives so i think it's really if they're touting this is absolutely wrong it's terrible for them to say that oh you know we're being very very speedy and another thing that the obama administration is guilty of is overclassification so when you get your hands on a four year request half that stuff you can't even read because things that may not even be a matter of national security are now of a sudden over classified and that has a chilling effect of its own for government employees to say look we're not sure whether or not this is a gray area where this is classified or not classified so we're just not going to talk to you so that's having its own effect as well absolutely and abbie we know that this is not just about government sources anymore we know that journalists are being targeted it calls into question another really controversial obama policy the

n.d.a. the indefinite detention clause of the n.d.a. can you talk about that provision a little bit and just how it sort of feeds into this this whole thing yeah i think that's why people are so concerned because we've seen this move a really agree just move on part of the obama signing into law the national defense authorization act section ten twenty one which authorize the indefinite detention of people who are and associated force with al qaeda or terrorists and we already know that that term is so general so subjective that it can really be anyone in journalist chris hedges tried to sue the administration by saying hey i've been in bed with what you call a terrorist what you do in tears and i can be indefinitely detained by the military with no hate. i mean we're talking about a policy that goes back centuries magna carta i mean this concept of be having due process and a fair trial is so foundational to democracy and to just free freedom and i think that that's just very terrifying when you see that coupled end with the war on whistleblowers in the war on the press. that was abby martin host of

breaking the set and man rob lowe the producer for breaking the set. and another news of fiscal deadlock between the white house and g.o.p. officials continues with a partial government shutdown now in its eleventh day and with less than a week to go before the treasury department runs out of money to pay the government's bills president obama has been urging congressional republicans to end the gridlock that has overtaken washington and crippled the country late yesterday house republican leaders met with president obama regarding a plan they proposed suggesting a short term debt limit increase that would last for about six weeks the white house has hinted that that new proposal is seriously being considered particularly if it means an end to the government shutdown this morning about twenty house republicans and majority leader eric cantor gathered to talk about the possibility of quickly reopening the government but only if there is a commitment by obama to take significant deficit reduction steps however the

president has asked for a short term debt limit increase with no conditions attached and he continued to press his case today in a meeting with senate republicans while there is no definitive deal at this point lawmakers are saying that this six week proposal is the greatest sign of progress since the government shutdown went into effect and vocals in the nation's capital say progress can't come soon enough congress controls all of districts appropriations and that means the city has been caught up in this national political fight to discuss the latest on the hill and how it affects washington d.c. i was joined earlier by senator paul strauss he's the u.s. shadow senator for the district of columbia i started off by asking him if he felt optimistic that we're nearing a resolution you know i'd like to be but the information i'm getting is that they're still pretty far apart i don't think it's unreasonable to expect that the government be open that the government pay its bills before we begin to debate about the great issues of. our day this. it's an outrageous tactic by congressional

republicans to hold the entire government hostage and particularly a turning my constituents in the district of columbia even worse because although we've been able to keep the d.c. government open temporarily we're about to run out of money and the consequences for city residents are going to be much greater than those around the country can you talk a little bit more about that how is this fiscal deadlock really affecting your d.c. residents of to quell all locally raised tax dollars has to be appropriated by congress that's wrong it shouldn't be that way we should be treated like every other state locality our local money should be our local money but the rules say that congress controls our budget and when they can't open up the federal government and pass an appropriations bill the city budget gets tied up in that now our mayor has decided not to close the government by declaring all d.c. government workers essential we've run the city very well we have a strong budget surplus but we're dipping into those savings to keep the government open and it wasn't designed to pay day to day operations it was

a rainy day fund and certainly it's raining today both metaphorically and in actuality but we're going to run out of money and unlike other situations where tourists can't go to parks or passports might not be issued the impact is very severe we have health clinics they're going to be forced to close because our medicaid funds are inaccessible mentally ill people can't get their medication life threatening illnesses are going to go untreated we have public charter schools are going to be forced to close that's not happening in the fifty states so what we really need the congress to do while they work out this national disaster is free d.c.'s budget from this ridiculous deadlock and allow the city to stay open sir and as i'm sure you know a couple of days ago mayor vincent gray you know dropped in on a press conference been given by senate majority leader harry reid to express that very concerned let's take a look at that really quickly. the government we have i don't know i was trying to be able to say. your side. says senator reid says i'm

on your side don't screw it up first well what does that even mean and was that response enough for you well i was right there so it was. it was certainly a memorable moment i don't know what senator reid meant exactly by that that you had to senate democrats have been on the district side in these fights with the federal government but we're getting a little frustrated because it's a lot like the fire department coming to your house and starting to tell you a story about how many times they've put fires out or rescue people in times past when we're saying look this house is about to burn down you need to do something now senator reed is a friend he's a supporter of d.c. stated and he has the job of trying to keep the entire country on track we respect his position and we're grateful for his help but we really need the district to be treated differently because we are different we're not an agency of the federal government and we don't belong in the middle of this federal shutdown mess well let's take a look at some numbers washington d.c.

has tapped one hundred forty four million dollars contingency reserve fund to keep thirty two thousand district employees working during the shutdown on october fifteenth the ninety eight million dollars payroll for these workers is due what happens when this contingency runs out of money we really don't know that is something that we didn't plan on nobody expected that congress would be this irresponsible and allow the shutdown to continue in the last government shutdown the district was exempted from the consequences locally within five days it's been many more days than that now that contingency fund was not designed to fund day to day operations for long term periods and unlike the fifty other states this is serious serious consequences to people's health to people's safety trash won't be picked up yeah it'll be fun no parking tickets for a few days but that's going to get old fast as the garbage begins to pile up in fact right now it's the district government is picking up trash and national parks to avoid a public health calamity. i don't know what's going to happen when trash doesn't

get picked up in the rest of the city when health clinics are forced to close when public charter schools are forced to close the consequences are going to spiral out of control and he and the house republicans have passed a bill to allow d.c. to spend its locally raised tax dollars but reid has not yet brought this to a vote do you feel like there's a disconnect between the needs of your constituents and the national there is a fundamental misunderstanding amongst many senators that this is not a federal appropriation this is a local government that's trying to spend locally raise dollars it's the same time let's not give the republicans too much credit they're being a little cute here they sent a bunch of bills across they're trying to reopen the government piecemeal we know we can't let that happen if we begin on a national level to start passing piecemeal c.r.'s some of the government's never going to open we're never going to have any p.a. again fighting environmental polluters we're never going to have people taking on. consumer fighting for consumers so there's plenty of agencies that the republicans

would love to keep shut down the entire government when it opens up as to reopen up but at the same time there's ample precedent for treating the district of columbia differently we are not an agency of the federal government our mayor is right the people of d.c. deserve to be have our budget free from this dysfunction and let's hope that these residents do indeed get what they deserve thank you so much for joining me paul strauss as chata senator representing the district of columbia thank you so much. last week federal prosecutors brought charges against thirteen people for allegedly helping hacker group anonymous carry out a string of cyber attacks in two thousand and ten and today the u.s. pushed forward with an arraignment of a few of those indicted the defendants are being accused of taking part in something called operation payback a group of attacks that took place between september two thousand and ten and january of two thousand and eleven and which anonymous initiated denial of service attacks on websites of major credit card companies recording industry trade groups and even a member of the rock band kiss the indictment against these individuals states

operation payback targeted victims worldwide including governmental entities trade associations individuals law firms and financial institutions which anonymous claimed opposed its stated philosophy of making all information free for all including information protected by copyright laws or national security considerations our very own andrew blake was at one of the arraignment hearings in virginia this afternoon and joins me now there was a little bit more andrew thank you so much for coming on the show give us a little history first of all operation payback this technically all went down last week we can you give us a brief history started back in late twenty's as you were saying earlier and it's very similar to a couple other operations have been waged by alleges members of anonymous in the past but the bare bones of it pretty much are a group of people. who knows how many you know a handful were indicted and hundreds or thousands may have participated in this

movement where they decided to target the websites of either corporations or government offices or any sort of entity that was litigating and trying to take down other people who were allegedly infringing on copyrighted material. missing a lot of people involved in free information movement information activists and stuff like that generally oppose copyright law you know states puts restrictions on . knowledge and hampers in innovation really. so during the course of a couple of weeks in a couple of months members of anonymous took down the websites for the chording institute association of america the motion picture association of america the us copyright office handful of others gene simmons from kiss his website was targeted because he was on a very pro copyright law and he was became a target numerous times throughout the course of this operation and it came and went and it ended in like you said january two thousand and eleven and now lo and

behold more than two and a half years later we're seeing an indictment unsealed and today the arraignment of a couple individuals well what they're using the terminology denial of services and how how do you distinguish that from i guess cyber attack or well it's not hacking for sure why not hack it would a distributed denial of service attack or sword some people have equated it as a form of digital protest know what it pretty much does is it sends a bunch of traffic to a website now let's say that so what let's say there's a website you don't like what's what's your what's your what's what's your favorite web site. for me on the spot. at a now i'll just do the one i frequent most google ok of course now google's going to be really hard to do because google is gigantic but what you would do is you would set up a piece of software called low orbit ion can and it's a custom made software that's distributed for free around the world super easy to use and you type in google dot com in there and you push a button and your computer starts sending ever quest to google just as if you were

to go to google dot com in your regular browser but your computer is going to send this request again and again and again and again and again again again again and again and if you have enough people doing this now with google but if you do it with a smaller let's say the the n p a or you know where these other sites that were legitimately targeted or gene simmons' website which i'm sure is awesome you overloaded with traffic and legitimate users if you just think of it as like a traffic jam there's too much traffic. and you can't actually access the site so by anonymous targeting these sites with the deed os all they did was kind of just crumble under the traffic in legitimate users were able to access those sites and for waging an attack that did that these individuals are now looking at five years each i want i want to talk a little bit more about them talk about you know what you saw who exactly was arraigned today was a handful of people involved i just came back from alexandria the eastern district court up there i saw the arraignment of two individuals dennis olin collins and

austin stan mr collins is in his early fifty's he is from ohio and he's actually currently the codefendant in a very similar case in which members of anonymous targeted pay pal when pay pal began refusing to process donations for we keep expec in two thousand and ten and that spread for a little while in that case itself the paper fourteen as they're called there's fourteen offense in that case that's been going on for two and a half years now and still has a better result so i think that's really significant because we're looking at you know this indictment here for the payback the payback thirteen or fourteen too many of them but the new case we're dealing with right now for all we know this could also take another two and a half years you know perhaps way longer and then mr stan. appeared to be in his early to mid twenty's he's from kansas and just showed up today said a couple of words they were both arraigned twenty five thousand dollars bond

there's a travel restrictions internet restrictions for the individuals and apparently a few others were also arraigned today in court a different room different judge but this case is going to be going on for a while it's a pretty good feeling and a ray of backgrounds from from those that were charged for sure you know this isn't the first time we've seen these charges against online activists how does this really fit into the sort of larger narrative the larger crackdown on hacktivism i mean. it's really difficult to really say if they're if this crackdown is everything that you think it is because there's so many different operations that we don't even understand that are happening we keep in mind that anonymous had been knowingly we're very aware that now this was infiltrated by the f.b.i. at least in two thousand and ten in two thousand and eleven and there is one individual hector msgr. by the alley assad who he worked as an informant for the f.b.i. and helped orchestrate a lot of these operations where the defendants in those cases have been convicted

and have been sentenced to jail around the world masterminded a giant conspiracy while working as an f.b.i. informant so is there really a crackdown it's hard to say because when the government's also creating these hacktivists and then putting them in jail certainly a crackdown if you're just arresting your own people you know there's still people involved in the movement and i don't think as long as people have an internet connection they're going to want to talk about things and they're going to want to do things and if the courts find it a legal well they're going to have to go to court i guess absolutely well thank you so much for coming down we're going to continue following this case we'll have you back on very soon thank you i was our t. web producer web producer excuse me andrew blake. and in a surprise move by the nobel peace prize committee the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons also known as the o.p.c. w. has been named the winner of this year's nobel peace prize the committee announced the award this morning in oslo noting the group's quote extensive efforts to eliminate chemical weapons though it seems odd to award in one is asian instead of

an individual this is in fact the twenty second time that a group has taken the top prize last year the highly coveted award was given to the european union to further explain its decision the committee has said that the conventions and the work of the o.p.c. w. have defined the use of chemical weapons as a taboo under international law recent events in syria where chemical weapons have again been put to use have underlined the need to the efforts to do away with such weapons the nobel committee states that this award was not given as a direct result of the group's efforts in syria however the organization's current work in syria stands as one of the largest endeavors it has taken throughout its longstanding efforts to eradicate chemical weapons worldwide. and now to wall street where of former senior examiner at the federal reserve bank of new york has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit the former employee is carmen sagar

a forty one year old boy or who spent seven months examining goldman sachs legal and compliance divisions while doing so she found that the bank did not have policies in place to prevent conflicts of interest that are required by government regulation however instead of being credited for discovering this lack of oversight she claims she was berated by three new york fed officials who oversee the is to to sions relationship with goldman sachs according to the lawsuit the officials were concerned that the findings might cause a downgrade of the wall street banks regulatory rating for weeks the officials tried to pressure the guard to change her examination findings and when she were a few. they fired her and immediately escorted her from the building in a statement the new york fed responded to the incident by saying that the institution provides quote multiple venues and layers of recourse for its employees to freely express concerns personnel decisions are based exclusively on job

performance and are subject to thorough review we categorically reject any suggestions to the contrary in an interview assert our as lawyer reiterated her client's wrongful termination and added that bank examiners need to be able to operate without fear of retaliation and will continue to follow the story and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered today go to youtube dot com slash r t america and check out our web site r t dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at amir and david see you right back here at eight pm thanks for watching. dramas that big no war two. story others. say since changing the world like. to make sure.

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