to the point that sometimes. hard times. were. coming up on ard t. the n.s.a. leaks firestorm keeps spreading worldwide germany is now demanding answers from washington over its controversial spying program coming up next former presidential candidate and former new mexico governor gary johnson joins me in studio to discuss these latest revelations and speaking of secrets revealed the cia documents indicate that for years the pakistani government has known and endorsed u.s. drone strikes so why is pakistan's prime minister urging president obama at the white house this week to stop these attacks. and you can forget the infamous pepper spray incident on the campus of u.c. davis well that cop behind the k.

mr just got awarded thousands of dollars we'll tell you why. it's thursday october twenty fourth four pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax and you're watching are to it and we begin with another diplomatic fire started by the national security agency today the european union is holding a summit in brussels and one of the topics of discussion will be revelations yesterday the dentist who was listening in on german chancellor merkel's private phone calls yesterday merkel placed a phone call to president obama saying that if these latest spying allegations are true that it's quote completely unacceptable unacceptable and a serious breach of trust germany is just the latest ally of the united states found to be a target of the n.s.a. surveillance edward snowden's leaks have shown that mexico brazil and france and others are all in the n.s.a. is crosshairs as well. the guardian reports today that the n.s.a.

use information from the white house state department and pentagon acquired the phone numbers of thirty five world leaders and monitored their phone conversations as well germany's foreign minister summoned the u.s. ambassador this afternoon to explain the n.s.a. that timothy's also today white house press secretary jay carney tried to dismiss further criticisms against the administration we're not going to comment publicly on every specified alleged intelligence activity and as a matter of policy we have made clear that the united states gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations as i mentioned yesterday the president spoke with chancellor merkel reassured her that the united states is not and will not monitor the chancellor's communications. and we have also said broadly that at the president's direction we are reviewing the way that we gather intelligence to ensure that we properly balance the security concerns of our citizens and allies with the privacy concerns that all people share now for more on

the latest n.s.a. created diplomatic scandal i was joined earlier by lizzie failing head of the roughly newsroom in berlin and i first asked her even though the white house wants this story to go to go away is it going away in germany. well it's very difficult obviously to make it go away i mean it looks like it was the german government who preempted any of the leaks and s.a.e. leaks and came out with the news themselves because obviously looks like it would have been very embarrassing for them to be on the back and has somebody like the spiegel the god you know blame greenwald that come out and says say that merkel's phone was being pat and then for the german government to react against it so it looks like the german government has planted this and said hey we know that we're being spied on and we're not happy about it although it's really difficult to believe that they haven't known about this for a very long time because of course. when the scandal first broke idea this year broke with the news that g twenty leaders which of course includes germany were

being spied on and this is really just a follow on from the the news a couple of months ago that germany is the most spied on country by the usa so it is really very embarrassing here of course germany and u.s. are supposed to be very close allies but then on the other hand it you know is the outrage is also a little bit difficult to believe because we've also seen rabbit revelations that germany was complicit in the end if they spying scandal so how much of this is a p.r. exercise on the part of the german government in order to kind of say face in the face of a general public which is very sensitive about issues of privacy it's really difficult to tell which way you know which which way they've tried to play it and we also have those sort of leaks previously that sure the germany was largely complicit with and the reason for german intelligence was here in europe are massive amounts

of. you have to wonder if a lot of this is talking cheek of merkel. saying that she has to be all rage for the sake of her public the united states saying hey we're not spying just for the sake of it sure. yeah. really but then on the other hand you know. germany and the u.s. are very close in that sense germany is of course the most powerful economy in europe and does also have its own policy which is independent of the u.s. and it is having a changing world in which the u.s. is no longer the only show in town to trade with it cetera and of course it is building up relations increasingly with other economic powers namely russia and china for example which the u.s. obviously sees as a threat to being able to regain its position as the only show in town in the world and in a sense this is just another thing that exposes that what the n.s.a. scandal is all about is not about u.s. national security is the u.s.

government keeps on arguing but it really is about the u.s. trying to always have an advantage politically and economically and that's been shown numerous times throughout the course of this n.s.a. saga of course it's been shown when the u.s. recently was exposed they've been hacking the e-mails of the mexican president and the internal n.s.a. documents showed that that was so that the u.s. could have advantage in political talks and investment decisions and of course that as well when the u.s. was exposed to be spying on brazil and the brazil the huge brazilian energy company this very difficult is becoming increasingly difficult for the u.s. therefore to argue that an essay is about national security when it spying on its friends when is spying on huge international corporations that really it should be trying to shape new relationships with and to. trade with and to cooperate with

but inspects that it's just kind of embarrassing itself more and more will speak to the point. diplomatic fire started all over the place all over the world as a result of the us aspire to. brazilian president dilma rousseff in response to as you mention the spying on petrobras and on her personally canceled a meeting with president obama which could put in jeopardy billions of dollars in defense contracts for the country we heard very strong words coming from elsewhere a lot of america there's a european union summit being held today in brussels what might the diplomatic fallout or economic fallout be with the european union over allegations like this well you know as i said previously it's really difficult to believe that it is including the french the french media and the germany that didn't have a known about this for a very long time so it looks like any kind of outrage is. difficult to judge the how genuine that is and i think if anything. the

european powers kind of accept that you know friends do spy on each other. and carry on doing business as usual and building up their relations with the u.s. competitive is all about the end result seems to be is just more kind of public embarrassment for the u.s. government which is finding it increasingly difficult to claim the moral higher ground in this whole scandal was the feeling of the newsroom at rupp live birdland thank you so much. now staying on the topic of the n.s.a. there are serious doubts that the spy agency's tactics really are keeping america safe on wednesday pro publica called into question claims that have often been repeated by the n.s.a. by members of the administration by members of congress and by members of the media that there is a mass surveillance program has stored at fifty four terrorist attacks pro publica argues there is a lack of evidence to support such

a claim of course having to defend its surveillance programs was something the white house never planned to spend its summer and now fall doing but then edward snowden came along similarly the white house likely didn't anticipate having to defend its drone program to which it's now forced to do after human rights organizations released reports this week accusing the u.s. government of committing unlawful killings with drones in yemen and in pakistan so have the executive branch's activities in the shadows from spying to drone warfare many of which predate president obama now reach a critical tipping point as citizens of the u.s. in the world finally come to realize their scope joining me now to talk about all of this is former presidential candidate and the twenty ninth governor of new mexico it's a very johnson thanks for coming on sam great to be with you and you hit on all of it but i hope we've gotten to a tipping point a little while we have to sit in we've heard over and over again from the white house about this need to balance privacy and security and as this pro publica

report says that sacrificing all this privacy isn't necessarily making us any safer well and where where's the balance when when you've got one hundred i mean we see today one hundred twenty five billion phone calls being monitored when a judge grants a surveillance to authority to n.s.a. to look at a one hundred thirteen million varieties and users and bottom line maybe we've had one act of terrorism and that's really questionable look we're throwing civil liberties out the window this is the basis for this country it is and its importance and it's being. it's horrible it has to stop and you have to wonder if it is actually counterproductive i think it was michael hayden erd keith alexander the current head of the n.s.a. when he's talking about these mass collection programs he says well you need the

haystack to find the needle isn't the question is why you're throwing the needle in the haystack to begin with completely and when you when you have a revelation that angela merkel's phone is being monitored well it isn't just the united states it's a broad also and when you talk about drone strikes look let's wake up to the fact that we're making more enemies because of you we don't just kill the target we kill a lot of innocent civilians every every time these drones launch a missile and it's resulting in more enemies to this country when you have this surveillance going on in the united states it isn't just the united states that. that's looking at this negatively it's the whole world it's looking at this negative in regard to these spying allegations against a homer call and we've heard him about against brazil and mexico and france now what do you make of claims that come from the administration and defenders the

administration that this is a messy world everyone is spying on everyone friends spy on everyone it's just the u.s. that got caught well. i say i say baloney and now you're back to just show me that show me the results of why this world is so much safer for everything that you're doing and that aside look i don't think this is constitutional and and yes you would argue that it is constitutional because a judge rule holds that you can go ahead and garner evidence from one hundred thirteen million verizon users to me that is not the fourth amendment that is not targeted law enforcement that's not a judge looking over some law enforcement shoulder that is a blanket. abuse of of what. and a lot to process should be a lot of members of congress are waking up to that we're seeing momentum building for some n.s.a. reforms there and but there's these two camps you have people like ron wyden and justin amash who want to have very aggressive reforms to rein in the n.s.a.

and you have this other camp of. defenders like dianne feinstein and mike rogers who are looking for more watered down reforms what do you hope to see in the next few months as far as changes coming from congress. to the n.s.a. radical change i mean let's let's rein in the horse and let's not let's not make it any worse so looking at something dramatic and and that's the agenda that i think this country was founded on civil liberties are important let's move on to drones you just briefly talked about them a second ago there are two reports out this week from one from his amnesty international about drone use in pakistan another one from human rights watch about drones and we have a picture of the reports here about the drones in yemen and the both the reports allege that the united states is committing unlawful killings that perhaps even amounts to war crimes do you think the u.s. is committing war crimes with its drone program i do and and it starts right at the

top of the fact that these get ordered in the first place and something that i have maintained you know for years during a presidential campaign look we're making more enemies we don't just get the intended target and who is who is where is the judge and jury when it comes to the intended target we are saying that this is an enemy combatant and with us citizens we've targeted u.s. citizens abroad with drones and. look more enemies to the united states as opposed to less enemies the united states because of this drone program because we're killing hundreds if not thousands of innocent civilians you said this comes from the very top in the administration when president obama took power in two thousand i was elected. office in two thousand and nine there was a lot of criticism leveled at him for not going back and holding people from the bush administration accountable for torture not going back and investigating and prosecuting people from the ministration do you think the next president which

could be you if you decide to run again should go back look at this drone program look at these surveillance programs and actually investigate members of the administration and hold them accountable for what's happened you know one point i said that this should be should be water under the bridge but the more the more i look at this look a crime is a crime. thwarting the law disobeying a law breaking the law should be prosecuted when it comes to drone warfare and when it comes to surveillance the patrolling drones around the world go it well i just want to quickly point out that you know the bush administration the obama administration they're going to believe that they are legally entitled to do this and they're they've got a qadri of lawyers to come to the table to say that in fact everything that they are doing is legal but i say that you could have a qadri of lawyers come to the table to say that this is illegal and that they should stop. these programs they're global in their nature and be on legalities if

they speak to us i think american empire this idea of american empire that these are the tools necessary to make sure that the united states remains the sole superpower in the world as someone who ran to be the leader of the united states are you are you comfortable with the idea that these are the tools necessary to be an empire why not americans ok well should americans be comfortable that of the united states not being a superpower and would you be prepared to break that news to them well i say that the united states can be a superpower but that that the department of defense should actually be the department of defense not often it's and that's that that's all we've been doing we've been militarily intervening in the state of affairs and as a result of the our military interventions i'm going to suggest. that we're a whole lot less safe not more safe we go in we're going to back the good guys in syria well guess what we back the good guys in syria and several months down the

road or several years down the road they're committing the same atrocities that assad is ques of committing today report that he planned some twenty six to iran well we're my plans are is to provide a voice that is not being not being provided for in american politics today and that's just a simple mixture of being a classical liberal it's civil liberties are important military interventions need to stop and let's balance the federal budget governor gary johnson for a moment on that right now moving on the prime minister of pakistan is in washington d.c. this week meeting with president obama now knowing that the washington post published a report showing that top officials within pakistan's government have routinely been briefed on and even endorse the cia drone program in pakistan documents handed over to the post described drone attacks in the tribal regions of pakistan and were labeled to be specifically shared with the pakistani government in addition it's known that pakistan provided use of its air strips during the early days of the

drone bombing campaigns pakistan has seen more than three hundred fifty drone strikes launched within its border since two thousand and four killing more than three thousand people including by some estimates hundreds of innocent civilians while in the united states this week prime minister nawaz sharif has been very critical of u.s. drone strikes the use of goons is not only going to you. what did you do to dignity but also to get treatment to do what is owed to him if which even if you can get it isn't from one country this issue has become image it into nobody a tradition should visit with i would if it's just the need to put it in the druidic acts. despite the rhetoric you just heard there this new report from the washington post shows a new level of cosiness between washington d.c. and islam abad when it comes to the covert drone war. let's talk some tech now we've all relied on wicca pedia one point or another and for the most part we all

trust the site to provide correct information despite the fact that it's an open platform in which practically anyone can make edits wikipedia has become the ultimate source for most questions historical scientific and cultural but is the public relations industry destroying that credibility or number of p.r. firms have sprouted up in recent months promising to boost companies with a pedia profiles one of the agency's wiki p.r. promises to write would compete of pages and manage them for their client in other words turning the online encyclopedia into a marketing catalog so if a company runs in a controversy with the p.r. companies can keep tabs on the entry to make sure that controversy doesn't make it on the company's would be a page this is similar to what's known as sockpuppet ing when commenters and editors pretending to be anonymous are actually operatives working to boost a specific agenda which could be a spent more than a year investigating sock puppets on their website nephesh identified over three hundred fake accounts responsible for writing or editing more than twelve thousand

articles since two thousand and eight. you know another interesting tech story comes to us via instagram no longer is the site just being used to show your friends what you have for brunch that morning or what yesterday's sunset look like it's also be used to sell guns perusing the hipster photo website you can find a whole array of deadly weapons and potential sellers instagram has no specific policy outlawing users from selling their guns through the site and of course any guns that are purchased over the internet do not have to be subject to background checks so instagram your one stop shop for selfies and bushmasters joining me now to talk about all of this stuff in the tech world is matt bender producer with the majority report matt welcome to the show thanks for having me so let's start with the wikipedia does it surprise you that p.r. companies have taken a great interest in this. it does not surprise me at all i mean when you think about it when you google just anything under the sun whether whether you're

googling it or looking it up on being or any other search engine oftentimes wiki pedia is the very first result that comes up so to control your wiki opinion page is really controlling the information that gets out about you or your company well what can we can pedia do about this i mean anyone can make at it a much smaller amount of people have admin rights and have a lot more power over editing and that can block certain people from making out it's and it's believed that many of these p.r. firms have actually made it into this more elite group of an administrator so what options does with a pedia have to to stop this behavior without fundamentally changing the way it works i mean unfortunately this is one of the things that we keep it is just going to have to have to really just hunker down and i guess you can say really basically i guess check up on there on who is editing it different articles much more often even perform the same checks on these once trusted editors and administrators really what makes wiki pedia so successful and so great is its openness many times

we can. pedia is getting these current events situations updated quicker than even some news organization simply because of its openness people who are on the ground that's certain events can add information that they couldn't i guess put out there otherwise so so really to alter wiki pedia would be to alter what makes a wiki pedia so successful so it really just comes on into the backend that they really have to to really do more checks and balances on i guess you can set some balance that would compete it has to find their what what does this sort of behavior do to the internet i mean we compete is a fairly truslow source i mean we're told not to use it for college papers or scar scholarly articles but by and large it's a beneficial tool for society what happens if we lose it and i think i think it would be a tremendous loss of wikipedia was to was just disappear i don't think that's going to happen anytime soon definitely not because of this issue when it comes down to

it though i mean these would be pretty articles being changed i mean if you're writing you are your paper on our french renaissance art you're really not to worry about this the information will most likely be accurate the information of the watch out for are these companies or people who have some sort of monetary gain or loss from certain types of information getting out there and those are the types of pages you have to look out for i think also the big concern here is not just companies but when historical events start being rewritten or where when you go to wikipedia to find out about the civil rights era and it's completely different than what actually happened or you read about political scandals or you see that maybe political parties are using wikipedia to advance a political agenda of some sort have we seen any of those those sort of instances happen here. there's been instances where where we're keeping the information has definitely been false but many times the second this information is put up and

starts to the seminal eight the wiki pedia editors and miniseries have always been on point to get this information taken off you can even see wiki pedia even can flogs of all the information that was removed and why it was removed the full discussion log of the administrators and editors who are who are deciding when to remove what to remove and and why to remove it let's move on to the second story here this one about instagram where you can now buy your guns. currently the company that facebook and instagram facebook owns instagram they don't ban any sort of explicit selling of guns here is this an issue of corporate responsibility well i mean instagram is not a commerce say this is an example of of users turning a platform into something it wasn't really built to do so that's basically what you're seeing instagram will have to eventually i assume update their terms of service to get with the times and how people are using it but instagram wasn't meant for this purpose right in craigslist for example does ban the sort of gun

sales and i guess it's very easy to ban gun sales because it's just that's a web site you go to for people selling stuff so if you go down there you know what's happening but with instagram and facebook can this company effectively ban gun sales without just banning posting of guns altogether i mean can someone just post a picture of a gun and it's just implied oh i know i need to contact this person and i can buy this gun exactly i mean like like you mentioned facebook is owned by instagram and facebook themselves have have been teetering on this very slippery slope when it comes to what sorts what sorts of content to allow on their web site and what to ben i mean they just said that recently they said that though allow beheading videos but mothers who post pictures of them breastfeeding their child are still being bad so they're really stuck in this area where they're not sure what to ban and what not to bad and how much of it. covered under what they want to cover on their terms of service under the first amendment they've banned certain hashtags like sexy grinding balls so what do you what do you make of the company's

reluctance to promote embrace to promote sex but i'm sorry reluctance to promote sex but it's embrace of promoting weapons and violence we just have thirty seconds well i mean it just shows how these corporations think i mean whether or not facebook knows this is being so things going to be sold on there or not basically they're realizing that they need to figure out what they're doing and when it comes down to it these things could possibly make them money in the future who knows if they'll somehow monetize this type of stuff but i think what you're seeing here at instagram specifically is this is where the government comes in and gun safety laws take care of what instagram can take care of not better producer with the majority report thank you you thank. and finally you might remember this incident took place on the campuses of u.c. davis back in november two thousand and eleven.

that was officer john pike dousing occupy protesters with pepper spray as they were peacefully sitting on campus an officer davis. i'm sorry was put on administrative leave after the incident and he eventually left the police force and it turns out is going to collect a nice check for his efforts that day the judge has approved a worker's compensation settlement for officer pike totaling more than thirty eight thousand dollars he claims he began suffering from work related depression and anxiety after video of him abusing peaceful protesters wound up on the internet and went viral the thirty eight thousand dollars settlement to pike is more than any of those students who were pepper sprayed received when you see davis agreed last september to pay out roughly thirty thousand dollars to each victim and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com forward slash r.t. america check out our website r t dot com ports us usa you can follow me on twitter

at same sax stay tune boom bust is next. it's. foreign countries and their state building companies their nationalized companies who are buying into britain who is in the process of privatizing these assets they're making them available so foreigners just know so they've convinced britons they should sell the edges sell the energy company sell the rail system trucks sell the education system celebrate then sell all the pay the debt will keep racking up the debt to keep selling all these assets and who the welfare states of other countries will then use that to give their citizens a nice juicy enable income based on this recurring revenue stream forked over by these hapless brits. this immediately below so

we leave the baby. was seen potions to cure the play your part of the physical. push use that no one is there still with the guests that you deserve answers from. politics. are today. and. i was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little but. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of so why it great things other that there has to be adequate rigor in a court of wall around a liar is a story made sort of movie is playing out in real life.

hello there i marinate and this is boom bust here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today. crowdfunding is coming to wall street will a new s.e.c. rule democratize the capital markets or is just six pack about to muppet ties a new brand of sell side marionettes buys and we dig into the five hundred page rule and speak with copper in austin fits to flush out the pros and the cons an occupy wall street activists alexis goldstein talks with more about a new bill in the house which overturns a key section of dodd frank you won't want to miss it and you might not be a fan of it but citigroup they sure are and they should be seen as how their lobbyists are easy two percent of it to finally mr zuckerberg sorry buddy.