what's going on guys i mean martin and this is breaking the set so the n.s.a. is a leaky faucet just won't stop the pain we've already know that the u.s. government has attended goals in the years of world leaders in france germany and brazil and just yesterday we learned the extent of the n.s.a.'s global spying apparatus goes well beyond these three countries yes apparently eavesdropping on the phone calls of longtime allies just isn't enough to quell uncle peeping sam's voyeurism addiction according to a two thousand and six classified memo released by the guardian the n.s.a. has monitored the phone calls of thirty five world leaders and the best part is that the memo acknowledges that the spying has produced virtually no report of all intelligence so not only are we pissing off our most trusted allies but we're doing

it for no reason. i think we all know what's really going on here this gives the us the upper hand on virtually all diplomatic issues what better way to win that chess game of global politics if you already know everyone's next move a bunch of the benefits this information could provide american industry and in fact n.s.a. carries out industrial espionage on a regular basis so if you're sick of being a citizen of a country that the global community is turning against then join all of us tomorrow in d.c. in front of union station at eleven thirty in the morning to tell the government to stop watching us at a store surveillance rally and now let's break the set. the . it was a really very hard to take a. look. at her how to act without her right

there. it turns out that not only the act of hakim can get you in the legal trouble but now just a labeling yourself as a hacker can get you into hot water last week a u.s. district court ruled that if you simply call yourself a hacker you can apparently legally have all your equipment taken without warning in this particular case engineering laboratory but tell energy alliance is doing x. employee or claim that he stole software coding from the company and the idaho

court decided that the employees computer could be confiscated without notice simply because his website stated we like hacking things and don't want to stop yes that's right despite fourth amendment language that protects individuals from a reasonable search and seizure hackers are apparently not included so why does the notion of a hacker synonymous with evil intent and good the act of hacking me one of the only ways to protect online civil liberties and apologise a professor dr dave coleman is an expert on hacker culture and particularly the hacktivist group anonymous she joined break in a separate earlier to talk about the group and the changing face of activism in the online world he started by asking what types of people comprise anonymous. i meant everything from you know last students to wealthy engineers to those who are. very poor or to people who are immigrants in the countries that they live and she kind of white middle class american so so it's quite

a diverse bunch and i think the pseudo in and then maybe of it where you have a stable nickname but you don't reveal who your who you are helps to create conditions for remarkable diversity yeah it is amazing that they represent so many different ideas and so many different points of view within society but you did mention something very interesting anonymous has become almost synonymous with the word hacker which you mention which still has a very negative connotation in mainstream culture how would you define that word hacker and why do you think so many people have such an adverse reaction when they hear the term i tend to. describe them as a class of technologists who again can be a system ministry or a programmer security researcher who tend to be committed to civil liberties like privacy and tree speech and who really have. their kind of craftsman who are also quite crafty tricky and cunning in their kind of orientation

towards technology and politics but obviously you know one element of hacking is a transgressor tradition where you seek forbidden knowledge and you enter into computer servers illegally and this historically and that in the kind of underground hacker community has been done for the sake of of pleasure and seeking for better knowledge not to destroy the servers where you enter but because there is criminal activity pirelli criminal activity in which individuals hack into a server to steal our data on credit cards it has a kind of overwhelming negative image and doesn't take into account. it both kind of subversive tradition underground hacking and this subversive tradition of hacking which is completely completely legal like open source software i want to ask you about about those about the actual tactics but i want to i want to know

something really interesting that the anonymous is planning on november fifth which is the million mask march which obviously the group is made up of diverse viewpoints and opinions what type of message do you think anonymous is trying to send by stepping out of the realm of online and onto the streets with this movement . well there roots in activism were actually based in the streets they started to protest the church of scientology on the street not one that kind of transformation into activism from peer pranking happens to this isn't the first time they organize street protests for operation bartz intend to go as well but this is a very large scale kind of. protests it's being planned. i don't think their forte is always planning something well in advance and also an action that's not hinged to an actual event in the world so i'm not so sure it's

going to be anything all that big at some level but what it does point to is the fact that many people taken the moniker june really care about issues of social and political justice right and so much of the focus has been on on civil liberties and on social issues in fact earlier this year you wrote an article where you said that it's hackers and coders and geeks that are the new guardians of civil liberties why do you what do you believe this to be the case. yeah i and i absolutely do i really stand by that still. you know what's so interesting about hackers and gates is again. they enter into the political arena and very very diverse ways and so they are doing everything from. founding political parties like the pirate party in europe they're building. software tools like tor which help you anonymizer so the net and they engage in dissent like with anonymous the point is that they're

getting involved in politics to all these different factors and most often their concerns with questions of free speech they want to fight censorship and they want to fight for privacy and they're doing it again through different localities very different ones so it's a very kind of culturally politically and. we rich still mean our politics right i mean they're involved in so much and they're calling attention to stories that we would otherwise maybe not even hear about we recently heard about them involved in the steubenville case in the mary bill case now. why do you think that we see anonymous attack institutions that deal with unjust prison sentences and fail to you know prosecute rapists what does that say about society that we have to rely on this group to fill the void of a broken justice system. well i think you just you know put your finger on it is that there is or there are many different elements to the justice system which are broken it's not entirely broken but there's there's enough broken parts where

people aren't comfortable using that system alone and so what anonymous often does in their actions is expose the hypocrisy and the corruption inherent to these systems and then shed light on the issues so that it kickstarts the justice system again so that it might work you know in a particular case it might work wow but what it does in a grander sense is show the fact that there is kind of systemic problems when it comes to the justice system but when we see going into places like pay pal or the vatican or hacking the state department do you see this as legitimate activism or should these type of actions be prosecuted. so i do see it as legitimate activism and i tend to see it as civil disobedience in most cases and because it's civil disobedience i do believe that the actors involved should be

willing to face legal consequences which might include some fines and and even some limited jail tons but unfortunately the system is so warped currently where there's no space in the united states especially for digital direct action and civil disobedience so the punishment is so cruel and so excessive. that it hasn't allowed a place for this so yes i believe there should be a consequence but not the types of consequences that are currently being doled out against scenes activists right and so many people especially in the civil liberties community that worry that with the with the term anonymous being so loosely defined that congress could use the group maybe as a selling point to go after net neutrality something that would be damaging and of course for her civil liberties do you think that this could be the case. so i've written a little bit about this because on the one hand yes and this can be used as

a kind of scary goblin to justify. retrenchments of our civil liberties on the other hand. the retrenchments and the kind of. curtailments of our civil liberties are already here and they're so extensive that if anonymous disappeared or never appeared it would be no different it would be no difference and i don't think that they will successfully use them as an icon to make changes if they want to make those changes they will make those changes and i think it's more important to have a kind of little factory that creates activists which is precisely what happens with anonymous verses the fear that there are negative image will be used to justify unfavorable laws which are ready are on the books i wanted to ask you your opinion as an anthropologist what does it say about anonymous what does it say about you know in this movement about you know what does it indicate about the cultural evolution of of activism and protests in this country well there's two

facets that i think are really interesting and they're not quite connected but. fast you know it's fascinating that anonymous is on the one hand so particularly it really arises out of geek and internet communities and sensibilities which aren't universal right on the other hand the the mast in the face has become the global face the symbolic chokin for dissent around the world and i'm not surprised that it's a mask that kind of allows for this because what it allows is for a kind of extreme circulation and different meanings can attach to that. and i think it's very important that anonymous really shuns leaders and spokespeople because. there's none of those it could allow the symbol to circulate and so that's been really fascinating to watch. and then again i think you know that what we've really done in a more particular sense is put on the table this issue of civil disobedience in the

digital around it is long resisted as a tactic on mind with groups like the out trying to disturbance here but there is a populism and openness to anonymous which has really burst this question out in the open and i think we really need to listen to that and ask well do we really want to worlds where we can't have any civil disobedience on line when we spend so much of our time on one that was dr gabriella coleman welfare and scientific and technological literacy of mcgill university thank you again for taking the time you're welcome. after the break he's already been convicted of genocide and war crimes for a decade or may get a chance at amnesty they can put out. the

news today. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. operations around. point outside to an active camp at guantanamo where patients are more spent in the months after a massacre the first strike never turned the world's attention to the place that some jobs gulag of arts minds. were. big conflict. over. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mentioned in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy albus. in

fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and across silicon we've been a hydrogen client handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers but once it's all just i'm job market and on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on in the world if we go beyond identifying the problem try rational debate in a real discussion critical issues facing up to find a job ready to join the movement and welcome the third. earlier this year an unprecedented trial led to the conviction of former watermelon dictator

a frightening rios montt the eighty seven year old was sentenced to eight years in prison over his role in the genocide of over seventeen hundred indigenous watermelons during the bloodiest period of the country's thirty six year civil war and what seemed like an unbelievable win for the justice system was in fact too good to be true you see. just this week guatemala's constitutional court issued a ruling allowing for the possibility of amnesty for a moment a new trial is now scheduled for april two thousand and fourteen so to discuss this disturbing new development a little deeper into the story i'm joined by john miller brown global strategist with few international thank you so much for coming back on thank you for having me so you know when i heard this i was just kind of her broken because here you have this unprecedented trial he was convicted sentenced to eighty years and now we hear he might be granted amnesty i mean how do we go from that to this you know i mean the sad thing is that as much as it's heartbreaking it's not really a surprise with myself having worked with indigenous communities of the genocide

cases in another region. there were many regions not just the she'll but they believe that it was the best case to move forward with the shield because they had the most evidence in that case i was fortunate enough to meet with one of the community members that i worked with very closely with the president of the witnesses association and while they were heartbroken the one thing they're saying is that you cannot take away that conviction this is the first time any head of state in any country has been convicted for crimes of genocide in his own country one of the things that we're also seeing is that the current president has a very strong connection to rios montt president. was a field commander in the shield during that time one of the things that happened after the verdicts went down was that activists were calling for not only small and but others that were implicated during that time of the genocide to be called to justice so there was very likely that the president himself the current president

of guatemala could have been held responsible so you're seeing that members of government that were involved at the time members of our military that were involved at the time and also the business community is well you know one of the things that we don't talk about kind of the dirty secret is how involved corporations were in the genocide that happened she went. as people in guatemala starting from arbenz and the threat he posed to the united fruit company it seems that corporations are involved a lot behind the scenes of a new kind of on censor the history of these countries you mention the indigenous community they are obviously pushing forward we have this verdict and i just can't imagine what they're feeling after decades of struggle after seeing this man walk free in the finally of this indictment and say where we need to put on hold talk about what his crimes were for people who might not know the story is completely devastating in this she'll specifically they used a policy called scorched earth which many people will know from other areas around the world about seventy to ninety percent of the community was burned during that

time in addition to rampant massacres rape the murder of children and other communities one thing that you would see is called the destruction of the seed where they would kill not only the men in the community but all of the boys as well so that they wouldn't be able to continue to have errors that were indigenous and her affair. and you know you went to guatemala or you worked closely with this indigenous activists what was your experience like here in this firsthand from them you know just to be a very tiny part of this movement is really just shaped my entire activism in the way that i view the world the beauty of this movement is that it is a grassroots indigenous movement this really did come from the people this was more than thirteen years in the making to bring him to trial and the amount of resilience they have is just something that continues to blow me away one of the questions that they would ask indigenous witnesses testified was how does your heart feel and many of them would say that my heart is glad because i'm finally

getting the chance to tell my story and even amongst all of the heartbreak that's the one thing that they're holding onto you know they say that you cannot take it away and no matter what happens april two thousand and fourteen no matter what happened in may when the decision was reversed you cannot take that away. some ballers as a whole i mean these people's voices were heard it's on the record we know the crimes that were done and i also saw that a call was actually put the u.s. government on trial as well for the for this real conviction and why what the united states is horribly complicit in the genocide in guatemala ronald reagan called real smart a man of great personal integrity they had a very close relationship ronald reagan as we all know was very had a very hard line against marx this rebels which people were denounced as being part of the reasoning why they justified the genocide that occurred in the one nine

hundred eighty s. so you have you have record of the united states really covertly giving weapons helicopters to guatemala during that time period which actually is illegal in u.s. law that the leahy law and other laws that are on the books but we've definitely been involved in the beginning again i would reference the one nine hundred fifty four assassination of president arbenz was democratically elected and that assassination was carried out by the cia and we also know that it was trained at the school of america i mean we have the school for genocidal dictators it seems like to keep out of the school do you think that reagan support for and his training of the way it kind of helped facilitate these crimes against humanity and help cover them up yeah absolutely i mean that's the unfortunate legacy of this school of the americas as you said it's called the school of the dictators and that's one reason not just in guatemala but all throughout latin america people that have received training at this school went on to become brutal dictators in

their own countries and. sadly just one example and you know i can't help but think after this was kind of delayed and put on hold you know considering the outcome of this trial so far what chance do you think ever holding politicians accountable in that are white affluent politician. from america and britain for their war crimes well i think it's extremely difficult the one thing that i actually do you feel encouraged about because of this guatemala case is that hopefully countries in the global south will be able to start their own movements as opposed to depending on the interim merican court for this hemisphere the pows to depending on the i.c.c. at the hague in the united nations i think that that's really what we're looking forward to and terms of holding western officials again on our battle it is a completely different that we're almost out of time but is there a website that people can go to to help facilitate support or orders provide support for these people absolutely the organization that i worked with as

a human rights a company or is called network in solidarity with the people of guatemala or in the squad that's and i as g u eight dot org thank you so much we'll put the website on the description of this video thank you for further target on this issue providing some insider millionaire you should brown global strategist you global. remember when leaving work actually meant leaving work you know going home in peace without a cell phone alert going off every five minutes now work never really leaves you considering how your phones also your computer don't get me wrong having the world's knowledge in your pocket is a revolutionary tool but if we've learned anything from the n.s.a. revelations integrating ourselves with the digital world has a serious downside we already know that all of our personal data is catalogued and

rearranged a digital versions of ourselves and everything that's collected is up for grabs but with the corporate collusion with government you can bet that accessing this information isn't just about power it's about economic advantage. see personalized advertising isn't just tied to our behavior online it's also connected to everything we do in the real world you may not give it much thought plastic card in your pocket is really a holy grail of information for corporate advertising believe it or not when you swipe your credit card at a gas station you're that much more likely to be targeted online by a car company or if you buy a diet pill after you visit donald's one night see everything is connected now whether it's in the digital world or the real world certainly convenient for advertisers to look at people as mindless corporate trends this cultural shift is causing us to lose sight of one another as human beings at the heart of this disconnect is our ever growing dependence on technology which in turn fuels the

exploitation of individuality so they've mastered how to take advantage of our uniqueness and make us feel that by purchasing these products we are expressing our bridge analogy and all the while still being treated as consumer sheep this technologic dependence and manipulative advertising is why we're still online at the dinner table in transit to work and even to sleep with our smartphones at an arm's length just a service. i have in today's workforce being glued to your phone is par for the course but be a diligent worker bee doesn't guarantee you job security case in point is that during this global recession productivity has actually increased we've officially become a world of workaholics and we're physically suffering as a result countless studies have confirmed the correlation between workaholism and sleep disorders heart disease nervous system problems and mental illness among many

others and we're not just hazard to our jobs but to a cycle of consumption an act that society equates to happiness we're told that the more we have the happier will be but in reality the more we buy the more we feel we need we've got to work for that dollar we got to work work work well guess what i have never heard anyone's last word to me to wish i had worked at war and unless you're a pharaoh i doubt any of those material possessions we buried with you in your room book anyone who's traveled the world sees that those who have little more than the basic staples can often be happier than those with the greatest amount of wealth. now i'm not suggesting that all of you go out and quit your job after all most of us need to work to survive and hard work often leads to great rewards i'm also not trying to preach to i'm as guilty as the next person of constantly checking twitter

being wrapped up in the twenty four hour news cycle and spending way way too much time on the internet but i also understand the still lama and i know hard as to achieve conscious simplicity living true to the montreaux that one thousand less actually means having more remember experiences are more valuable than commodities so i implore you this we can connect with another human being and go out into nature because at the end of the day that. that's what's real and that's what matters. wealthy british style not. the time to write for things we don't already know out of the.

markets why not. come to find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our. site that i think corporation kind of can. do and the bad i think it's all been all about money and i think that's like that for a politician right a lot and i think that. they're just too much. of a guy. that. the

in. the news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. showing corporations rule the day. i was a new alert and scripts scare me a little bit. leave me. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. the alexander family cry tears of the war you and your great things rather than have you ever read or get a quart of wall around alive there's a story made sort of movie is playing out in real life.

overplayed. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution which says that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy schreck office. told. them you know i'm sorry and on this show we reveal the picture of what's actually going point on we go beyond identifying the problem to try to fix rational debate a real discussion critical issues facing america by the book go ready to join the movement then welcome to the big picture. full on tell more about washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture.