coming up on our t.v. a great midwestern city broiled in controversy the city of chicago has been dealing with major gun violence and now local and state officials are debating new mandatory minimum prison sentences for anyone using a gun during a crime or have an in-depth party exclusive coming up and he's the man with the plan we're now learning just how edward snowden was able to uncover and leaked details about the n.s.a. mass surveillance program details on that coming up. and have you ever wanted to visit space turns out space true or tourism is becoming the next big business find out how to take a trip to the stars later in the show. it's

friday november eighth and washington d.c. i'm lynn neary david and you're watching our t.v. we begin today with an in-depth look at how the obama administration is handling some very controversial legislation involving mandatory minimum sentencing attorney general eric holder has been at the forefront of the issue ordering changes to a justice system that has resulted in the severe overcrowding of jails and prisons across the country but while my mandatory sentences are being scrutinized on the national level one state is looking to expand the controversial law that's the state of illinois of course the crux of the debate is playing out one major city chicago the city has been no stranger to a whole host of gun and gang violence but seemingly growing more grim by the day artie's liz wahl was on the streets of chicago and brings us the story. it's known

to have the windy city well beyond the skyscrapers and downtown glitz chicago is known for something else crime some of these streets are described as a war zone where violence is part of day to day life issues each other you know it was all about drugs and more and the f.b.i. estimates there were five hundred murders here in chicago in two thousand and twelve alone more than any other city in the united states that figure has given chicago the reputation as being america's murder capital most of the deaths are a result of gun violence around here it's no secret if you want to gun you can get one by me being a former game liberal you know i love whether street now to get a gun you know pushes that the city of chicago is trying to change that by imposing a mandatory minimum law for gun offenses under the law anyone caught with you legally possessing a gun would get a minimum three year sentence they would have to serve eighty five percent of that

no exceptions violent record or armed old lady that's called a grainy done so you know and it's something that will carry these neighbors because they're scared because they they feel as if the city of chicago is not it cannot adequately protect them the proposed laws designed to get tough on crime but experts say mandatory minimum sentences simply don't work there is no reliable evidence that mandatory sentences will deter crime they're reliable evidence that critics of mandatory minimum sentences point to similar measures in the war on drugs and mandatory minimum policies were enacted in the one nine hundred eighty s. america's prison population swelled dramatically chicago's cook county jail is a prime example of there are over ten thousand in base in the county jail making it the largest in the united states population reached its highest in six years and it q. on growing our prison system is one of most crowded under-resourced systems in

all the country we've got about forty nine thousand people in the system built for thirty two thousand with jails and prisons across the country filling up top level political leaders are reexamining mandatory minimum laws because they oftentimes generate. disrespect for the system so there is a national trend we're away from and herman responses because people are starting to look at the research perhaps that's why the mandatory minimum proposal is facing tough scrutiny from state lawmakers in illinois if the law passes it's expected to add four thousand inmates over a decade when already crowded system what we see and chicago unfortunately with a lot of our gun violence is a legacy of incarceration policy we have entire neighborhoods where people have grown up without hope the blue legals when i got the northwestern school of law says better alternatives include boosting police presence and enacting programs

that help troubled youth some of the alternatives that we've seen to work here in chicago that are promising intervene with younger people under twenty five who are most of the gun defendants in any gun court in america the goal would be to keep people out of these jail cell instead of packing more inmates in in chicago. so to discuss this topic a little bit more i'm joined by our two correspondent liz wahl in a flashback from chicago thank you so much for coming on was first small talk about what the minimum sentence the sentencing law is right now as it stands sure as it stands right now for going to fences you can face a mandatory minimum of one year behind bars this law would expand that time to three years so any going to fence you would be facing three years that is the mandatory minimum now this is being pushed by the chicago mayor. around the manual the police commissioner and several victims of gun violence in chicago as we saw

gun violence is a huge problem there it's known as the murder capital of the united states five hundred murders in just one year people are sick of it politicians want lawmakers they want to act like they are getting tough on crime doing something to address this gun issue but we're seeing a lot of resistance over there in chicago i'm told that this is one of the most contentious issues that they have ever seen because as we saw in that story that the chicago jails are already flooded the system is already flooded supposed to add four thousand people one billion dollars over the span of a decade and people there are saying you know what maybe prison is not the best alternative maybe we need to look elsewhere in order to solve this problem this gun epidemic in our society sure and you mention that guns are easy to get in chicago i want to take a look at something briefly there's a new technology in which you can actually create your own gun using a three d. printer it sounds kind of ludicrous but apparently this is we're not far from from

seeing this become a little bit more commonplace of course this brings up issues of regulation can pretty much anyone get a gun at this point well guess that's what we're seeing on the streets of chicago i mean i didn't have to venture too far out to the parts are outside of the ritzy part of you know the downtown chicago and these rough neighborhoods and i've heard from people firsthand if i want to gun i know where to go i can get pretty much any kind i want i know who to talk to it's pretty ingrained and people know that if they want a gun they can get one so the question is whether or not i think yes regulation needs to happen but is throwing people in prison and locking away the key going to address this problem i can tell you from being out there in the community that it's you. in a place where crime is so when growing and. it just so part of this atmosphere the communities that they grow up in. most infamous you know the drug

cartels the the gang violence is a big problem there's factions within factions these people are not going to be the ones that are going to say ok i'm going to follow this law they're going to drop drop their guns and be like laws in place i'm going to get rid of my guns the worry is that this is going to actually sweep up a larger group of people people that live in these rough neighborhoods that are carrying a gun they might not be authorized to have it but they're carrying one because they want to feel safe in a very dangerous community and the fear is that the jails are going to be flooded with people like that people that are not that's the thing about mandatory mandatory minimum laws is that it doesn't discriminate and whether you're a first time offender or a more hardened criminal you are going to face this mandatory minimum sentence all right well great reporting live thank you so much r t correspondent with wall. and new details are emerging about how former government contractor edward snowden gained access to the troves of n.s.a.

documents he would later leaked to the press according to new information obtained by reuters stone and may have engaged in some very low tech methods to gather the classified documents those methods include persuading between twenty and twenty five of his colleagues to give him their logons and passwords and he apparently did so by telling them that those passwords were needed in order to conduct his job as a computer systems admins administrator the leaks that would ensue represent the worst breach of classified data and all sixty one years of the n.s.a.'s existence but this revelation is just the latest look at the inadequate security measures that were employed at the time last month reuters also reported that the n.s.a. had failed to install the most up to date anti leaks software at the whole weiss site where edward snowden had been working meanwhile more news regarding glenn greenwald that's the journalist who broke this whole story and we're now learning rep alan grayson who has been one of the most vocal n.s.a.

critics sent a letter to attorney general eric holder last month seeking assurance that if greenwald were to come back to the u.s. for a meeting with grayson he could do so without being arrested he wrote quote varing in mind that mr greenwald is a citizen of the us please let me know whether the department of justice intends to bring charges against mr greenwald and whether the whether the department of justice the department of homeland security or any other office of the federal government intends to detain question arrest or prosecute mr greenwald back in july greenwald was set to testify before congress via video link from brazil where he currently lives but that hearing was later canceled if greenwald enters the united states it would be the first time since the n.s.a. documents were first leaked back in june. and since those revelations leaked customers have become more and more wary of big tech companies like arisan or

eighteen t. because it's been revealed of course that they have forked over americans met a data to u.s. spy agencies but there's one small internet service provider resisting pressure to all of that it's called x. mission and it's an independent company based in utah that unlike the tech giants has refused to turn over customer data without a warrant artie's marina reports. inside of the data center and here we're taking an exclusive tour through one of the few data companies standing up to the u.s. government in the name of privacy i think we do residential are very well pete ashdown is the owner of the x. mission an independent internet service provider based in salt lake city this hour here handles most of our e-mail unlike most power players in silicon valley x. mission refuses to give the n.s.a. backdoor access to its networks since one thousand nine hundred ninety eight its mission has rejected the u.s.

government for more information stored on private servers like these we don't share our information about our customers if you don't have a warrant the majority of law enforcement requests ashdown says he's received and refused have been subpoenaed lacking accountability and necessary by a judge this is actually an amiga since launching his company in one thousand nine hundred three ashdown says he's filled no more than two customer data requests from the federal government was more like where we bring in customers with a small team of forty employees x. machine caters to thirty five thousand customers who pay for foundation services like internet connectivity server colocation and web or email hosting you're like. oh.

thirty france the current climate of america's unrestrained surveillance matrix has been facilitated in part by verizon facebook and other giant corporations who have spent years secretly working with the n.s.a. regulation government contracts and. monetary. compensation are in my opinion the three reason. why they're cooperating ironically utah is probably the most unlikely home for a privacy champion roughly twenty seven miles away from x. mission. is the n.s.a.'s newly constructed one point five billion dollar data center i think it's a strain on the tech industry of utah albeit n.s.a. activities are a stain on american internet businesses because people don't trust to put their information stateside anymore ashdown has vowed to face jail time if that's what's needed to protect his customers from being monitored what surprises this fourth

amendment advocate is that big data companies like google won't promise to do the same marina porton i r r t. and today freedom of information advocates from all over the world will be gathering in sixteen different cities to participate in a weekend hackathon all in the memory of internet activist aaron swartz they will be working on projects he started or contributed to but never got the chance to finish today nov eighth would have been his twenty seventh birthday swartz was an internet entrepreneur or he was heavily involved in the the the development of web feed format our assess the web site framework web dapat i am the social news site reddit however he was also known as an outspoken activist for public transparency and it's his work in that arena that ultimately led him to be charged with the computer fraud and abuse act or the c f a a it's

a piece of legislation many advocates are now calling outdated take a look at what parker hitchens' of the electronic frontier foundation had to say about it and a bipartisan bill named after aaron that would reform the c.f. he spoke to r t at the los angeles def con back in august. this if it was written in the mid eighty's in response to threats that were you know shown in movies and so you can imagine that the language there doesn't really reflect the way that people use computers today so erin's law goes through and it tightens up a few sections of the c.f.a. to make it better reflect the intent of the legislators and make it less of a tool that can be used by prosecutors as as sort of a dragnet of course after two years of struggling with federal prosecutors over his case swartz tragically took his life in the wake of his death internet advocacy organizations have dedicated themselves both to reforming this legislation and to

the causes that were most important to him and that's exactly what's playing out this weekend in an effort of global activism. and it seems like more and more companies are offering us a way to get off this earth and get into outer space it's all about merging old technologies with new ones in the burgeoning industry of space tourism while most companies will soon offer you a ride to the stars of iraq it one company is taking it back to the basics lifting people to the stars and none other than a balloon of course i was a bit intrigued by this so i went to go find out how all of this works take a look. it's a voyage of voyages a journey that harkens back to the movie classic around the world in eighty days starting in two thousand and sixteen one company will send passengers nineteen miles high right to the edge of space and it offer this service not on a rocket but rather on

a helium filled balloon the arizona based company called world view enterprises has plans to attach a balloon to a pressurized capsule that can hold up to six passengers and two crew members after lifting off the balloon would take approximately an hour and a half to reach a height of one hundred thousand feet and that's just high enough to see the curvature of earth. so how is it possible to take a balloon like. came down to nasa ballooning laboratory and wallops island virginia to find out this is where the magic happens nasa is one and only ballooning workshop it's home to a number of engineers and researchers whose sole focus is to make discoveries by sending scientific instruments up to the edge of space and back blue flights are actually the oldest form of flight and the physics are actually very simple. to do you have buoyancy in the balloon it lifts you up to

a particular altitude in the new fog believe it or not the concept is just that simple on the ground the balloon is filled with a very small amount of helium and as the balloon ascends into the atmosphere the helium expands to volumes of. and while they are sturdy enough to carry up to eight thousand pounds nasa has no intention of taking balloon manned missions any time soon. but that hasn't stopped private companies from chartering their own manned missions just last year red bull sponsored daredevil felix baumgartner who jumped to earth from a helium balloon setting the record for a parachute jump from the highest altitude and outside of balloon flights companies like virgin galactic and space x. will soon be offering commercial trips to outer space by rocket these private escapades are all part of a flourishing industry that's taken root in the last decade called space tourism in fact in the next ten years the f.a.a. says this industry will be worth one billion dollars. that's

a large growth considering it was just in two thousand and one the dennis tito an american engineer and multimillionaire became the very first space tourist it seemed very kind of cavalier at the time and i think you know our track record has proven that even the wildest craziest ideas can become a reality that's tom shelley the president of the company responsible for making that unprecedented mission happen we arrange for very successful very wealthy individuals to be out to fly into space and we will look to continue to do that but we're very much looking forward to a lower priced experience being available but lower prices in the industry don't exactly translate to a low price overall take a ride via rocket and you're looking at a price tag of two hundred fifty thousand dollars while a balloon ride is a bit more cost effective at seventy five thousand while it might not seem like a competitive market just yet the choices for private space flight are growing by

the day more and more companies are beginning to privatized some of the oldest technologies creating an opportunity for ordinary people to pay their way up to space in washington on your own david are to. so here to discuss this along with some other space issues making headlines i'm joined by jeff manber space entrepreneur and author of the book selling peace jeff thanks for being with me appreciate it so like i mentioned in the piece it's still kind of pricey you have these trips ranging from seventy five thousand to two hundred fifty thousand i think a lot of people still can't really afford that well traveling to space to be accessible to the general population and any time soon you can afford something i found that. first off to go to real space the international space station runs about thirty million and that's on the russian rockets and that's what dennis tito you know right and and so this is this is lowering the price and we're all excited about

this so i mean if there's a lot of net worth individuals they can afford seventy five mil or all of right of course i mean maybe they'll sell a share maybe they'll be a scholarship one day but it's going to be a long long time before it comes down below that but even at these prices virgin galactic has some six hundred fifty people who have reservations is another smaller company called x. core they have several hundred people so we're really seeing the frontier finally opening up are you excited by it i am excited i mean i was involved with dennis tito in everyone thought we were crazy in doing that he wasn't the world's first space tourist there were two before him and so it's happening step by step by step and so it's just great because they come back and they talk about it and what do you think the potential is i mean do you think we could one day have this be a functional form of transportation the way you use airplanes it has to be i mean it can't just be for space it's there are a lot of people who are richard branson with virgin galactic he talks about wanting it to be a point to point to go from san francisco to bangkok in forty five minutes so you

don't only have space goals with this technology those are more emotional it's getting the whole society to experience the beauty of space but also i think the not the next generation but two generations. of aviation will be point to point these planes that go scurried into space and then land on the other side of the globe under an hour later absolutely well earlier this year we saw a company called orbital successfully send its first rocket filled with supplies to the international space station that's just one private company but who are the major players in the private space market right now and is there really a lot of competition that exists between them well it depends and we have competition in the new orbital center payloads to the space station that funded by nasa but it's commercial because if they don't succeed the middle get paid their competition is a must with space x. and he's the same in the same situation he has to succeed that's going to the space station and then below that year virgin galactic doing suborbital xcor doing

suborbital ilan wants to take manned missions to mars and my company man or x. we had cargo both on space x. and all but all and for us there was no mass and no government funded we have real customers and so it's a it is a new marketplace it is and going off of that you know with nasa is funding really sort of starting to dwindle private industries are picking up the slack what are the implications you think of really privatizing this industry i mean is it a good thing a bad thing well i kind of think it's a good year i've only been fired but i'll tell you why i think it's a good thing and that is government should not be involved in low earth orbit we call it it's fairly routine we don't want the government doing things unless it's cutting edge the government's not involved in aviation boeing in their bus you know makes the plane just doesn't design the cars government doesn't design our computers why should they design a launch vehicles now so for us it's very exciting let nasa go to mars let nasa do asteroid things and cutting edge science and let the private sector do what we do

best which is operation so it's a good thing i want to turn to one more thing that's making headlines because not only do people have the ability to visit space but apparently space can visit as we saw happen there. past february and russia we had that here entered twelve hundred people you know researched this we came out saying that this is actually going to be happening ten times more than scientists originally thought how should people really sort of ingest that new should we be scared or what we should be scared i mean for us in the business one of the fundamental reasons i was space program was to prevent the earth from getting wiped out of the ultimate environmental program and for us the fact that people ignore this is like the person who won't go to the doctor so i mean we should focus on this we should try and come up with a means to prevent what will be an inevitable city one day being wiped out absolutely why do you appreciate you coming in and breaking all down for us jeff manber space entrepreneur and i thank you. and let me introduce you to

a fun little new toy it's called the black cornish now it looks innocuous enough right that's exactly why it's so effective this little toy is in fact a drone and yes it is as small as it looks weighing in at only point five six ounces it was unveiled to the public just last week at the association of the united states army expo here in washington and the idea is that soldiers can carry it and operate it as easily as they could a radio now it has yet to be used by american troops but soldiers from the british army have been using it in afghanistan and they say it comes in handy in scouting routes for possible enemy ambushes and helps them peek over the walls of a nearby compound and unlike the noise you associate with a real helicopter this mini replica runs come completely silent and is invisible at more than thirty feet in the air so the next time you see a mini flying helicopter and can't exactly spot the person operating it it's

probably because it's already spotted you. and tonight's resident takes a look at author frank herbert's science fiction account of an efficient government also known as the bureau of sabotage take a look. one of my favorite science fiction writers frank herbert dreamed up a government entity known as the bureau of sabotage or abuse advocate for short it shows up in a few of his awesome works of fiction and i love the idea of it very much in the

futuristic worlds where busa have exists government has become exceedingly efficient it runs like clockwork society has figured out how to run the government with no red tape at all so legislation gets conceived written passed funded and executed all within a few hours instead of the months or years it takes or congress now the government machine is so well oiled that it starts moving too fast for society to keep up one leader gets into office the next their vision for the future society tries to follow along but before you know it another leader is elected him her agenda isn't acted society is left with its head spinning efficient government starts steam rolling over human concerns and will be people start losing control over it and society starts falling apart and interviews sadly a government bureau created with the sole intention of slowing things that held

down people who work in the bureau are called saboteurs of course and their job is that it will create as much red tape and confusion as possible in order to keep the government moving more slowly at a pace that society can keep up with ever since i first encountered the bureau of sabotage and herbert's fiction i. i like to think it really exists here in america because you see so much evidence of it just look at what the hell is going on with obamacare watching our congressmen slow down its implementation defined logic they've held filibusters there subpoenaing enrollment data they debated but now tech issues for weeks nonstop and of course it doesn't stop with the a.z. a immigration reform gun control any measure that might be implemented meetings will change is the least advertised by the us congress a length they go to just advertise legislation here in the us is utterly fantastic

old so either they're part of a real life hero of sabotage or they're just complete utter idiots either way they're morons behavior is the stuff of science fiction tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the resident. and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our web site r t dot com slash usa follow me on twitter adam you're a david and have a great night. there

i marinate and this is boom bust here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today. first up below us numbers are out and beating expectations which was kind of easy to do considering how low those expectations were we'll take a look behind the numbers plus we talk about the new rules affecting the london metal exchange and how the chinese government may shake up the commodities market that's all coming up and look to our levison i had to shut down his encrypted email service to love a bit i'm a government pressure and while he may be up against the.