i'm. coming up on r t the fight against the n.s.a. hits the nation's court system in d.c. a u.s. district court judge hears a case on the n.s.a. his collection of phone metadata and its prism program or on that case and others just ahead. during the weekend the nation's capital activists gathered for a summit on drones the summit focused on the global consequences of the u.s. drone program and even include victims of drone strikes that's coming up later. and new research shows that every year thousands of americans are going to hospitals wind up victims of a medical mistake that cost them their lives an in-depth look at some of those victims later in the show.

it's monday november eighteenth or pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax and you're watching r.t. and we begin here in washington d.c. at the d.c. district courthouse where a judge heard oral arguments today and the case to put an end to some of the n.s.a. spying activities to issues at hand with the n.s.a.'s bulk telephone metadata collection program which we know targets millions of americans as well as the n.s.a. is collection of americans internet data under its prism program both programs were revealed by edward snowden and u.s. district court judge richard leon summoned department of justice lawyers to defend those programs against the larry klayman a lawyer for the conservative group freedom watch he's filed two lawsuits against the n.s.a. and is asking for a broad preliminary injunction to put an end to those programs immediately and this appears to be a case that judge leon is very much interested in hearing back in october as government lawyers pushed for de lay's judge leon lashed out so. i don't want to

hear anything about vacations weddings days off forget about it this is a case at the pinnacle of public national interest pinacle all hands twenty four seven no excuses the department of justice the n.s.a. the allied government agencies that have an interest in this have had four months to think through its position that's a lot of time an interesting note about judge leon in two thousand and eight he ordered the release of five algerians detained at guantanamo bay setting the government had no evidence proving they were terrorists now one of the main issues in this case beyond the constitutionality of these spy programs is whether or not the d.c. district court has the authority to overrule the opinions of the top secret fi's a court which is already signed off on these surveillance programs if you is also challenging the fires the court's decisions on these programs particularly the phone metadata collection program on thursday of this week

a district judge in new york will hear arguments from the a.c.l.u. directly targeting the n.s.a. surveillance of millions of horizon phone users again as revealed by the edward snowden leaks but while the n.s.a. lawyers up in district courts this week it's received a free pass from the highest court in the land today the supreme court denied a case brought by the electronic privacy information center epic that also challenge the office as collection of horizon phone records it would have been the first major n.s.a. challenge to be heard by the supreme court. court cases aside there's another form of backlash the n.s.a. is dealing with since its secrets were dragged into the sunlight the agency says it's seen an enormous surge and open records requests coming from americans who want to know exactly what the n.s.a. has on the staff at the n.s.a. freedom of information act and privacy act office are overwhelmed by an eight hundred eighty eight percent increase in open records request since the edward snowden revelations that americans who have contacted the agency for information

have all received the same form letter informing them that the n.s.a. cannot confirm or deny whether or not they're subject of surveillance. and moving on the n.s.a. isn't the only agency fighting against transparency in the courts so too is the department of homeland security last week a federal court here in d.c. ordered the department of homeland security to disclose details about the internet kill switch now we're talking about here is what's known as standard operating procedure three o three which is the part of homeland security's ability to shut down entire communication networks basically preventing people in the area from using their phones or their internet d.h.s.s. as the procedure is necessary in times of crisis to prevent detonation of a remote controlled explosive the procedure was approved in two thousand and six but no one really knows under what pretext d.h.s.s. is actually allowed to flick the internet kill switch and some fear it could be abused during

a protest against police brutality in san francisco in two thousand and eleven bay area rapid transit officials disrupted activists plans by turning off the internet and cell service for three hours at four different transit stations now following this the electronic privacy information center filed a freedom of information act request for the department of homeland security to hand over its plans to activate the internet kill switch to determine whether or not the procedure violates free speech rights and public safety d.h. has previously argued handing over such information could hinder law. spent techniques and prosecutions but that argument was tossed out by last week's federal court ruling but the court did leave the government some wiggle room for an appeal noting the court is not unaware of the potential adverse use to which this information could be put its ruling furthermore is no judgment on whether it is in the national interest for s o p three o three to be disclosed if in fact the government believes a release will cause significant harm it has other options to pursue part of

homeland security has thirty days to hand over information or file an appeal now to one organization that doesn't rely on the courts to have information released wiki leaks following last week's sentencing of jeremy hammond to ten years in prison for his role in hacking the servers of the private intelligence firm stratfor with the leaks on friday released five hundred thousand new strapper documents which you weeks announce to the dump on twitter under the house tag three hammon bringing the total of stratford files released over five and a half million their original stratford document back in the beginning of two thousand and twelve contain some bombshell allegations including claims that the u.s. government had a sealed indictment against drilling assad inch and that pakistani military intelligence officials knew all along of osama bin laden's hideout in about a pakistan jeremy hammond who admitted to being part of the internet activist group anonymous which claimed responsibility for the stratfor release was arrested back in two thousand and twelve as part of an international f.b.i.

raid his sentence of ten years in prison was the maximum sentence permitted under his plea deal. movie on over the weekend a number of organizations came together here in washington d.c. to host a drone summit focused on the global use of drones and its consequences as well as resistance movements against drone warfare the event brought together families and victims of drone attacks as well as human rights advocates and artists artie's a marriage david was there here's her report. no no. anti drone activists from across the country poured into washington d.c. this weekend for a three day call to action where. it started on friday with dozens of demonstrators marching from the white house to the headquarters of drone manufacturer general atomics but that march would only be the precursor to a two day drone summit taking an in-depth look at the u.s. as controversial drone warfare program one many say stands in direct violation of

international law it's illegal because under the united nations charter which is a treaty the united states has ratified and therefore part of u.s. law you cannot use military force against anyone unless you have been attacked by that country and this is not done in self-defense and therefore it's illegal under the obama administration the drone campaign has drastically expanded yet officials have done very little to explain the legality of the practice but to quell a growing dissent from the public this may president obama disclosed the guidelines he said his administration followed when planning and executing strikes before any strike is taken there must be near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured the highest standard we can set however a recent report put out by human rights watch showed that many drone strikes were not at hearing to those policies in fact when it comes to yemen the report showed

that between two thousand and nine and two thousand and thirteen eighty two people were killed with at least fifty seven of them being civilians and those victims included innocent women and children we got there and we saw those loved ones who once last night what dancing with us and joy of the wedding being cut to pieces by dismissals it's that reality anti drone advocates say has. created a climate of fear and begun to terrorize local communities they hear the buzzing constantly overhead they're always living in fear that a drone strike is going to happen they don't know when where and who will be hit and this they say has created a new problem for the united states and that instead of eliminating enemies through drone use it's only creating more it makes us more vulnerable to terrorism because of blowback because when people see their loved ones getting killed by drones and then the rescuers being killed by other drones and then mourners at funerals being

killed by still other drones it makes them hate the united states even more it's a very sad lesson because it means in fact that you're reinforcing the cycle of violence hatred terror trauma and stigma and that's why more and more people are coming together to call on the obama administration to change u.s. policy and stop the proliferation of drones it's a mounting pressure that is seemingly caught the attention of the senate intelligence committee which just recently approved a plan to step up both public and internal government oversight of drone use abroad but while activists commend this as a step forward they say a little more oversight under the same policy just won't be enough in washington a mirror david our team. joining me now in the studio for more on the drone summit and what may come out of it is america david very welcome so some good reporting there so this lasted all week tell us

a little bit more about some of the more issues that were covered here and was a three day action like i mention in the piece it started on friday with the protests but the summit really hosted a number of discussions taking a real deep look at drones drone policy both on the domestic and international front aside from policy it really gave a platform to drone victims there was so the civically a yemeni delegation that was there many families of drone victims and i think that was probably the most compelling part of the whole thing i spoke to a representative of many drone victims in yemen and he spoke to me very candidly about how fearful people are over there he talked specifically about the buzzing that people here above had and how it's instilling in them this just perpetual fear he talked to me about how children are scared to leave their houses to go to school how women have dropped out of educational programs because simply they are just in fear of walking outside and so the takeaway was really that this is paralyzing

communities of abroad that only recently have we really had a chance to hear from these drone victims one of the criticisms leveled at the drone program is that its critics blowback that it's actually making us less safe and you could cite that for the last few years we've been conducting this drone program and yet you look at recruitment numbers and arabian peninsula they're still recruiting they're still. going strong there is there any other evidence that suggests that the drone program is creating more hazards than we're getting you've already heard this happening in pakistan but this is also happening in yemen too which is sort of the you know next step on the drone campaign and you know drone strikes have increased dramatically in yemen particularly since two thousand and eleven which is in the last couple of years and at the same time they are seeing corresponding numbers increasing of. men slipping into militancy and fact the representative i talked to told me about how their national security has taken a look at this very issue and in two thousand and eleven there were approximately

three hundred militants fast forward to two thousand and thirteen and there are three thousand that's a nine hundred percent increase and the reason for that is because they say the government doesn't protect them anymore they don't trust their government officials they don't trust their president and that is making them slip further and further off the edge so so what comes next year we we've drones just recently came the news with brennan's nomination a few months ago we had alan grayson hosting out on the hill hearing we now have this summit where does this go so next up is a congressional briefing that's taking place on the hill tomorrow i'm in which representatives are really alan grayson jan schakowsky are going to have an opportunity to listen to the drone victims families people from the yemeni delegation but more generally these activists are taking a look at the bigger picture they're really focusing on influencing public opinion as you know the proof will of drones used to be eighty percent it's come down to sixty percent and they're very encouraged by this and i think their main goal is

really i ching away at that percentage and making sure that more people are aware of the effects of drones and it's dangerous that it's impressive the story is sticking around the news which is good or to correspondent america. who study by the journal of patient safety reveals a staggering number of americans are go to the hospital every year wind of the victim of some sort of preventable death we go now to los angeles authorities ramon go into. like my sister was just writhing in pain for so long and it just haunts me and you know the last moments with both my mom and my sister are just ingrained in my head eric andrus is overcome with emotion as you remember the death of his sister cally and cared for his mentally disabled sister day and night and even though she had the mentality of a four year old she could sing and dance to those songs and she knew more about musicals i think the most normal people as enters explains he took alley to the emergency room for stomach ache days later she was dead this is this is her record

from just the three days that she was in the hospital i mean this is how much stuff that i've gone through to find out what happened to my sister delhi medical errors can happen at even the most highly rated hospitals new research shows that up to four hundred forty thousand people die every year in america from preventable medical mistakes that make a bit third leading cause of death in the us following hard to tease and cancer the incidence of people dying of errors and accidents in hospitals is abysmal in this country it's it's really a crisis level problem in one thousand nine hundred nine the institute of medicine reported that up to ninety eight thousand people a year die because of mistakes in hospitals in twenty their team a study in the journal patient safety says that number has grown to be between two hundred ten thousand and four hundred forty thousand patients that's more than the population of miami florida. not all medical errors

kill but they can still cause a lifetime of pain when i left the operating room i had a fever i was nationalists. i was having channels and i was told that that was probably due to the anesthesia actors in moderately schickel went to the hospital for a minor surgery she expected to be out in a few days. instead she contracted necrotizing fasciitis also known as many flesh these so you can see this is all now here and cut away and right here it's spreading down my fat years later cole is still in physical therapy her claim of hospital injury is not isolated she was diagnosed with spinal bifida as a child in two thousand and eight she went to the hospital for elective surgery to release some of her symptoms her husband danny call used to enjoy an active outdoor lifestyle however after a trip to the hospital came out

a quadriplegic and now requires round the clock care home videos show long helping his wife to do the simplest tasks we have never been allowed to talk to any of that any of her doctors you know a lot of talk to the patient safety department a lot of talk to the addict the barman talk to anybody except duke lawyers because some states have caps on malpractise claims many lawyers refuse to take on cases of medical error despite longs for a stranger with the health care system the love for his wife has strengthened during this time of struggle i rely on her as much as she relies on me i think. i think most guys were honest and they would have to admit to that she's my rock many health care professionals want to reduce accidents but transparency remains a major barrier it's long past time that we have a national conversation about these deaths in hospitals a requirement in the fordable care act encourages medicare providers to report

medical errors but it stops short of requiring all health care providers from participating the best hospitals find ways to to to create safety nets around the mistakes they expect people to make so they double count the sponges they use bar coding technology on their sponges for example to make sure that they're not accidentally leaving something in a patient after an operation has barcoding for medication ministration now too well technology might help simple inexpensive things like good hygiene can prevent infection in the least a cold case the state health department found her hospital had broken several patient safety laws ashur doctor what is his infection rate for the procedure you're going to have document everything take a little notebook with you write everything down every drug they give you make sure you've got your cell phone with you with a little camera take pictures of things it's not right and and a country as wealthy as the united states and with the resources that we have

there's no reason for patients to have to go through that victims agree that individual patients must remain vigilant. as families fight for transparency and accountability they hold their tragedy will help others avoid the trend of deadly mistakes in los angeles remote lyndall archie and archie's ramon glinda joins me now from our los angeles superior is ramon thanks for joining us a frightening report there i'm i'm curious what are what are the most common types of medical errors that we're seeing. right when we think of medical mistakes they're examples of surgeons leaving objects inside a patient like a sponge or some scissors a common mistake is giving a patient the wrong dose of medicine and some instances doctors missed tumors these are all examples of things that happen every single day in hospitals here in the

u.s. but according to a more more recent report from johns hopkins university the most common error is misdiagnosis they took a look at malpractise suits over the last twenty five years and they saw that mistake no says outranked surgical mistakes and overdoses of patients and these misdiagnosis can many times lead to unnecessary procedures an example that john hopkins gives is is a teenager who went in for a complaint of a headache to the hospital was sent home days later had a stroke another gentleman who when complained of chest pain doctor after doctor missed the fact that there was problems with his spine and now he can't walk so all these things happening are really alarming patient safety advocates and that's why they're trying to get the word out about about this trend of medical errors there's a study you came out and they put a number on this for as many as four hundred thousand deaths a year that's pretty staggering but could it actually be higher you mentioned in

this report that transparency remit remains a major barrier at hospitals lawyers are reluctant to take up any any sort of cases like this so maybe there's cases that aren't being reported on here which the number could be even higher. right yeah you mentioned those factors and really back in one thousand nine hundred ninety nine excuse me the institute of medicine reported that there were nearly one hundred thousand deaths and they recommended that there be some sort of central agency that keeps track of that now in two thousand and thirteen and there's still no agency which keeps track of that so really we're depending on these watchdog groups that go through these medical records but even then there's a lot of problem in keeping track of how many errors are occurring because many of these medical records are inaccurate and again we get to the the fact that many doctors at many health care profession or professionals just don't want to admit the mistakes that they've made that this is really a story that you rarely hear about why are people not finding out about mistakes

made in their hospitals sure well it starts with the doctors and nurses unfortunate there is this culture of silence in many hospitals really some doctors don't want to. tattle tell so to speak on another doctor because a lot of times these doctors depend then each other for business they need referrals from that other doctor so they don't want to be known as the rat in the hospital as far as nurses goes they they deal with the same thing some of them have reported bullying and some of them are afraid of being retaliated or or disciplined against and some to some sometimes unfortunately doctors just make decisions based on avoiding lawsuits instead of really focusing on the prime interests of the patient here or to corresponding ramon glinda. yvette stay on the issue of health care you might remember last week president obama responded to mounting criticism of his signature health reform law and announced this change to allow americans to

keep health insurance plans that no longer meet new standards under the law. i said that i would do everything we can to fix this problem and today i'm offering an idea that will help do it insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into two thousand and fourteen and americans whose plans have been canceled can choose to reenroll in the same kind of point. some of criticize the president's fix setting up by allowing americans to stay in non qualified health insurance plans and fewer americans will buy their health insurance in the new exchanges which could cause prices in those exchanges to go up in the cap the entirety of the health reform law one of those critics you see i'm right here was none other than washington d.c. insurance commissioner william p. white who released this statement last thursday criticizing the president's fix the action today undercuts the purpose of the exchanges including the district's d.c. health link by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate on the very next day white was fired an official within d.c.

mayor vincent gray zone office said the city quote wants to go in a different direction and commissioner white statement was scrubbed off the department's website so much for the whole if you like your health insurance commissioner you can keep them. now to madison wisconsin and an innovative new approach to sheltering the homeless the organization occupy madison a spinoff of the occupy wall street movement has just finished building its first tiny home which they hope will be part of a larger cooperative of eco village homes their initiative is known as o m built home less than one hundred square feet is made largely from recycled materials it has a composting toilet and is wired for electricity to run small appliances the group plans to build many more tiny homes and eventually create a community of tiny homes occupied not just by the homeless but by those who prefer sustainable community living as well earlier i spoke with occupy madison organizer luca clemente about where this idea came from. well much like in other places

around the country when we began our encampment we learned that there were a lot of people in the madison area who were homeless and had nowhere to go and they of course flocked to the encampments and it became cook sort of like a homeless community in addition to the political activity that was going on the homeless issue became very important to us and so over time we realized that we had a crisis right here that wasn't being dealt with and we decided to do something about it so you got one of these tiny homes built now what happens next who's going to live there well where will it be placed. well the first house we have the two people already go in it's a couple that have been homeless for a number of years and they're very excited they helped build it that's one of the things that we like about the project is that the people who live in the houses don't build in themselves. it's really difficult to get a good i'm holding a phone in my hand so difficult to get a view of the entire house but one of the things that's really important is we we

want to make the houses beautiful so that. kind of insult a sense of pride and that the community would be more welcoming to them on in terms of where we're going to put them right now we have some issues that we're working on regarding zoning it's very difficult there's no legal way right now that they're allowed to be really anywhere and so we're working on now the ultimate goal here though is kind of a cooperative sustainable living community of a bunch of these tiny houses what do you need what needs to be done to get to that goal eventually. well that the first step is not we're working with churches and non-profits and we didn't get the city council to pass a resolution that will allow the tiny houses to go in church parking lots and in the and in nonprofits are allowed to also host the chinese houses ultimately we would like to get land and the mayor has showed some support for this and so we're hoping that we'll be able to get land to create a community because what we really want to do is have a community and you know this is you know it incorporate

a lot more than just gardening and workshops for other projects as well when when the occupy encampment started out there was a whole alternative living component to them you know there there were places where people could be fed educated how it was given health care for free so not only was it a demonstration but also put occupies message into practice is that part of the motivation here to build this community to serve as an example or an alternative to other people. it is we really do hope that this idea of just time because there are a lot of people right now that are just marginalized and the like in madison for example right now there's a less than a two percent vacancy rate and you'll have twenty to thirty people who are all jockeying to get the same apartment when it becomes available and rents are very high and the person who's living on a minimum wage job can't even afford an apartment even when one becomes available so we're trying to create an alternative where people can participate in the building of their own house and then become part of

a community where they can engage in projects and meaningful but you know things that add meaning to the light stuff and some interesting work you guys are doing up there in madison as occupy in madison organizer luker clemente thank you so much for joining me thank you and that does it for now i'm sam sax a turn boom bust is next. please please please state. very hard to take. a look at that that was so great.

the sun. the sun at least some. of the. well. technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future are covered. pick your country iraq afghanistan libya saudi arabia israel egypt syria turkey and even away and then each one shouldn't finds itself either the odd man out leaving alone or leading from behind in a muddled path is the u.s. simply out of touch or is history in the region merely being on.

their i marinate this is boom bust and here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today. first up it was a historic day on wall street with the dow topping sixteen thousand thousand on monday we'll tell you why and what caused the run coming right up and the revolving door of washington to wall street takes another spend this time it's timothy geitner in the turnstile and finally we have the one the only american investor author and bow tie afficionado jim rogers alive on today's show you won't want to miss a moment and it all starts right now.