in the morning you think you're going. coming up on our t.v. in california a group of alleged anonymous hackers are on trial for launching a cyber attack on pay pal this after the company refused to allow financial transactions that would support wiki leaks war in this case just ahead and get ready for the next evolution of the economy this time it's going digital bitcoin continues to skyrocket in value while its new rival light coin attempts to level the playing field one the growth of crypto currency coming up and in detroit a federal judge has ruled that the city cannot file for bankruptcy now public workers worry over potential hits to their pensions is the city balancing its budget on the backs of work herds and in-depth look at how the motor city is trying

to restart its economic engine later in the show. it's thursday december fifth four pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching our t.v. well starting off this hour fourteen so-called computer hacktivists associated with anonymous appeared in california federal court today over charges that they conducted a quarter dated cyber attack on pay pal. master card now the distributed denial of service attack or the d.d. o. s. hack overwhelmed pay pal's online services back in two thousand and eleven and temporarily knocks the company off line today the fourteen pay pal of the pay pal fourteen reached a plea deal that will choir each to pay five thousand six hundred dollars and plead guilty to a felony which will be dismissed after a one year period with good. behavior no two members of the group chose not to face

that potential felony on their records and instead took a misdemeanor charge of ninety days in and ninety days in prison this hack was part of operation payback which was in retaliation for pay pal refusing to accept or perform trying financial transactions for the secret spilling organization wiki leaks in the wake of the biggest document drop in u.s. history now to fill us in on the very latest i'm joined by one of the attorneys for the group stanley cohen as well as our t. web producer andrew blake who has been closely following the case stan lee i want to start with you what is the latest information that is coming out of the courthouse tell us about this plea deal. well we've been involved in negotiations for over a year and negotiations based on strength not weakness based upon principle not acquiescence that did not involve cooperation and did not involve any of the defendants for announcing their conduct they were all stood up and said we did what

you said we did we it was critical was civil disobedience we believe we appropriate actor must be willing to pay the price after tremendous amount of negotiation back and forth and challenges we reached a conclusion a deal with eleven of the defendants pleading guilty to a felony count then to a misdemeanor count sentencing adjourned for a year if there are no new arrests at the end of the year the felony is dismissed the misdemeanor is left in place and people will sensibly get conditional discharges at that point the restitution fifty six hundred dollars per person paper out that it was five point five million as a result of this plea disposition pay-pal may have been getting as much as eighty thousand dollars back and these folks who took a principled stand continue. with their principles in fact and continue determined to. play an active role in the future of their lives the community in the world so

what is next for this group are is there anything against them using the internet for instance or being able to log on anything like that you know the conditions they have been on pretrial release for almost two years two years nominal conditions and they are allowed to continue with their lives or have been no changes their students their bloggers their writers are on internet they're on twitter they talk. you know they continue with their lives this is this is it's comparable in some jurisdictions to the deferred prosecution which basically says ok we're going to put this off for a year and if everything works out fine the case get dismissed well here in the day everything works out fine. it's going to go to mr irwin as one experiment said to be a one of the persons that three will be walked out of the court system either is a badge of honor encouraged or stanley cohen one of the attorneys for these and this group of anonymous activists thank you so much for joining us and please keep

us updated as this trial kind of continues or as these that these people continue and within the next year now and your let's talk about the precedent being set here has anyone ever been successfully prosecuted for a d.d. o. s. attack you know it's really weird that we're not necessarily setting a precedent here because they put in this guilty plea had this gone to trial and we had a group of civilians get up there and hear about what's being called a hack but is really just overloading a website a whole bunch of times then we might have a precedent we might find out that oh if you did also website you can have to do this you have to do this and they can they can screw you for really long time there was actually case several years ago kind of the infancy of the whole anonymous movement when some kid ahead did the deed asa tax where you just overflowed a website he did it against the church of scientology they actually turned around they went after him and he served a year in prison for clicking a button that took down scientology dot dot church i don't know what the hell there

are websites called there's another related to this incident there's another one happening right now in the eastern district courts for the eastern district region federal courts just down the road where a handful of legit hacktivist operated a similar campaign against a bunch of anti-censorship web sites also in the tell you for this whole kind of snafu that broke out after we began releasing all sorts of confidential information back in two thousand and ten so that just happened and then you know right now that's happening right now but just earlier earlier this month i believe around a week ago a fellow was sentenced to a few years probation and ordered to pay one hundred eighty three thousand dollars fine i believe in. thirty three thousand dollars restitution to koch industries big corporation from david and charles koch for taking down one of their websites momentarily with adidas a few years ago now meanwhile journalist glenn greenwald who is the journalist that was working with edward snowden all of those n.s.a.

leaks is reportedly working with the founder of e-bay which is the parent company of pay pal on a new media venture so i want to bring up a couple of tweets that the e-bay founder wrote his name is pierre omidyar he tweeted whatever you think of at wiki leaks tactics we know more about our world through their journalism donate via keep a pow but this certainly also cation considering pay pal was part of the blockade that attempted to start wiki leaks of those funds so i want to read another tweet that says this transparency organization responded by saying the blockade has cost wiki leaks tens of millions we announced successful changes in policy right after the lawsuit so what do you make of this agreement and more importantly. how kind of saying this these leaks are ok these ones are not it is a bit selective but also human there's a lot of players involved here you know this really shouldn't come down to just what peter says or with julian or anyone from wiki leaks says there's

a lot of people involved. obviously massive massive corporations but you know it does raise a lot of interesting points about no one is a leak ok one is a digital protest ok and who's got the money to say what can and can't work but you know going into this pay pal was looking at receiving upwards of five million dollars in restitution for the crimes alleged crimes committed by these hacktivists and now they're looking at receiving around eighty k. so a lot of people were building this up disabled you know people had all the time to go out there and say you know don't tackle these kids don't go put him in jail and appear recently just made a statement this week saying you know he won. and see for the people fourteen it was hoping that you know by pleading his case at least bring them a little bit of media attention because it's been almost three years now and not many people talking about those. blake thank you so much for filling us in and i will turn our viewers to your website r.t.

dot com for the latest on all of these cases. ok well here's a question for you what's in your wallet money is of all over the centuries from shells to gold to paper to plastic in these days it's gone digital now you've probably heard of bitcoin before an alternative crypto currency that exists entirely on the internet the coins value has skyrocketed over the past year it is well beyond the general public's affordability at this point but for those of you looking to get into the newest financial revolution known as the digital economy worry not light coin has been called the silver two bitcoins gold former google employee and mighty graduate charlie lee invented the currency to correct some of the coins fly it's grown over four hundred percent the past week end it is still more affordable and abundant than coins now despite cryptocurrency is growing popularity in the public no nation has adopted this type of currency to date so far

this currency is just a flash in the pan or is this the economic future of the world i had a chance to sit down with john as. he's the author of the global minnow tour who started off by explaining the differences between bitcoin and like to point. it's a bit like shale gas inhalation boy. it's the porter cheaper brother. what it what the number one feature of life line is that it's prices not skyrocketed so if you if you had a lake and didn't get into the beach kind community you know you have to fork out a thousand bucks for one big climb whereas lifeline is at the very early stage of it's bob let's say so you know it too stupid to get in and hopefully to be one of the early entrants that become the idea stuck in a sea of this new cryptocurrency now are likely going in competition with one

another. yes indeed but this is absolutely inevitable isn't it. going to stop this from nothing and those who and. keeping on. knowing the last it's. a great idea and that's a sea of money at least. and it was quite natural that once. you know the price of oil the declines let so. they would be competitors they would be other communities that fold at the edge and they tried to look to see the same kind of bubbles stages and effects from it and i'm glad you brought up this kind of conversation about the amount of money that bitcoin costs right now i want to take a look at how the markets have been reacting to that client now this past january bitcoin was trading at about thirteen dollars by the beginning of this november it

was worth two hundred dollars and then by saying that giving it was almost twelve hundred dollars before dropping back down again now bitcoin is so popular at the moment that it briefly overtook gold and value but gold throughout the years has remained stable and it has remained at dependable meanwhile something like tulips for instance shot up in the markets and then really dropped so my question to you is what do you think being an economist what is more likely to be the outcome of bitcoin are we going to see the gold scenario or are we going to see the tulip scenario. i know that because lying is marketed as a kind and not. you know a flower like yours is supposedly the thing that has to do with the fact that they've been made those times actually take place across borders that flee. a dance supposedly. at epcot and say that is. betty ends with

a dream in the sense of controlled by a central bank or a government. however what percentage of big decline since it creation i utilised in order to purchase goods and services is thought aggression the entities a minuscule amount which means. as a means of exchange basic line has a duty to use therefore that conclusion from this kind of looked at this with far more like a tip than it be like a gold coin so is it possible to see a bit coin bubble kind of a rock thing in the near future given those charts that we just showed showing this shot up in the stock market. the only way to keep going late and no gain that was there should. be declined somehow magically becomes jane and got it. the. goods and services that one can

budget using it suddenly expands massively and people start using it a lot more is going to see then you would it would be possible to see big babies calling value being maintained sustainably but i see no evidence of that so my simple mad why let me seem to be what i was especially because i don't i would sell them. that's very interesting that you would follow and it's a very tiring kind of sign now one of the major differences between light coin and bitcoin are the fixed points that the two companies have lycoming the fixpoint as around eighty four million coins oint six point is around twenty one million coins so what company has a better model and your opinion due to that affordability. i don't think that is the main difference because it doesn't matter how many a beat going for like lines. i mean double what matters

is that there is a fixed supply that's what matters. in both of these groups of patents is the ultimate limit is given that it's fixed and it's commonly known and the rate at which these kinds of minted is more or less predictable that's what makes that's what. creates scarcity and therefore allows these communities to develop in a way that that resembles. gold the gold market. liberal men with these is that with a guide and see which is based on a fixed supply where there is gold. big lines or light lines is that effectively if they do succeeds in a quaint why do so across the world is it jane doing means of exchange by definition this guy this is going to be deflationary because they want

to be strict doesn't either way it's twenty million or a comedian i want to see this fixed and that a the fingers in the mine supply is always going to be low without some of the lying that a finger is in the production of goods and services then the number of the unit dependency unit of goods or service is going to be striking and that will mean that the pendency for an economy that uses these got incentives. towards deflation and invest in the second problem is of course. a social justice issue and like we've seen in big going a few and a bit glad that we've been going market a community a year or two years ago when you mean to be going to fail a cheaply that nahla were a nominal leg of the ladies and that is still going to see that this building and the fundamental division between the early adopters and the late and us very interesting thank you for breaking that down we're going to see have our eyes

apathy obviously how nations respond to this no nation is currently backed up a crypto currency as an alternative to ffion money but might happen in the future who knows yana sadhaka fits the author of the global minnow tar. meanwhile a federal judge in michigan ruled this week that detroit can in fact file for chapter nine bankruptcy judge steven rhodes wondered aloud in court why such a move hadn't already been permitted given the city's dire financial situation proponents of such a ruling called this detroit's chance at a fresh start and expressed optimism for the city's future however not all are happy about this decision as a result of this bankruptcy ruling public employee pensions are now on the chopping block or as judge rhodes puts it pension benefits are a contractual right and are not entitled to any heightened protection in a municipal bankruptcy her critics warn that this unprecedented decision could

shift financial burden onto the backs of a public that is already struggling most city retirees after all receive a pension of less than twenty thousand dollars a year now those people are now are wondering if they need to sell their houses look for cheaper nursing home or even in some serious cases come out of retirement back to work to discuss this latest ruling peter henning a professor of law at wayne state university joins me now their own can you give us a quick overview of the federal judge's ruling when it comes to detroit's filing for bankruptcy. well what the judge decided was that detroit can in fact be part of the bankruptcy process. a government is different from a private corporation a private corporation can opt for bankruptcy what the judge said he is that detroit is eligible to go into the bankruptcy because it's insolvent it cannot pay its bills and that means now that the city manager who has been appointed by the

state's governor the city manager can now offer a restructuring plan called a plan of adjustment so in a sense what the judge decided is step one has in fact happened now detroit filed for bankruptcy it can move forward the question now will be how much of a hit are the different creditors going to take so we all know at this point that the pensions are fair game is the first time for a ruling of this type well that the reason why the pensions are fair game in this case is that michigan's state constitution has a provision that says that pension obligations cannot be reduced and that's a provision that's found i believe in eight or nine other states so what the judge decided is that federal law trumps state law. if you are in a state where you didn't have this particular state constitutional protection your

pensions were always subject to being reduced in a bankruptcy and that's always been the case by the way too in corporate bankruptcy as whenever the company goes into bankruptcy the group that immediately takes a hit are the pensioners so in a sense what the judge said is that public or private employee your pensions at risk here so what kind of ramifications could this have for those pension holders and the pension holders throughout the country. well assuming the judge's ruling is upheld and if it is being appealed but if it is upheld then the message is to public employees anywhere that your pension is not sacrosanct and if a city or local government is in dire straits that your pension could be subject to being cut it's not going to be wiped out that i don't think we're going to see from the bankruptcy process but the pensioners are going to take

a hit here they're going to lose some of their benefits if the rulings impelled the question now is how much because in any bankruptcy it's really a matter of how much pain are you going to absorb how much of a cut are you going to have to take everyone gets hurt in a bankruptcy it's just a matter of how much so who benefits from a growing of this type while the other creditors would benefit from it the various claimants on the city's assets citi is sold close to ten billion dollars worth of aunts. and those creditors want to have their slice of the shrinking pie the pensioners want it the city has any number of other obligations that it must pay out on so what it is if you will is a bit of a feeding frenzy each group of close creditors each class of creditors wants the most it can get or at least wants to take as little hint as possible now detroit's

bankruptcy filing says that it has over one hundred thousand creditors can you give us an idea of who those creditors are and how they rank. well all the pensioners certainly would be considered creditors. all the bond holders are considered creditors and then anybody who might be owed money by the city that includes for example me because i work in the city of detroit i pay taxes. i have a claim to get a refund on my taxes therefore i'm a creditor. it's a very small amount and i don't ever expect to see it but the number of creditors is everybody who the city does business with thirty seconds left where does a try go from here. well the question is what is the restructuring plan going to look like and can detroit ever get back to the credit markets that's the problem

for the pensioners is if the we organization plan favors the creditors so that detroit in five years can reach up the pension credit market pensioners are going to take a big hit peter henning professor of law of wayne state university thank you so much for weighing in thank you for having me while you're after here a pro-business group known as the american legislative exchange council or alec has gathered for one week to discuss domestic business policy now this week the group has come to d.c. to meet but it wasn't alone protesters gathered right outside ok but like. all right we've got to go we're going to let them know it is not ok for them to have a private meeting like letter writing for writing writing legislation in their backyard every day oh there you saw demonstrators demanding that alex stay out of american politics they accuse the organization of writing legislation for lawmakers

to blindly pass through federal or state governments legislation which often benefits corporations at the expense of the public now in a bed for transparency alec allowed members of the media to attend this year's meeting artie's that sam sachs was there and he brings us an inside look at this conference i'm here at alex two thousand and thirteen states a nation policy summit in washington d.c. where senator ted cruz addressed the conference just a moment ago alec of course is the american legislative exchange council a conservative pro-business organization that brings together mostly republican state lawmakers from around the country and teams them up with representatives from corporations like exxon mobil a.t.t. and pfizer you can actually tell who's who around here with lawmakers wearing red badges that say legislative member and corporate representatives wearing blue. badges that's a private sector member now alec has often been referred to as a dating service for lawmakers and businesses together here legislators and

corporate representatives are crafting and voting on model legislation that's going to be done behind closed door meetings a little bit later this afternoon as are known as task forces no media is allowed in there's an education task force there's an energy task force a tax policy task force it's basically organized in a similar way that our congress is organized into committees now once legislation is passed out of these task forces is then carried with lawmakers back to their home states where they try to pass it through their respective state legislatures to become actual laws so basically that's how it works and it's this activity that threatens progressives who argue that this organization acts as a shadow government churning out corporate as legislation and forcing elected lawmakers to pledge allegiance to corporate interests rather than their own voters back home members here say nothing nefarious is going on but looking at the

conservative vendors on hand and what's on the docket in closed door task force meetings you can clearly see an agenda emerging alec has operated largely in the shadows but the organization did release some of its priorities for this year and we can get a sense of what laws are being written and voted on at this summit although alex still keep secret which corporate interests are be high in writing each model bill for example there is that this model bill under consideration this week opposing the e.p.a.'s ability to regulate greenhouse gases under the clean air act a proposal that supported by the big oil industry or there's this bill how did the international relations task force that opposes regulations requiring country of origin labeling on food in grocery stores a proposal supported by big guy plus there are model bills. weaken public sector unions as well as to make the affordable care act or obamacare more difficult to implement these are all conservative priorities but passing model bills that could

become laws down the road is only one priority this year for alec the other is mending fences as the guardian reported this week alec is facing a fund raising crisis after hundreds of lawmakers and dozens of corporations left the organization over controversy created by alex support of stand your ground laws and voter id laws it's reported that alec is facing a one point four million dollar budget hole this year and has launched a new initiative known as the prodigal son project to lure corporations and their donations back into the organization. but there's little concern on the faces of members in the halls around here who dined together on flay and will later vote together on corporate friendly laws in bold in by the dysfunction down the street in congress alec is taking the responsibility of governing into their own hands and that is exactly how corporate america wants it in washington d.c. sam sachs artsy. current that doesn't for now i'm meghan lopez stay tuned boom bust

is next. you know councils here in the u.k. are calling for tougher laws to police aggressive bankers finally no longer will the banker beggars be shaking us down for yet more hand outs and bailouts every time we passed the city no longer listening to them plead for more money printing and free credit facilities we're sick and tired of all the banker beggars harassing us every time we pass one of their toll booth cons like this famous one eight hundred we don't oh look i found your banking system going to found trash on the ground before me through some dollars it'll give a burke give me the trillion i want another trillion more trillions gimme gimme gimme.

your comment was. all a fake i think i'm. a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i roll researcher.

ok i marinate in this is room bust and here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today first up what the rock is up with these earthquakes in texas are two correspondent guy in a teacher can brings us a full report from texas on the business of fracking and the literal groundbreaking effects that it's happening now also bitcoin has a deal of avenue in which to employ its purchasing power we'll tell you all about it coming up and finally we got detroit detroit detroit the motor city had their share of ups and downs and this week the bankruptcy filing has created more questions than answers for the future of the city anthony randolph of the reasons beyond.