hello and welcome to crossfire all things considered on people of all the scandal that keeps on giving the steady stream of snowden related leaks no longer surprises but the all encompassing scope of spying still does even online gamers have not been spared although while the powers that be are hesitant to rein in the n.s.a. in fact they appear only want to make legal what is now illegal is it time for an international bill of digital rights. to cross the surveillance state i'm joined by my guest suzanne also in new york she

is the executive director of the penn american center and in washington we cross to eugene per year he is a national organizer with the answer coalition all right cross talk rules in fact that means both of you can jump in anytime you want you to go to you first in washington ever since this scandal with the n.s.a. broke with me as a result of mr snowden we've gotten one leak after another and we've been told today that it's only about one percent of what he's willing to through other people obviously now to expose and i watch all of these leaks coming out and first i had to be like it most everyone just really quite shocked and amazed and now i'm not shocked or amazed anymore the only thing that really concerns me because i'm in media is this how encompassing it is it seems like it's people are kind of gold by it i mean they just know this is we're calling this program digital octopus and even when we see that symbol i don't see the outrage in the grassroots why is that . well i think that we've seen some outrage i think here and over twenty six in

washington d.c. there are many thousands of people protesting it but i think in some ways it's such an all encompassing program it's very difficult for people to wrap their mind around it needless to say the government is doing everything possible to sow misinformation about this program in the populace that i'm not even one hundred percent sure people know what they can do and what is going on because it's so all pervasive and the government is so consistently lying and i think that certainly having all this revealed has a chilling effect on protests in this country whereby people are now very concerned about if they speak out how will that be seen how will that be held against them their actions their movements their writings who they're talking to how will that all of fact their ability to be effective in the public arena and i think we're seeing not only a conversation but a really internal conversation amongst people in terms of how they challenge these sorts of policies and i think in this new terrain it's very difficult to say how do you react to that because you change kind of jumped to my next point or actually my most my last point here is it does have

a chilling effect on descents and you know people are going to being far more careful in what they say and we still don't know to what extent it is all encompassing because one week after that i mean gamers now they're all they're watching gamers i mean my goodness what a a wonderful way to spend taxpayers' money what are they trying to get by studying gamers when my point is here is that everyone is aware of it is it sinking in to just how maybe dangerous this can be. well we did a survey of pen american center members american writers to ask them how they're reacting to these revelations and what we found was there were far more up in arms than the general population about ninety percent said they were very concerned about at a state surveillance and we were surprised to learn that just about a fourth of american writers were self censoring in some way they told us they were restricting what they post on social media who they talk to who they e-mail with

and even what subjects they take on in their writing out of concern that they could attract some sort of trigger and warrant the n.s.a.'s attention and they want to avoid that and in a sense i think we can look at writers as the canaries in the coal mine on this they're the ones who depend on free expression for their livelihood for their craft so if they're this concern and they're actually changing their behavior think the rest of the public is not going to be too far behind and that there may be real grounds for concern that people will restrict their political activities be wary about who they work with who they make contact with whether they're going to take part in a protest i don't know that we've seen that yet but i don't think if i could stay with you if i could stay with you i thought the n.s.a. was looking for terrorists you're talking about writers well. it's true and you know some writers have reacted to our survey saying this is

ridiculous writers have a job to do so they have nothing to be afraid they need to write more and be more aggressive in taking on sensitive topics when we asked people what sorts of topics they felt leery of writing about you know the answers weren't too surprising it had to do with terrorism in some cases writing about the middle east writing about the military so topic subjects keywords that might somehow. take over a trip wire and bring them to the n.s.a. as attention ok so would you agree with me that this is the actual intention of the n.s.a. there baby i don't. think everybody in america and americans living abroad and countless tens of hundreds of millions of people around the world are terrorists but one thing the outcome and we've just heard it on this program is the chilling effect is that maybe the real purpose of this program or programs is to make people wary of speaking out. oh i think so for sure i mean if we look at one of the

sayings that we use the most here in america knowledge is power if the n.s.a. is attempting to control especially all the communications and knowledge and information resources on the entire internet all over the world at all times then what else could they really be using it for if it isn't to manipulate that power to cause people to do things or not do certain things it's really just an extension of the military power and the n.s.a. is a is an arm of the pentagon it's really an extension of military power that the us uses in exactly the same way except it's even more pervasive because it deals with almost every single aspect of our personal lives and i think that it's absurd for them to say oh well this is just about terrorists with the video game thing they've seen that they didn't even find any tears but they just saw well this is online and maybe something online terrorists could go in here and they could use it maybe who knows so let's just go in there monitor the whole thing spy on all these people and if we find something we find something and that's just how it is so it's clear that

their mentality is to not really look at things that are potentially threats but to just control all information resources and then use it how they see fit well says that we would the n.s.a. head of the n.s.a. is actually come out i mean personally i see it a little bit differently. go ahead jump in please do. sorry i just wanted to say look i see it a little bit differently i do think that the impetus of the genesis for these programs has to do with tracking down terrorists and being able to connect the dots so that attacks can be prevented but i think what we've seen is that the technology and the capabilities have moved forward in advanced so fast that now they're able to sweep in such large quantities of information and there's been very little oversight scrutiny or real deliberation about whether these vast volumes of information are useful to actually prevent attacks whether we have the capability to sort through them effectively so that law enforcement is focused on the right

areas and also what the consequences are of living in a society where so much is swept in so i'm not as ready to judge the motives behind this or to say that the real goal is to chill speech i think the motives originally may have been quite genuine but what we have not had is a proper weighing up of the consequences of these incredibly powerful technologies in the way that they have transformed intelligence gathering you know if the bonuses were genuine which who knows maybe they were i think that we've seen just an archipelago of lies from the government if their motives were genuine i don't think they'd be consistently trying to conceal every single aspect about this to the point of lying in front of congress about what they're doing and that as soon as it comes out say ok well we do this but we don't do that and it turns out that they do do that and the next set of leaks that they would be interested if it was genuine and having most of this or more of this come out so that it could really truly be evaluated in the public sphere but they're trying to prevent any sort of

evaluation on the efficacy of these programs and what's really going on coming at all i mean we've seen that the bills in congress the support of those bills ron wyden and others have said that even though they believe they have significant support on the floor of the congress they haven't been moved out of committee at all yet so there's. a significant attempt by supporters of this surveillance state to prevent any sort of evaluation of what's going on with these programs and the technology and where technology has taken us which leads me to believe their motives are not infection. suzanne i mean one of the interesting thing i would tell you that there are a couple of things going one is they've gotten. they've gotten used to having these capabilities they now have entire huge teams devoted to absorbing this data analyzing this data they've become in noord to having this incredible volume of information so i think it's become very difficult for them to think about how they would live without it even though they did live without it until just

a few years ago i think the other piece that weighs heavily is the idea that some time somehow there will be a terrorist attack that will come to fruition and somebody will come back and make the argument that. the powers of surveillance not been restricted or been subject to regulation that the dots would have been connected in such an attack might have been prevented so i think there are a couple of strong political factors that you know as you say are weighing against the correct impulse which is really to shine a light of transparency on these programs and for the congress and the courts to do their jobs of weighing up these competing interests of intelligence gathering national security privacy the first amendment these are very fundamental issues and values of our country that are now at stake in that are now potentially pitted against one another and what is most dangerous i think is that the courts in the legislature abdicate their role because on grounds of national security or on

grounds of secrecy that they don't take the proper and probing look at all of this well you get to suzanne if i can stay with you i mean it gets down to trust as well i mean we've had members of the and say. come out and lie in public in front of congress. and now we hear that we still have to be able to connect the dots i mean it's very disingenuous to listen to an agency that with so much power and so much funding and then say to us and then say well now you can trust us now because well you know that but what's going to happen when the rest of the ninety nine percent of what snowden took is released so we're going to be trusting them as much yeah i look i think there are definite grounds to question the assertions here and that's why i think it's so important that the courts and the congress do their job they have access to confidential information they can hold hearings in secret if necessary but clearly it's

a situation where the american people no longer trust what the administration is saying and we need to restore that and the only way i think to restore it is to bring the light of day to these proceedings and to hurry to go we're going to a short break and then after that your first book in your discussions on the heads of state. until me the people in my gun are. bringing good stuff for ukraine. because they didn't but equal yugoslavia in each should probably. be

abu ghraib it's memory of the past and they. believe much better before that even though this is how come you'll know in europe we don't know. why is the price of gold so high. demand global demand do you think oldest money. know the value of the only place we have to live of the water that we need to survive it's not compared to i mean gold we're not going to eat gold we're not going to bait with gold. we're not going to drink what clearly what a mile is and it's in a desperate economic situation absolutely right what we're wrong to do is say therefore any kind of economic development from the outside is going to be a benefit their only purpose is to extract as much money as possible to feed into

the global. with we're part of a geo political economic system that's extremely exploited or. first of all it's a question whether mining should even be carried out altogether can it be done in a way which doesn't destroy people's lives resources environment and so on well you know those are pretty serious questions mining is not a what a moment problem it's happening in asia in africa and south america in central america in mexico and it's even happening in canada and the united states. the torch is on an epic journey to. one hundred and twenty three days. through two hundred cities of russia. really fourteen thousand people.

or sixty killing. in a record setting trip. there. are numbers. torch relay. on our. welcome back to cross talk we're all things considered i'm peter all about your mind you were discussing the surveillance state. ok you seem to go back to you in washington and looking at all of the funding the budgeting that goes to all of these spy agencies here

a week getting good value for our money here because i i just don't see the great plots that are being hatched you know being found out in capturing people and all these trials and you think you get a little bit of more result from it i mean again it gets down to trust and when we're told well we we we made sure that three different three different attacks didn't happen but we can't tell you about it because it's a secret i mean i got i'm not you know i may look dumb but i'm not stupid. no i mean i think we're certainly not getting bang for our buck i mean we've seen even in congress that there's been significant debate amongst congressmen and senators who do have this information about how effective these programs have been at stopping particulars terrorist acts we've seen certain things that the n.s.a. has put out in the media other journalists have questioned whether in fact it was mass surveillance and so i think quite clearly we haven't seen a very strong evidence that in fact that many many attacks were stopped and it's effective as possible but the other side of that coin is also i mean it's like if

you ask me to cook a chicken whether i bake it or whether i fried it i've cooked a chicken so you say well look we've stopped three terrorist attacks here using mass surveillance but who's to know that that was you know the best way the most effective way it's all just take our word for it it's all secret there's nothing we can do so i'd say we get almost no value and quite certainly until the american people can have all of this seen of all of this these programs that are shedding their constitutional rights put on the table there's no way for us for even to be able to judge the claims made by the n.s.a. or people like senator dianne feinstein. said if i go back to you in new york it's a false dichotomy our security and our liberty because it sounds nice but it did do we really have to give up one to get the other and if you're willing to give up one to get the other you don't get either. look i think that's true and i think what's challenging in this debate is you know the original figures that were given out fifty terrorist plots warranted you know quickly under the light of scrutiny that number got reduced to i think about thirteen attacks involving u.s.

soil and the detroit details were released about a few of those those facts didn't seem to hold up either reporters were able to generate information suggesting that the key leads and links in detecting those plots came not from mass from surveillance but from other sources of data so i think we have to really look hard at this claim that we have to trade off our liberty for national security and be able to weigh that up and i think what is at stake here and perhaps is only beginning to be highlighted in the public debate is that we're trading away not just the fourth amendment protections against search and seizure but also first amendment liberties i mean the idea that there are right or self censoring you know whether you agree with that or not whether you think they ought to be more courageous and speak their minds nonetheless there are writers who are holding back so there are ideas there are stories that are not

making it into the marketplace and you know here in the united states that's really a pretty astonishing thing in an organization like penn where used to doing work on behalf of writers around the world who are going to object to censorship or who self censor because they know that in china in iran you know they're going to be jailed for a right that a right we're not used to that here at home and i think that needs to sink in the courts and in the congress to recognize that we really are trading away some quite fundamental values potentially you know i think it's really interesting eugene because all through my life and i'm a child of the cold war when we were never taught to be were wary and afraid of the state because we were always afraid of other states and and now it's seeping in somehow for very good reason that you know the state is not necessarily our friend because you you know if you if you're if you're a person under surveillance then you cannot be free at last and i think that that's beginning to make a connection with people. no i think so for sure i mean you know the state has

certain interests we look at what's going on in u.s. politics we see that it's big business primarily that are running things and so you look at the average person you see that not only do you feel alienated from politics that's why we see you know not that many people even vote in the first place particularly amongst young people but you also see this massive security state and you start to think wow i mean this cannot be my friend in fact we have to recognize we have an antagonistic relationship between the two and i think that quite frankly this is a terrible thing to be happening at our country to have this massive system and really to the world to have this massive system where a few people in complete secrecy can monitor anyone in the world and let's be clear if we look at the obama administration's rationale for who are terrorists they say they don't have to tell you why they declared a certain person a terrorist either so who knows how this information could be used now or in the future against the american people and i think that's a very very scary thing and the people of the world as well and it's a massive intrusion on our rights and and trampling on the ones of people around

the world if i can stay with you and i think it's very interesting is that we have this kind of. a kind of a sick paranoia that is sunk in in the u.s. government because i think everyone wants obviously wants to avoid to have a major attack a terrorist attack against united states nobody wants that and no sane person wants that and then you get this organisation like the the n.s.a. and they'll say we'll protect you and then they realize oh my goodness what we can do with all of this information here and it's you know while any people's personal privacy i'm going after dissidents going after journalists and oh you know well we could make some money this way too because we can cheat the this government we can help this company i mean it's really kind of turned into a kind of frankenstein monster with because i agree with what susan had to say in the beginning of the program maybe the initial ideas of keeping an eye on things as of course is rational is what one should do but it's kind of just turned into something so much bigger and there it's being used in a very malign way. yeah i mean it's a it's

a false dawn this idea that will just give us all that protect you i don't think that that's possible and i think that ultimately if we really look at what's going on here it narrows the debate in a very serious way that makes it seem that u.s. foreign policy has no role in creating threats against the country but we know the number one thing driving recruitment for the taliban and al qaeda forces in pakistan and yemen are u.s. drone strikes so they say well don't worry about anything else just give us these powers and we'll take care of everything but in fact that's not the case it's us foreign policy that's the real culprit if we want to be safer and we shouldn't be giving up our constitutional rights to this small ball of people living in secrecy ok susan you want to jump in the new york own hand. wow look i can't agree with the idea that the main threat to u.s. security is the u.s. has own foreign policy i do think that it's essential to keep in mind that these policies have consequences that they can turn people against the united states

we've seen that in this case quite concretely with the rifts that have opened up with german chancellor angela merkel with brazilian president dilma rousseff canceling a visit to washington those are pretty serious they put the president in iraq word situation and i don't think there's any question that this is cause these revelations have caused diplomatic damage at the same time i think we need to be a little careful in how we message this publicly i don't know that we should call it a frankenstein monster you know when we surveyed writers we didn't get a lot of stories back or or even really stories back of people who had gotten caught in the dragnet who'd written me and us an e-mail and suddenly found somebody knocking at their door that's not happening today as far as we have heard but there is what there is is this chilling a fact that is more subtle you know maybe in some ways quite insidious we also do know that there have been mistakes in the application and the exercise of these

programs that sometimes they've looked at things that they according to even their own rules should not have been with any program this large that's going to happen so i think we do need to be careful in terms of talking about what the real problems and flaws are what real harm and damage we are seeing if we paint it as an unqualified monster i think there will be people who say and there were people who even said in response to our survey that they do recognize there is a need for some surveillance there's a need for intelligence gathering we've always done that it does have a role to play in national security but that this has gone too far and we need to read. look at what the limits are and where the boundaries should be drawn a bit suzanne if you think the n.s.a. is doing a very good job to convince the rest of us of what you just said what you say is quite rational and straightforward but they're not doing a very good job they want to keep these powers they want to make them legal and

they don't want to talk about what they're doing it can't and they can't have it both ways because if you want to have it both ways people will consider them a monster more and more often as these leaks continue i mean isn't it incumbent upon the powers that be to come out and be a little bit more honest and transparent with people about these things. i think it is i mean you've got to recognize that this is a agency that's built on a culture of complete secret c. and they've operated these programs in some cases for many years completely shrouded from any kind of public notice and all of a sudden it was blown up in the open and they're having to adjust to the fact that they can't do business in the quiet and secretive way that they are accustomed to that they have to be accountable and i think this is really brand new for many of the officials and officers who are running these programs so that's a big adjustment yeah the place where i think we really need to look at it for accountability is the executive branch the president and the white house where

there their job is not to gather intelligence i mean i can understand if you're running an intelligence program and somebody gives you access to this incredible sweeping breadth of information you know it's your job to ferret out terrorists you're going to say terrific you know this is just a gold mine and i can pore through it and leslie and maybe i'll find some useful leads and you know that person is probably just doing their job but it's the job of the president and of the executive branch of the justice department the congress the courts they're the mediators in this they're the ones who have to say ok this person finds value here he believes that the this information is useful and necessary how credible is that came what's the evidence that these programs really advance our security that they really uncover profits and then on the flip side what are the consequences what kinds of harms result from these programs are we

creating a real breach of trust between the american people and our government because the consequences of that could be very far reaching in the in the very reason why we say i'm sorry we've run out of time i really like how we ended on the program here many thanks to my guests today in washington and. in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember. her.

i mean people name me as. i'm able forty one sadly i've got no family no. i'm still looking for my to get a life. so my place in the world. i literally have no place to live. will. you sit there chewing on the bread that you bowl with the last money you were able to beg and all they can say is get out of here. there are only two possible outcomes to the situation you know how you go to miami and it's all about fancy cars with hot chicks the other option you die in the ring breathe deep breathe deeply. want to run your whole strong arm and watch n.b.c.

news all the face time you know. it was. a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure.

dozens of civilians are massacred near the syrian capital damascus with eyewitnesses telling r t of mass executions and kidnappings carried out by islamist rebels. as the european union posts ukraine integration on hold u.s. senators joining the protesters in the capital kiev throwing their weight behind the opposition's pro western ambitions. mexico is gripped by mass anti-government demonstrations with protesters accusing authorities of stripping the state of its wealth and people of their future.