coming up on r t a federal court ruling delivered a blow against u.s. surveillance the judge found that the n.s.a. is tracking the phone data is likely to be unconstitutional the latest on this new development just ahead and the transfer of two one tunnel bay detainees to saudi arabia has given new hope but attention camps closure with the obama administration pushing forward on the transfer of war detainees is this really the end of the get go more on that coming up in mexico politicians and the public rise in protest against an energy bill that experience will allow foreign companies to plunder the nation's oil resources and help the u.s. to dominate mexico's oil and update on this growing opposition later in the show.

it's monday december sixteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching r t so let's get straight to today's top story starting off this hour a landmark ruling could pave the way for more regulations of the national security agency u.s. district court judge richard leon ruled that the n.s.a.'s spying program violates the fourth amendment prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures the decision says quote the court concludes that plaintiffs have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the government's bulk collection and querying of phone records metal data that they have demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their fourth amendment claim and that they will suffer irreparable harm absent collimator injunctive relief ruling applies to the metadata collected from phone calls that take place from or within the u.s. judge leon also said the department of justice failed to demonstrate how collecting . data actually warrants terror plots joining me now to talk about this is rachel

levinson wildman counsel to the brennan center is a liberty and national security program rachel thank you so much for joining me so let's start off by talking about this ruling how important how long your mental is it this is a really important ruling this is a ruling that says that the justification that the government has been using that collecting this huge quantity of information about americans phone calls is no different from collecting small amounts of information on a very targeted person and it doesn't i understand it and i say originally tried to say that this metadata is protected under previous laws i think were made back in the seventy's or late sixty's but this judge ruled that that's not the case right so what the n.s.a. has relied on what the department of justice has relied on is this one thousand nine hundred seventy nine supreme court opinion called smith versus maryland and in that case there was a single person whose phone metadata information about his calls had been gathered

because there was a specific crime that had occurred in which he was a suspect and basically that has been kind of analogized very broadly to the collection of all americans phone calls information about them and the judge said that one just doesn't transfer to the other we're in a totally different scenario now totally different scenario with totally different technology and also capabilities on the government's part now i want to read a statement about the ruling today that was put out by a former edwards former contractor edward snowden he said i acted on my belief that the n.s.a. is mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge and that the american public deserves a chance to see these issues determined by open courts today a secret program authorized by secret by a secret courts was when exposed to the light of day found to violate americans rights it is the first of many so this decision was deemed likely unconstitutional what does that realistically mean in what does it really do right so it's kind of the this isn't a sort of in a. funny procedural posture right now so what happened was that there were several

plaintiffs in the case and basically they said our own constitutional rights have been violated by the collection of all of this information so the judge looked at that looked broadly at this very broad collection but then said yes for these particular people i think it violates their constitutional rights but he also said i'm not really making a decision on the constitutionality yet what i'm determining is what my most likely decision would be down the line so we have to wait a little bit for this to make its way up to an appeals court now meanwhile this comes out in the light of a lot of different things are happening in the realm of n.s.a. and surveillance and spying now one of the things that happened in the wake of that n.s.a. surveillance scandal was that a presidential task force was set up to make recommendations about what can be done in the future to make this organization flow in a more transparent way so first of all let's talk about some of those recommendations go ahead sure so what we know with the report itself hasn't come

out yet so what we know sort of from the press coverage of what we've learned is that it contains at least forty recommendations the white house has received it they're reviewing it with they've said of the that they'll release the report sometime in january once they've had a chance to kind of make a decision but there has been information about some of the main recommendations in there and those include keeping broadly speaking this bulk collection of phone metadata but holding that information with the phone companies or with a third party rather than government raising the standards that the n.s.a. has to meet to search that information and among other things making the process before the secret court the secret foreign intelligence surveillance court more adversarial meaning there would be an advocate there for the public's interest for citizens interests well there's a lot of things that a lot of good issues that you just raised first of all i find it very interesting that we only know about these recommendations through leaks which is pretty interesting that self but the other thing is that. the main word here is

recommendation how likely is it that the n.s.a. will actually take any of these recommendations and implement them into practice well it's clear that the administration is under huge amounts of political pressure so this pressure has been building over the last six months as these revelations have been coming out we've been learning about more and more n.s.a. spying programs we've been learning more and more about the extent to which the n.s.a. over a period of years hasn't complied with the own prosy its own procedures that it said it had put into place and now there's pretty significant legislation that's working its way through congress including a pretty strong bipartisan bill so i think there's no question that something is going to have to change the white house has hasn't signaled a lot yet about which recommendations is actually going to take up it has set a bit so i think we know that some changes will have to be made the n.s.a. certainly has been advocating basically those changes be on the margins now one of the recommendations that we know won't be taken out is the on consolidation of the

two of the different agencies so i want to go ahead and read a quote from white house spokeswoman caitlin hayden she told the washington post following a thorough interagency review the administration has decided that keeping the positions of n.s.a. director and cyber command commander together as one dual hatted position is the most effective approach to accomplishing both agency's missions so does that essentially mean business as usual as far as we know yes so that's the way it's structured right now general keith alexander is the head both of the n.s.a. and of cyber command so if they're kept together it means again that the same person will be running both will sort of have the scope of power the position has now and also will mean that the head of n.s.a. will be a military position because the head of cyber command has to be military and finally i can't let you go without talking about how a top n.s.a. official who is in charge of assessing the damage that edward snowden caused has actually said that he would consider granting snowden amnesty. he had possibly

agreed to hand over the rest of the documents and mind you it's a lot of documents glenn greenwald in the guardian said they only released one percent there's one point seven million documents that are believed to be in edward snowden's hands how likely is it do you think that some sort of amnesty would actually happen i think this is really fascinating general alexander has said that he's not in favor of this but legit is quite high up general alexander is retiring next year so his words certainly carry a fair amount of weight that being said edward snowden has also said that he shared the documents with journalists that a lot of them aren't in his hands anymore so it's a little hard to know what it would mean to hand them back to the n.s.a. and may simply mean the n.s.a. so wants to know what he took and doesn't yet know that that that alone would be significant for the agency and keith alexander himself it is still very against it so we'll have to see how all of this kind of pans out but again it will just wait till tomorrow will be new n.s.a. revelations to talk about rachel levinson wildman counsel for the brennan center of

liberty and national security program thank you for coming on the show thank you well the c.b.s. news magazine program sixty minutes is under fire for the second time in as many months for a reporting scandal this time the program is being criticized for a recent two part series that looks into the n.s.a. director keith alexander called sixty minutes to invite them into the agency for an unprecedented inside look on what the n.s.a. does and what its officials think about the leaks from former contractor edward snowden now media critics argue that not a single dissenting voice was featured throughout the reporting two part by the way and no tough questions were ultimately asked archie's political commentator sam sachs analyzes the report as well as the blowback. sunday night's sixty minutes report which touted unprecedented access to the n.s.a. didn't start off so well full disclosure i once worked in the office of the director of national intelligence seriously seriously they couldn't have chosen

a different reporter someone who'd say they didn't previously work for the intelligence state john miller has always had a very close that's his schtick is that he's got this close relationship still with all his national security people he used to work with and it basically meant you've got a national security insider preventing this you know pre-presidential the so-called big scoop but the compromise reporter really is the perfect setup for what followed next a p.r. job for the n.s.a. and since it was a p.r. job the n.s.a. was spared tough questions and given a platform to distort the claims made against the agency by the edward snowden documents and i say can only target the communications of a u.s. person with a probable cause finding under a specific court order today we have less than sixty authorizations and specific persons to do that he actually was asked whether they collected content and responded by by addressing whether they target americans which are different things

because some of the biggest programs they collect content targeted on a foreigner say bad somali terrorist guy and any americans whose communications who are communicating with that bad smelly terrorist guy will also be collected the n.s.a. is legally allowed to take three hops from any target and peer into the communications of individuals who talk to individuals who talk to individuals who talk to targets that could include millions of people including americans and then there are other ways we know for example that the n.s.a. collects. e-mail directly from telecoms which is in the united states and we know that it every year that they may collect. as much as fifty six thousand americans e-mails alexander didn't address e-mails at all and i think that they end up getting a lot more e-mails than they do phone calls but that they're collecting a lot more u.s. person and am listening to a lot more u.s.

person content than they're letting on and then there was this claim made about how the n.s.a. collects data from internet companies like google and yahoo one of the snowden leaks involved the concept that n.s.a. had tunneled into the far end data centers of major u.s. internet providers and an elite described it the right way no that's not correct we do target terrorist communications and terrorists use communications from google from yahoo and from other service providers so our objective is to collect those communications no matter where they are but we're not going into a facility or targeting google as an entity or yahoo was an entity but as the washington post reported back in october the n.s.a. is hacking into data lives between google and yahoo servers in scooping out data which raises a bunch of questions in itself they can legally get terrorist communications from

google and yahoo it's not clear they can legally get for example financial intelligence from google and yahoo one of the reasons they would have to go overseas to have to sue to break into google and yahoo communication cables is is that they're doing stuff beyond what the face a court would approve but softballs in soapboxes weren't the only favors handed out by sixty minutes sunday night they also help the n.s.a. with its mowen hills problem by featuring young hip morning you'll analysts and sixty minutes devoted a good chunk of their report to bashing edward snowden. they discovered the first secret snowden stole was how to cheat on a task to get a job at the agency and it's also worth mentioning that not a single voice opposing the n.s.a. was interviewed during the entire report so what was the point of all of this keep in mind that after the christmas break congress is going to come back more start

we're going to have a fight between whether dianne feinstein's bill or whether the leahy sensenbrenner bill gets passed which which reigns in all of the spying so outside sixty minutes report was less about giving americans answers and more about giving the n.s.a. a chance to fire the opening salvo in what could be a pivotal legislative fight next year and they seem to have the mainstream news media in their corner in washington d.c. same stocks are today. syria has been a civil war for nearly three years now with no end in the foreseeable future violence on both sides has ramped up dramatically this weekend leaving hundreds of civilians debt r.t. arabic correspondent will hire has more. sources in the military say radical islamist fighters entered the town of and massacred local civilians according to the latest figures at least eighty people were killed in the districts of which the syrian army has now liberated entire families were

killed other families were kidnapped and are being used as human shields in the battle against government forces. you know for sure but i don't strike and there are no system for hold the streets and also it's very. terrible they were killing the fear on of them to fire the army and see the city they carry the smell of the worst thing in the right when the shots. they keep and maybe repeat. some of the kidnapped families have been transferred to areas south of the town they're now being you know strategically important terms which the rebels said. gratian these places are heavily fortified sources also say the total death toll and address may in fact increase because the syrian army has not yet liberated the entire town that was r t arabic correspondent. well two

longtime guantanamo bay detainees have been transferred out of the detention facility and to saudi arabia and what is being described as a ray of hope for the facilities eventual closure according to one time away task force review assessments from two thousand and nine leaked by wiki leaks to the new york times saad mohammad who signed khatami was captured in pakistan back in two thousand and one and was considered at high risk for reengaging with al qaeda meaning. while homuth of dolphin mood was captured in karachi pakistan in two thousand and two his official files describe the mood as a member of osama bin laden's fifty fifth brigade which took place in the attack on air force base he was described as a high risk to u.s. interests with medium intelligence value i spoke with michael ratner president emeritus at the center for constitutional rights to talk more in depth about the transfer of this man and what it means for the future of on tom ok well you know

we've had eighty people who've been recommended for release years ago and it's taken five years since obama promised to close the place to start getting some people released it is as you said a ray of hope why now i think a couple of things one is i think the hunger strikes that took place in may or a few months ago put this issue back on the front page that's number one number two i think it is still a huge issue in the muslim world that we are keeping a hundred eighty people or one hundred sixty people rather who have never been charged with crimes at guantanamo so i think they want to they actually may actually making an effort to close it but obama has had clay feet about it we'll have to see whether these two plus two people recently sent to algeria against their will and i think two more people that are going out today to sudan will make a difference will be down to one hundred fifty eight will they actually get it closed i still think it's very unlikely in this administration you have to remember half of those people have not been cleared for release or they haven't been charged

with anything but they haven't been cleared for release do we have any indication at this point why the guantanamo bay officials chose these two men for elise as well as the other four that you had mentioned previously. you know i think they're trying to figure out what countries they believe they can get assurances that the people sent back won't be tortured they claim to have that from algeria we at the center who had one of those algerian clients and think that's wrong that he is in danger in algeria but they went ahead anyway i think because of the pressure on them to try and get them closed i don't think there's any particular order i think it's when they can get agreements with countries and get people out but they certainly have not worked very hard on it as we sit here we're coming up on january eleventh of the twelfth anniversary some of these men have been there are eleven and almost twelve years so that your shows me that they're not working very hard and recently a couple of days ago the general who actually was responsible for setting up one

town m o general lenhart came out with a statement saying it was the wrong thing to do to set it up to begin with we didn't learn anything from the interrogations it has to be closed immediately and it's unconstitutional to keep people at guantanamo without any charges and without any convictions yet that's what i'm afraid to say that part of my country has become do you know what will happen to these men next after they are transferred away from guantanamo bay are they still in prison somewhere else or do they walk as free man. well certainly with regard to the jury and they were put into incommunicado detention and algeria immediately we have been trying to put a huge amount of pressure on algeria we have petition campaigns demonstrations so that they won't do anything to these men the experience in two thousand and ten of a man who was sent back to a jury did not go well they got a very long sentence really for not doing anything that you and i would consider criminal except really opposing the algerian government by having left it so we're

worried i mean obviously we have to keep track of the people in saudi arabia were sent back and each of them because you never know what's going to happen to them hopefully this administration will be more able to look at that than they have in the past and will be more concerned by because one bad example will put this program to an end but one thing that shocking to me is that obama tomorrow could close a good half of that camp the spike the restrictions that are there in congress yemen in particular there's eighty some people from yemen sitting in one town i'm over fifty five of those have been cleared for release yemen has been taken off the list of countries where you can no longer send people tomorrow obama could transfer those fifty five when we start getting some mass transfers like that begin to have some hope that this ray of hope will go into real sunshine for the people at guantanamo now piggybacking off of what you were just talking about let's talking a little bit more detail about one of the major issues that has been slowing this

process down significantly and that is the transfer of these men to other countries now a new national defense authorization act seems to have some language and it that allows for compromise on flexibility and transferring these men out of cuba what do you know about that. well you know the last national defense authorization act which is still in effect was permissible enough to allow these six people to be transferred to algeria to distort the arabian to the sudan what that shows me is that those quote restrictions could have been complied with by obama all along but he didn't the new n.d.a. which will be voted on next week gives him a little more room to make the certifications that the people won't be dangerous or recidivist etc but he's always had that room but hopefully it will be somewhat of a green light if not a big green light for him to say i know may have the courage because maybe congress is not as strong against that to get these people out of guantanamo but it's something the president should have done

a long time ago that i put really right at his feet and finally we have just a short amount of time left but we have guests here on our team before who have said that even if guantanamo bay does eventually close for good the idea of guantanamo bay or indefinite detention well not what do you think about that you know this country has changed permanently since nine eleven the idea that we can indefinitely detain people that we didn't prosecute anybody for torture you don't have to try people when you pick them up i'm afraid that is now imbedded in the american legal system and so what i fear is that you can close guantanamo physically but you will not end the illegal detentions that are currently going on in places like bag ram and may go on in other places as well so i think it's very bad going forward even if it's closed physically but closing it physically would certainly be an important step particularly for the men and one connell michael ratner president emeritus at the center for constitutional rights thank you so much . well google is moving forward with plans to buy out the robotics company boston

dynamics in a somewhat surprising move by the internet giant for years boston dynamics has been leading the way in machine innovations picking the interest of the defense advanced research projects agency or darpa which has been partnering with the company for years and now it seems that google wants in here's a quick look at some of the most interesting innovations that have come out from boston dynamics. so first of all get men a robot designed to look like a human for the testing of chemical protection clothing having to walk and move freely and do a number of calisthenic exercises even when exposed to deadly chemicals and then there's this robotic dog called the big dog this canine s. creature was originally designed to lug around soldiers gear box you can also throw cinder blocks like he's doing right now like a shot of them there and check out cheetah on the track until this robot runs about one mile faster than the olympic sprinter hussein bolt though still slower than an

actual cheetah for now anyway also dynamics is the company google has acquired in the field of robotics in the past six months alone the tech giant has also behind the first ever of self driving car no word yet on how much google paid or how it plans to use boston dynamics in future ventures so for now it looks like we're going to have to stick to. well you've heard of people using picket signs and protest chance to get their message of dissent across in the past but how about stripping down to their skin if it is well that is exactly what one mexican congressman recently did during a speech to raise awareness about a controversial new energy bill in the country congressman antonio garcia clinical of the democratic revolution party hold the stent on wednesday while talking about the future consequences of allowing foreign private companies to drill for oil and

gas in mexico or to correspondent nicholas o'donovan is in mexico with a look at some of the other protests that are taking place. protests against the energy reform have been held in all major cities across mexico it's a new demonstration of power of those who oppose what they government has approved without their consent we can't forget that there is three points of the mexican constitution that will be modified under the new measure for many mexicans this new era in the energy sector just means the beginning of the end of the country's independence many also believes that the whole process has been just a farce and that the decision was really already made even before the debate began the rapid approval that the reform is getting in the local delegations at least read to me as the position of those who think the politicians of mexico aren't on the side of the people on the side of commercial interests now losing that is not interested in asking that they don't care about what they think at all this states

will have to hold to me and in a minute they know know what they are doing in there to train us the streets are not the only thing as i have now and will do all it takes is a planet and symbolically protesters in mexico city the nation's capital chose the square of independence to kick off their massive march pressure tension and frustration been building up here it's only about energy reform they talk about education reform and no drugs this is dave it's just the mexican people coming together really demonstrating they just are not happy with their policy that was artie's nicholas o'donovan reporting from mexico city. well the food and drug administration announced plans last week to phase out antibiotics of the animal feed due to growing public health concerns now the reason for this move is because experts say humans are taking too much of these antibiotics and and their bodies are coming up with drug resistant super bugs that render them use less the center

for disease control reports that every year two million people get sick from antibiotic resists. bacterial infections and twenty two thousand people die the majority of bacteria that causes those illnesses comes from food in particular from meat now this move is the latest in the obama administration's attempts to raise food safety standards the food additives that are targeted this time include antimicrobials that are used to fatten animals up to provide more meat it is also aimed at phasing out the use of eight medical anti-microbial such as penicillin and tetra cyclon the national defense resource council says eighty percent of all antibiotics are sold that use this unnecessary antibiotics in the livestock pharmaceutical companies are also asked to voluntarily participate in the removal of growth for motion hormones and take them away from their labels for these

antimicrobials they now have ninety days to decide whether or not they want to add here to these new policies and three years to put the new practices in place. well what is creepier than an old man sneaking into your house every year while you were sleeping to eat your cookies drink your milk and eventually maybe some presence the a.c.l.u. says the n.s.a. is much creepier than santa claus and in true holiday spirit the group released a christmas themed video to reiterate the point now due to copyright restrictions we can't play the song for you but here are some of the lyrics and bear with me i am certainly not beyond say it goes you better watch out to you better not sky you better log out you better not type the n.s.a. is coming to town you are making a list they're checking it twice they're watching almost every act like tronic device the n.s.a. is coming to town now the song goes on for another minute and

a half but i certainly won't subject you to my singing voice for about long because . is that in itself might be considered unconstitutional it's just the latest way the a.c.l.u. is drawing attention to the n.s.a. scandal in trying to get the public to rise up and do something about it but that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america no forget to check out our website r.t. dot com slash usa and to find out what i'm doing when i'm not bringing you today's top stories follow me on twitter at meghan underscore aloha is also right back here at eight pm.

i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. they wait substory. get this guy like we're about guys that are working for the people motivations the.