coming up on r t a federal court ruling delivered a blow to the u.s. surveillance judge found that the n.s.a. is tracking a phone data is likely to be unconstitutional the latest on this new development coming up the transfer of two guantanamo bay detainees to saudi arabia has given new hope for the detention camps closure with the obama administration pushing forward on the transfer of more detainees is this the end of get no more on that ahead in mexico politicians and the public rise in protest against and energy bill critics fear it will allow foreign companies to plunder the nation's oil resources and help the u.s. dominate mexico's oil and update on this growing opposition later in the show.

it's monday december sixteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching r.t. well 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. as a spy program violates the fourth amendment prohibition on an reasonable 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 met a data but they have demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their fourth amendment claim and that they will suffer irreparable harm absent coleman ery injunctive relief the ruling applies to the metal data collected from phone calls that take place from or within the u.s. judge's. leon also said that the department of justice failed to demonstrate how

collecting this made of data actually helps swart terror plots earlier i spoke with rachel levinson waldman counsel to the brennan center the liberty and national security program i first asked her about the importance of this ruling. 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 as 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 way around 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 book broadly at this very broad collection but then said yes for the. 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 about what we've learned is that it contains at least forty recommendations the white house has received they were 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 and 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 that 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 if 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. this some talk 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 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 to reprogram 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 at what the n.s.a. does and what its officials think about the leaks from former contractor edward snowden media critics argue that not a single dissenting voice was feature of throughout the reporting and no tough questions were alternately asked artie's political commentators sam sachs analyzes the report as well as the blowback. sunday night a 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 say i didn't previously work for the intelligence stated 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 presenting this so-called big scoop but the compromised reporter really is the perfect setup for what followed next the 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 an essay can only target the communications of a u.s. person with a probable cause finding under specific court order today we have less than sixty authorizations and specific persons to do that he actually was asked whether they collect content and responded by by addressing whether they target americans which

are different things because some of the biggest programs that collect content targeted on a foreigner say bad somali terrorists 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 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 phone recalls but they're collecting a lot more u.s. person and and 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 involves the concept that n.s.a. had tunneled into the foreign data centers of major u.s. internet providers the least describe 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 links between google and yahoo servers and 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 using google and yahoo one of the reasons they would have to go overseas to to to break into google and yahoo news communications cables is is that they're doing stuff beyond what the face a court would approve but softballs and so boxes weren't the only favors handed out by sixty minutes sunday night they also help the n.s.a. with that smolin ewell's problem by featuring young hip more neil analysts than 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 test 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 and 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 i said 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. the same sex are to syria has been in civil war for nearly three years now with no end in the foreseeable future violence on both sides france up dramatically this weekend leaving hundreds of civilians dead r.t. arabic correspondent abu talib although high a has more. no doubt about that our team 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. it was constructed by don't strike and our system fourfold the streets also it's very. terrible they were killing strangers here one of them to fire the army and see if they carry the smell of the worst thing in. the shop. the kids and maybe. some of the kidnapped families have been transferred to areas south of the town there are no being held strategically. which the rebels said. renshaw these places are heavily fortified sources also say the total death toll and the drug may in fact increase because the syrian army has not yet liberated the entire town of those r.t. arabic correspondent paul will hire. two long time guantanamo bay detainees have

been transferred out of the detention facility on to saudi arabia in what is being described as a ray of hope for the facilities eventual closure according to the guantanamo review task force assessments from two thousand and nine leaked by wiki leaks to the new york times so odd mohammad who signed qahtani was captured in pakistan back in two thousand and one and was considered at high risk for reengaging with al-qaeda meanwhile how mood of dollar homuth 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 arab brigade who took part in an attack on bob graham air force base he was described as a high. risk to the u.s. interests and a medium intelligence value i spoke earlier with michael ratner he's the president emeritus at the center for constitutional rights to talk more in depth about the transfer of these men and what it means for the future of guantanamo bay 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 the 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 play feed 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 two 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 and they haven't been charged with anything but they haven't been cleared for release do we have any indication at this point why no guantanamo bay officials chose these two men for elise as all 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 as ian 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 a levon 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 a mill 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 on the spray to say that part of my country has become deal 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 men. well certainly with regard to the two algerians they were put into incommunicado detention in 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 algeria did not go well he 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 it 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 despite the restrictions that are there in congress yemen in particular there's eighty some people from yemen sitting in guantanamo 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 to morrow 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 talk in 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 in it that allows for compromise on flexibility in 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 saudi arabia and to 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 now 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 r.t. before who have said that even if guantanamo bay doesn't then surely 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 they don't have to try people when you pick them up i'm afraid that is now in bedded 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 close physically but closing it physically would certainly be an important step particularly for the men at guantanamo michael ratner president emeritus at the center for constitutional rights thank you so much . 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 your skinny that's exactly what one mexican congressman did during a recent speech to raise awareness about a controversial new energy bill in the country congressman antonino garcia a clinical of the democratic revolution party pulled the stunt on wednesday while talking about the future consequences of allowing foreign private companies to drill for oil and gas in mexico or to spanish correspondent nicholas o'donovan is in mexico with a look at some of the other protests 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 are 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 is the position of those who think the politicians of mexico aren't on the side of the people on the side of commercial interests they're losing that is not interested in asking that they don't care about what they think at all this states will have to reform a trillion ten minutes they know know what they are doing in there to train us the streets and 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 be building up here it's only about energy reform they talk about education reform transfer this is a it's just the mexican people coming together really demonstrating they just are

not happy with their policies that was artie's nicholas o'donovan reporting from mexico city well you know saying that money doesn't grow on trees well that doesn't stop the u.s. government from spending a lot of it seems to be ample and abundant president takes a look at how the defense department spends and wastes our money. the fact that the us government wastes huge amounts of money in ridiculous ways like it has money to burn is no big shocker but here's a pretty disgusting instance of it in two thousand and eight the defense department

spent four hundred and eighty six million dollars to buy twenty italian maybe twenty propeller military transport aircraft called g. twenty two's to give to the ask an air force and five years later they're basically rusting camps of scrap metal the us bought the aircraft to help the ask and support their own military when we leave them to the mess over there but according to a letter by john south of the special inspector general for afghanistan reconstruction no one bothered to buy spare parts for the aircraft to help meet operational requirements he said another two hundred million dollars was needed in order to make sure these things could actually fly but no one bothered to think that through and it turns out the italian made planes aren't even cut out for the hot and dusty environment in afghanistan him and so the department of defense ended the g. to twenty two program so the aircraft only ended up flying for

a total of two hundred and thirty four hours that translates to more than two million dollars and hour they were supposed to fly for forty five hundred hours that's why the government spent so much money on them because they were supposed to be used a lot but in actuality they're sitting on the tarmac at an airport in afghanistan and an air force. face in germany that is a colossal waste of taxpayer money almost a half a billion dollars and now only the inspector general plans i'm running and investigation into the total amount of money spent to procure operate sustain and dispose of the g. twenty two's and to evaluate what went wrong and how to prevent it from happening again and that paper pushing posture fills investigation is going to cost taxpayers even more money. so here we have all of our politicians all spiffed up in their suits and flag pins and getting in front of any camera they can to talk about

miss spending money on food stamps and health care and other stuff that people actually need were no they're blowing billions in the defense sector and crap we don't even use like we have money to burn if anything should be burned. at the stake for wasting our hard earned money tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the resident. and before we go don't forget to tune in at nine pm for larry king now tonight's guests are comedians alex bore sting and chris dullea here's a special snippet of what's to come where alex explains how she became the voice of lois griffin and stuff mcfarland's of family guy. he needed someone to help with the pilot presentation and at that time you know i think he was

a little like oh my god it's alex porson from mad t.v. you know i was the big shot then and he was you know i was doing him a favor of helping with the pilot presentation and i was doing a live show at the time that was doing valise band sounded like my cars and then long island and ice and how a mountain there was and he said can you speed up because the show is only twenty two minutes and it's really annoying so it's better that than he said that's great all right that does it for me for tonight but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or check out our website r.t. dot com slash usa and don't forget to follow me on twitter and i can underscore lopez but for now have a great night. i got a quote for you. it's pretty tough to. say when it's not story. let's get this guy like you but smear that guy stead of working for the people most

issues the mainstream media are working for each other right right the station. they did rather play it well. i know c.n.n. the m s n b c fox news have taken some slightly but the fact is i admire their commitment to cover all sides of the story just in case one of them happens to be accurate. that was funny but it's close and for the truth and might take. off. it's because one call attention and the mainstream media works side by side the joke is actually on here. at our teen years we have.