because i am. coming up on r t one day after a white house appointed panel released its report on the n.s.a. r t is sifting through the nitty gritty details of the panel's recommendations will the n.s.a. listen and is it enough to protect your privacy some answers ahead could jamie dimon end up behind bars years after the financial meltdown one report shows how j.p. morgan chase and its c.e.o. violated a federal law that could carry up to twenty years in prison so where's the justice department we'll take a closer look at that story next and amnesty international has released a new report on atrocities in syria detailing inhumane acts by g. hottest groups like torture and murder more on the crisis in syria just ahead.

it's thursday december nineteenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching r.t. well the white house appointed review group on intelligence and communication technologies released a report detailing forty six recommendations for the national security agency to become more effective and more transparent the report was just over three hundred pages long just under three hundred pages long that is and since the moment it was released we have been combing through each page to bring you the most important information coming out of it for an in-depth look at this and other developments in the surveillance saga this week artie's sam sachs reports the week started with edward snowden reaching out to brazil in the n.s.a. making a p.r. push with the help of sixty minutes. but the week is ending very very differently

on monday the federal courthouse behind me delivered the first legal blow to the n.s.a. signature bulk phone records collection program a program that the world just learned about back in june as a result of edward snowden's disclosures in the case judge richard leon said i cannot imagine a more indiscriminate an arbitrary invasion than the systematic and high tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without prior judicial approval surely such a program infringes on the degree of privacy that the founders in shrine in the fourth amendment to the program will be shut down in six months pending a government appeal after the ruling journalist glenn greenwald was quick to explain the significance of what just happened it's an extraordinary ruling ari and it's an absolute medication forward to specific attributes one as a some indication of the constitutional rights of american citizens and it's also i

think a very important expansion for our fellow citizen edward snowden they don't winstead an independent review panel set up by the white house to report back on possible n.s.a. abuses delivered forty six recommendations to reform the spy agency in the cross-hairs section two fifteen of the patriot act which underpins the n.s.a.'s bulk phone records collection program the report says we recommend that section two fifteen should be amended and that the government can only collect private data from companies if the particularly information sought is relevant to an authorized investigation intended to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities and like a subpoena of the order is reasonable in focus scope and breath recommendation five goes on to say legislation should be enacted that terminates the storage of bulk telephony metadata by the government under section two fifteen. recommendation for

ads the government should not be permitted to collect and store all mass undigested nonpublic personal information about individuals to enable future queries and data mining for foreign intelligence purposes in other words no more bulk collection at the n.s.a. and no more backdoor searches the events of the week have the biggest defenders of the n.s.a. walking back their die hard support the chairwoman of the senate intelligence committee senator dianne feinstein on this program in conjunction with other programs helps keep this nation safe i'm not saying it's indispensable and it's also in bold in senators who've been pushing legislation to significantly restrain the n.s.a. senator rand paul after monday's court decision the n.s.a. phone surveillance program is a blatant abuse of power and an invasion of our privacy this ruling reminds of the federal government that it is not above the law and senator ron wyden after the white house report was released on wednesday when combined with the u.s.

district court ruling on the likely unconstitutionality of bulk phone collection earlier this week this report will help to galvanize support for surveillance reforms both with the public and within congress so where do things go from here well in the courts as a result of this week's ruling that it will likely be the supreme court that has the final say on the cost to shall the of the n.s.a. spying programs but that could take a couple years as for the white house and for congress things might happen much much quicker all lawmakers have to do is take serious the recommendations from the white house review board and then enact new legislation occurred the n.s.a.'s powers and since budgetary matters have been resolved recently and lawmakers could get to work on this as soon as the beginning of next year so the week is ending with one of the n.s.a.'s most prized spy programs on the verge of dismemberment and with edward snowden nearing vindication in the united states but if he's ever going

to return home and what happens in our courts and in congress over the next few months are critically important in washington d.c. same sex party. now in the midst of this report calling into question the n.s.a.'s surveillance tactics the spy agency is also conducting a blitz of its own the n.s.a. has launched its own twitter p.r. page so far it has sent out a total of three tweets its first tweet encourage viewers to turn into that controversial sixty minutes report that media clip critics claim amounted to a p.r. job for the agency the other two tweets linked to podcasts on lawfare where our reporter interviewed the n.s.a. director of come of compliance john de long and n.s.a. general counsel d. so is the twitter account going to change the beleaguered agency's perception here to talk all things n.s.a. i'm joined now by justin wright act she is the national security and human rights director for the government accountability project and all along with that word

snowden she was named one of their own policies one hundred leading global thinkers of twenty thirteen just on first of all congratulations on being named so i want to start by getting your initial reactions coming out in the wake of this report with those forty six recommendations my initial reactions are i am pleasantly surprised by the forty six recommendations they are a lot more aggressive than i thought they would be coming from a president's own white house committee i also feel most importantly this indicates edward snowden who has been dry that by the government by very loudly and listened for asli as some sort of traitor or committing treason i think this vindicates what he revealed was indeed barely if at all constitutional and likely unconstitutional and that these programs are even being recommended to be done away with and terminated completely at the same time do you think it's actually going to

change anything in terms of edward snowden's current situation you know it's been very interesting to me that over the last week both the tech giants called for. or some sort of amnesty for snowden and and at the same time and then say suggested amnesty or pardon might be an order so this is not coming from the lawyers this is coming from industry this is coming from the agency the agency soon to be deputy director so that's pretty significant and i think with these recommendations with the one two three punch of judge leon's decision followed by the tech giant stressing down the white house for the snooping they've been doing followed by these forty six recommendations that snowden people are seeing bad he told the truth and he revealed programs that were in fact illegal and he shouldn't be the one going to jail for that sure now earlier today i spoke with cass sunstein he's

one of the people that was on that review panel that suggested these recommendations despite having what he calls quote complete access to complete this review i asked him if there are any surprises and i want you to listen to what he had to say we didn't discover any shocking character issues. what do you think about that no shocking practice i don't know why you said that because certainly if you read the report of which he is an author there are forty six not four not ten twenty thirty or forty but forty six lengthy recommendations about how to reform these programs including terminating killing off the most central book collection of all phone call data innocent americans killing off the major program and numerous other significant reforms so maybe he had just already heard most of the information from edward snowden. that is

a likely possibility now i also spoke with sunstein about the section of the report recommending how to deal with people like edward snowden who would have access to classified information and who might want to go public with it one day versus going through with what they call the proper channels so i asked him if this was meant to stop leakers like edward snowden and let's hear what he had to say to that. i'd say that the difficulty is that if there are people who are getting access to information that's private we don't want such people either intruding on the privacy of their fellow citizens which is a risk if the government is acquiring information and the idea is to make sure that the insider threat as we describe it is is is confined while also respecting channels for the legitimate whistleblowers so what do you think about that confining this insider threat yeah i think the insider threat

program was a bit confusing because he's worried about intrusions on individuals privacy apparently by employees of the n.s.a. when n.s.a. is conducting massive daily dragnet intrusions on everyone's privacy i think if you really want to eliminate insider threats people are not trying to reveal private information whistleblowers like thomas drake and bill binney and kirk we be and edward snowden are all n.s.a. where n.s.a. contractors who are trying to reveal illegal programs and that's quite different and you need to have meaningful effective whistleblower reform which national security and intelligence whistleblowers have none now obviously a lot of people are very happy about this report as you said it is more far reaching than a lot of people anticipated glenn greenwald himself is very happy about this but at the end of the day these are only recommendations how likely do you think it is that the n.s.a. or the white house will take up any or all of them. you know i. it's

ironic that president obama is going to be contemplating these recommendations during his time in hawaii where edward snowden is from i am disheartened by the fact that before these even came out he already said that he would be rejecting the recommendation to separate n.s.a. from cyber command i think that's a huge mistake but i hope that he will follow the other recommendations and if he doesn't now that these cases are allowed to go up through the courts i'm fairly confident that the courts will make that happen and thirty seconds left where do we go from here i think we have a lot of great bills like the usa freedom act on the floor of congress are coming up in twenty fourteen and i hope they get passed i think that would be a substantial substantial step i think they're going to be more and more court cases and rulings like judge leon. in the future and hopefully that case by judge

leon will when that's way up to the supreme court sooner rather than later to get a similar kind of ruling just one rate ak you are one of the leading tech leading global thinkers of twenty thirteen here on foreign policy magazine i encourage people to go out and read it you're also the national security and human rights director at the government accountability project thank you so much thank you. at guantanamo bay two long time detainees have been transferred out of the camp into their native country of sudan this comes just days after two saudi detainees were transferred so it appears as if the obama administration is finally making good on its war to begin the process to close the facility down for good in his detainee assessment leaked to the new york times by wiki leaks even to him off many breaking either it is described as a veteran al qaeda member who served as osama bin laden's courier in the one nine hundred ninety s. he was captured by pakistani forces back in two thousand and one while attempting to cross the afghanistan pakistan border with other members of the so-called dirty

thirty group who were some of bin laden's security detail his believed to have a high intelligence value and also possess a. high security risk to the u.s. its interests and its allies now the other men nor the home it is described as a senior al qaeda military trainer in afghanistan with connections to the group's operational chain of command mohammad has a high intelligence value and poses a high security risk as well he was captured by pakistani forces back in two thousand and two the efforts to transfer detainees out of get mo have a lot to do with the two new special envoys appointed by the administration those being cliff sloan at the state department and paul lewis at the pentagon meanwhile congress is also working on making it much easier to transfer detainees out of cuba the provision in the part of the new national defense authorization act that is set to pass this week helps them do such

a thing so it looks like the end of one tunnel really could be on the horizon. well time and again president obama has promised to get tough on big banks to ensure that a net financial crash similar to that of the magnitude of the one back in two thousand and eight. here's a president on sixty minutes back in two thousand and nine they're still puzzled why is it that people are mad at the banks. well let's say you know you guys are drawn ten twenty million dollar bonuses after america went through the worst economic year that it's gone through in in decades and you guys caused the problem and we got ten percent unemployment why do you think people might be a little frustrated but critics argue he has been anything but tough case in point j.p. morgan chase c.e.o. jamie dimon in a recent salon article writer david de and makes the argument that jamie dimon explicitly it violated a federal statute that could result in decades in prison time an insult even admit

it to doing it he violated section nine o six of the san mains oxley act which addresses criminal penalties for certifying a misleading or fraudulent financial report under s o x nine o six penalties can be upwards of five million dollars in fines and twenty years in prison so if it's so easy to find a crime that jamie dimon committed why is he still a free man to answer this question i'm joined now by william cave black associate professor of economics and law at the university of missouri kansas city thank you so much for joining me now if jamie diamond is so clearly violator of these laws if he so clearly a criminal why haven't any charges been brought up against him. no charges have been brought up against any of the elite bankers whose for a cause the crisis so he's being treated like all the other criminal c.e.o.'s he

gets complete immunity now we constantly hear about large banks may have acted unethically in the run up to the financial crisis but they weren't acting illegally is that true in your opinion well actually the justice department has stopped repeating that line in fact the justice department is now taking the position in case after. case in writing in pleadings where they're responsible under professional obligations to you know have a good faith basis for this they say it was fraud and it was a massive fraud it was led by the largest most powerful allegedly most sophisticated banks in the world it isn't just the department of justice many other federal and of these such as the federal housing finance administration have accused virtually every large bank active in the secondary market

gauging in fraud so this is actually the three largest fraud epidemics in world history so does the justice department need to get more creative about filing charges against financial institutions. actually it doesn't need to get more creative it needs to get more down to business it's hard work building these cases but it all begins with actually forming a partnership with the banking regulators and doing the hard spade work to establish how the fraud mechanisms work which are always accounting in this concept in this context and none of the hard work has been done in the trenches so no it isn't innovative it's old school stuff that sent over a thousand elite folks to prison in the savings and loan debacle

and somewhere around six hundred eight hundred in the enron era scandal and zero elites in this scandal now as i understand it the purpose of the sarbanes oxley act was to change corporate behavior by putting top executives personally on the hook for any wrongdoing do you think that jamie dimon or anyone else for that matter will ever see their day in court when it takes say another financial collapse for something to be done about this and for it to be taken more seriously well it's certainly going to take another attorney general and probably it's going to take another president of the united states of america and that's probably going to put us pretty close to beyond the statue of limitations so i still think they've got indict somebody just for their professional reputations but again that's going to be one small group of folks probably intermediate level people as opposed to the hundreds and hundreds of folks that we prosecuted at the most elite levels in the

past so this is the greatest strategic failure by the department of justice in its history and certainly i judged jed rakoff ugly agrees he wrote recently a scathing essay in the new york review of books. saying that the lack of prosecution for the great recession must be judged as one of the most egregious failures of the criminal justice system in many years so obviously you agree with that right so that's going to set the stage for the next far larger crises very very interesting thank you so much for bringing us your opinions on that and for weighing in and really breaking down this complex kind of financial scandal that's going on william k. black associate professor of economics and law at the university of missouri kansas city thank you so much thank you amnesty international released a report today describing a series of abuses and human rights violations that were committed in detention

facilities run by the islamic state of iraq and al shabab or the i asked us for a closer look at the report r.t. correspondent celina nasser is a researcher for amnesty international has a report there is widespread torture torture of adults including also children the most common form of torture is a floodgate floodgate against detainees take place on a daily. every day basically it includes flogging against children we have witnesses former detainees who told us that they have seen children as young as thirteen to fourteen being flogged scores of times the detainees are sentenced to death at the trial that does not exceed three minutes which is. outrageous really one former detainee told

us that he once counted the number of lashes fulling. he counted until ninety four and he stopped counting get anymore. that was selena nasser a researcher at amnesty international well her on the crisis in syria i'm joined now by kate gold legislative associate for middle east policy at the f c n n l thank you so much for joining me now this amnesty international report it says that abductions torture killings shari'a courts secret prisons with inhumane conditions are just some of the things that are going on and they're all coming back to that al qaeda link jihad his group in syria so what do you make of this why are we seeing more coverage of it good point yes well this report certainly highlights in stark relief the gross human rights abuses many of which are war crimes that have been perpetrated by one of the most powerful armed opposition groups in syria known

as isis or the islamic state of iraq and of sham and so it really underscores the urgency for the international community to end the military assistance to all of the actors in this conflict which are have all perpetrated these human rights abuses and work toward a negotiated solution but unfortunately it's not getting the attention it deserves so how does this report reflect on the situation that is currently going on in the country shows that it's getting worse every day the united nations has warned this is the most grave threat to peace and security since world war two so we're seeing it just get every worse day by day. it's time for the international community to stop all military assistance to all the different actors in this conflict and work for the geneva two talks make sure that those are success and that we get an immediate cease fire and the conflict now as i mentioned this report details torture and flogging and abductions and murders obviously there's

a lot of accusations going around on both sides this is just the ugly face of war is this what the reality of war is. well clearly there are human rights abuses being perpetrated on all sides and that is why it has to end this is not inevitable you know seemingly intractable conflicts in lebannon in northern ireland and south africa they ended when there was the resolve to do so and we saw that there was the resolve to eradicate syria's chemical weapons arsenal and we're seeing great progress we're seeing a rare moment of cooperation between the united states and russia were seen resolved through cooperation at the u.n. security council and that's what happened when it came to chemical weapons the same kind of urgency and the same kind of spirit of cooperation is what we need in the case of ending the conflict once and for all now i want to take a moment to kind of focus on what's going on with these rebel groups obviously there's a lot of loose affiliations with one another there are reports that extremists in

jihad just start bringing their fights into syria so what should we make of this rebel group at the moment given all the factions and friction within the rebel group. unfortunately some of these extremist groups are among the most organized and most powerful armed groups so groups like isis groups like the youngest reformed these are the groups that are organized they have the largest military presence on the ground and they're also the groups in the best position to see the weapons that the united states that turkey that other countries have been sending to the armed opposition groups. yes there is so much so many factions there are estimated to be more than a thousand different armed opposition groups but these are the groups that have the most extreme groups that have perpetrated these barbaric acts have been the most powerful the most organized and the more that these weapons are sent to the more that these groups are emboldened to become stronger and more extreme and hard to

determine you know everyone wants to know who was the good guys and the bad guys in the fog of war back in world war two obviously you know we like to say that there was distinct good guys and bad guys but when we have these days it's really hard to point out those exact distinctions right yes this is a civil war so there are clearly gross human rights abuses happening on all sides and there however it's important to keep in mind that the majority of syrians are not involved in this these are hostilities that they're not taking up guns and they want to see a peaceful resolution to this conflict so so when you're looking for good guys when you're looking for for actual actors who are going to play a constructive role you can look at it syrian civil society organizing women's groups all kinds of different groups organizing for a nonviolent solution to this brutal crisis and we have less than a minute left but we are entering are just about to enter the third war of this

crisis the third year of this crisis how much longer can this war realistically go on before it tipped over the entire region into chaos. it depends on the international community if if there is resolve and if there is a determination to see that this this conflict and then it can and will require getting buy in from all the different actors at the table inside of syria and the external actors and we will see a major opportunity to end this conflict on january second when the geneva two talks commence and what about christians in syria there are reports that. atrocities are going on against religious minorities yes there are and i've actually heard from some colleagues who've been on the ground with some of these religious groups they've said that despite all the sectarian violence there are still some is an incredible displays of interfaith cooperation so we see when

muslims when there are some extremist groups that attacked a christian church then the mosques would would use their minarets to call christian services together and the christian services when the minaret could not work because of the electricity was cut off then christian groups christian churches would ring their bells and so still that is happening but unfortunately it's rapidly it's rapidly unraveling as we see this conflict persist thank you so much for joining us late of associate at the middle east policy at the f c n l and that's going to do it for now i'm maggie lopez. a. pledge it was a compliment very hard to take a pledge against a long career as

a plumber that never had sex with the perfect there's no let's play. lists the i'm. led play. live. st augustine. speaking to. try to. cover a team of journalists trying to release wiki leaks documents. united states is trying to. make. more pro-american

they encounter fear ignorance and pressure. country blocks the way to information freedom. media stuff on our to. their i marinated this is boom bust and here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today. chat room ours will be closed from nine to five at least if you're employed by a big bank that's right banks that may start to see.