coming up on our t.v. a white house appointed panel has released its report on the n.s.a. party is sifting through the nitty gritty details of the panel's recommendations will the n.s.a. listen to it and is it enough to protect your privacy some answers ahead and amnesty international has released a new report on atrocities in syria detailing inhumane acts by your hottest groups like torture and murder more on the crisis in syria coming up. plus hackers taking aim at shoppers that and major data companies are getting personal to personal with your information we'll break it all down for you in our tech report up coming up next welcome to our.

well it is thursday december nineteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm like a lopez and you are watching our t.v. so let's get to day's top stories the white house appointed review group on intelligence and communications technologies released a report detailing forty six recommendations for the national security agency to become a more effective and transparent we here at r.t. have been combing through the three hundred page report to bring you the most important information for an in-depth look at this and the other developments of this n.s.a. surveillance saga here's our teens as sam sachs the week started with edward snowden reaching out to brazil and 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 deliver the first regal 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 that case judge richard leon said i

cannot imagine a more indiscriminate and 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 trying to in the fourth amendment 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 or a and it's an absolute vindication for to specific attributes one a voice of indication of the constitutional rights of american citizens and it's also i think a very important panic and for our fellow citizen edward snowden they don't win today 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 particular 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 adds 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 offenders 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 helped keep this nation safe i'm not saying it's indispensable and it's also embolden senators who've been pushing legislation is significantly restrain the n.s.a. senator rand paul after monday's court decision the n.s.a. phone surveillance program is. then vision of our privacy this ruling reminds 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 will likely be the supreme court that has the final say on the cost to shelby 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 to curb 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 then what happens in our courts and in congress over the next few months are critically important in washington d.c. sam sachs r t well in the midst of this report calling into question the n.s.a.

surveillance tactics the spy agency is also conducting a blitz of its own santa fe has launched a twitter p.r. page so far it has sent out a total of three tweets its first tweet encourage viewers to tune into and it becomes traversal a sixty minutes report that media critics claim amounted to a p.r. job for the agency the other two tweets linked upon tasks on lawfare where a reporter interviewed the n.s.a. director of compliance john de long and the n.s.a. general counsel raj s.g. to talk about the recent report on the n.s.a. i was joined earlier by cass sunstein a professor of law at harvard. i've been paying more attention to the substance of the report to as and. to the feedback seems to be people's reactions are generally very positive which is gratifying so what was the most shocking practice that you discovered that the n.s.a. was telling. we didn't discover any shocking practices so our goal

was to think about principles that are going to be helpful for the future and one thing we do is honor and respect the hard work of the intelligence community which is helping to keep our nation safe and helping helping to keep our allies safe and it's important to keep in mind some of the work is helping to prevent human rights abuses and then atrocities abroad so we want to create security foundations that are respectful of privacy and liberty and and not accuse anybody of anything so talk about the process your group went through to put this report together what kind of access for you granted into the national security agency's practice it complete so there were two things we were focused on one was to try to get public involvement in a very ample and in some ways unprecedented way so we asked for comments from the

world really we got hundreds of comments from people who are concerned about privacy and liberty who are focused on national security who have their own views about the right balance and got a lot of great ideas from people and we paid attention to those comments we also had a lot of meetings with people including the american civil liberties union the technology companies centers that are concerned with justice human rights organizations we met with people outside the united states certainly in terms of the intelligence community we were given. as much access as we wanted so all overall what was your sense of the n.s.a. surveillance practices. we feel that going forward it's important to do two things first to retain. the mechanisms that allow the and essay and colleagues in the intelligence community to read and.

intrusions on our national security so many people said after the nine eleven attacks that there was an intelligence failure we didn't study that in detail but we certainly don't want to have intelligence failures that result in the deaths of innocent people so that's why on the kind of foundation for our recommendations the other thing we think is that security means not just national security but also security in your homes and persons and papers in a fax that's to paraphrase the fourth amend the constitution so we do have a series of reforms that would give both americans a non americans more clarity about the constraints. on surveillance now recommendations three seventh or forty six deal with people within the n.s.a. who have access to classified information the people the people that i have spoken to say that this is an effort to stop leakers like edward snowden from going public

with information was that the intention here i'd frame it a little differently i'd say that the difficulty is that if there are people who are getting access to information that's private like information about regular people going about their lives 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 we certainly don't want such people. leaking classified information or other information that could be helpful or and bad cases dangerous to to. americans and and and and others nations which or maybe are close allies but in whose citizens we take a keen interest you don't want them to get hurt so the idea is to make sure that the insider threat as we describe it is. is far and.

respecting channels for the legitimate whistleblowers that was cass sunstein a professor at harvard law school. while at guantanamo bay two longtime detainees have been transferred out of the camp into their native country of sudan this comes just two days after two saudis were transferred bringing the total of detainees to one hundred fifty eight in his detainee assessment leaked to the new york times by wiki leaks even him off many by him 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 a big lot ins a security detail he is believed to have a high intelligence value and also poses a high security risk to the u.s. its interests and its allies now the other man nor of the men who harm 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 he was captured by pakistani forces back in two thousand and two now in the effort to transfer of the detainees out of guantanamo bay have a lot to do with the two new special envoys appointed by the administration those being close 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 is part of the new to the national defense authorization act that is set to. this week so it looks like the end of guantanamo bay could ultimately be on the horizon amnesty international released a report today describing serious abuses of human rights committed by. in detention facilities run by the islamic state of iraq and al shrum or the i.s.i.

for a closer look at the report spoke with selena nasser a researcher for amnesty international there is widespread torture torture of adults including and also children is the most common form of torture is a flood gave a 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 a 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 on a child he counted until ninety four and he stopped counting anymore it was selena nasser a researcher at amnesty international and earlier i spoke with legislative associate for middle east policy at the f c n l i first asked her why we haven't seen more coverage of these atrocities. 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 that just get every worse day by day clearly 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 end the conflict now as i mentioned this report details torture and logging and abductions and murderers 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 lebanon in northern ireland in 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 we're seeing a resolve through cooperation in 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 derelict portside extremists and jihadists are 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 or groups like isis groups like the on this restaurant 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 seize the weapons that the united states that turkey that other countries have been sending to the armed opposition groups they yes there is so much so many factions there are estimated to be more than a thousand different on the opposition groups but that these are the groups that have the most extreme groups that has perpetrated these barbaric acts have been the most powerful the most organized and the more that these weapons are sent to them the more that these groups are emboldened to become stronger and more extreme it's 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 just. good guys and bad guys but when we have wars these days it's really hard to point out does exact a stink sions riots yes this is a civil war so there are clearly you see 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 peace on 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 syrian civil society organizing women 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 that 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 minaret to call christian services together and the christian service is 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 that is happening but unfortunately it's rapidly it's rapidly unraveling as we see this conflict persist

thank you so much for joining me. of associate at the middle east policy at the f c n l still ahead here on our t.v. your online data is digital gold. and major u.s. data businesses a closer look at the online cash flow coming up after the break. welcome

back will attention all should target shoppers you better check your bank statements the retail giant reports that forty million debit and credit card accounts could have been hacked between black friday and december fifteenth the company is warning customers to check for an authorized activity on their bank cards in case the criminals decided to do a bit of holiday shopping at the target customers expense the hackers may have been able to access the shoppers names card numbers expiration dates and the three digit security code on the back of the card so how safe is our data with all this extra card swiping that we're doing during this holiday season to help me sort through this i was joined earlier by hugh mancini gone founder of s s p blue and i first

asked him how someone could know if their information was vulnerable during this attack. anyone who went to target before the day before thanksgiving and until december fifteenth is vulnerable that's millions and millions of people and what you have to do is number one before anything is change your pin number on your debit card if you have one so how much it was stolen how far reaching is this do we know any of the specifics at this point which states for instance well it i think i believe it hit almost every state that target is in there were some two thousand stores that were targeted no pun intended on that one by accident and also canada so this is something that i think is going to be continue to be investigated but the bottom line is if you used a credit card or a debit card you could be at risk and you need to check your statement change your pin number and do some other things so how does this attack work isn't target more

vulnerable than anywhere else that people use their credit cards or their debit cards. well i think what we have to understand as consumers is no retail shop has one hundred percent security so this is not something that will target didn't do enough what's really going on is that hackers have done something very clever here they have figured out that instead of just targeting the online retail experience going to target dot com or some other store dot com what they're doing is going to what's called the point of sale that moment when you swipe your credit card they're hacking into the system that collects that information sending it off to some other location and grabbing your credit card information your pin number and therefore they can now create their credit cards and walk around and shop with them as though they are you or they can go online and use that information and shop for other things so how can customers protect themselves from this moving forward beyond

target. well moving forward not only if you're a target customer you have to think about your security even if you don't shop at target because this can happen at any store one of the things that you should do consistently is every few months change your pin number as much as it's not it's not easy to do it's worth doing second check your statement all the time one of the best ways that i think i can think of doing it is putting a mark on your calendar every day at two o'clock you're going to call that one eight hundred number on the back of your card and just follow the prompts and hear what your last five charges were because if there's something unusual in real time you're going to remember it you're going to report it and then that will be taken care of by the bank or the credit company you know i want to go ahead and move on away from data that's been hacked and to data about individuals that companies mine they buy and they sell now a new report from the senate commerce committee just came out and it outlined some

of the data that these companies have now one of these data mining companies act with facts. has seventy five thousand individual data elements on people these include for instance whether consumers have bought a particular soft drink in the past six months whether they use laxatives or not whether they visited a gynecologist within the last year or not and how many miles a year they drive over the past four week period i mean him and i personally don't even have seventy five thousand data points on myself so how do the data companies find out whether or not consumers are saved using laxatives well i think this this report the one thing is clear senator rockefeller is pretty irked by what he's finding out in this report and that is that data companies are getting information about you not just in the online world like oftentimes we think about and we if you look at the past year what we you and i have been talking about making we've been talking about the online world what this report is doing is it's showing that in

the physical world there's a lot of data being collected about you know it's being merged with the data about you in the online world and so every place you're going sites you're visiting in the physical world and the places you're going in the online world are getting merged into one to create a profile of you which then the data brokers are selling to marketing companies and saying you're looking for a group of people who go to st paul minnesota and shop at this one particular store and a bucket of people or they go skiing over there let's focus on them and target them give me that data and that exchange happens for money and then you start getting ads whether in your mailbox down the street where your mailbox is or in your online exposure experience as you're browsing the web and human we don't have that much time left but i want to ask you two more quick questions first of all how much money are these data mining companies actually getting in is there

a meaningful way to opt out of that. well the bottom line on the money is it's in the millions to the billions of dollars that's how much money is being exchanged here in terms of opting out that is the challenge it's almost like you can run but you cannot hide so what you can do is say hey data companies i want to know what you have about me i want to do something about it if it's incorrect i need the right to correct it and that's i think what you're going to see one holiday is over senator rockefeller is going to come back and no doubt they're going to start introducing legislation to give more power to consumers and right now it's obvious they don't he mancini gun founder of s.s. people who thank you so much for joining us and for giving our viewers some idea of how to protect themselves this coming holiday season and beyond. well a new york city police officer faces a disciplinary trial over allegations that he performed a wrongful stop and frisk two years ago this is the first time that the civilian complaint review board is prosecuting an officer for stop and frisk violations

following its establishment earlier this spring officer ramon boris stopped real estate broker yannick barton and allegedly first him for talking back to him that was all the way back on december twenty third of two thousand and eleven while he was waiting for his wife in the car morris eventually arrested martin and took him to jail leaving martin's car running martin claims his car was full of it was stolen as a result charges of disorderly conduct or thrown out and now martin is suing both the n.y.p.d. and officer gora's with this first ever prosecution of a police officer for violations and appears opponents of the n.y.p.d. as a stop and frisk policy finally have someone to fight for them and now to pennsylvania where a motorist checkpoint has got some citizens wondering why they had to have their cheeks swapped it began in downtown reading where a number of cars were redirected into a private parking lot last week their passengers were asked questions about their

driving and then were asked for a swab from inside of their mouths local police were at the checkpoint and while they did not take part in the stop at least one citizen said the police presence made him feel as if the exercise was not voluntary ricardo told the reading eagle quote a federal survey with local police helped violate my rights the checkpoint is part of a program under the national highway traffic safety administration and the white house office of national drug control policy there are several similar checkpoints throughout pennsylvania the federal money is given to a private firm which then administers the checkpoint now the idea behind it is to figure out how to all. boyd car crashes the reading police say the swapping is to determine whether people were on a prescription drugs and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website artie dot com

slash usa and follow me on twitter at my going to underscore lopez also your right back here at eight pm. i've got a quote for you. they way it's not story. if this guy like me or that guy stead of working for the people most issues the mainstream media were pretty much on the right drugs they should. they did rather well.