coming up on archie a white house appointed panel has 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 to it and is it enough to protect your privacy and some answers ahead amnesty international has released a new report on atrocities in syria detailing inhumane acts by john as groups like torture and murder for the crisis in syria coming up could jamie dimon end up behind bars years after the financial meltdown of one report shows how the j.p. morgan chase c.e.o. violated a federal law that could carry twenty years in prison so where's the justice department will take a closer look at this story ahead. it's

thursday december nineteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm like a lopez and you are watching r t well 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 more effective and transparent we're at r.t. have been combing over the three hundred page report to bring you the most important information for an in-depth look at this and other developments in the n.s.a. surveillance saga here's artie's 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 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 of the founders in shrines 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 ari and it's an absolute in the case and somewhere to stay safe a 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 wins day 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. 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 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 to help 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 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 will likely be the supreme court that has the final say on the cost to shelby of the n.s.a. spying programs 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 embassies most prized spy programs on the verge of dismemberment and with edward snowden nearing been vacationing 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 or to win russian president vladimir putin was asked today about how

offering edward snowden temporary asylum has affected his country's relationship with the u.s. he had to say this but it's much easier to with a small percentage have to snowden's revelations well. with the muslim world and the him because he. can do that and he's not going to it's punished. but he's not the only one getting a message out in the midst of this reporting calling into question the n.s.a. 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 tune in to that controversial sixty minutes report that media critics claim amounted to a p.r. job for the agency the other two tweets linked to podcasts on lawfare were reporter interview the n.s.a. director of compliance johns long and n.s.a. general counsel roger. earlier i spoke with just one right at the national security

and human rights director of the government accountability project i first asked her to give me her initial reactions to the forty six recommendations in the report . 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 and so in the white house committee i also feel most importantly this has been the case edward snowden who has been derived by the government by very loudly and vociferously 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 some sort of amnesty for snowden and and at the same time n.s.a. suggested amnesty or pardon might be in 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 followed by the tech giant stretching down the white house for the snooping they've been doing followed by these forty six recommendations that snowden people are seeing that he told the truth and he revealed programs that were in fact illegal and he should 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 issues what do you think about that no shocking practice as 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 and they're against killing off the major program and numerous other significant reforms so maybe he just already heard this to be 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 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. the difficulty is that if there are people who are getting access to information that's private but 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. and. 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. and as i say 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 that was just right at the national security and human rights director at the government accountability project well amnesty international released a report today describing serious of uses of human rights committed in detention facility is run by the islamic state of iraq and or the i.s.i. yes for a closer look at the report artie's focused alina nasser a researcher for amnesty international. there is widespread torture torture of

adults including and also children the most common form of torture is a floodgate. flogging against detainees take place on a daily. on a daily every day basically it includes flogging against children we have witnesses former detainees who told us that they have seen the 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 falling on a child and he counted until ninety four and he stopped counting any more that was

slim and nasser a researcher at amnesty international and i spoke earlier with kate gold legislative associate for middle east policy at the f.c.c. and now 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 of 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 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 flogging and abductions and murderers obviously there's a lot of accusations going around on both sides it's 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 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 as 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 there of course that 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 and fortunately some of these extremist groups are among the most organized and most powerful armed groups or groups like isis groups like the analysts refer and 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 and hard to determine and 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 distinctions right 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 these aren't 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'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 tips 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 end and it 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 a major opportunity to end this conflict on january second when the geneva two

talks commence and what about a christians in syria there are reports that. on the trustees are going in 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 were some extremist groups that attacked a christian church then the mosques would would use their minaret to call christian services together and that. 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 kate gould legislative associate at the middle east policy at the f c n l well time and again president obama has promised to get tough on big banks to

ensure that a financial crash similar in the magnitude of the one that happened in two thousand and eight never happens again here's the president on sixty minutes back in two thousand and nine they're still puzzled why is that the people are mad at the banks well let's see where you guys are drawing 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 however 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 dayen makes the argument that jamie dimon explicitly violated a federal statute that could result in decades in prison damon himself had admitted to what he did he violated section nine zero six of the sarbanes oxley act which

addresses criminal penalties for sort of fining misleading or fraudulent financial report under s.o.s. 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 walking as a free man to answer this question i spoke earlier with william k. black associate professor of economics and law at the university of missouri kansas city take a look. well no charges have been brought up against any of the elite bankers whose frauds caused the crisis so he's being treated like all the other criminal c.e.o.'s he gets complete immunity now we constantly hear that 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 lie 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 the 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 that was william k. black associate professor of economics and law at the university of missouri kansas city well attention 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 warning 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's customer's expense the hackers may have been able to access the shoppers names card numbers expiration dates and the sri

digit security codes on the back of the cards so how safe is our data with all this extra swiping that we're doing during this holiday season tell me so it through this i was shown earlier by how much any gum founder of s s p blue and i first asked him how someone could know with their information was vulnerable in this attack so 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 is on target more vulnerable than anywhere else that people use their credit cards or their debit cards so i think what we have to understand is consumers there's no retail shop has one hundred percent security so this is not something that wild card get 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 a point of sale that moment when you swipe your credit card they're packing into the system that collects that information sending it out 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 that was he mancini com founder of s s p d blue well are you sick of being spied upon whether it's by the n.s.a. or by surveillance cameras hidden around the world tonight president takes a look at a new contraption that allows you to escape hidden cameras. it's hard to tell just how many surveillance cameras there are in the us right now the

federal government has given hundreds of millions of dollars in grants for cameras more and more cities are installing them everywhere and of course anyone with about fifty bucks and an internet connection can string them up on their own but just because it's hard to tell how many there are doesn't mean it should be hard to tell where you're in the brains of one of them and a man named james bridle agrees so he went and made something he calls the surveillance balder a sponsor is that medieval piece of armor that goes over the shoulder it was designed to protect you from unexpected unseen blows from above and the surveillance ball there is much like that you wear it on your shoulder and it's designed to protect you only what it's protecting you from is the spying eyes of on scene surveillance cameras from above the way it works is that it contains a detector which filters light in to collect and isolate the infrared lading used in both c.c.t.v. cameras when the sensor detects infrared it sends an electric signal to to

transportation electrical nerve stimulation or tens pads attached to the where the shoulder and that electrical poles causes whoever is wearing this baldor to twitch sharply the technology is perfectly state in fact tens pads are commonly used by doctors to help manage pain so if you're wearing the surveillance ball they're out and about and you happen to get within range of a surveillance. by now i has this baldor will make you twit that's how you know you are be watched as bright as i was website this baltar physicalize as the policeman in the mind providing tactile feedback every time one comes under the gaze of power and turns the gentle caress of the surveillance state into a sharp reminder that we inhabit a world of overlapping unequal and often conflicting information flows right on

dave's right of the surveillance folder is still a prototype and is probably more of an art piece than a consumer product but i for one think it's brilliant and perfect because when you are i knowingly being watched by someone you don't know it should make you jump a little tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the residence . and finally before we go don't forget to tune in at nine pm eastern for larry king's politicking tonight's guest is david gregory moderator of n.b.c.'s meet the press and larry will also take a look at christmas in washington including scenes from the white house with michelle obama here's a snippet of tonight's interview with david gregory at the newseum. we're in the first amendment gallery. and as fit as do those that is the first amendment fair in will the first amendment is very pretty well i think that there are

a lot of platforms for expression i think we have ordinary citizens who have applied forms a way they've never had before and to to reach us those of us on air those of us with big. you know broadcast platforms so yeah i mean i think you know there's a lot of debates around. in publishing but that's that's always going to be a tension about what the government things are you know secrets that must be you know maintained for security versus what the public needs to know to have a debate i mean there's no question that whatever you think about words no we wouldn't be debating the security state and the reach of the surveillance had. not been disclosed. that does it for me for tonight before the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and check out our web site r c dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez to find out what i'm doing when i'm not bringing you today's top stories but for now have a great night and

a happy holidays. crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want.