coming up on r t in iraq two major cities have reportedly fallen to terrorists pollution and ramadi are besieged by al-qaeda militants while many iraqis still experience brutal insurgent bombings the latest on the unrest in iraq just ahead and a series of new developments on n.s.a. surveillance u.s. senator rand paul plans to bring the n.s.a. to court for violating american rights while the n.s.a. sidestepped the question over whether or not they have spied on congress more on that coming up and four states which have fostered the nation's energy boom have found that there is a link between fracking and water pollution look at the states that have found the connection out later in today's show.

it's monday january sixth five pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. well over the weekend an already volatile situation in iraq turned deadly when al qaeda linked forces took hold of two key cities in the anbar province members with the islamic state of iraq and syria or the i.s.i. yes launched attacks on the cities of ramadi and fallujah if illusional sounds familiar to you that is because it is the location of some of the bloodiest fighting between u.s. forces and al qaeda groups back in two thousand and four at least twenty people died on sunday in bombings iraqi military forces have responded with air strikes that reportedly killed sixty militants twenty two soldiers at least twelve civilians have also died in the battles u.s. secretary of state john kerry has promised military support to the rockies but said no u.s. . troops will be put in harm's way kerry said quote this is

a find that belongs to the iraqis we are not obviously contemplating returning we are not contemplating putting boots on the ground this is their fight but we are going to help them in their fight to talk about the current situation in iraq i was joined earlier by saeed ora caught he is a correspondent a political analyst for the all crudes newspaper and he started off by giving me a little bit of background about the region in question. this is the epicenter of the sunni heartland it was the center of the sunni insurgency back between two thousand and three and two thousand and eight until or until progress was able to create the awakening councils and so on so it is very important and the rocky forces are not really really to handle this influx of huge forces or i mean relatively speaking as far as irregulars are concerned large forces that are down the city and basically taken the main center the main center and the surrounding

areas and so on so that they are virtually control this for the you know which is the also a trade center it is a cultural center of the. province and so on so it's very important for them to control it for the for the. i asked to control it but also it is equally important for the government take it back and let's talk about the specific importance of this area you had mentioned a couple of different issues were guarding this area obviously it's area but also there is a sunni majority as i understand in this area so how does that play into this whole situation as i said during the insurgency that was really the epicenter of the insurgency so it was basically the initiative of general petraeus back then who went and created virtually created with his advisors the awakening councils where the sudanese were. mobilized to fight and they did and they you know they threw

them out of the the region and so on and returned they were taken back into the government and they were assume a great many of their former positions under saddam and so on a lot of them were you know these tribal chiefs and so on were in the military they had high rank and so on so they were going back of these procedures position and pay and so on so they were basically made peace with sort of speak by the americans so it is. very very important that they don't get it if they did they are not going to side with the government and that will give you know sort of tremendous leverage for the. client that basically enough for the to grow and prosper their own activity and we know that right now iraq is led by a shia majority followed by a prime minister nouri al maliki so i as i understand it reports that i've read some of those militants actually went to a prayers over the weekend saying that they were going to protect the sunni people

living in fallujah and living in the anbar province. the shia majority government which is an interesting point you know is this the biggest security threat does iraqi troops have faced since the u.s. left definitely is there was. the most good situation since the military the u.s. military withdrew from iraq in two thousand and eleven and now the problem is it's also playing on the sectarian differences that are now everywhere in the region in syria there's been a spillover from the syria war into iraq and so on that really the situation makes it far more complex and so on and in the absence of. good status of forces agreement with the united states iraq really is unable to defend itself i mean today we were told that there are good supply them with foreign missiles and so on but in fact iraq has not even had the meat to deliver those missile they don't have fighter jets they don't have you know combat helicopters and so on so. basically directly and perhaps with some drone strikes as they do in yemen and

pakistan is going to be very difficult to do for american troops and i'm really glad that you brought up the point of syria and how the violence in syria is spilling over to the us i know that some of the weapons that the i.s.i. us is news and they smuggled from weapons that are in syria that were actually supplied by saudi forces so it is all of this directly related to syria or is there something else that's going on here. without a doubt the birth of truth to syria directly because it is called the climax to iraq and the eleven time syria basically that's what it is and that's where the big end of the acronym stands for that so it is you know it is sort of elastic group that goes across the border the border has always been porous across iraq so that's one and second there's also the sectarian divide that is being constantly through this war in syria that more and more have taken on sectarian aspect and another

interesting aspect to bring up is the rule that we are seeing out to lawmakers in particular that are really criticizing what's going on in iraq as a fail or a button failure from the u.s. for not leaving those troops in in two thousand and one was being senators lindsey graham and john mccain now the reasons we didn't leave those troops in is because there was no iraq harlem and terry decision to give immunity to troops were kind of conversely going through similar situations in afghanistan do you think that karzai should be taking note. i think that there should be a lesson drawn from iraq and what happened and where the failures it was basically a failure on part of the u.s. to sort of horn out some sort of agreement with the iraqis i was there during two thousand and seven when the person for agreement was you know worked out with the iraqis but then you know in two thousand and eleven or two thousand and ten the obama administration was unable to work out any kind of a status report to the iraqis so they were living through their own devices sort of

speak to fight terrorism and basically depend a great deal on iran and iran's influence well right now what we are saying is a battle between araki forces and between this al qaeda i.s.i. yes but it could very easily slip into sectarian violence in the coming days we'll have to keep a very close eye on this correspondent a political analyst for all could see newspaper thank you so much for weighing in and thank you for having me kentucky senator rand paul is making headlines once a. then this time he's attacking the national security agency with a massive class action lawsuit that claims the n.s.a. violated americans constitutional rights with its bulk collection of metadata here's rand paul explaining the lawsuit we everybody in america who has a cell phone would be told you will for this class action suit if any of your viewers have a cell phone they have to go to my facebook tonight they can sign up to be part of the lawsuit we want to overwhelm the government and we want to show publicly that hundreds of thousands of people don't we object to the government looking at our

records without our permission so far senator paul claims he has more than two hundred fifty thousand signatures on his website and the number is growing daily in that same fox news interview rand paul was asked if he was afraid that the n.s.a. was spying on him he said he didn't believe he was being spied on personally but the potential for abuse exists which is right on point by the n.s.a.'s own admission in a statement responding to senator bernie sanders question about whether the n.s.a. is spying on members of congress the agency tells our teeth quote n.s.a. authorities took to collect signals intelligence data include procedures that protect the privacy of u.s. persons such protections are built into it and cut across the entire process members of congress have the same privacy protections as all u.s. persons so it looks like they are on the same page as the rest of us which means it could have been collecting their minute data as well earlier today i spoke with

rachel levinson wildman counsel at the brennan center i asked her if everyone with a cell phone could potentially be a part of this lawsuit as senator rand paul alleges. i think as a legal matter this is still a little undetermined the n.s.a. has been a little closed mouth about which companies it's actually collecting from and we know in part from the presidential review boards report that came out a couple of weeks ago that they may not be collecting from all companies there's kind of some number that isn't public yet so i think it's hard to say that literally every single person with a cell phone is necessarily being affected by this certainly we know that a lot of americans are sure now how likely is it that a class action lawsuit like this could realistically result in a change where others monetary or otherwise i mean i think you know it has some legs what's required for a class action suit is that there be a group of people who kind of have some claims of question of law in common that it's more practical to bring that lawsuit as

a group than individually we have these two kind of competing decisions that have just come down from different district courts one saying the program is totally constitutional one saying that it's not but in both of them the pleased if in those cases had standing that is they were allowed to bring these lawsuits it's not inconceivable that some much larger group of people would have standing to given what we're learning about the program and i'm glad you brought up those two kind of differing opinions when it comes to federal justices and what they had to say or what federal judges anyway on the other hand on friday the fisa court renewed its program for another ninety days that bulk metadata collection so is a significant considering how contested this metadata collection program has become well i think if you knew that that is a court we're going to renew the order i would have been stunned if the court had said no we're not going to the court has had the information in front of it it has decided that it's comfortable renewing these orders that said this program is now

being battled out in much more public arenas with these courts where they're adversaries on both sides there are people making the argument against the programs and so i think these cases are going to test the constitutionality of the programs really much more than has been happening in the much more secret files of court and absolutely you know you may remember this exchange between senator ron wyden and james clapper who is the director of national intelligence take a look. does the n.s.a. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans. no sir. it does not. not wittingly or. now since then activists and even legislators have been calling for action some type of action against james clapper for saying that they say that he blatantly lied to congress and the d.n.i. his lawyer actually shot back against the new york times for that saying that he blatantly lied to congress they said quote indeed it would have been irrational for

mr clapper to lie at this hearing since every member of the committee was already aware of the program as mr clapper has explained he was surprised by the question and focused his mind on the collection of the content of americans communications in that context his answer was is accurate when we pointed out mr clapper is a mistake to him he was surprised and distressed what do you make of that surprised and distress this is hard to know because you sort of have different narratives coming from the center widens office on the one hand and from which office the lawyer for the d.n.i. on the other hand so they both agree with with the basics which is that senator wyden office had presented the question in advance and then in questioning mr clapper basically seemed to misrepresent the collection that was going on and senator wyden said he got the question vance he had a he had an opportunity considerate to answer it correctly or at least to say he couldn't answer it in an unclassified setting and then when the mistake was pointed out to him he didn't take any opportunity to correct it bob went on the other hand

says he didn't see the question his staff saw it but he didn't and he couldn't really correct it because the programs had been declassified get i don't think we know exactly what went on behind the scenes that being said the you know mr clapper has been in this business for a long time he's been doing intelligence for a long time personally he's testified to congress many times so i think it's still troubling that faced with this question he somehow wasn't thinking of a massive metadata collection program on americans and didn't even at least fall back on answering in a classified setting he simply gave an answer that was untrue that's a very interesting point and you know in that same fox interview that we played earlier rand paul went on to say that if we are going to extend the law and prosecute edward snowden then we should keep that law and prosecute james clapper and he went on to say that he things would be interesting if the two of them were in a jail cell to deller together thank you so much for joining me rachel levinson wildman counsel at the brennan center. well i know i've done it before i bet you probably have to you read something on facebook posted by someone that you probably haven't

spoken with in the years and it really gets your blood boiling artie's a mirror david explains why in these moments you might want to keep your fingers off the keyboard. if you have facebook account then at one point or another you've probably found yourself in the following situation you're typing your status update you're all set to post it and then common sense kicks in and you realize that posting it would be a huge mistake maybe it's too personal or controversial but for whatever reason you delete it feeling a sense of relief that no one will ever be able to see those words one that's really not the case if the facebook calls you were on posted not self-censorship and it's a behavior that the social media side wants to discourage the company wants you to post anything and everything you're thinking when you're thinking it that's when to facebook back to researchers decided to examine the frequency at which users filter what they type how do they do this well according to the study facebook sends a code to your browser that code automatically tracks what you type into any text

box and then reports that information back to the web site now the researchers say they only sent back mehta data that shows whether a user had self censored not what that user had typed but that doesn't mean that facebook can't read what you don't post and fact the study proves that the company certainly has the technological ability to read that information and it's a notion that's not sitting well with some facebook users and anon line petition twenty eight thousand people so far have called on the social network to quote stop sucking our unposted bonce in response to the petition a company spokesperson denied the allegation telling mashable that facebook does not collect or track any time and that people have chosen not to post but that's not an easy sell coming from the same company that's under fire for another privacy complaint you see just before the new year facebook was slapped with a class action privacy lawsuit

a lawsuit claims that the social network is scanning users private messages an order to profit from their data in other words if you send a private message that includes a link to another web site. facebook will then register your private post as a like for that company and that means that your private communications all of a sudden become public but the main problem the suit argues is that facebook has been misrepresenting the privacy measures around personal messaging the suit says facebook mines any and all transmissions across its network including those it labels private in order to gain any and all morsels of information it can about its users the social media site will likely argue that there is a difference between having its computers scan your messages versus having a human read them and interestingly that's not an argument we haven't heard before in recent months the n.s.a. has come to a similar defense regarding the agency's bulk collection of the public's metadata

so in an era where americans are forced to really evaluate their perspective on the n.s.a. it seems like many of them will also have to re-evaluate their perspective on social media and washington a mirror david r t well the federal bureau of investigations has long been in the business of finding crime with law enforcement as its main focus however it seems the f.b.i. has priorities might be shifting away from putting criminals behind bars while combing through the pages of f.b.i. documents after successfully filing a freedom of information act request washington based national security lawyer mcclanahan noticed a change in the agency's fact sheet that was sent out this summer the primary function of the f.b.i. used to be law enforcement but these days national security is the agency's main focus the f.b.i. says this change in priorities has been going on since the september eleventh attacks on the world trade center f.b.i. spokesman bresson told foreign policy magazine that the agency's website and

missions have long reflected this deviation from its original goals however critics say the f.b.i. is deep prioritizing law enforcement substantially in. fact according to a two thousand and ten inspector general's report between two thousand and one and two thousand and nine the f.b.i. doubled its number of agents focused on counterterrorism and national security efforts during that same time there was a notable decline in the number of criminal cases that were investigated by the agency and a steep drop in investigations over white collar crimes so that might be the reason why the bankers who caused the two thousand and nine financial crash and who continually use risky business practices still walk as free men perhaps the better question now is if the f.b.i. has primary mission is national security these days then what is the department of homeland security doing. well the trial of two police officers charged in the death of a mentally ill homeless man has resumed this week with testimony from a u.c.l.a.

cardiologist the cardiologists expected to support the prosecution's claim that thirty seven year old kelly thomas died as a result of a violent beating at the hands of six fullerton police officers and not because of a bad heart caused by years of drug use kelly thomas got into an altercation with police officers on the night of july fifth two thousand and eleven after reports were called into the station about a man juggling quote car door handles at a bus depot parking lot the defense contends that the officers acted within the department's policy and that thomas fought with them form a full of ten officer manuel ramos has been charged with second degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for the police corporal jason only has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the use of excessive force a third officer joseph wealth will face trial later this month this is the first time in the history of orange county where police officers are on trial for their actions while on duty the case could be handed over to the jury by the end of this

week. while still ahead here on our t.v. in for us states there are hundreds of complaints over a hydraulic fracturing this process to relieve it in. deeply buried natural gas has left locals fearing there contaminated a water supply or on the effects of fracking after the break. i. think.

i would rather that as questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on our t.v. question for. welcome back an investigation has begun to shed light on some of the dangers of hydraulic fracturing or fracking across the country the associated press collected

records of complaints in pennsylvania ohio texas and west virginia hundreds of grievances were reported by residents over the years pennsylvania had three hundred ninety eight complaints last year alone ohio reported forty west virginia says it received one hundred twenty two letters over the past four years and texas presented the a.p. with a ninety four page spread sheet outlining two thousand complaints over the years however very few of these allegations were actually confirmed by the states now fracking as a way to extract natural gas and oil from deeper within the earth and previous technologies allowed how well horizontal drilling objects highly pressurized fluids into shale rock layers fracturing them and allowing access to a gas or oil well earlier this morning our earlier this afternoon. i spoke with tyson slocum the director of the public citizen inner g. program to learn about well water contamination caused by hundred fracturing and i

first asked him if the a.p. investigation is the most conclusive one so far when it comes to the environmental damage caused by fracking. so far yes and what this study shows is that there's huge discrepancies between what kind of procedures each individual state takes in addressing these concerns about water and other environmental contamination from the hydraulic fracturing process what this investigation shows is that basically most of these states are just operating hotlines where people can call and report these concerns that they're having but we're not seeing a systemic follow up to to determine exactly what if any contamination has occurred and in fact what we've seen at public citizen is that once the oil or natural gas companies confront landowners they typically require them to sign what's known known as nondisclosure agreements which for bid these landowners from discussing if

there was contamination at all and so what we're seeing is that we is that the lack of good information about well contamination and all of these gag orders on these nondisclosure agreements it's having a huge impact on policy because we're not getting the data we need to determine what the impacts of fracking are and so one thing that we've asked the oil industry to do is to release homeowners and landowners from non-disclosure agreements to allow them to talk publicly about their experiences of having their water contaminated from fracking now you touched on it a little bit during that response but i do want to address something in particular and i'll overall i read a number of different complaints that happen in all these different four states i had it turns out that it level two thousand and eleven for instance in ohio fifty four are ported only two are confirmed that seems to be the pattern consistently

why is it that so few are actually being confirmed at this case well a lot of it because the states. lack of the resources to follow up on these they also lack the technical ability to assess whether or not the contamination has occurred and often at the same time that these folks are contacting the state with their concerns they're also contacting the local oil company and typically the oil company will swoop in and they'll want to hush this whole situation up and so the oil company will say listen we'll give you ten or twenty thousand dollars in cash will give you a year's supply of free drinking water all you have to do is sign this nondisclosure agreement that forbids you from ever mentioning this publicly and in fact there was a famous case that came out this past summer where one non-disclosure agreement forbid two young children of a family from ever talking about hydraulic fracturing for the rest of their lives

so these nondisclosure agreements are becoming more and more on arrests and it's inhibiting policy analysis to determine the extent of the dangers of fracking and i remember that case well we actually covered it right here on r.g.p. now this same associated press every part said that the most common type of pollution is from methane enough from the chemicals injected into the ground when used during the drilling process what should we take that to mean well the methane is basically the natural gas and that's just the most common form of interaction between these wells the seismic formations and ground water sources and so that's the the easiest and quickest thing to detect that's also i mean it's the easiest thing to detect the fact is that the hydraulic fracturing process as you mentioned in your overview is injecting millions of gallons of highly corrosive and highly toxic chemical mixtures into the ground and some of them are in small traces it still is harmful. for health but it's more difficult

to pick up especially. if different state agencies lacked the resources to do the full kind of testing required and in fact this rail car accident carrying frack crude oil up in north dakota one of the things that we're seeing that caused this fire to be so combustible was fracking chemicals were mixed in with the crude oil as a coming out of the formation which is creating problems in our rail transport system so we're seeing dangers with the chemicals not only for the environment and for and for drinking water sources but also on rail transport where you know seventy percent of north dakota for octal oil is being moved now we really don't have much time left but something that i noticed while looking over all these documents was that texas had that ninety four page spread sheet and i have said it was very thorough but ohio and pennsylvania and west virginia they weren't as thorough so

can you quickly go over why there are such differences in this reporting and what make a difference if the states kept track it would but again the texas did more thoroughly and what they were able to produce. in response to an open records were request was simply a log of all of the complaints that given the agencies received there wasn't necessarily follow through to determine the validity of these complaints and so it's one thing to have a clear catalog of all of the complaints and every state we need to have standards for that but but the most important thing is actually the investigation and that's where the states aren't doing their jobs thank you so much for weighing in tyson slocum director of the public citizen energy program thank you my pleasure. and that does it for now 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 at and again underscore

lopez c. of act here at eight. i've got a quote for you. that's pretty tough. stay with substory. let's give this guy like you would smear the guys that are working for the people most issues the mainstream media are working for each other right right was it easier to fight. the good rather.