live from the r.t. new center eight pm here no sweeping changes for sweeping surveillance president obama is about to introduce him to limits the infamous intelligence programs but part of this little hope of any fundamental reform will be following that across the other headlines syria says it's ready to unite with moderate rebel groups now in the fight against hardline radicals according to the country's foreign minister who's in moscow ahead of those forthcoming peace talks. with scotland police day britain's foreign secretary is in a charm offensive to convince undecided scots not to quit the u.k. as the months to a decisive referendum. my

name's kevin are in very good even if you just joined us this is r.t. international our top story tonight it's been brought in some pretty dirty business no president obama could be about to clean up america's notoriously invasive intelligence though he set to outline reforms any minute now which could impose limits on the n.s.a. after will supply edward snowden revealed was all just how far did go into our private lives but expectations of any fundamental change a pretty low as r.t. some sacks reports next from washington. today president obama heads to the department of justice just a few blocks from here and he'll deliver a speech on n.s.a. reforms specifically what he supports from the forty six recommendations his own review panel put forward a few weeks ago the president is expected to devote a large portion of his speech to the privacy concerns of non-u.s. citizens and businesses basically trying to assure foreign consumers that their

privacy will be protected when they communicate using american tech companies like google and yahoo now you may remember when it was disclosed that allied world leaders like brazilian president dilma rousseff were spied on by the n.s.a. the president was quick to order a review of that program but the president has not shown the same concern for tens of millions of non u.s. citizens in germany and brazil and france who are also being spied on so there's a high likelihood that he will finally tackle that issue today now the big question is what happens to the most controversial n.s.a. program revealed by edward snowden and that's the n.s.a.'s bulk telephone metadata collection program the president could order an end to that program right now you could do it today if you wanted to and you wouldn't need congress' approval in stead the president is expected to introduce some limited reforms to the bulk collection program and then take it to congress to have the final say on whether or not it should continue subsects while lawmakers on capitol hill are divided over where the spying programs boundaries should be democratic congressman rush holt

proposed a bill for reining in the and i say we don't want those who are doing the surveillance to be the very same ones who decide who the bad guys are the global sort of debates over the role of a they say is diluted the usual partisan rivalry between democrats and republicans when bills defending surveillance and calls to restrain it come from both sides just when radek who campaigns for government accountability doesn't believe that any of the proposed changes will make a genuine difference the. so far what has been telecast through government leaks look a lot like a lot of cosmetic changes in other words it does not appear that the president will be reigning in the largest controversy with this probably the bulk collection american data nor will he be adopting any recommendation to house and store that data in for example

a telephone company rather than five anational security agency again i think a lot of these changes are really discuss magic and they're contrary to what his own internal review panel recommended just rather it was about some for what we saw just in the global spread of america's all seeing eyes of cost taxpayers a pretty penny as well now actual figures are as you'd expect top secret but there are some bits of leaked information of go to lift him a little spice spending the so-called black budget reportedly amounts to fifty two point six billion dollars for twenty thirteen out of out over ten billion went to the n.s.a. its funding is grown fifty three percent in the last decade that sources say terrorist attack should methods only evolve and it stays available seven point five percent or so with its own a washington correspondent going to come next that looks into the agency's effectiveness. three years the u.s.

government had been hiding its dragnet surveillance of entire nations under the national security rug in fear of another nine eleven americans had no idea of just how pervasive the government spying program became but following edward snowden's revelations lice came to the surface does the n.s.a. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans. no sir. we know of at least. fifty threats that have been averted because of this information. there is only one case where this was useful somebody sunday thought maybe five hundred dollars to somalia to an al qaeda affiliate not to be encouraged but even in that case the government wait of two months to investigate this case so you know the idea that this is kind of critical to stopping terrorism is overblown public policy group the new america foundation has analyzed hundreds of terrorism related cases and says

traditional investigative methods such as the use of informants in tips work best. the n.s.a. sweeping surveillance did nothing to prevent the bombings in boston last year even despite multiple tips from abroad concerning one of the perpetrators the president's own surveillance policy review board has concluded the n.s.a. bulk data collection was quote not essential to preventing attacks the head of the n.s.a. was eventually pressed to admit that the government had exaggerated the effectiveness of the program would you grant that fifty four cases a keep getting cited by the administration for not all plots how the verge of all of my thirteen had some nexus of us do you agree with that yes or no. yes the obama administration found itself in hot water when edward snowden revealed that the n.s.a. was busy spying on allies and trading partners not just terrorists the n.s.a.

has built a vast new center in to talk to store people's private data and much of it will have nothing to do with terry's what we're doing is advocating tele tarion procedures which is gathering information about all the individuals in the world. thousands have been taking to the streets to protest against what they see is their government becoming big brother when in the wake of nine eleven the patriot act are fading and to privacy many americans thought at least they'd be safe but with recent revelations even that tradeoff is under question in washington i'm going to strike down our teeth well let's take you to the cameras and pointing at the podium any minute now in washington d.c. don't come we'll bring you the a streaming live coverage of president obama's speech on intelligence reform. tips you off about it also online as well details of fresh legs revealing that the u.s. and u.k. have been obvious to millions of mobile phone text messages worldwide every day.

in the. the syrian government says it's ready for a limited ceasefire with rebel fighters as well as a prisoner swap the foreign minister announced a readiness to cooperate with moderate opposition groups against radical islamists after a meeting with his moscow counterpart at the same time so the level of raise the issue of the opposition taking part in next week's peace conference. i believe all those who are backing the syrian national coalition and those who consider it the only legitimate representative of the syrian people's which does not correlate to the real political situation all of them need to consider the role they're playing in preparing the geneva two peace conference or the opposition syrian national coalition is meeting in istanbul to decide whether it'll attend next week's peace talks it's not

a decisions of going to be announced on saturday we think political analyst chris bambery believes the s.n.c. that doesn't have the capacity to represent syria's opposition at the talks the truth is the syrian national council do not represent those people no fighting in syria against the government and the syrian national council cannot really speak no for the opposition in total and we have the american secretary john kerry desperately pleading with them to come to geneva but the same time many of those people engaged in the fighting who are radicalizing as a consequence of all this and are looking toward to hardly take groups reject any role for the geneva talks or not want to go to geneva so the syrian national council are caught if you wait between the back of the united states and there are people who represent in syria the opposition who are increasing become disenchanted from that process and i think today they are known for by the acid regime the offer of a cease fire in a web or will put the onus on them as well not just to go to geneva but will they

respond to this gesture by its so word acquiring a cease fire meantime for his partner because top diplomats come out with a sharp condemnation of terrorist activity in syria syria has become the magnet for jihadists and extremists. human rights group says that up to a thousand people killed in fighting between al qaeda linked militants and other rebel groups with some civilians even being executed former french prime minister dominique de ville passport to our head of the geneva two peace talks he said dropping all pre-conditions is essential here for any dialogue to take place next week. i believe we have two problems today one is we need of caused the opposition to take part in this discussion because how can we have any settlement without having everybody around the table but also we have with the opposition a very strong. very strong fights between the two parts of the political opposition

and the jihadists are fighting very strongly on the ground i think we should take away the jihadist all the people that are behind al qaeda and we should not focus on the problem of assad we should not have any preview condition. before starting this political discussion the i really believe that iran should be as much as possible part of the talks because you want is a very regional players and if we can have iran on board in discussing the crit crises of the region we of course we will be much more efficient. that he had something very different after such a twenty full tape the venues are ready and the athletes apparently a primed but you need a whole heap of help a coast to make it all run smoothly. that's right because up in the minds of

present president putin has given the pep tilt to beyond me a vote until he is the sochi twenty four to. those immediately votes so we leave the media. by the seat motion securely play your part of the physical. issues that no one is asking with the guests that you deserve answers from it's all on politicking only on our team. choose your language. of choice we could know if you're going to stay still some. choose to use the consensus to. choose the opinions that invigorating. choose the stories that impact your life choose to access to often.

hello again over the next eight months scotland's pondering whether to cut or not the accord with britain and the heavyweights of westminster are there for the northern neighbors to stay as far as the public is concerned that the decisions far from a done deal an easy choice the scots have got to make. westminster's new scotland analysis papers set out the british government's position on why scotland is better

off within the united kingdom so part of the focus of today's analysis is britain's extensive diplomatic network and how much scotland benefits from it so the document even goes as far as reminding scots about some of the relatively modern day in pleasures that they enjoy as british citizens such as consular services when they travel abroad which they might be taking for granted at the moment and of course william hague was keen to remind scots that should they vote for independence there their membership within the european union would have to be renegotiated nor would they be able to use the pound and of course you also spoke about the u.k. protecting scottish business interests for example the world famous scotch whisky and the salmon industry protecting it from excessive taxation and so forth but today scotland analysis comes off the scottish government produced its white paper back in november which propagated why scotland should vote yes to independence it

was somewhat of a road map by the scottish government despite everything that william hague said today about scotland being better off within the united kingdom the white paper back in november argued that independence would boost scotland international profile it would deliver new opportunities for exports and it also said that scotland has contributed more tax per head of population than the u.k. suggesting that scotland is certainly wealthy enough to go it alone but what we're seeing is two very big campaigns getting very much bigger in the run up to that historic vote on the eighteenth of september and i suspect that you case foreign secretary william hague is going to be making a few more trips up to scotland it's all part of westminster is intensified no campaign in the run up to the vote. it's going to see celebrities sports stars in business they gave play with scots to vote no to independence on the eighteenth of

september all talking of those celebrities if you're as old as me you may remember the next person we're going to hear from let's hear the yes scotland movement how it's playing the can to the westminster romancing scottish musician independence campaigner. told the seas shaw scotland will be better off by itself to some extent a kind of truth can annoy instance of people william hague coming up to score them talking about all the difficulties of scotland being an international separate nations the incidentally william hague thought that five years after the scottish parliament was founded in one thousand nine hundred would be a disaster situation actually doing extremely well for scotland over the last forty years has contributed more to the u.k. than lived in social benefits we have actually a net contributor if you include oil and you include all the natural assets of scotland so number one will essentially really economically viable to go forward for independence but it's not just about being viable and it's not just about being

the same as the westminster government who would want to use policies it's progress and we'll look not just to mainland europe you'd be welcoming a very obvious european member with an independent scotland but we're looking to scandinavia look into those small countries that have the best indicators of well being economy society through the world any any anything from the economics and to the cia index would would recognize these are countries to emulate that's what scotland's benchmark against is the best in the world not really a rather broken record from the westminster problem. and there are details of building a very different future to have on our website r t v dot com a lot of this article from the home from scratch in just one day sounds appealing doesn't it that's what california scientists say will be a reality very soon with the next generation giant it has to be big three d. printers what's next also to online make you might want to check this out the computer hacker take get into your kitchen yes you it seems there are not entirely

your problem seems that branching out from don't worry too much there branching out from p.c. is there no targeting smart household appliances and high fives to fridge is more cold. ok all seriousness now december in bahrain saw hundreds of rallies suppressed and hundreds of people including miners arrested by news collated by the country's opposition party document the length gone to an cracking down on protests calling for greater freedoms and equality in the sunni led kingdom out of more than seven hundred protests last month four hundred were brutally. suppressed and dispersed by security forces in fact there almost two hundred arrests made as well with raids being the most common tactic used by police those raids are often carried out at night and in all cases the security forces refused to prove that they had warrants now this report we're going to talk about it also reveals details of cases of vandalism torture and other heavy handed

treatment by the authorities norma's four hundred cases the crackdown on dissent took before collective punishment let's talk about this with human rights advocate side how the messiah is joining us live now from a number are there thanks for being a live on r.t. international you compile this report tell us where you got the solid information from what's backing it up here. well in fact we have human rights and freedom department and all the people are coming to us and document these cases to ask on the other hand we are monitoring orders going on our country human rights activists we have a great and huge. team they monitor what's going on here and there and the violation still remain. lots of people are arrested and detained it was one hundred eighty three persons been detained on

december thirty one of them was trial less than eighteen years and one of them aged ten years and the other thirteen years and they are still in the jail up to this moment the house raids is ongoing and it's almost two hundred and seven house raids have been during the night time and. lots of vandalism tortures the ongoing while the authority are denying that they are torturing people in the investigation rooms but actually it is ongoing. practice and it is a. really big title and so i do think you've been talking about this raising awareness of it for a long time now and we've been covering it for

a long time now as we head into a new year is there any hope that your message is getting through i mean bahrain's crown prince did just very recently meet some of the opposition if you take that as a small sign of positive news that there may be a breakthrough and things might get a bit easier in the future. to be honest the the experience. of the previous previous period for three years does not give us hope but we need to have this hope because we are looking always to have. a right to state and some environment which the human rights need to be respected as we know that the price of the foreign affairs minister has left to geneva and meant nothing two days back and he say

we are going to. to accept your recommendations and start a new era and really we will impress in face our eyes on this issues because the human rights in bahrain are not respected and lots of violations ongoing and we need to use this as a tool to stop the cruel action taken by the authority so i think side we've only got thirty seconds left really briefly. now bill rajib still in jail as as we're speaking now i don't know what you hope is for his release maybe you'll tell us about that and what about your big hope for a constitutional monarchy anything anytime soon is it on the horizon or not. actually first of all no bill roger will be released so me that's my and my hope i don't have any information but there are thirty have no choice but to release him and i am very confident of this i have no news but i fear and this is my feeling

because nebular job should be outside and they have no choice on the other hand the constitutional monarchy is our aim and our goal we are going to work on what is it achievable in the near future or not realistically really briefly to be honest is the author of the. respect the. the the opposition demands and consider what's going on in the region it will be achieved by not recently let's say it will take years unfortunately understood so so we've got to leave it there thank you for your time. human rights advocate from bahrain's opposition group thanks. all right a complete change of tack now to keep a major event like the winter olympics running like clockwork you need more than top venues more the world class athletes to make it happen you'd a small army of helpers as well of course goes in all walks of life but the saatchi

twenty fourteen recruits a big getting a presidential pep talk as well as andrew farmer reports. that meeting was also an opportunity for a question and answer session and one particular question of note came from a forum volunteer he was asked why did the official track suits for saatchi contain the rainbow colors of russia is against gay propaganda well mr putin initially jokes saying he did not design the tracksuits but then on a serious note pointed out that it was a law against gay propaganda to minors and also stress that being gay in russia is not a criminal offense but he also had plenty more to talk about in that meeting he joins me now i get your name right you're against now what was his message to you. mr putin says there are only games is holiday for everyone but twenty years first because taters for for resisters for the country for people who are going to avoid them but for us it's. quite hard and i say and that makes the question why have you

become a volunteer because it's many months hard work and it's also one paid. for military is very important because you give something to a country and you get something back you get experience you get friends to get a lot of things actually a lot of skills and i think it's very important for everyone of you is just one of twenty five thousand volunteers it sounds like a huge number actually they are the chosen few because organizers did receive applications from one hundred fifty thousand people from all around the world and over the majority of volunteers are russian the rest are made up from people from or from around about sixty different countries as we heard that they do have different responsibilities in general they're here to meet and greet the athletes as well as the delegates as well as members of the public and also help them find their way around sochi but other responsibilities do include things like translating press conferences and also escorting athletes to doping control so

there's a lot for them to think about and do more importantly all of them to have a very nice. because they do and will try their best to make us all feel very welcome and he won't list either because they will be wearing those like the color track six. mr moviefone with a ok because there's a what you might want to do for the next half hour maybe you can do both you're good at multitasking as you're seeing on the news while the president laying out what he may or may not do with regard mass spying going to say except we want to started streaming on our web site r.t. dot com coming up here on r.t. on your television after the break to t.v. titans go head to head next larry king meets legendary american newsman dan rather in politicking this is r.t. international. the majority of congress are now millionaires for the first time in history

according to the center for responsive politics which sounds pretty insulting when the average americans not doing so well financially this seems bad like a bunch of rich guys rule the country which they kind of do but one could argue that congress isn't rich enough first off due to inflation a billion dollars is not as much as it used to be a special in the cost of a campaign to get in a congress costs around one million six hundred thousand dollars so yeah a million dollars of net worth may sound pretty rich to you or me but the expensive game of us politics these guys can't even afford the costs related to getting a work electoral campaigns are a big money affair so it is no surprise that people like you are me can't get into the law making business without selling at least a little piece of our souls to someone who has very deep pockets so again the problem isn't that congressmen are wealthy it is that many of them have to get constant financing in order to maintain their positions and as you average folks know once you're in debt they've got you by the throat well that's just my opinion

. on the politicking with larry king one of my favorite people a legendary newsman dan rather what does he expect with the president and the president's political opponents in the years ahead as you see parallels between the bridge controversy surrounding new jersey governor chris christie and the watergate scandal that brought down richard nixon plus how far would he go to get a story it's all next on politicking little larry king. love the politicking he's a bestselling author he was one hell of a white house correspondent one of the best anchors ever the long time ago the c.b.s. evening news he currently is the host and managing editor of dan rather reports on

access t.v. and i'm honored to have the legendary newsman and my friend then join me he's been with us many times in fact this man while anchoring the c.b.s. news would cover hurricanes for us on larry king live here in the lower level standing are very very well know if a tree been read without him or let's get right to it what do you make of the bridge gate well first of all it's an overstatement call it bridge gate and then what are sort of all this serious but if you first wrote about it this all started with watergate watergate became a shorthand word for a widespread criminal conspiracy led sort of say by the president of united states out of the oval office constitutional crisis for the country more than forty people sort of card time now those who know that story to be true of this widespread criminal conspiracy tried always to soften it by saying well these things.