coming up on our t.v. for four more rhetoric president obama lays out his plans for reforming the n.s.a. what he had to say and the future of the u.s. surveillance head. arming citizens is this a way to curb crime or a police chief of a major u.s. city thinks so well look at the issue coming up. in the movie independence day a washington d.c. was leveled by aliens but a new report says d.c. is endangered by a different kind of explosion the story coming up later in the show.

it's a friday january seventeenth four pm in washington d.c. i'm parian boring you're watching r t america. today president obama outlined the reforms to n.s.a. surveillance that he supported following a review from a white house appointed panel that gave forty six suggestions would be weeks founder julian assange tweeted that it's clear the president would not be speaking today were it not for snowden and whistleblowers before him the debate around edward snowden who leaked american intelligence to the public about six months ago continues to see a wide range of praise and scrutiny for his actions some consider him to be a hero and refer to him as a whistleblower why others say he put americans and expression troops and danger within the intelligence committee he is widely seen as an enemy to america a pentagon official who as a former special forces officer told buzz feed i do not take pleasure and taking

another human being's life having to do it in uniform but he is singlehandedly the greatest traitor and american history he also said i would love to put a bullet in his head one thing everyone agrees the current conversation about surveillance would not be happening without these leaks from snowden artie's sam sachs was at the president's speech and brings us this report after nearly seven months of n.s.a. disclosures president obama finally came forward with reforms to the spy agency acknowledging that the current capabilities of the usa do leave open the possibility of abuse given the unique power of the state it is not enough for leaders to say trust us we want to be use the data we collect for history as too many examples when that trust has been breached or so the system of government is built on the premise that our liberty cannot depend on the good intentions of those in power the president address the n.s.a.'s most controversial program section two fifteen bulk telephone metadata collection i believe critics are right to point out

that without proper safeguards. this type of program could be used to yield more information about our private lives i am therefore ordering a transition that will end the section two fifteen bulk metadata program as it currently exists basically the president no longer wants the government to be in control of these massive metadata databases and he's instructed the attorney general and the intelligence community to come up with a new method of storage and report back on march twentieth in the meantime the president is making some changes to the program as it stands first the n.s.a. will only be able to query those databases with prior phase of court approval but used to be able to query them based on their own internal guidelines second ones in the databases the n.s.a. will be restricted to only taking two hops from a target instead of three hops these changes deal with access to the databases they do not deal with bulk collection collection of virtually all americans metadata

will continue because white critics of the n.s.a. are skeptical of the president's announced reforms former n.s.a. whistleblower bill binney he still is not being given the right perspective on technology and what's capable of technology instead of taking the bulk collection approach and trying to modify those legislation in that area to try to correct it but still maintain that bulk collection is the wrong way to do it and a former n.s.a. whistleblower kirk we be it's sort of a false rubric to say a rouge if you will a red herring to say well if an essay doesn't have it it's safe not true if it's connected to a wire a network and i say can get it now aside from section two fifteen bulk collection the president announced a number of reforms in other areas there's more declassification of files of court opinions coming a change to the indefinite secrecy that comes with national security letters and also allowing providers to share more information about the national security

letters that they receive from the government also the president called. on congress to create a special panel to advocate before the fires a court and major cases dealing with civil liberties now were guarding foreign intelligence the president said he's willing to extend more privacy protections to u.s. citizens whose communications are incidentally swept up in the bulk section seven o two surveillance and he said he will also extend privacy protections to non u.s. citizens as well regarding spying on foreign leaders the president said he's put an end to surveillance on friends and allies but did not say the n.s.a. will stop spying on diplomats other things that were not addressed by the president today nothing about the n.s.a. breaking in christian standards as revealed by the snowden documents also the president said he's seen no abuses in the n.s.a. programs but he did not address reports that the n.s.a. has been breaking into the data links on google and yahoo servers nor did he address the latest report from the guardian regarding bulk content collection of

millions of text messages around the world so while some specific reforms were introduced how exactly they will be implemented moving forward remains to be seen and there's still several concerns that were left unaddressed and it's also worth keeping an eye out on congress to see if the president's speech disarmed lawmakers who want to substantially reform the spy agency over the next few months in washington d.c. same sex artsy. detroit is one of the most dangerous cities in the united states and has topped the list for the past five years and response the city has reorganized their police department under the direction of chief james krag and has seen measurable success the murder rate dropped fourteen percent from two thousand and twelve to two thousand and thirteen what's a secret well kreg says he's seen that good citizens who are armed can deter violent crimes take a listen. but here's the key what main point is safest places in america.

one of the safest places in america is not by crime would not exist and certainly in portland maine they had gangs they had narcotics suspects they had shootings but clearly suspects knew good americans who are. joining me to discuss is matthew feeney the assistant editor at reason dot com and reason twenty four thanks for joining us so what do you think about this do you do you agree with that having an armed citizenry can that really make a criminal think twice about doing a violent crime i don't think it should be surprising to people you know that they go living in a neighborhood with people. a little more hesitant to commit a crime than one where people do not have arms i mean i obviously haven't you know have the same experiences craig does but he was in maine and now is in detroit and he seems to think that there's a difference and it's you know he's someone definitely worth listening to considering that he is a police chief and as you pointed out

a rather dangerous place but one thing he did say is that in detroit that these criminals are starting to show up with body armor on and they're not wearing the body armor for the police they already know the police are armed they're wearing them because more citizens are being armed so what are your thoughts on that not surprising you have those are going to try and anticipate problems in the pursuits but i think it's important to stress obviously that you know craig is talking about legal gun owners he's not saying that you know everyone should have a gun but he's you know people who are able to legally purchase one you know most of whom into the millions of guns in this country and most people who own guns are not a danger to the public and it's no different in detroit yeah i got to speak with a spokesperson on the phone and he said one thing that he really wanted to stress because he got a lot of press at this conference was that he's only talking about good responsible citizens having access to guns but on top of this do you think that we still need regulations to ensure that only these responsible citizens are carrying guns i mean well you can the spectrum is very wide i mean if you look globally there's

obviously the countries that have an incredibly incredible amount of gun control and you know the the other end of the spectrum is that there are no controls on who have a owns weapons but you know obviously it's up to the michigan legislators to come up with whatever the regulations are i think it's worth pointing out that you know throughout the world even presently there are a. examples of people using guns to you know community mexico for instance so they're vigilantes who recently kicked out police officers who they thought were corrupt in light of a lot of cartel violence plenty of stuff to look at globally to make sure only responsible people are the ones who actually have the right which might not be the police and a lot of places in mexico now one thing he did get some flack from is comparing portland to detroit and obviously portland it's very hard to secure a pair because for one their social demographics are very different portland is predominately white jury is predominantly black so can we really say that because portland is

a safer place because they have more gun owners to really say that there's a direct correlation here with detroit well you know the comparison is not perfect but this is a problem but you're going to have been any policy talking about any issue is going to be the same whether it's guns or health care or education people on both sides fall into the trap of you know trying to draw false comparisons but i think the only reason why i think this one is particularly interesting is because a man who has worked in both cities is making the comparison and you know i've never been to portland and was only in detroit very briefly want someone you know to put. his thoughts on it having not looked at the raw data by so difficult for a scientist a researcher to do this on who's actually been on the ground has a different perspective and there was a quote impact study that showed that states with restrictions on carrying a concealed weapons had hired gun related murder rates than other states but the studies out there is also pointed out that you can't conclude that concealed weapons. cause lower violent rates do you know of any hard

evidence that. well i mean something i will say is that i remember the great publication on prohibition is generally that was published by the institute of economic affairs and you know as the accent might imply you know i'm not from a country that's used to wide range of gun ownership but in in the u.k. which you know one hundred years ago or so. so you know you know very relaxed gun laws but you know handgun bans were instituted and might have an effect on the gun rate but this study showed that you know it doesn't have that much an effect on the actual homicide rate and you know people should be concerned about whether people are being killed or not not what weapon is used to kill them he would say anything on the opposite argument we have about thirty seconds left is there any evidence that stricter gun laws lead to less violent crimes. but i want you know i feel like it's with your point we're returning again to a point i made earlier that you know you can point to you know whole countries are going to be completely. hard it's going to be hard to draw any lessons from countries all jurisdictions because of the problem but i do think it's worth

listening to craig because of his experiences in both jurisdictions thank you so much as matthew feeney the assistant editor at reason dot com and the state of ohio is facing a lawsuit after trying an untested method of lethal injection on a man can to death with his family saying the execution amounted to cruel and unusual punishment the man in question dennis mcguire was given the death penalty for the rape and murder of joy stewart who was eight months pregnant back in one nine hundred eighty nine during yesterday's execution witnesses said that it took almost twenty five minutes for maguire two to die with the new combination of drugs listen to how one witness describes his death. i would save her from jail the thirty minutes mr mcguire appeared to be gasping for air i don't know if it was air hunger or exactly what it was but i was going to tell you it's

a description of the gas deeply it's kind of a rattling going will sound there was sort of a snoring through his nose a couple times he definitely be choking. now mcguire's family is saying that this death of violates the eighth amendment and they're suing the state of ohio his lawyer alan boehner said quote the people of the state of ohio should be appalled at what was done here in their names ohio event of a innovated with the new form of lethal injection because the manufacturer of the previously used drug pentobarbital has been used has been barred its use in capital punishment. the obama administration on wednesday issued a new guidance to help public schools and meeting their obligations under federal law to administer discipline without discriminating on the basis of race color or national origin the following data shows that students of color face more harsher

punishments for committing the same actions as their white peers with an increased amount of law enforcement and schools disciplinary actions can result in a student entering the criminal justice system however critics are saying that this is nothing less than imposing racial quotas in the school system and could lead to increased violence and our schools to discuss is daniel lawson the director of the center for civil rights remedies at the civil rights project and you see a thanks for joining us thanks for having me on so over the past few years and many schools have adopted as zero tolerance policy now the government is saying we should end this approach why. well for many reasons oftentimes these automatic responses are not just about kids who bring guns or drugs to school but they're being applied to all sorts of minor infractions of the school code things like tardiness or dress code violations or bringing a cellphone and what this does is it pushes kids out of school we lose tremendous

instructional time it dramatically increases their risk of dropping out and in involvement in the juvenile justice system and these are just unsound education policies and practices and the other thing is that there are real viable alternatives that work much better to help kids improve their behavior and be productive in school now groups against us guide and say that this will lead to an increased rates of punishments for whites and will reduce punishments for minority youth how this affects how schools discipline their students while they start disciplining more or less. well that's just patently absurd it's laughable that people are saying that and they obviously haven't looked at the statistics or the guidance provided by the us permit event in the department of justice the guidance is really common sense. how to be effective in school discipline and

holding kids accountable for misbehavior but proven effective evidence based practice is that help teachers to training and help school systems to systems of support for kids will reduce misbehavior keep more kids in school where they can learn and these have proved effective in places like baltimore denver oakland cities across the country are already doing these things so it's not just some academic idea of oh we could do things better there are schools that have turned this around and in so doing have been crew graduation rates so those arguments are just patently absurd i mean what if there's a greater infraction rate among minority students what if more minority students are capable of the are doing the bad behavior is does this deserve more punishment for this minority group so if you if your punishment is counterproductive it makes

no sense to be using it so most people would say for example for concerned about a dress code violation even if more black kids were violating the dress code suspending a student out of school with that there where they're more likely to get involved in gangs and commit crimes that makes no sense there are all kinds there's a whole range of right and to to enforce a dress code that doesn't mean pushing a kid out of school where there's no guarantee of adult supervision like i said there are proven effective practices and that's really what this guidance says it saying even if there's no intent to treat kids differently by race. or disability status not point out that it effects kids with disabilities as well that if there's no sound policy or if there's a better way to address the misbehavior that doesn't result in huge loss of instructional time then schools really should do that everyone would want their kid to go to that kind of the scrape and study sell ossuaries there's also sells and

that's the spending a student benefits the students who were in trouble it is not to benefit the student who was in trouble but also studies show that a greater percentage of minorities are arrested then than white teenagers so if we're using this what you call it desperate impact rule and the department of education why don't we use it in the department of justice to why don't we have the same standards across the federal government well actually that part of justice jointly filed the these these standards in the sky games so it does if also applied to the juvenile justice system but we have to remember that the whole the whole concept here is that we're moving schools to sound effective practices if there's a legitimate purpose for the response the punishment what have you and it's educationally necessary in the justice you know context it's important for safety and it's then

there if there are disparities that i really do do differences in misbehaviors that's not going to violate civil rights it's only one there are unsound practices or much better more effective ways that schools can go about encouraging appropriate behavior and keeping kids in school you know if they're not if they're not using sound practices. that's where and they're they're punishing kids with disabilities or black kids a lot more than others or latino kids or english learners that's where these guys are i thank you so much that was then you know lawson he's the director for the center for civil rights remedy and at the civil rights project at u.c.l.a. thank you. and you may remember the fate of washington d.c. in the film independence day. my. while these three is not facing an alien attack there is reason to fear explosion and the

nation's capital why well researchers have found about six thousand natural gas leaks under the roads in the district of columbia at least twelve of them are potentially explosive duke and boston university researchers drove down every street of d.c. to measure the leaks most are said to not pose any interest to the general public however they could add to climate change joining me to discuss is d.c.'s shadow senator paul strauss thanks for coming after to be here so we're going to blow up or what i think the risk of d.c. blowing up the way it does in those hollywood movies is a little bit exaggerated if you're planning a trip to our nation's capital by all means come visit it's not likely to blow up anytime soon but what is exploding is d.c. is population thousands of residents are coming here every year and that continues to put pressure on an aging infrastructure and that's really what's at the root of this problem and the researchers they warned washington gas about the twelve

locations that were potentially explosive they fix them four months later eight of them are still explosive so is this even really fixable well it's certainly a lot of it's very concerning and the last thing i want to do is minimize the risk of this but we don't want to sensationalize it either this is not a unique d.c. problem for example the same research study showed that in boston a similar problem with gas leaks was there and in fact just about every major east coast city with an aging infrastructure is facing this problem with makes a difference in washington d.c. is that we're not as equipped to deal with it for example in boston senator from massachusetts ed markey almost immediately introduce legislation that would call for a revolving fund to fix these gas pipelines tighter standards in the district of columbia i'm not able to co-sponsor this bill i'm not able to vote for it so our lack of federal representation is once again hampering the way we deal with an important national problem and you're. and the infrastructure here with these pipes we can't

see these are all underground so it's not like bridges and roads that we use every day so we got this kind of head and didn't they collected well a lot of our infrastructure just to collect including the bridges including the road you know we just passed a omnibus budget bill that has restored a lot of the sequester cuts to the defense industry so we're investing money nationally to maybe blow things up in other countries but we're not spending the money we need on infrastructure to keep things from exploding you're at home we have americans that want to work that need jobs we have jobs that need doing and we're not investing in infrastructure repair the way we ought to be and that's unfortunate this is a classic example along with bridging roads of something that we should be spending our money on that will make our cities safer and make our country safer and help put americans back to work right but we also have a lot of that in this country and we have to prioritize our spending that's just not money for everything so where on the priority was does this a lot and what is more important than infrastructure well i think infrastructure is very important and it doesn't necessarily mean that these projects have to be borne

by the taxpayers we have a robust natural gas industry that profits from putting gas through these pipelines stricter enforcement is necessary to make sure that those who are selling this gas to the consuming public have a responsibility for keeping them safe but we need to do our part of the national level to make sure that this isn't seen as a local problem when in fact it's a problem that's occurring in many many of our major densely populated cities are you hiring for higher taxes in the natural gas industry i think we need tighter regulations and i think that there is something that we need to do to keep replace these aging cast iron gas lines we can continue to use technology from the eight hundred eighty s. to power needs in the twenty first century right and like you said we're not the only city that's dealing with this and brazil in two thousand and twelve it got so bad that they created a facebook a game there is an app made where players had to try to divert the manholes. you can see we have some footage of it but this is no joke manhole explosions have

flying cars they've killed people and there was a massive explosion in georgetown several years back and that caused a lot of damage likely didn't hurt anybody but is it possible that these may have holes could hurt somebody absolutely this is a dangerous problem that requires immediate solution there is a bill in congress there's a bill in the senate but what is happening is that if you're from the district of columbia one of the city's most affected by this you can't effectively advocate for this bill in congress because you don't have a vote that's one of the things that worry me so kudos to senator markey who represented boston as a member of the house represents the state of massachusetts but urban centers are vote short when it comes to dealing with issues like this in the united states senate which is why things like these he stated are important not for politics but because public safety is often implicated in our disenfranchisement or a budget autonomy you know as an important civil rights issue you see us who members of the district this is senator paul strauss and us shadow senator from the

district of columbia thanks for joining us as we approach the fourth anniversary of the supreme court ruling of the now famous citizens united case which ruled that corporations associations and labor unions all have the same political expenditure rights as people argue why wall street will be holding a protest tomorrow and zuccotti park artie's anastasio brings us the latest on the story. this saturday the occupy wall street movement returns to its birthplace in the big apple zuccotti park for a day of action against corporate money and politics events are scheduled around the fourth anniversary of the supreme court's citizens united ruling of twenty ten that held that corporations and unions are allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigning and elections in the u.s. wall street has essentially dubbed this an assault on the power of the people and a slap in the face of democracy of course is known for its tough stance against money and politics and the over expanded corporate power in modern day america

their demands remain to put an end to corporations being able to influence politics with their money and end the concept of wall street sleeping in the same bed with politicians as well as pushing to stop the notion that corporations have the same rights as people in the us they will be marching to the too big to fail banks holding a rally and speak out against corporations outside new york offices of several corporations and this will be taking place throughout the day occupiers say years after the financial collapse of zero eight wealth inequality continues to be a prevalent issue for so many common americans who are still struggling to stay afloat while corporations have enjoyed better times than ever now the key goal for the movement is to gather more public awareness to the major issue of corporate control in the united states and doing what they can to call for an overturn of the citizens united ruling providing even more power in politics to the already largely almighty corporate elites and pushing aside the ninety nine percent of the population that remains voiceless and this comes of course two years after the most

expensive presidential election in american history and counting where more than half a billion dollars were pumped into the presidential campaigns separately one obstacle the occupy wall street movement seems to recently have been faced with are numbers of protesters coming out for public events and the question is will occupy be able to generate enough buzz for enough people to show up for this saturday's protest the movement has. largely been out of the public eye once occupy camps across the west were victim roughly two years into the movement and while work in smaller groups and on a more local narrow focus scale has been ongoing it's initially the big numbers of occupy protesters that got the world to take a listen to what they had to say and as they said r.t. new york boom bust is coming up next here on r t aaron eight joins us from the paper and thanks to jack coming up on boom bust i'm joined today by money manager peter schiff one of the few people who predicted the financial crisis of two

thousand and eight plus we're taking a look back at some of the greatest moments from the show the past week you won't want to miss it so stick around right after the news thanks aaron that does it for now i'm perry i'm boring stay tuned for a boom bust next. technology innovation. developments around. the future or ever. we welcome aaron nate and abby martin to have a terrific hosts on the our team at work. it's going to give you a different perspective give me one stock never i'll give you the information you make the decision don't worry about it i'll bring you the work it's a revolution of the mind it's revolution ideas and consciousness is frustrated with the system yeah it's true but you're probably would be described as angry i think

i'm a strong you know i was single. i was a new alert animation scripts scare me a little bit. there is breaking news tonight and we are continuing to follow the breaking news. alexander's family cry tears of the war you and your great things out there that there has to be ever read dark in a court of law found online there's a story many sort of movies playing out in real life.

and a happy friday i marinate this is boom bust these are the stories we're tracking for you today first up finally finally the day has come out peter schiff makes is a long awaited debut on boom bust today in today's show mr schiff weighs in on the federal reserve president. and future then we're taking a look back and highlighting some of the best hits from boom bust this past week it's a boom bust britain says you won't want to miss it plus the effervescent ed harrison i feel your questions comments and concerns in today's in the margins it's the part of the show where we put you the viewer in the driver's seat.