coming up on our t.v. perform our rhetoric president obama lays out his plans for reforming the n.s.a. what he had to say and the future of the world's surveillance. arming citizens is the way to curb crime a police chief of a major u.s. city thinks so a look at the issue coming up. in the movie independence day 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 friday january seventeenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm parian bori you're watching our see america. and 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 where he leaks founder julian assange tweeted that it's clear the president would not be speaking today were 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 referred to have as a whistle blower while others say he has put americans and expecting troops and danger within the intelligence committee he is widely seen as an enemy to america a pentagon official who is a former special forces officer told buzz feed i do not take pleasure and taking another human being like human beings life having to do it in uniform but he is

singlehandedly the greatest traitor in american history he also said i'd love to put a bullet in this head one thing that everyone agrees the current conversation about surveillance would not be happening without these leaks from snowden are some sacks 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 has 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 they 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 with 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 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 the 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 regarding foreign intelligence the president said he's willing to extend more privacy protections to u.s. citizens whose communications are incidentally swept up in a 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 encryption 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 r.t. the trade 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 reorganize their police department under the direction of chief james craig and has seen measurable success the murder rate dropped fourteen percent from two thousand and twelve to two thousand and thirteen was a secret well chief craig says he's seen that good citizens who are armed can deter violent crowds take a listen. but here is 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 earlier i spoke with matthew feeney the assistant editor at reason dot com and reason twenty four seven to learn more about this issue i first asked him if having an armed citizenry could cause a criminal to think twice about committing violent crime. i don't know you should be surprising people you know that they go living in a neighborhood where people are. perhaps a little more hesitant to commit a crime than one where people do not have 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'm going 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 you know 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 you've got to speak with a spokes person 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 throughout the world even presently there are examples of people using guns to you know community mexico for instance so they're vigilantes who recently kicked out you know police officers who they thought were corrupt in light of a lot of cartel violence so plenty of stuff to look at globally to make sure only responsible people are the. once you actually have the right which might not be the police and a lot of places in mexico now one thing he did get some flak from is comparing portland to detroit obviously portland very hard to compare because for one there so show demographics are very different portland is predominately white predominantly black so can we really say that because portland is a safer place because they have more going on 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 a comparison and you know i've never been to portland and was only in detroit very briefly want someone you know to go to. his thoughts on it having not looked at the raw data but i 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 low or 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 some 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 one hundred years ago also you know had you know very relaxed gun laws but you know gun bans were instituted in 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 to kill we 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 worth a point returning again to a point i made earlier that you know you can point to you know whole countries are going to be completely. 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 the state of ohio is facing a lawsuit after trying an untested method of lethal injection on a man sense to death with his family saying the execution amounted to cruel and unusual punishment the man in question dennis mcguire he was given the death penalty for the rape and murder of joyce stewart who was eight months pregnant back in one nine hundred eighty nine during yesterday's execution witnesses said it took almost twenty five minutes for mcguire to die with the new combination of drugs listen to how one witness described his death i would save her from the chain of thirty minutes mr mcguire appeared gasping for air i don't know if it was air hunger or exactly what it was but i wanted to tell you it's a description of the gas deeply it's kind of a rattling going to will sound there was sort of a snoring through his nose

a couple times he definitely fear to be choking. now mcguire's family is saying that this death 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 innovated with the new form of lethal injection because the manufacturer of the previously used drugs and to barbara tall has been barred its use for capital punishment. the obama administration on wednesday issued new guidance to help public schools in meeting their obligations under federal law to administer discipline without discriminating on the basis of race color or national origin this follows data showing that students of color face more harsher punishments for committing the same actions with their white peers with an increased amount of law enforcement and schools disciplinary actions can result in

a student entering the criminal justice system over critics are saying this is nothing less than imposing racial quotas in the school system and could lead to increased violence and our schools earlier i spoke with daniel lawson the director of the center for civil rights revenues at the civil rights project at u.c.l.a. i first asked him why the government is saying we should and the zero tolerance policy is adopted by many schools 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 involvement in the juvenile justice system and these are just unsound education

policies and crack. that there are real liable alternatives that work much better to help kids improve their behavior and be productive in school now groups against those guys and say that this will lead to increased rates of punishments for white youths and will reduce punishments for minorities how will this affect how schools discipline their students will 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 primitive ed in the department of justice the guidance is really commonsense. 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 but what if there is a greater and fraction 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 a 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 there's a whole range of writing 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 racing. for 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 and schools really should do that everyone would want their kid to go to that kind of the school right and studies show us what research also sells nasa sending 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 rusted 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 or in the justice you know context it's important for safety and it's then there if there are disparities that 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 at 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 are english learners that's where these guys thank you so much that was then a loss and he's the director for the center for civil rights remedy and at the civil rights project at u.c.l.a. . still ahead on art c.d.c. is known for hot air how about hot air and gas explosions a new report says the city has more than five thousand gas leaks under its city's streets i'll tell you more ahead. i've got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. because they were it's not storing. let's get this guy like you but smear about guns that are working for the people most issues the mainstream media are working for each other right because they

should. they did rather well. i marinate join me. for that impartial and financial reporting commentary in from news and much much. only on the bus and only on. dramas the truth be ignoring the. stories others the few still noticing. the faces changing the world right now.

pictures of today's news. from around the globe. locally. you may remember the fate of washington d.c. in the film independence day. while d.c. is not facing an alien attack there is reason to fear explosions in 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 not to pose any risk to the general public or

they could add to climate change to discuss the situation i was joined earlier by d.c. that shadow senator paul strauss i first asked him if d.c. was in danger of blowing up. 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. 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 for months later eight of them are still explosive so is this even really fixable well it's certainly a lot 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 it different 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 fun 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 yeah and out of the infrastructure here with these pipes we can't see and these are all underground so it's not like bridges and roads that we use every day so we got that kind of head and as they get neglected well a lot of our infrastructure goes to quickly 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 bridges and 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 in the priority was does there's a lot and what is more important then 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 at 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 again and there was an apple made where players had to try to dodge the manhole as 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 in several years back and that caused a lot of damage likely didn't hurt anybody but is it possible that these they had 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 we're. and we so kudos to senator markey who represented boston as a member of the house and 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 i things like these he stated are important not for politics but because public safety is often implicated in our disenfranchisement or a budget autonomy and it was an important civil rights issue to see us who members of the district this is senator outhaul strauss and us sat a senator from the district of columbia thanks for joining. 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 occupying wall street will be holing a protest tomorrow and zuccotti park r t the herc in the brings us the latest on

this 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 occupy 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 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 they're 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 collapse and 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.e. new york a woman in california who received a traffic citation for driving while wearing google glass just got the case thrown else the alleged infraction was driving it with monitor visible to driver which makes it illegal to drive while watching a video screen however because the highway patrol officer couldn't prove her google glass was turned on while she was driving the ticket was dismissed what with all of the recent n.s.a. surveillance talk it makes you wonder if california police really wanted to know if the glasses were rolling at the time of the traffic stop could they have just asked

google that does it for perry i'm boring see you back here at eight pm. i have. a site. i'm sick. mind. and. all the money and i've actually sick for politicians the last. eight. years just two. days. sir.