breaking news on our t.v. and as a whistleblower edward snowden takes part in a live q. and a lot of people ask their burning questions to snowden including a question about his reaction to president obama's n.s.a. speech we'll take a look at his response just ahead and the capital of ukraine has seen countless clashes between protesters and riot police now a ten cease fire has been declared by opposition leaders negotiate with the government the latest from ukraine coming up and the syrian peace talks have just wrapped a day to win switzerland but with the two sides warring over assad's power in the country will the syrian government and rebels even be able to come to an agreement or bring you more from switzerland later in the show.

it's thursday january twenty third five pm in washington d.c. and i know you're a david and you're watching our t.v. . and we begin today with breaking news with a special q. and a that was conducted by former government contractor edward snowden today stone and gave a number of curious people out there the chance to have a conversation with him by offering them to ask some timely questions our very own pham sachs has been charting those questions and answers from our newsroom fan it seems like a lot of people are dying to know what students responses to president barack obama's speech that he gave just last friday do we have a response yet from him this sort of use that kind of the frame of should president obama have been given given this speech so early especially since so many voices have been weighed in this debate namely the privacy and civil liberties oversight board which released a report today basically saying that the n.s.a.'s bulk phone records collection

program is both illegal and mostly useless in preventing terrorism in that context edward snowden was asked do you think it's a shame that obama gave his n.s.a. speech before his privacy and civil liberties oversight board reported that report . in which snow didn't respond and he wanted to focus in on the bulk records program he said it's time to end bulk collection which is a euphemism for mass surveillance there is simply no justification for continuing unconstitutional policy with a zero percent success rate in light of another independent confirmation of this fact i think americans should look to the white house and congress to close the book entirely on the two fifteen bulk records provision course in the president's speech he didn't call for ending bulk collection he said that he'd like to see the government move away from storing all these records but yet bulk collection will continue that's what snowden was focused on when he said that is what needs to end so i guess we can gather that he was not very pleased with president obama's speech it didn't go far enough but i know you've been tracking some other questions and

answers what else do we know this snowden to dress the number of questions here there's been a lot of talk over what he thinks about spying in secrecy people have said that snow. he just doesn't believe in any sort of spying and he was asked directly about that question what in your opinion is the appropriate extent of u.s. national security apparatus surely some spying is needed to which snowden replied not all spying is bad the biggest problem we face right now is the new technique of indiscriminate mass surveillance where governments are seizing billions and billions and billions of innocents communication every single day i think a person should be able to dial a number make a purchase send an s.m.s. read an e-mail or visit a website without having to think about what's going to look like on their permanent record so we see a number of n.s.a. disclosure over the last seven months but starting wants to focus on those disclosures that reveal this mass surveillance whether it's phone dragnet on all americans in the united states or these reports of collecting tens of millions

communications of average german citizens or average french citizens or average brazilian citizens snowden thinks these are the most egregious types of spying student was also asked about whistleblower protection laws and whether or not they would have helped his situation and what he thinks of president obama's proposed whistleblower protections and this is what snowden said you know if i had revealed what i knew about these unconstitutional but classified programs to congress they could have charged me with a felony one only need to look at the case of thomas drake to see how the government doesn't have a good history of handling legitimate reports of wrongdoing within the system my case clearly demonstrates the need for comprehensive whistleblower protection act reform of course noted referring to previous n.s.a. employee thomas drake who blew the whistle a few years ago about warrantless wiretapping going on at the n.s.a. and he was charged with the espionage act and finally beat those charges obviously it's now to gone to congress that's not likely anything would happen most members of congress already knew about these programs and hadn't said anything about it one more thing that snowden was asked about whether or not these n.s.a.

revelations are going to permanently damage american democracy tend american democracy recover from what's been revealed to which snowden replied yes what makes our country strong is our system of values not a snapshot of the show. sure of our agencies are the framework of our laws we can correct the laws restrain the overreach of agencies and hold the senior officials responsible for abusive programs to account so a hopeful note from snowden moving forward clearly not what you would expect from someone who's been alleged to be a spy who's trying to bring the united states down which is some accusations you've heard members of congress on the house and senate intelligence committees making routinely without any proof whatsoever sarah very very important questions and very thorough answers on his part i should say snowden you know could have easily gone to any publication to give them an exclusive interview to really talk about this information as an outlet but he decided to do this q. and a which i thought was interesting you know why do you think he chose us as a sort of medium of communication this is only the second interview he's kind of

given this where the guardian did a q. and a back in june of last year but you're right i mean snowden is in high demand everybody wants to do an interview with him but as he said from the get go he doesn't want this story to be about him he's mainly shied away from the media of course as people have come out to said that he's a spy and question his motives he comes out and can speak for himself on this but for the most part he's leaving it up to the journalists he's given these documents to in the organizations that have seized on these disclosures to make change happen to sort of push this story forward. perhaps they see this as a way to get the information out in a very unfiltered way straight from the horse's mouth well that's all we have time for sam sachs political commentator and thank you. and a national security agency program to collect vast quantities of information about phone calls has been determined illegal this is all according to an independent review done by the privacy and civil liberties oversight board also known as the p c l o b in the two hundred and thirty eight page report released today the board

concluded that the section two fifteen program has contributed only minimal value in combating terrorism beyond what the government already achieved through these and other alternative means and it added that the sation of the program would eliminate the privacy and civil liberties concerns associated with bulk collection without unduly hampering the government's efforts the board's conclusion of course goes much further than what president obama recommended and a speech given last friday at the justice department there obama said he wanted to move private mehta data out of the hands of the government but he did not call for an end to the program earlier i spoke to colonel morris davis law professor at howard university i first asked him if the board shared its conclusions with obama before his speech and if they were taken into account. i think he probably did and again the formal report was not released until today but i'm sure that you know he was briefed on the contents of the report and took that into account when he gave

the speech on friday i don't think you'd want to give a speech on friday night take this come out this week and contradict what do you said no again the report was not unanimous it largely split along party lines with two republican a primarily republicans dissenting in three primarily democrats that were in favor of the results absolutely do you think it's at all possible that obama decided to give his speech before the report was released so that you know he thought maybe what was going to come out would undermine. you know what he was going to recommend i don't know i mean i. attribute some sinister motive to the president but curious it was it was encouraging what he had to say on friday but you know he's given many encouraging speeches in the past and often there's not a lot of follow through so i'm hoping that there will be follow through this time and he'll live up to what he promised to do what do you think about this latest report when you think it says about the overarching constitutionality of the

program should this sort of be the final nail in the coffin so to speak in regards to an ng the ball collection of americans metadata therefore does come out today as two hundred thirty eight pages i haven't had a chance to read through it i don't have it. believe that one of the board members is judge patricia wall to you may have seen recently was awarded the presidential medal of freedom right. a great jurist a real credit to the legal profession someone that you know i look up to and admire greatly so given her involvement in this she's a former judge on the international criminal tribunal for yugoslavia the former chief judge of the d.c. circuit court of appeals here in washington but a lot of stock in faith in her analysis of this situation and again it confirms what others have said you know the new america foundation did a study recently where they came to the same conclusion that. we always hear oh we've got to have this program and people should trust the government to retain all this data because it keeps america safe and it stops terrorist plots but again this

is another group that said there's no proof to back that up and i want to take a look at a pew research poll that came out this week of the people who heard obama's speech last friday as seventy three percent of them say they are skeptical that the proposed changes will make a difference at all you know considering that and of course considering that the results of this latest report do you think there's sort of a mounting pressure now on congress to do something about this to end that or do you think congress is really just going to be determining where that information is stored going forward versus actually ending the program to predict what congress will do when anything when you look senator dick do you think there's a chance that that means this is pressure could it's an interesting coalition this forming you have the left or the progressives on the left and the libertarian right there in agreement that these this program out of the stops is kind of you are getting some bipartisan disinheritance bedfellows that are in agreement on trying

to contain this program is kind of that middle of the moderate middle that's more accepting of trust the government will be interesting to see going forward what happens with sure and the p c l o b says that it's opposed to having that information the mehta data be stored with a third party. they did say that they would leave you know the idea of storing it with phone companies on the table do you think that storing it with phone companies is a better option or do you think both of them sort of sound questionable well i would much rather have my phone carrier a t. into your verizon or someone storing i mean i may get spam to it right email trying to sell me stuff but unlike the government they don't have the ability to put me in prison or kill me or or do other kind of things so given the choice between the two i'd much rather have it in commercial hands said. government hands absolutely but do you think that it's very important to sort of have very detailed restrictions on how long they can hold that that information but i don't think so i mean certainly

something you don't want kept in perpetuity but a reasonable period of time as we go he does have a legitimate interest in being able to search these records is really the you know the devil's in the detail on the right way to structure this to you know to be say or to the american people and also to maintain our security absolutely well attorney general eric holder said on m s n b c today that while clemency for snowden really is sort of off the table the u.s. would consider a resolution an alternative to clemency i think it's left a lot of people wondering what another resolution could mean give any insight as to what could be an alternative to clemency well i think i'm maybe an anomaly people tend to put edward snowden into the he's entirely good or entirely bad camps and if i'm not in agreement then you know people get rather angry with you i think i'm in between the two i mean there's no doubt of what he did was wrong and he signed the same security paperwork that i signed and there's no ifs ands or buts about it

being wrong to take classified information i think you ought to be accountable for that but i'm also pleased that we're having the discussion that he triggered i mean the president within a given the talk on friday but for edward snowden so there are there's benefit to what he did as well so i think there ought to be some middle of the right henri with eric holder that there should be a conversation had about about something about an alternative and i'm really disappointed with like members of congress and members of the intelligence community that say out of the shot or words to that effect there ought to be some reasonable resolution that accommodates both the good and the bad and comes out with a fair result absolutely we'll have to see what happens colonel morris davis a professor at howard university thank you so much for. and now to the embattled ukrainian city of kiev and a temporary truce leaders of the opposition have called on protesters to refrain from violence however the city center remained ablaze overnight there have been conflicting reports on the number of casualties but r.t.

has confirmed that at least two have died so far both of them ultimately from gunshots authorities however have stressed that police are not equipped with live ammunition so far over two hundred police officers have also been injured during the riots with more than eighty of them hospitalized here's our teeth are all over with more. but we've seen is groups of demonstrators and rioters in there across ukraine trying to. occupy or demonstrate outside of government buildings now in the in the cities. and. we have seen the main. local ministration buildings being occupied by demonstrators now i was looking online and on twitter accounts of thousands of people involved also we've seen it on the local news here as well that there scenes from then it's not just those two cities in the west of ukraine we're also hearing

a fair of government offices being besieged all the at least the scenes of demonstrations so certainly the unrest in ukraine not limited to to the capital here in kiev that we are hearing from the government side that they are all ready to consider repealing or at least toning down the new measures new laws that were brought in to tackle the violence here in kiev and we've also heard from the prime minister mr assad of who said that. he was he was ready to resign and his whole cabinet resign if the parliament here in ukraine decided they weren't up to the job now that's one of those things that's going to be up for discussion at a special session of the ukrainian parliament that will be held next week that was announced by vice president dick the un of course which also up for discussion. that session of parliament will be the possibility of holding of holding elections

we've also been seeing a reaction to what's going on here in kiev from other afield from abroad the european union has been particularly vocal on thursday we heard from. mr but also the president of the european union he had a he held a phone conversation a phone call with. with ukrainian president viktor which he said he was deeply concerned that conversation is over to shoot him that they would no be no state of emergency called in ukraine and they was no plans at the moment to to involve the military. extra type of security services on the streets now he wasn't the only european leader to talk about ukraine the. head of the european parliament martin schulz said that he in his opinion there has to be elections in ukraine immediately and he was calling for the ukrainian government to call those elections the european union applying pressure making their voices heard of all over the subject

of what continues to be a moment a standoff between. police and a lot of talks going on between the various sides here in ukraine now as artie's peter oliver and his talk a little bit more about the u.s. reaction to what's happening in ukraine i was ruined earlier by r.t. is this the cavanagh i first asked or what the u.s. response is then to the crisis in the country. it hasn't really been much of a change in the u.s. response throughout the course of this crisis basically with washington again today threatening sanctions against ukraine if the violence there escalates the spokesman jay carney did praise the ukrainian president's decision to meet again with the protesters but he did basically pin the blame on the current crisis on the government saying that the president there has basically failed to address what he called the legitimate concerns of the protesters now on the sanctions no firm decision just yet it does seem that washington is sort of hoping to basically wait it out not really resort to taking that step really hoping that in

a coach will make some moves perhaps to calm the crisis down but it's not all empty threats we did see earlier this week the u.s. revoking the visas of several top ukrainian officials who were implicated in ordering police violence not in the latest crackdown but what happened in december in november just saying and vice president biden actually called the ukrainian president today what was that conversation you know that was ringing off the hook i think bunch of european leaders also called them biden basically urged. to keep on meeting with the opposition he said all the typical platitudes about deescalating the crisis trying to find a peaceful resolution to what's going on there he emphasized that he believes also that the ukrainian government is it's only the government of ukraine that can ensure a peaceful resolution to this so basically saying the ball is in the government's court not really the protesters but we do have to keep in mind that of course while the protests were sparked by the decision by ukraine not to sign the e.u. pact it's really evolved and shifted into anger over government corruption police

violence as well as harsh new anti demonstration anti protest laws and biden did seem to make a veiled reference to that when he urged the ukrainian president to respect freedoms of assembly and expression and that was the writing first started i think it was in november you know the obama administration was saying very very little about it you know secretary kerry decided not to take a trip there but you. about you know why the u.s. has really sort of been cautious in taking it has been cautious and it seems to be that the muted response has less to do with ukraine and more about what else is happening on the agenda right now and internationally as well as the u.s. relationship to russia the two countries are kind of on polar opposite sides here with the u.s. sort of supporting more of a european oriented ukraine russia of course wanting to see its former soviet republic in its orbit but really the white house doesn't want to be seen as provoking the kremlin on this issue because of course we have the cooperation

between the u.s. and russia on several issues in syria to go weapons iran talks and of course the geneva two peace conference that's still going on in geneva so the u.s. not wanting to ruffle any feathers so what's the latest on this truce how long is it supposed to last is there or definitive time or you know my experience with these things is you never know unfortunately there are so many elements on the ground there could be propagations on either side and while of course everyone i'm sure it is rather grateful when they see these kind of truce agreements called for anything could really happen it's such a tense situation feelings are so high on both ends that any sort of mistake on either side could really spark the conflict yet again and indeed well lucic have not thanks for your reporting thank you iranian president hassan rouhani went to davos this week to talk about the potential for a comprehensive nuclear deal and the hope for opening up the country to more investment ronnie is the first iranian president and more than a decade to join business and political leaders at the world economic forum which

explains why the leader's speech took a front seat at the conference artie's katie putting as more. is taking full advantage of the president of the country has a very high on a all to davos economic forum because it's incredibly timely full hey we know that the six month interim deal that struck between the six major. it's this week and the message from him is is open for business and i say it's certainly timely because in the audience you've got two hundred fifty people the to support some of the richest people in the world eighty billionaires hey we got forty heads of state so he's speaking to the right people and it's the first time in ten years that an iranian media has come to this event and he is basically opening up the country to international investment he's worried the likes of any tell you tell show as well as exxon mobile throughout the day he was ready drum up support for the oil

industry that has been ready suffering in the last two years because they sanctions which will now be partially lifted thanks that interim deal that has been struck now he's got great expectations for his economy let's listen to the man himself grow door of iran's economy has the potential to be among the world's top ten in the next three decades that's our long term goal which we're planning to achieve through our social economic as well as domestic and foreign policy my government is pursuing ideals and economic development democracy and the improvement of iran's foreign relations and that's impossible without our international engagement now considering a run has one of the biggest if not the biggest oil and gas reserves in the world is a feasible goal for the country now the relationships between iran and the west are now warming up thanks the sanctions being partially lifted and investors are keen to get involved as well now as r.t.

is katie pilbeam. and still ahead here on r t day two of the syrian peace talks come to an end in switzerland and common ground is in short supply all the international community calls for assad to cede power damascus insists his departure is off the table more on that after the break. we welcome aaron eight and abby martin two of the two or three coasts on the r t network. it's going to give you a different perspective give me one stock i'll never i'll give you the information you make the decision only about how breaking the set were the resolution of the mind it's revolution of ideas and consciousness and frustrated with the system the extreme right you know problems and so would be described as angry i think in a strong enough under single. got a quote for you. it's pretty tough to. stay with that story.

because this guy like you but smear that time instead of working for the people the motivations of the mainstream media were pretty much on the bribers day to day. and they did rather well. i would rather 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. i'm

. and now to switzerland where the international mediator for syria has decided to hold separate meetings with the government and the opposition after the warring sides failed to find any common ground during the first day of the syrian peace conference diplomats are hoping to bring syria's bitter rivals together for their first face to face talks tomorrow artie's igor piskun i was in switzerland and brings us more but you're right it is the story to. can you just read yours is that you live in new york i live in cabo i like

to give this see the end this year in. here in this forum the first day of the conference was expected to be spent listening to formal statements instead it was the scene of bitter exchanges as the syrian opposition pressed on with its calls for president assad to step down and i think that is the problem and i said i don't have a problem with any solution without our stepping down as a change of power in damascus is something washington is pushing for as well bashar assad will not be part of that transition government but according to the u.n. secretary general of this is neither up to washington nor any other outside players to be signed the seriousness of themselves had the primary responsibility to end the conflict determine their party to a system and future and start repeating their country while democracy is willing to discuss anything from commenting terror to a partial cease fire anything that is except assad's resignation it seems the

parties have a different understanding of the course of the talks indeed the only agree on the one thing that a political solution is the only way no one should. know one's trying to gloss this over that this is the beginning of a tough and complicated process more than forty countries and organizations and all suggest together how this must end. that it has to have an inclusive syria but it's because of the stupid statements were indeed emotional when there was need to accuse asians but what's most important is that only the parties involved want direct talks to start as soon as. if there is the blizzard that the first round of negotiations mediated by the un it arab league special envoy on syria is expected to last one week after nearly three years of extreme violence it isn't a surprise the two sides of the syrian conflict aren't getting along very well frankly

just getting them in the same building me already be considered a diplomatic breakthrough not to mention the talks which are scheduled to continue on friday hugo is going off r t montreaux switzerland and virginia lawmakers facing a shortage of lethal drugs used to carry out the death penalty have advanced a bill that could bring back the electric chair in the state the house of delegates in virginia passed the measure yesterday sixty four to thirty two the bill allows the prisoner to choose the method of execution and puts lethal injection as the default but if the alternative is not available it says the remaining method of execution shall be employed meaning electrocution according to the death penalty information center right now only six states still authorize the use of the electric chair those states are alabama florida kentucky south carolina tennessee and virginia but historically those states have only moved to use the electric

chair if an inmate personally requests it since inmates were given the option in one nine hundred ninety five only six of the eighty five inmates executed since then have chosen electrocution over me people injection of fairfax county democrat had this to say about the new bill he said it's a barbaric way for the state to execute people it's disappointing to me that my colleagues want to take a step backwards these calls for a return to a ban and forms of capital punishment come as many states are. countering growing complications over accessing lethal injection drugs as manufacturers refused to supply the drugs for executions in the absence of pentobarbital just last week ohio administered a two drug lethal cocktail that had never been used before on death row inmate dennis mcguire but wire reportedly gasped several times and mates morning noises during a prolonged death that lasted almost twenty minutes and that does it for now for

more on the stories we covered go to you tube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at i'm here at david. welcome to the kaiser report i'm max kaiser last week the heritage foundation and the wall street journal presented their annual list of economic freedom for the seventh year running the u.s. has dropped down that list now residing at twelfth most free economy in the world while the us used to be number one it is now behind ireland at number don yes the same ireland which was a vassal state of the troika until mid december when it gave that low.