i'm. coming up on our t.v. armed in america over the weekend a shooting inside of maryland mall left three people dead we'll take an in-depth look at the growing trend for gun violence across the u.s. just ahead and more silk road fallout now two men involved in vick when exchanges have been arrested and charged for money laundering authorities say they laundered one million dollars of virtual currency for the plaque market website more on that coming up and a cia whistleblower john kiriakou is calling out corruption from his prison cell in pennsylvania his latest letter accuses prison officials of violating his rights by censoring his communication with the press the details from chiappe curiosity behind bars later in the show.

it's tuesday january twenty eighth four pm in washington d.c. i'm lynn neary david you're watching r.t. america. we begin today with the gun violence in the u.s. over the weekend a mall shooting took place in columbia maryland a city located just outside of washington d.c. the shooting highlights the increase the increase in gun violence across america in recent years research released by yele school of medicine estimates that out of the over ten thousand kids shot in the u.s. in two thousand and nine at least one third of them died additionally according to a usa today report put out last month nine hundred thirty four people died in mass shootings over the past seven years that's only one percent of all gun related homicides and it's this high volume of shootings that makes the latest incident feel somewhat routine artie's making lopez was in columbia maryland and brings us

the story. it's become an all too common scene in the u.s. less than a month into the new year public shootings have dominated headlines leaving dozens dead and many more fearing for their safety the columbia mall in maryland became the latest scene of a public shooting here on saturday a gunman entered the mall around eleven am an open fire here she reportedly killed two people before turning the gun on himself police officers swat and first responders arrived on the scene in two minutes using lessons from previous public massacres they immediately enter the mall rather than waiting to secure the surrounding area the gunman darion marcus aguilar a nineteen year old newly graduated high school student his victims twenty one year old brianna benlolo and twenty five year old tyler johnson both victims worked at zumiez skate shop on the upper level of the mall the killing spree was over in seconds realized this and there was people running by the store. and then there

was another one right behind us was like. we got to the gates closed. the doors and. got all of our customers in the back room and we all hit i just ran you know and went where i saw other people going in was just trying to get to safety now police are trying to figure out the shooter's motives and why these tragedies continue to occur we have about one hundred times the rate of gun homicides and violent gun crimes relative to many countries of western europe and we should not be in the business of normalising violence since the beginning of two thousand and fourteen there have been seven school shootings across the country in just fourteen school days resulting in one shooting every other day meanwhile both baltimore and boston have been the scenes of unprecedented gang violence just north of the columbia mall shooting in baltimore newspapers. sixteen people were shot and

killed within the first twelve days of this year alone the youngest victim sixteen year old lavar crawford he was shot seven times in the back and then on tuesday night yet another gang shooting another nineteen year old killed meanwhile over the weekend in boston three shootings that left three people dead in just twenty four hours bringing the total to nine for this year that's the highest the death toll has been in this city this early in the year in recent history shootings attributed to gang related retaliation so what is being done to curb this alarming trend federal and local lawmakers are coming up with a wide range of responses and louisiana state representatives are debating proposals to restrict sales forcing gun buyers to complete a safety training course first but oklahoma state senator nathan dom says violence will only decrease if everyone owns a gun regardless of their training or their state of mental health he is pushing to

eliminate gun licensing and background checks on a federal level president obama confronted the issue during last year's state of the union address ideas parents made clear or in this chamber tonight along with more than two dozen americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. they deserve a vote. thank you thank you deserve a vote thank you for the service of both. thanks for the memories of. the service both thankfully still right through a vote but the house never gave

a vote to a bill to increase background checks and the senate failed to overcome a filibuster this year president obama is not expected to address gun control in his speech but could take executive action in the near future though not everyone agrees with legislation the bottom line is that you can't write a law that essentially will apply to someone who's a law breaker you can assign penalties to lawbreakers but you can't create any law that controls someone's behavior gun violence has gone down in the u.s. over the past two decades however this recent uptick of public shootings has once again made the second amendment right to bear arms a target of debate in the pursuit of public safety in washington meghan lopez r.t. and the justice department has agreed to relax its longstanding gag order on certain types of data requests made to tech companies allowing them for the first time to publicize how much customer information they must turn over to the

government for more on that here's our teasels wall. so here the status of the next conference happens every year and brings together hundreds of people and attack world and government leaders of course one of the issues that they had to discuss today is this issue of n.s.a. spying and possible reforms to the program this of course in the wake of the very controversial revelations from former n.s.a. contractor edward snowden one of the speakers today on this very topic was a judge a judge by the name of james carr he was a formerly a judge in the face of court to the court that ultimately approves government surveillance requests he discussed some of the changes he believes should be made to the process the need for this kind of outside import whether you say it's representing the interest of the target representing the interests of the constitution the interest of the public through are

a handful of times in my six years when some of the you know i really would like to have somebody else in the room talking to me about this that's how we judges make our minds up about something now one of the most recent controversies to come out of the edward snowden revelations is that the n.s.a. uses i phone applications or smartphone applications to spy on their targets one of the most notable apps that they use is angry birds this game it looks like it's all fun and games but apparently according to these documents these kinds of apps can provide the n.s.a. with huge amounts of information we're talking information from location political affiliation sexual orientation and other personal information and google maps is another tool that is used by the n.s.a. according to these documents the n.s.a. has responded by saying they only collect information for quote counter intelligence purposes but it is unclear the scope of this program and how often

they do tap into these applications to get in for. may shed now meanwhile some of the biggest names and tech some of the biggest tech companies like google yahoo facebook microsoft they have all reached a deal with the justice department where they can now disclose the amount of requests and when exactly personal information is requested from them all of this is an attempt to be more transparent as this debate rages on about privacy and government spying here in washington r.t. . and today one one time to mow detainees pleaded through his lawyer for release from the u.s. naval base in cuba where he has been held without charges for twelve years in the plea of guilty malik said that upon his release he would rejoin his yemeni family attend college teach and start an agricultural business the government however said oliver harvey was a bodyguard for osama bin laden and argued that the detainee could fall back into

a life of extremism if he wanted to both sides presented their arguments to the periodic review board a panel composed of representatives from six u.s. government agencies the panel now must reach a consensus on whether already hobby poses any lingering threat to the u.s. it's a process that could take weeks the public portion of the hearing lasted just ninety minutes with his lawyer and his two personal military representatives linked by video from cuba to the board in arlington a journalist and for human rights advocates watched the video feed from a conference room in the same suburban washington office building that houses the board's offices. was the first one ton of detainees to have this review panel hearing made partially public the review board is of course a component of president barack obama's effort to close guantanamo but it remains to be seen whether obama will move that initiative along by putting it on the

agenda of his twenty fourteen state of the union address now our team will be at the address tonight on capitol hill and we'll have coverage for you tomorrow beginning at four pm eastern. and federal prosecutors have officially charged two bitcoin entrepreneurs with using the virtual currency to launder one million dollars from drug trafficking on the underground website silk road silk road was a black market website that allowed users to buy everything from cocaine to guns all by anonymously using bitcoins roberts who went by the name of bt seeking and ran a digital money exchange through the site was arrested in his florida home additionally charlie shrem an overnight big queen celebrity was arrested at new york's kennedy airport because he has a form of digital cash that allows users to bypass banks and credit card companies but when the f.b.i. shut down the silk road site knocked over and seized millions of dollars in

bitcoins they said the digital currency was being used to cloak illegal trades now to talk a little bit more about this latest development i'm joined now by our g.'s ana stasi churkin out from our new york bureau so ana staso first of all let's talk about charlie shrem is a very very popular name in the big world what are the details of his arrest and what's his connection to silk road. well i mean twenty four year old charlie shrem was arrested upon landing this weekend on sunday at new york's j.f.k. airport upon returning from amsterdam where he was giving a speech he was taken to a manhattan federal courthouse where he has now been released on bond of one million dollars and is currently under home arrest in his parents' home in brooklyn and he was charged with conspiring to commit money laundering with operating an unlicensed money transmitting business as well as failing to report to a for authorities any suspicious activities he has importantly pled not guilty and

is facing as much as thirty years behind bars because the prosecution is saying that the c.e.o. of the bitcoin exchange company instance had been helping users by over one million dollars worth of big quine's to later be able to use this money on silk road this super notorious websites dubbed by officials to be the black markets bazaar of drug purchases and the most dangerous site on the internet and the second man robber known as the bt seeking how is he allegedly involved in this whole ordeal. well love fifty two year old frailer was also arrested this weekend at his home in florida and charged with two of these charges conspiring to commit money laundering as well as operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and basically what the prosecution accuses of all of doing is operating on the silk

road websites by. buying up get bitcoins with cash then at a marked up price these bitcoins to users kind of buying them off of trends websites and that's their connection there and because he was buying the big points of their website selling them on marked up prices and getting kind of some kind of deals with sram because he would buy the big queens and much larger stock and so the officials are saying they could cooperate together from twenty eleven to twenty thirteen. or exchanging over one million dollars worth of bitcoin and which silk road users again because bitcoin is the only currency that was allowed to be used on this website that's now shut down to be able to buy drugs online so the question is where do the cases go from here or is this expected to have a larger impact on the big coin community as a whole. well i mean that's probably one of the most important questions in this

case because the bitcoin community and the big trend was only beginning to really take off and this is one of the questions whether or not these particular arrests and what's going to happen to these two men in particular because he was really a celebrity like you mentioned in the big quinn world and some of the. analysts and supporters are saying that the only reason that bitcoins have been is being attacked is because it's a virtual currency that is not connected to banks or corporations but it's much harder to track online obviously than you know using a credit card and these are some of the concerns and some have been saying that this is possibly an attempt to scare the big community but you know we'll wait and see obviously how this part of these particular cases end up impacting what happens to be should be really interesting to see how all of this plays out in the coming months artie's. from our new york studios. and the concern about the impact of silk road on big quiet hasn't stopped thousands of others from

celebrating its future as an alternative currency artie's carry on boring without the north american bitcoin conference in miami this weekend and brings us this update may claim believers think this e.p. payment network is going to take over the world's banking system as we know it but its reputation for facilitating illicit behavior makes it risky and there's a significant amount of people who still don't know what big corn is or how to use them as skeptics doubt this will ever catch on but here at the north american conference in miami beach florida the big going community is reveling in the extraordinary growth the cryptocurrency has seen in the past year there's an unbelievable migration of human talent and capital moving in a big climb last year at this time we had seventy thousand users of blocks in dot info and just a week ago we got one point one million which is a major milestone for any company but especially for a pickling based business and there's plenty of room for more big claim this was it so there are so many opportunities for innovation on top of bitcoin we haven't even

scratched the surface yet people are going to use it for escrow and smart contracts and you'll be able to buy a car and have the title transferred on the block to block chain dot info and bit pay are among some of the first big queen businesses to lay the groundwork for the fledgling currency the next step is to make it more user friendly people every day in their lives use e-mail they probably have no idea how it works under the covers but they use it because it's simple free and easy allows them to send messages anywhere in the world for free while you can do the same thing with decline send money anywhere in the world basically for free so we have to make it that simple and we're working on things like that so you know user interface design and education systems help people understand how to use it is really a focus for two thousand and fourteen and part of that cause is to provide financial services to people who don't have access to things jeffrey tucker is using decoding to help launch a liberty and the merging markets where people are under bank are don't have the banks at all how can they accept that point and then we'll be able to. start their own business using this new technology bricklin itself as

a global currency so it can go anywhere and move regardless of geography and so if you could sell your stuff or your services anywhere in the world record for by us if you have access to a bank or not have to have all you have to have a cell phone it turns out there's a lot more people cell phones of it than with bank accounts actually all over the world i've looked through and african nations got paid for right so we have a lot of people and these emerging markets especially in africa who use their cell phones for their banking me this way because it's unregulated cyber criminals have use it as a tool for tax evasion and money laundering but it's the decent realization of bitcoin that keeps it out of the hands of governments and central banks it's a technology that can really bypasses all of the elites in the world it's amazing in december when china restricted banks from using pick when the price dropped ten percent and one day the government regulation could only go so far for this

untraceable digital point more regulations governing the coming and going from national minister because the more you would sort of eyes to what is just this bailout of national monies charlie so these regulations are deaf or going to become a doctor they're going to hope business but they're going to be counterproductive even for the part of the couple but we haven't seen a widespread abandonment of national currency get to supporters say these challenges will be overcome in the long run because it will transform digital commerce mid-point is still in its earliest phases of industry development and faces a lot of challenges going forward including price volatility government regulation as well as legal and physical issues over despite this there has been a flood of new recording and bester is an entrepreneur i think this is a disruptive technology that's here to stay in miami beach florida kerry and boring archie. and now to the latest regarding whistle blower john kiriakou we're now learning that the bureau prisons of. as making a concerted effort to stop kiriakou from sending letters from prison you may

remember that curiosity was the first member of the cia to publicly acknowledge that torture was an official us policy under the bush administration in two thousand and twelve he was convicted for providing the name of an officer involved in the cia's rendition program to a reporter and he began serving a thirty month prison sentence in february of last year soon after the yahoo began writing what's been coined letters from loreto in which he communicates with his supporters and talks about his prison experiences the letters published on firedoglake were very descriptive descriptive and often revealed the corruption and illegalities taking place behind prison walls but in august of two thousand and thirteen kiriakou abruptly stopped writing after the prison administration informed him that he would be able to serve the final part of his sentence in a halfway house but this was only if he agreed to stop sending the letters however the prison leader broke its promise and kiriakou decided to resume his letter

writing and in his most recent letter he wrote i have learned firsthand that the prison and ministrations greatest perceived threat is my freedom of speech now earlier i spoke with kevin the stole a blogger at firedoglake i first asked him why the bureau of prisons classified kiriakou as letters as dangerous. they've caused by them as dangerous these letters that firedoglake dot com has been publishing since the middle of last year they've been classified as dangerous to the prison facility in loreto pennsylvania because of his access to the press i guess they were marketed for blysse he obtained documents showing classified for central inmate monitoring and this means that they scrutinize him more heavily than other prisoners inside of the facility right and in his latest letter about rights he said quote the v.o.p.

is afraid of you knowing what the prison system is really like they're afraid of the public disclosure of that they don't bother to follow their own rules they're afraid that you'll learn that they can violate the law with impunity can you give some examples of how. illustrate this what are some of the regulations that were being violated. what he was talking about was specifically how supporters of curiosity who have been railing him letters of support trying to correspond with them and what they are having happen is their letters are opened and then those letters are sent back to them it appears that one person had his tape back together shot and then the letter came back to him and he has no idea that you know to react he's having his letters denied to him with out throughout and even being notified of the fact that the warden of the facility is rejecting these letters we've also got instances where legal mail is being opened and i guess curiosity doesn't get

a chance to appropriately challenge this if it's legal or special mail he's supposed to be able to watch the border and open it look at it inspect it and make sure that it's not threatening to the facility and that hasn't happened i don't think and then the other thing is the e-mail he has e-mail service and it takes a while. well to send e-mails out and receive them but apparently he doesn't use it anymore because when you send e-mails he finds this conversation with. the officers staffers inside a prison and then they talk about it will come up you have a no say something to him about something as wife said or they'll say something to him about plans that he might have one example as he was considering maybe going to do business or or do some work in south africa and he says well. someone came up to me and said i would be a great person and i could talk to you about doing business in south africa and he thought that was kind of freaky and so he decided to refrain from talking about using on e-mail also something peculiar is that his mail was only delivered on

mondays which i find very interesting what was the rationale and then relegating all of his mail to just one day of the week. the rational that would probably be the same for all the other violations of his rights the fact that he has brought access to the press and i think they just want to take their time getting him letters any correspondence he has in coming from and they don't want to be inconvenienced by the fact that he is someone who is very popular a high profile prisoner he doesn't want they don't want to say that he has more rights than anybody else in the us and in the process they're actually denying his rights right now have it in his august thirtieth letter before all of this went down before he stopped communicating kiriakou explained that he was forced to sign a memo from the u.s. justice department that stated he was legally obligated to clear everything he wrote with the cia's publication review board but as it turned out he wasn't

actually legally obligated to do anything he talked about how the intimidated hand the sensually into signing that memo. yes according to a lawyer. this is a legal and constitutional he would have to submit your prison letters to the cia's pre-publication review board has nothing to do with his time as an intelligence officer so they also wouldn't have any material to clear. sensually he was sent down and he was ordered to sign this memorandum or. letter that said he wouldn't send any letters out giving them to the cia's work to them or publishing and actually it seems he has been doing this even though he shouldn't be required to do show he has been sending letters to the cia sent one in december we published copy of this notice that came back to him that they have received this letter and then in about a span of a month they approved it and i think that i haven't gone back to look at the

posting stats firedoglake that i think it checks out that that december letter we did not put up at firedoglake not to the middle or the early part of january about the time i would have approved it now have been as i understand it kiriakou submitted a freedom of information act request for himself that was last year what was revealed in that foyer request. the revelation was that out in fact he was designated for a central inmate monitor at which time i have to tell you you're supposed to be notified as a prisoner if you are given this designation and according to the letter if i read it correctly kiriakou was not informed. right and all of the two hundred fifty seven pages that he was able to obtain from that there were five that were marked for your exam to do not release to end mate do we have any idea what's being censored in those five pages that they chose not to reveal to him. it would appear

that somehow he was able to figure out that. maybe because his attorney placed some kind of a request for that information and was possibly privy to it because of the fact that this person would be representing him legally so i don't know if the information he put in the letter he would have had some way of accessing the content of those pages otherwise he would have been able to describe passages from them as he does in the letter so i don't think they manage to actually withhold withhold any information from him like they want to hear well thank you so much for all of your insight on this very important case to have a stole a blogger at firedoglake. and boom bust is coming up next here on our t.n.a. joins us for a quick preview erin what do you have for us thank you america now coming up on groom bus lawmakers in the u.k. criticize the queen's money management skills will tell you why coming on up and financial blogger francis coppola joins me on today's show from our london studio

to talk u.k. economy timely stuff given the royal household apparently a lot of budgeting ability you won't want to miss it so stay tuned the love learning about the queen there and does it for now and an era david stay tuned boom bust is next. you know the data is finally over but have you paid your bill yet oh i see you didn't realize you had to pay for the self described great and good ha ha ha ha. i'm the president and a society. i'm big corporation kind of can. do i'm the banker trying to put all that all about money and i'm a vastly sick for a politician writing the laws and regulations that. somehow.

there is just too much rat today's society. that. doesn't. give a. very hard to take out loans to get along here a lot you never had sex with her rick perry militant. islamists.

flip. the bible. hello there i'm marinating this is boom bust and these are the stories that we're tracking for you today. first job we're going to trip across the pond with a heavy u.k. lineup on today's show the first of many of us many of us we struggle to keep up with our financial house and keep it all in order and the queen of england is no exception i'll tell you all about it coming on up and former banker and financial blogger francis coppola joined me earlier today from our london studio to discuss fiscal policy interest rates and the overall you character on me you won't want to miss that interview and finally a big big player in the big coin world was arrested on monday so what does this mean for the cryptocurrency.