publishes confidential information of how much this china spends on birds as proof of alleged russian meddling in the u.s. presidential election. comes with leaks reveals twitter's rival apparently didn't interfere in the votes printing e-mails from a top facebook official appearing to pledge help to hillary clinton's campaign. i spent hours alone here is poised to vote on independence from madrid with your thirty's increasing pressure by moving in thousands of police to the region u.n.

human rights experts have been voicing their concerns. thanks for joining us this hour my name is neil harvey you're watching our international. first this hour twitter has unveiled a report on how it battled alleged russian interference in the two thousand and sixteen u.s. election taking aim at r.t. in the process according to the statement the social network john revealed to the us senate confidential information on artie's and. twitter claims little vaguely that more than a thousand tweets quote definitely or potentially targeted the u.s. market artie's editor in chief margarita simonyan however noted that all media outlets promote themselves. twitter has disclosed in congress

a monstrous information we spend money on our own ad campaigns as all media organizations in the world do now we have to go even further and honestly confess we also spend money on ads in airports taxes billboards the internet on t.v. and radio commercials or even on c.n.n. . my colleague jacqueline discussed fresh accusations of russia's meddling in artie's alleged role with our correspondent daniel hawkins just when you think there couldn't be any more chapters in the solder new one pops up this time it's about social media if they can't find evidence through officials then get some social media platforms involved in this particular report by twitter they've released a report to congress which is of course investigating those alleged russian links to the hacking of the election in two of the sixteen. report really discusses a lot of detail troll accounts bought stuff that twitter calls malicious automated accounts and now they've managed to find a few hundred of these accounts out of the well hundreds of millions that must exist in the twitter sphere and in the by and those accounts effectively we can all

say that those accounts those bots have been officially linked to russia while you're absolute think so of course given the title of the report the russian interference into any sixteen u.s. election bots and misinformation so you could be forgiven for thinking that but actually twitter themselves are saying they were unable to verify any specific russian connections we can hear it from the horse's mouth right now we have not found accounts associated with this activity to have obvious russian origin but some of the accounts appear to have been automated chorus our channel is never left untouched so what do we have to do with all this stuff and we are given a lot of room in the to its reporter amongst all these trolls bots malicious accounts. as we've said giving that information and how much exactly we spend on advertising on the social platform and as the editor in chief said something commonly done by. social media in our days there are no specific allegations of any wrongdoing against. whatsoever so quote what r.t.

is doing in that report is many i suppose now we had a similar story coming from facebook last week and now it just now we have twitter so social media is just sort of the next step on the russian meddling sagar yeah absolutely the latest social platform to announce they found some sort of russia link they can. found or trade straw the one hundred thousand dollars worth of spending around three thousand from june twenty fifth to me to dean so let's just put this into perspective for one hundred thousand dollars over the course of two years that's fifty thousand dollars a year i mean the orders decide is that really enough really to influence the outcome of the u.s. election will let people see i mean he's actually that's a multi-billion dollar you know a sort of facebook ads are everywhere you see something every day and you can't be that much of an effect i mean a hundred thousand dollars would make up zero point zero zero zero suddenly all of the revenue it also seems that the height of the program has gone beyond influencing entire presidential elections now and it seems to be controlling even

american society according to some at least from l g b t rights to gun control issues more recently the black gloves months of protests all those racial tensions in the united states some pundits like the one we're about to see on c.n.n. think the criminal is behind all this let's take a listen that was bought by this russian troll farm on facebook was a black lives matter ad that was argued specifically to the city of baltimore and ferguson missouri and this is based on my conversation my source and goal here was really about creating chaos and the shooting his sources my sources a lot of this information from. the very from official reports that new speculation to these reports by the social media platforms they have relied on unverified sources sources which haven't made public and haven't been revealed at all so really i mean how trustworthy are they would you trust anything i say from my sources i don't think many people would do that i mean of course nothing new for

c.n.n. in the mainstream media to feel that the kremlin's reach has no answer whatsoever but these allegations of russian meddling are often based exclusively just on claims coming from u.s. officials their certainty of varying degrees and to those claims always hold up just. recent report by the department of homeland security actually notified officially notified twenty one separate u.s. states that they'd been targeted by russian all russian linked hackers on the subject of the sixteen presidential election but if we take a look at what the states have said themselves texas for example it's come back to texas secretary of state orlando problem he said and i'm quoting him here that his office is the term and it's agency was not targeted and furthermore the h.s. has relied on incorrect information so they've been very clear they've held their hands but say hang on a minute we've not been at the top target at all so what's the big deal here wisconsin another state here they've said there was an attempt to hack them there was some sort of a but the target was the department of workforce development which deals with

unemployment and if it's nothing to do with elections here you something russia wouldn't be able to interest at all absolutely given california take that one of the one of the biggest most important states the target in the system was the state's department of technology and the secretary of state for that state says it doesn't even use i.t. for its services so quite how that would have worked i'm not sure and you know as we quite said. speculation allegations mount up when you look at them in detail though broken down a lot of the validity can be questioned. the media and twitter have been busy looking for russian fingerprints around the u.s. election we could leaks is pointed out that the social network giant even trying to back one side in the presidential campaign the whistleblower published an e-mail in which facebook's chief operating officer proposes helping hillary clinton's campaign chief sheryl sandberg added that she was thrilled about the progress that

hillary was making at the time the e-mail exchange date right back to the u.s. presidential campaign of twenty sixteen as get more on this story from our correspondent polly boy. wiki leaks has really put this on into perspective because on the one hand you've got the u.s. senate struggling to find that clear link between the alleged russian meddling in the u.s. elections and the kremlin and on the other hand you've got what julian asuncion is just sort of brought back to the surface from that trove of leaked predestiny emails and that's that we have clear evidence in these e-mails that facebook expressed an overt preference for hillary clinton in the run up to the twenty sixteen election in the u.s. i still want hillary rodham clinton to win badly i'm still here to help as i can i'm thrilled at the progress here making. the first woman president of the united states while these e-mails beg the question is the u.s.

senate intelligence committee going to be as interested in hillary clinton's campaign manager working with facebook to elect clinton as they are in russia allegedly hacking the u.s. elections and does the u.s. senate know for example also from these leaked e-mails that mark zuckerberg facebook c.e.o. wrote a personal e-mail to protest back in august twenty fifty saying that he enjoyed spending time with podesta and that their conversation gave zaka bug quote a lot to think about now infer what you will from that but that all read like tech spoke low being to a lot of people. i think it's safe to assume that the silicon valley or the giant tech companies that were all gunning for hillary in the run up to the us elections. many viewers will remember

was accused of calibrating their search results in favor of hillary clinton's campaign. and subsequently leaks have revealed that eric schmidt who is the chairman of alphabet that is the parent company of google he had close personal ties with the clinton campaign take a listen to a memo written about schmidt by clinton's digital strategist i have been kept apprised of the work being done by eric schmidt's group and others working directly and indirectly with your team on the whole i am comfortable with where we stand and confident in our roadmap to launch day and beyond. i want to be interesting to see is that no one appears to care about the links between these giant tech companies and the clinton campaign these are large companies that control so huge flows of information but no one seems to have taken

any notice of this clear preference that they found for the hillary clinton campaign rest assured for anyone who is concerned we have got in touch with facebook and we are asking them if they're going to be reporting themselves to the u.s. senate intelligence committee for their alleged links to hillary clinton's campaign . i am drowning in spin i did hope former u.s. congressman ron paul luckily is on the line to hope so we could speak to you first i would like to get your reaction to the twitter report because my understanding of this right sue hundred twitter accounts suspected proven at this stage links to russia they were accused of all things that i think this is the lowest thing over the hood violating the ban on the bone sperm chili that is holy those sacred rum is that proof of election muddling. oh abscess absolutely not

and i think they're just one of which i don't i'm going to i think the dedication of the senators several at least that are involved in this is to undermine our first amendment you know most of the time you could look at some of this stuff that's going around and i think it's all coming from sore losers you could just say well why don't you protect prior restraint is how i did it you can't allow people to say things or do things but i think it's a witch hunt that i think that they don't care about what hillary was doing and they want to very biased against that from him pain and i think that's where the real problem is and i think the senate has a job to do i think our government has a job to do and they're trying to avoid it because they don't even talk about it i would like our government to talk about our involvement in campaigns most recently in ukraine you know we've participated in a coup and i did that to me sounds like a more serious offense then tinkering with twitter accounts and trying to figure

out who who who placed the ads so far they haven't showed me an ad that was a that was a pro trump ad that was paid for by the russian government i mean that seems to be you know if they were thousands and thousands of they had the russian government and it was blatantly pro trump you know you say well maybe they shouldn't do that and they're involved that we know about it but i still think the serious thing that we have more responsibility for is to know what our government does getting involved in other election well i want to know is one of my employees been doing walt as surely no smoke without fire do i need to look for a new job if they've done something wrong i want to know. well that's as hard as a because i don't think justice is necessarily that thing that blossoms whether and no matter under what system of government it's just seems like there's so much bias

in the justice system that it's i thought it would be better with more outlets and the internet to counteract some of this but it looks like sometimes this backfires and they actually end up using the internet to try to stir up more trouble by just the ultimate consequence of this i can't i can't predict their ass but i do think that is totally biased and i do think that there should there should be more attention with this in ministration look at what the hillary campaign is doing yes to distract from the one sidedness of what's going on but i really believe that whether it's it's whether it's a hillary campaign or the trump campaign and the russian the alleged russian interference i consider this rather minor compared to some of the problems we face in this country i am much more interested in in our relationship with russia and

how we deal with syria and when and when we're going to accept our libertarian viewpoint that we ought to start coming home from those kind of places and stay out of everybody's election but you know to seek out justice here is a real challenge the quite frankly i don't have the sensation that boy this is a big deal you know if we don't find out by not exactly what russians did to our elections you know the end of the world is coming i think that's a bit of fear mongering when i look at the numbers the role and it's a bit worrying i'm concerned that maybe the russian government the u.s. election may be auty did it itself because the whole hundred thousand dollars was spent on facebook ads and up to two hundred accounts. i mean that sounds substantial cuts when election. well well hardly i wouldn't think it will i don't recall anything i saw or heard during the

campaign that would have entered into my mind then know that seems like a small of on compared to the billions that are spent here in campaigns and was done behind the scenes i think and actually the money isn't the whole thing as much as who controls the media i think the conventional media a bit of. a little bit of grief because they were he was able to use twitter accounts in colorado you know this monopoly in our media portrays you know anybody that doesn't fit the mold of the establishment is something that we have to stop so i think that the money spent they that they're saying his band doesn't seem to be anything in comparison to the control of the media the control of the deep stay in the control of the billions of dollars that was spent on both sides and also there were a lot of dollars that involved the clinton campaign that has not been resolved and i think some of the house committees are sort of looking at that but i don't think

that's likely to. you know bear much fruit maybe this is an opportunity for the usa to follow the example set by china about controlling its internet protecting the country but perhaps cutting off web sites like reddit all the drudge report which is being claimed should be probed also for alleged interference in the elections and for links to russia should this happen do you think room. well this is this is horrible this is what i mentioned earlier on these senators and individuals who are suggesting this or are working hard to undermine our first amendment they want they want to interfere with that what is their allegations on c.n.n. equivalent to what reddit is and c.n.n. has access to other countries and they do things similar to russia today they are involved in other countries and so i think that close people down

a matter of fact the ron paul liberty report has been mentioned. you know as somebody participating and there are some days that we're very concerned about what's happening instead of honoring and respecting what has been an american tradition protecting the first amendment a lot of people in this country don't fully understand or care about the first the minute they want to control it if they don't like what you're saying and they'd like to close us down and so i consider that a very serious problem i'm sorry to slowly this conversation now so far we've managed to go proofread but none can to do something that some people might consider to be some form of evidence wiki leaks has published an actual e-mail coming from hillary clinton's campaign chief and it mentions a facebook top official offering to help the clinton bid a lot of people might be confused by the partly a real piece of evidence what should we make of that should it be investigated.

well obviously it should be i don't think i know of any media stations in the. united states it's going to pick up on it and talk about it instead. i'm not even sure if the leadership of the republican party will follow up you know rumpus made some statements where he backed off on the prosecution of some of the wrongdoing which has been suspected. but it is irvin best again if nothing for no other reason then to try to neutralize the bias that we find in our media constantly. i'm just reading some information saying the cia's running it out on twitter this is what i'm being told now they're looking to haul a russian speaking people the ad says you can discover the truth as a cia agent so the cia trying to the russians because presumably one thousand russians originally. for them what's your impression of.

well i don't have much respect for the cia on principle the libertarians are very annoyed with and if the very existence of the cia spy agencies have been around for a long time in just about every country and i think one can find out what's going on in other countries without having a secret government that's what i don't like i don't like are being involved in affairs that the congress has no no knowledge about the fact that they're out looking for employees that disturbs me but most of what the cia does disturb so anyway. i'm trying to get to try to make some sense of what appears to be a world of madness around us so the nub of the story today about r.t. was that r.t. has done something wrong by paying for adverts on social media to advertise its company. and something is wrong with that apparently is this not the same thing though that the u.s. government is doing its advertising the belief that russia has done something wrong

whether it's doping its athletes or the government level whether it's trying to infiltrate us security systems through hacking whether it's trying to fix the us elections is that not just a form of advertising you send a message and you repeat repeat repeat but there's no proof. you know and i think this is what happens when empires. challenge they have to be very determined you know to control the information so i think that that is a major problem and i think it will continue to exist but the average american is not too much aware of this a look at the political sides of this but i do think that. you know the their their effort is to close us down you know and to not allow us to speak out and they are attacking our first amendment and if they look at radio free america i think that

was directed toward trying to influence other countries and i think they're still around and like programs like that we have been involved in we've been involved cia's been very much involved in their affairs of elections and i think that's what we as americans should be concerned about i i i can understand everything that is being a going on i just see what's happening in this post-election period as a result of a bunch of sore losers that we're shocked that they didn't win the election and now they're out there who sort of go after a witch hunt but i think that the responsibility for us ought to be is what has our government done has our government been involved after they're in power and unfortunately we're involved too much around the world just want to finally talk to about one thing the particular concerns me and it's facts or lack of science and you'll know this from your experience if you go into a court of law and you make an accusation against somebody

a serious one and you provide absolutely no evidence it will be laughed out of court and it will be embarrassing for those making those claims what we see on the political level though a serious accusations and it tends to even shut down broadcasts this or social media sites all websites without any evidence being produced and yet there is no repercussion it seems to something need to change because it's a very dangerous weapon. you know you're right about that if it's extreme it will be thrown out of court unfortunately some get through and they still go into the court because the judicial system can be very very biased but when you're tried and prosecuted by the media you can destroy people's lives and you can be found eventually somebody has the money they can fight it they can might be able to win win a court case if they sue somebody. many people who either go bankrupt or their reputations are destroyed so it's done by people who have an agenda and

a basic flaw is what i say they do not want free expression and that of course is what we should be protecting because that individuals like myself that's the only thing we have is the ability to speak out in the international has been helpful but others you know who they claim have a greater influence they're being challenged and they are being closed down and that's exactly what's going on in the senate today is people are trying to investigate and in close people down and challenge people who are you know not committing any crime but there are you know involved in selling ads and then you know i get the selling of the ads was some type of a sinister approach to destroying our country i think you always give people the benefit of doubt on what they're advertising and i don't think there are any will be lost on people the cia apparently advertising on twitter to mobilize russian

speakers presumably to spy against their own country yet irony that the would presumably because it's all in the name of freedom and democracy it's been great to speak to you as always you all right as. an engaging as always hope speech you can see rome pull former u.s. congressman mike ross. staying on the subject of media. b.c.'s rachel maddow has accused russia of trying to divide almost everything and everywhere in one of her latest t.v. series she even proposed to set up a fake secession movement to see if moscow would back it she tried to claim that russia wouldn't be following this latest stunt. i have reason to believe that russia does not watch this t.v. show so here's an experiment let's create a fake secessionist movement in the united states on the theory that russia will support secession of anyone in the west for any reason just because they'd

literally love for the west to break apart. so it's. called for more samir a no she's a big figure in the us i'm not really familiar with. pronounce the name correctly who would. tell us about it. well lately it seems that rachel maddow covers russia more than any other topic for the past few months she's managed to connect almost every news event to russia even if connections don't actually exist but that's precisely her point she thinks russia is everywhere she starts with fires that ukrainian ammunition depots but conveniently fails to mention that such fires have happened multiple times and it doesn't for two thousand and five and two thousand and six but facts don't matter when her sole agenda is to blame russia on anything and everything now we might not be here to prove her wrong but we can however note that her reports are filled with outright lies and fake news so let's

point them out. we saw that this week in iraq where russia was one of the only nations on earth that supported the northern iraq referendum in which the kurds voted this week that they should break off northern iraq from the rest of iraq and become their own independent nation. now that's completely false the russian foreign ministry said in a statement that moscow supports iraq's unity sovereignty and territorial integrity but it doesn't stop there even manages to drag catalonia into this. another independence referendum this weekend in spain where the capital on the region is voting on whether or not they'd like to break off and form an independent state apart from spain turns out russia is supporting that one too. she says russia supports the catalan independence referendum more fake news contrary to what maddow says russia views the domestic affairs a position which spain's ambassador to russia believes to be perfect accusations

don't even end their. russia for years in this country has actively promoted the secession of texas according to rachel maddow of russia supports the session of texas and the only proof cited is that the group's name is contained typos grammatical errors and a general unfamiliarity with basic english phrases but that's not the only time russia was under rachel maddow spotlight. you're not having a terrible terrible dream also you're not dead and you haven't gone to hell this is your life this is our election now this is us this is our country we know of the russian attack on our election russian efforts to try to elect donald trump president did not seem to be a super labor intensive process it was like an industrial process but you do need people to do the work they're apparently still working now this summer it's still against us the apparently quickly started diverting from any actual reelection

campaign to instead paying his lawyers on the russia thing. even though rachel maddow is enjoying record high ratings at the moment it seems it seems as if political discourse has been reduced to celebrity gossip and it's important to differ differentiate between news and entertainment yeah i didn't understand a thing she was saying but i'm glad she's popular over the. ok human rights experts un human rights activists have been voicing concerns over the spanish government's bid to put the referendum in catalonia we'll have more on the after of. the modern international order centers on two basic principles the sanctity of sovereign borders and self-determination in this regard the kurdish question is particularly vexing and even dangerous will some thirty million kurds ever.