one of the most influential intellectuals of our time speaks about the modern civilization of america. u.s. presidential hopeful to fails to make it through to the next round of democratic debates despite becoming the most searched full kind of it online she's now questioning the d.n.c. selection process. a frenchman to appeal often losing his battle to protect people in his village from home full pesticides. i think the government isn't doing its job they're the 1st to say that there should be no path to site but they do nothing we breathe in the press sites we did during testing the amount of pesticides we found was alarmingly high and a group of military experts is pushing the pentagon to come clean over the number of u.s. overseas bases they claim the current figure is being hugely understated. believe

are surprised sometimes when young men and women are killed in places no one even knew that we had a military installation there where you can have more on those and other stories from around the world the big picture is next here on r.t. don't go away. welcome to my 100th episode of the big picture 2 years in the blink of an eye and every week has been question of war and this week some of the more memorable answers to 3 questions that matter a lot to you which we have been asking all along but 1st serve vaillant's capitalism what facebook amazon and google know about us how they're selling their information and how you can slam the brakes on a holiday cook in washington this is the big picture on our t.v. america.

too often when we use a web app or join a social media site we just check the box for accept rather than reading a long page of fine print terms of use but if you read facebook's privacy policy might feel like you have none among other things you permission facebook to gather are the people pages accounts hashtags and groups you are connected to and how you interact with them types of content you view or engage with features you use actions you take people you interact with and if you have purchased anything or made a donation through facebook they capture your payment information your credit or debit card number billing and shipping details anyone creeped out yet why are tech

companies building a dust ca on you and how can you opt out let's ask investigative journalist an r t contributor ben swan and ben our last get up bottom line question right up top true or false when something is free you the user of their product correct. that is true no question about that look when people talk about big data and tech companies what they have to understand is that they the user are the product i think when the lot of people with into this they originally had the idea they had the mentality that oh facebook and google are trying to sell us products they're not they're trying to sell you as the product yeah the stuff they sell us is icing on the cake it's our data and like millions of other consumers i shop on amazon a lot so the free shipping alone cost justify going amazon prime which also lets me park at alexa to play some $14000.00 songs and to watch

a lot of video and not only am i not threatened by the way that amazon comes to know me i kind a like the way amazon recommends stuff that people who bought what i bought also bought is there a dark side to amazon that i'm being naive about. i don't think it's so much that there's a dark side to it i think it's an issue of preference when it comes to specifically amazon and amazon prime and alexa if that world were to remain in a vacuum hole and i think it's completely fine the issue was a lot of people didn't realize upfront that alexa is recording their preferences and that amazon was gathering so much data on that i think most people know that now we didn't know that in the beginning but i think some people like it like you're saying some people like the idea of being referred certain kinds of products the issue becomes this though that amazon as a company has become so massive and has branched out into so many other areas that go far beyond just the use of items like alexi or selling you scotch tape or are

you having you know even amazon fresh delivered to your house when they start working with the pentagon when they're developing facial recognition software when they're buying companies like ring doorbell and all of these kind of technologies begin to merge together i think that's when it becomes very questionable because. it's no longer just about amazon prime and getting free shipping to your house it's about again you being the product and also you being surveilled or monitored in a way that many people might not recognize because amazon has branched out so much you are pedigree is out there there's no question about it so grab a pen or hit record because in just a few minutes we will give you specific instructions for some settings you can change to minimize how much about you is available meantime had tipped to bloomberg news for what may be the privacy scoop of the week facebook confirmed that it had been transcribing users audio and said it will no longer do so following scrutiny

and other companies much like apple and google we paused human review audio they say facebook had been paying 3rd party contractors and hundreds of them to do this to it as sure as us check whether it's artificial intelligence correctly interpreted the messages and those monitored had chosen the facebook option to have voice chats recorded listen to this now when you ask face the to transcribe your messages you're probably not expecting that there is an actual person that is looking at these messages and trying to transcribe them this is done and honestly but still these here private conversations it's kind of the same as if you have a of voice message on your phone that gets transcribed on a magically by your phone provider it's like that you see that it's obviously from a bot there's a lot of errors and they're trying to make that higher quality by using these humans to make it better and this comes after facebook founder mark zuckerberg told

congress this process was benign listen to this. i mean so you're talking about this conspiracy theory that gets passed around that we listen to what's going on in your microphone and use that for rats right we don't do that to be clear we do allow people to take videos on their on their devices and nominate share there isn't of course videos also have audio so so we do while you're taking a video record that and use that to make the service better by making sure that your videos have audio translation how to have a habit or to paraphrase bill clinton we're listening but we don't inhale ben have we gotten too comfortable interacting with robots. maybe to some extent but i think i just want to comment quickly on what mark zuckerberg was saying there what he was saying in front of congress was either a flat out lie or it's even worse than we had thought it was consider the fact that

he just said there is a conspiracy theory using that term that everyone loves to use a conspiracy theory that we are recording your audio so that we can sell you products and we're not doing that ok and so let's take him at his word if he's not doing that then we know you are recording the audio we know you are transcribing the audio with 3rd party companies so what are you using that for if it's not to sell us products what is the purpose of all those transcriptions and by the way i also want to point out that that facebook announced that they were no longer doing this but holland they'd only stopped a week ago it wasn't like this was something they did on their own they knew this story from bloomberg was coming and so they quit doing this just one week ago and this is the this is the im oh a facebook every time they get caught transcribing data they're not supposed to have handing out dated the 3rd party contractors the cambridge analytical scandal when every anything happens with facebook they suddenly jump up and say oh we're not doing that anymore we're done we'll stop it's like having a problem child in your house who keeps getting in trouble over and over when they

know they're not supposed to be doing what they're doing and then they self correct when they know they're about to be punished yeah. this rolling disclosure is like a watergate flashback the cover up is always worse than the crime and yet does you know road confidence in the company ben am i being paranoid if i keep a little post it note over the camera on my laptop. no absolutely not but look my wife actually used to do this years ago we 1st got a laptop and i thought it was nuts that she would always put something over it and she would say because they can see you through the camera and i thought she was being crazy and then of course it turns out that absolutely you can be seen through your camera but here's what's important is people will will jokingly say well you know the f.b.i. can see you in the cia can see you anybody who can hack into any app can see you and there's actually a very interesting story about a young woman i believe her name was cassidy wolf and she was a miss teen usa and part of her platform when she became miss teen usa was to talk about privacy and the importance of privacy on cell phones because she had

a classmate when she was 17 years old who was able to hack into an app that he knew was on her phone and was able to watch her in her bedroom when she would dress and undress because he could see her through the camera on her phone so it's important that people remember big data side government aside any body can hack into that phone and a moment you through your apps if those apps are allowed video and camera permissions and most apps are even when they don't require them like a flashlight on your phone it can still access many times the video features on your camera if you let it investigative journalist ben swan thank you for stepping into the big picture although my pleasure alexa. are you listening to me before i say your name well of course she is that's how she hears her name and on a recent show we listed step by step instructions for getting her to deal leak what she hears look for the video entitled overly intimate with amazon's alexa where you

find all our shows at youtube dot com slash the big picture our t.v. now about google which is the starting gate for so much of what we do online you will get chills when you review your google history especially if you use google maps for directions like i do because google is tracking your movements so here's what to do log in to your google account then click data and personalization then take the privacy shack up it's a real eye opener and you will end up unchecking boxes under activity controls and if all of this spooked you enough that you want to delete all your data not only google but a variety of other online services hit d.c. 8 dot me and i'll spell that d e s e a t

dot am when you get there use sign in with your g. mail address and from a list of sync accounts you can choose which to do you leave or keep an eye on your i phone or android smartphone please check your settings to see which apps have access to your camera or microphone. 2 years ago r.t. america took a big chance may and as we question more each week we keep asking 3 questions that matter a lot to you the answers are coming up this is the big picture on our t.v. america.

see globalists are actually goes back or occupation we started that really before occupy wall street before the revolution in cairo before obviously this relation all in france or the protests and they're all connected all these protests are connected they're all connected to a rebellion against the have money and banks are all global insurrection against banker occupation. why a paradise with some all year round turned into a round the experimentation field for agricultural chemicals we know that these chemicals have consequences they are major irritants there's no question otherwise why would that the chemical company workers themselves be geared up that suited up locals attempt to combat the on regulated experiments but often in day you have many of these people who have one foot into the biotech pharma and the other foot in the government regulatory bodies this kind of collusion is reprehensible while

the battle goes on the chemicals continue to poison hawaii and its people so one has to ask the question whether there is a form of environmental research going on in hawaii whether these companies feel they can get away with this because the people have less political power. has it really banned 2 years here we are doing our big picture show number 100 and in every one of them i've. tried to deal liver on our ts montra to question more it's not just a slogan and if you followed us all along you have seen a sask several important questions again and again for instance of pesticides poisoning us yes. you are more than

a little yes that yes the answer is yes they are it's everything all and everything this stuff it isn't and not even to the food the air that we breathe the stuff that they spray around in large quantities everywhere not just in the rural areas of the country but all over the place this stuff has penetrated the things that you put to use that this is a non farm example do you realize how noxious that stuff is they put out your a lot of a good green if you let your child go out and roll around that after it's sprayed you're taking the life of that child in your hands or dogs and that's the same stuff that they used to spray the corn this grow in the field of the lettuce and stuff it's the same stuff that stuff we've reported on most is good life oh see the ingredient in months settles roundup blamed when the jury awarded $289000000.00 to

a california groundskeeper who contracted non hodgkins lymphoma. every single study showed malignant lymphomas wow in bodies and that is the corollary to not hodgkin's lymphoma in humans what do we know about the research proving that monsanto. the research proving it which monsanto was accused of suppressing so this is been a long saga roundup was it's made by monsanto they've packaged it with genetically engineered seeds and that in the mid ninety's they did a big push to get it approved so that they could sell wound up and they could sell seeds that you could spray with round up and it term magically increase the amount of this chemical that's in our environment and they made a lot of claims in the mid ninety's when they were really pushing this out about how it was nothing to worry about table salt was more dangerous just a lot of claims about how benign this chemical was and you fast forward now into

the last cup. of years and finally more science has been done and we're not the one saying it's a probable human carcinogen the world health organization says that it's a probable human carcinogen and they have levels of possible probable you know they kind of worked through all of the available science and they came out with that determination a couple of years ago and monsanto went into crisis mode and it's really resembles what the tobacco companies did there are some major crops that if you're eating conventional food that are higher and like the state those are oats weight. and some spices so if you're eating conventional those are things you could just kind of avoid a little bit because they have higher rates of life estate for instance all the things we're supposed to because they're good for us so if you can shop at farmers markets and chat up the farmers your being there lessens the demand for food that has to travel and that means less fossil fuel pollution which we are also breathing in. 99.5 percent of those people

had signs of all timers from breathing fossil fuel smaug what the fact is going on here petroleum pollution is coming at us from every direction including sadly the sea. or the. plastic is one because durable and plastic these terrible because it is durable. almost every piece of plastic it was made is still on the planet in some form or

another but the production of these plastics. for starters releases very large amounts of pollutants into the atmosphere and increasingly we're making plastics with oils that are derived from fracking which pollutes groundwater and so forth so these are complex multifaceted insults to our terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems that just come from the production of plastics candidate trump promised to slash regulations and president trump sure is keeping the promise he pulled us out of the paris accord how will all of this contribute to the problem well i think on 2 levels so just the domestic regulations and loosening of restrictions on pollution. pollution control and some of the older power plants is estimated to lead to something like this these are government estimates the e.p.a. estimates something like $1400.00 extra deaths a year by 2030 plus $15000.00 cases a year bronchitis and tens of thousands of school days lost that's from our own

loosening of restrictions similarly with automobile emissions there are estimates coming out that we are steadily making our air where's the international implications i think many other countries are actually acting faster than we are to clean up their fuel with american communities feel more be traded by their state than flint michigan the water crisis there is a story we've been covering all along in recent developments could finally hold those responsible accountable it seems to this legal layman that prosecutors go easier on little fish when they're after the whale could former governor rick snyder a republican still be held accountable they've got a plan and hopefully this 7 please will lead to a larger effort and maybe some bigger fish to fry in terms of governor snyder himself absolutely my guess is he is a target of the investigation and in order to create a case and to build

a case against someone of that staff. sure at that level in this or any climate it's important to have cooperation from key witnesses or and either fortunately or unfortunately key witnesses in this case or folks who have also been charged with crimes yes the clock is ticking we have we still have some time. you know i know that the criminal team is making every effort to ensure that they have all the discovery that they need for this so they're going to be doing a comprehensive review and analysis and i have every confidence that they're going to do the right thing and those who need to be held accountable will be another issue we question more are we being surveilled and scammed big brother and big corporations are watching us and so are the wise guys. every time you answer your phone or open your mail or check your e-mail you could become of victim scams are everywhere everyone is vulnerable interestingly enough there is

statistics when it comes to sophisticated people who are investing the college graduate sophisticated person they are more susceptible to be hit with an investment scam millennialist and seniors are also huge targets of scammers and interestingly enough when it comes to seniors there's actually a physiological basis for this there's been some studies recently at cornell and the university of iowa that show that as we age there's a part of our brain that deals with skepticism that becomes less viable and so where we may have already thought anecdotally that seniors are more trusting they really are matters data gathering risk intel info overload it does if you do the content for the meditator that's not a problem i mean the meditative could be stored in racks just on the stand right here right behind us that would be for the entire world and have multiple copies of

it so that's not the issue the issue really is the content and that's not the program they're talking about they're talking about the basic one under the patriot act section $215.00 where the minute data the content the calls a day time duration is passed from the companies to in a say to graph and build relationships that's not the that's not the real major program that's been violating our rights the one that is the upstream one that's where they're copying not just the content but also the method data free public why 5 sells a lot a lot taze my out of my mind to log on at starbucks i can sit down in the starbucks with a very simple device that makes my my broadcast look like on starbucks i just call the starbucks if my signal. is stronger than the starbucks signal a macor a call at starbucks to you and all are going to me wow then pass through 3 starbucks and you're thinking you're trying to starbucks i'm sitting back watching

everything you do or your time for you know that's very interesting so you work for a bank that's even more interesting what position seriously so you're impersonating don't i or i yes and that's the easiest thing in the world every hacker in the world has the facilities to sit at starbucks and trap everybody's communication to the starbucks one far when they turn the sting ray on all the cell phones within a given area start feeding data into the cell site simulator and police can get information as to what will cations of specific phones they can determine all the identities of people within a certain proximity so suppose there's a protest and they want to determine who all the protesters are they can use the sting ray device to do that. and they can also obtain all the data and find out what you are using your phones for they can look at the data that's stored on the phones so it brings up a lot of privacy concerns when the government is is employing these devices and the

most important questions we ask are existential are we being pushed into war despite candidate trumps a vow to avoid what he called these stupid wars his chicken hawks are hawkish about iran's why. it's always been about iran's oil and who has power over that oil and how is that oil sanctioned and kind of split and the superpowers that get access to that oil whether it's. today with the world economy it might be a case of preventing china from having access to iran soil how does iran's threaten our national security where there's orderly no threat to. u.s. national security from iran if we simply moved your troops back. from being right up to the border of iran there would be

no no interaction there be no threat about anyone being harmed if we go in there we are likely to suffer perhaps $20000.00 killed americans maybe you know another 607-0000 who will lose limbs be crippled be blinded and probably a 1000000 a 1000000 iranians men women children soldiers everybody will be killed how does ammonia whenever the u.s. stops its cruelty against our nation with the size of their crippling sanctions stands up to their commitments and returned to the negotiating table which they themselves left on the road will reopen with over them where there was that mess that up we got out of it what what harm was being does and i thought it was a definite net benefit despite the all smiles photo ops with kim jong un and

iran under encumbered by the j c p o a treaty we pulled out of how do we get the nuclear genie back in the bottle well obviously you can't get the nuclear age in the back of the both will but the only way to prevent the inevitable i think which is the destruction of the planet through the use of nuclear weapons whether by accident or design at some point is to abolish them on both on all sides you know we've got about 14000 nuclear weapons still around in the world the u.s. is poised to spend $494000000000.00 over the next 10 years in so-called upgrades and modernizations of its nuclear weapons arsenal you know the mind boggles to think what we could do with that money to better society instead and that is the big picture just some of the big issues from our 1st 100 weekly shows and as we begin our next 100. thanks to all the guests who have joined the conversation here one of the reasons i love my job is all the interesting people we meet here each week and i have especially enjoyed introducing you to some of my brothers and

sisters in the radio family i came here from and thanks always to the radio chum i met 20 years ago in fargo north dakota ed schultz made me a regular on his m s n b c show and when he moved to r.t. america he introduced me to about boss here ed and wendy and i became dear friends and everyone here misses a lot ditto commissioner bart chilton also gone too soon as i did bart started out as a guest on our t.v. shows and ended up with his own shows the commish was my pal and his contagious enthusiasm still lives here and thank you for watching the big picture if you see somewhere else you can also now watch r t america live at youtube dot com slash r.t.m. erica and we're live at direct t.v. channel 321 on the pluto t.v.'s 279 and on dish 280 and all of our shows are available anytime anywhere on any device and youtube dot com

slash the big picture r t m holland cook in washington and at holland cook on twitter where if you follow me i'll follow you question more. she stressed to make sure that the british and the books that i've yet to.

see optician was telling you she didn't taste the taste to she's a cia which is quite a shock. to which she never happened and i know what you. and i must do to occur in the air force for sure i. want to talk to you so if you are my it's your bonus for each of you. it's a mistake was a word supporter i'm still with them sort of spiritual or do they seem to be arguable that it's a student actually the person has to be wrong or should stop them spinning. i am ask eyes or this is the kaiser report you know this began as a celebration of our 10 year.