kristin salumi al jazeera on the new england coast. well, there's more everything covering right here, al jazeera dot com. of course you can watch us on live streaming as well. ah, just a quick look at the main stories now. and some initial reports have started trickling out of the pacific island nation of tonga, which was struck by a soon army on saturday. now, authorities in australia as a, there was an appear to be any sign of mass casualties, but it has been significant damage to infrastructure, roads and bridges. and new zealand, air force orient aircraft left oakland on monday morning local time to assist in an impact assessment of how the area and the low lying islands are doing. bangladesh is reporting a sharp rising, covey infections, cases of tripled in

a week with almost 3 and a half 1000 detected on saturday. most of the new cases have been registered in the capital dak, our government is introduced new restrictions to try to control the spread of the buyer virus. public gatherings have been suspended and mosques and mandatory in public areas. or in our other headlines, novak joke of which has been deported from australia. men's number one tennis player lost a last ditch caught appeal to overturn the cancellation of his visa. you're straining government argued the unvaccinated pay, his presence could fuel anti vaccine sentiment jockey, which was hoping for a record 10th australian opened title. sarah clark has more now from brisbin on sunday, in a special federal court hearing in melbourne or the chief justice of the federal court. james also ruled that australia's immigration minister was within his rights to cancel his visa. now this was a unanimous decision before the full bench, which consisted of 3 judges. and due to the urgency of the matter,

the judges ruled that they would not release the grounds for the decision just yet . that would be released at a later date. no joke of it was to play in your strain open on monday evening. obviously his till 2. he shot at that a strange title. his 10th potentially could have been his tent tidal that's now out as well as his hopes for his 21st. a grand slam and other stories are following our barbers claim responsibility for suspected suicide bomb explosion in the somali capital market issue. a government spokesman was injured in the attack photographer at the scene in the capital said he sold 40 parts scattered outside the home of mom at brand molina. before he was taken to hospital al shabani fight is linked to al qaeda of time responsibility for many attacks in somalia and in neighboring countries. nobel peace prize when maria theresa is one of the guests on studio b unscripted. that's next. you know, you can watch out to see were english streaming live on like youtube channels plus

thousands of all programs award winning documentaries and in depth news reports subscribe to you choose dot com forward slash al jazeera english. ah, why are journalists under attack? because democracy is under attack because you attacked the truth tellers because the integrity of facts is gone. when i started seeing videos of people so angry with things that were frankly untrue. now i realize i was working for something i was evil, and i had been a part of actually creating a when mark soccer bird essentially said that it is ok for politicians to lie. that spells doom. ah, my name is maria theresa and i'm a journalist and author the message that the government is sending is very clear.

be silent or your next. i received thousands of death threats online. i'm christopher wiley. i'm a data scientist, but most people know me as the cambridge analytical whistleblower. facebook knew about cambridge analytic his schemes since 2015 before the story broke. facebook threatened to see the guardian and then band me for whistle blowing. i revealed har . data is being manipulated political gain without our consent since rapport started reporting, president detective doesn't work. i've been repeatedly charged and arrested. it makes you feel vulnerable. quite right. i'm inspired by ha. maria continues to stand up for the truth in the face of real being. chris's revelations led to the largest b, the crime investigation in history,

if we allowed cheating in our democratic personnel, and we allowed this amount. what about next time? what about the time after that? we know 1st hand what happens when social media is weaponized and the danger it now poses to our democracies around the world. this is an existential movement. and it's time for us all to ah, the the, so good to talk to you, you figured out and then you created a system. you taught yourself how to code, you learn the data, and then you built this whole system that was very efficient as modifying behavior . and then you decided to take it down. when did you decide it was wrong?

when i 1st joined the, the company that later became cambridge analytics at the l group, i joined the company that at the time was working on projects that were geared towards counter extremism encounter radicalization. looking at how extremism spreads online and we got discovered by a guy by the name of the banning who long story short got a billionaire to acquire the company. and what i saw was that i had worked on a system that got essentially inverted to radical eyes. young men in the united states and that, you know, witnessing the inception of an insurgency the all right campaign. and so when i started seeing videos of fall and focus groups, who were so angry with things that were frankly untrue. you know,

i realized i was working for something that was evil and i had, you know, being a part of actually creating it. and i couldn't keep doing that. it's interesting when you said you were looking at it for counter radicalization at 1st i came to it because i was looking at how social network analysis spread the ideology of terrorism and we created rapper. because if you can convince people to blow themselves up with this radical ideology, why couldn't you have something car for good? yeah, right. that's why we created rattler. but then when you started seeing the negative parts, it's hard to pull yourself out. how'd? and to be a whistleblower. what gave you the courage to do that? yeah, i think at least for me you know, growing up kind of, i've an outsider. i was partly in a wheelchair when i was growing up because of a invisible disability. and then lobe on top of that sort of being clear,

i came out as it was. so barbara, i've been coming out for my entire life and you know, for me it's that sense of otherness that and comfortable with being uncomfortable. yeah. that i think gave me a little bit of a nudge to help me become, become with a bar, but with setting up rattler. and you know, being on the outside, i think you're going out there every single day. pissing off a lot of people. i try not do you find that you know, your life's journey sort of influences that? oh gosh i so i, i was born in the philippines and then moved to united states when marcia los declared in 1972. but when i was with americans, i never felt completely american. and when i'm filled with philipino, so i don't feel completely filipino either. so i guess it's that it's the otherness part of it. right. and that, that's a good training for journalists or with the line or whistle blowing. but you find

that there's a bit of an overlap because not that i would ever call myself a journalist. but in some sense, as i feel similar, there is something similar about that, you know, shoving uncomfortable information into people face. going, you have to pay attention to this and feeling the consequences of that. so i was going to say that the mission of journalism, right, you speak truth to power and you know, power doesn't like that in your and i think you've been speaking truth. i mean, there's a cost to yourself, but you also seem to learn something more from each instance that you've done that . has this been a good experience or a bad experience? the mixed bag, i guess. i mean, i think it's been on the whole a good x perience for i've learned a lot. so, you know,

you know, after watching 2016 happen and knowing so many things about what was going on. you know, i learned that i do feel compelled to speak uncomfortable truth, but at the same time, you know, you know, getting called to testify. our congress, you know, as the 20 somethings gave or living in london, it's not something that you really expect to be part of your life's journey. was pretty intimidating. is pretty intimidating to have, you know, the department of justice and f. b, i sitting behind me and you know, giving me a subpoena after that but i think on the whole, it's been a good experience because if you think back before 2018, the idea that privacy or data protection, you know, the internet would be a mainstream, political issue in the 2020 election and the primary race would kind of be

laughable. so i feel like at least in not sense, exposing wrongdoing and exposing the structure is that facilitate and support that wrongdoing. with companies like facebook. yeah. have at least opened up an awareness into a conversation and our mainstream political discourse, i think, is productive. how is the is it to manipulate math on a mass scale? i get frustrated a lot by the, the current sort of discussion about election manipulation because it focuses on the united states and britain because britain in the united states, and i'm sure coming from the philippines. you know, this for while have been manipulating elections and democracies around the world for hundreds of years. britain was a empire a well. and the reason why, you know, the national drink in britain is t and, you know, national animal is a lion. and, you know, these are not natural things here. and so i think the reason why

people are so upset in the united states or in britain or other parts of europe is an american voter. now understands what it feels like to be an african voter. because, you know, living in a country where you've got a gradually eroding information system where lies are everywhere, where you don't know what to trust. you've got foreign countries left right and center, trying to manipulate your trick. you deceive you and corruption rife in the administration, looking at the philippines and something that i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on coming from an ex us connie, where you had a large country dictating the terms of how government works. you know, it's, you know, becoming independent. yeah. and now having a large american corporations run by a bunch of straight white dudes in america. so starting to influence at

least what information is allowed or not allowed to exist or what gets amplified and promoted or what does thing in the philippines do you, do you feel like there is a sort of neo colonialism happening online? so you're, you're the 1st person i heard say the colonialism never died. it just moved online . right. and i think we talked about facebook as the 1st level, which i mean, frankly, the collapse that roshan of our institutions began on facebook. when the description of the philippines, sally carno wrote in our image and he described the philippines as a country that's spent for 150 years in a convent and 50 years in hollywood. we were colonized by spain and then the united states. and i think it's ironic that the country that gave democracy is also the, the place where silicon valley then has given some one like to tear it down

both sanara, all these types of authoritarian leaders who work who are killing democracy, the power to do it to manipulate people, but i think we all know that the are countries in the global south bear the brunt of all the tech decisions that have been made. right? i mean, how do we get power, how we've never really had a seat at the table in these things and we've there the worse. do you think that you should get the table? sure, that's part. i mean, part of the reason i can speak about it is because i can take, you laid it in a way that the west can understand you currently are, you know, challenging and allegedly, and arguably corrupt regime. what does it mean for you to say give us a c other table? do you give a corrupt regime a seat at the table to talk about now?

so i think one of the things this time show us is exactly how human behavior is universal regardless of culture in many ways. because a very same things that manipulate americans and europeans are the very same things that manipulate us in the global south. we just don't have the institutions to fight back and look how weak your institutions have gotten here. um, behavioral modification system. ah, how do we fix it? i, i've been a journalist for this almost 35 years. i. it's never been as hard to work as a journal associate is to date, i have to post bill 8 times. my government filed 11 cases and in death did 11 cases an investigation that year and then began arresting me in 2019 1st arrest was valentine's. that was wild and i have a valentine o n. my government seems to work very well in february this february.

you know, they've, they've gone and filed a similar case against the largest broadcaster in the philippines. what would you say? you know, to see your critics in the philippines about the charges that you know, the government has lodged against yo, did you break the law? oh my lord, i know i am challenging power, right? we continue to do our jobs and we will continue the line. i always use this, we are going to hold the line because the philippine constitution, like the united states constitution has a bill of rights where pattern after the united states constitution. and let me ask you this, what the cambridge analytic could do in the philippines. the company operated in many places around the world. this is something that also i learned spending time there that you know it's, it's really profitable. so go and corrupts government because governments have

like, really monetize of all of that. you've got sovereignty, it's something that's really hard for our company to replicate. and you know, with that you can, you can dictate mineral rise resource rights, passports, all kinds of things in the philippines. you know, they had an office there, you know, the story of the philippines. you guys kind of got trump before everybody else. okay. yeah. you're facing presenting quite serious charges, least 80 years. why do you care so much? because then wouldn't it be easier to just go somewhere else? i mean, i could toss the same question that you why you became a whistleblower right? because this is the time that matters. because if i didn't stand up for the standards and ethics, the mission of journalism, when it matters, then everything else i did beforehand doesn't matter. then i'm not who i am.

defining who you are. i hate this. thank you. i hate that the baton was passed to me now, but that's why it matters a how do we get civic engagement when people don't know the facts? i don't think we can. it's kind of like what we're doing right now. we're sitting on a stage. we're having a discussion, there is an audience they know that we're talking. and if i say something that's not true or somebody can call us out, or a journalist can call us, what we have now is a situation where i can become invisible. and i can go and whisper into everybody's ear and they all hear something different, right. and i can do that now with the benefit of having followed everybody in the audience around for years and years and years reading through their text messages, listening to their phones, looking at everything that they look at,

even when they don't realize that they're being watch and i don't think that we can have a functioning democracy when there is no longer public discourse because everything has become privatized. and oftentimes people can't, don't even know if they're receiving something that is targeted or not, which again goes back to if you get rid of transparency, you get rid of accountability and you get rid of democracy. we can take questions from the audience. maria julie is edie. from the international center for journalists, i've spent time with you and with your news organizations, and i know that you have learned a lot as a result of the orchestra, this information campaigns, the deliberate targeting of journalists and rattler. in particular, given that we're talking particularly about what christopher has referred to as porting, if these problems from the global south to the west. can you tell us sitting here

in london? what journalists in particular, dealing with these problems now can do to prepare themselves. oh lord, ah, so if i think this is an existential moment for democracy, globally, journalism, the death of journalism, i won't say the death of journalist, but the death of journalism is only the 1st signal for the death of democracy. our dystopian present is your dystopian future if we don't do anything right now. and of course, with elections coming up in the united states. it's a huge problem. but what are the danger signals the fact that we don't know the facts. one, the fact that you don't know who to trust because in the philippines, the 1st targets of packs and these are exponential attacks, right? i was getting an average of 90 hate 90 hate messages per hour in the philippines.

in 2016, our data showed that women were attacked at least 10 times more than men. so massaged jenny sexism, the kind of gender, sexual life, gender, the tax on women. what's the end goal? you pound someone to silence so that a whole narrative collapses. and then the voice with the loudest, mega fullness amplified bottom up, and then top down our president. for example, the attacks against me and rattler. we were attacked for a year on facebook and social media. and then after that, a year later, president to character said the same exact thing, which is like astro turf thing. it is, it leaves the groundwork for what the government does. you are all living through something similar is just our institution crumbled within 6 months.

your institutions are a little bit stronger than ours, but human beings behave the same way. and the lack of trust is ushering in a whole new ah, 93940 s, right? all of a sudden we're looking at hashes and i guess this is why i'm so scared and i want silicon valley. i want the west will have stronger institutions to do something more about it. because if we don't, instead of a year or 2 years of this or going to look at decades of fascism. my question to you, christopher, i am from kenya. you work for cambridge analytics in robi, of a 70 people died may be directly or indirectly related to the role of cambridge and they took her question then is, is it legal or morrow for british or american farms to work in countries like her was and take advantage of lack of regulations and yet continue to operate. this is

something that i found most shocking when you've got a, a company in country a, let's say, if in britain engaging with multiple firms and contractors each and their own jurisdiction, creating disinformation or hate propaganda that were it entirely in britain would be wholly illegal. and then disseminating that in another country, because you've got so many different players involved and so many different components of wrong doing, it's actually really difficult to figure out where technically did a crime occur in tax while we're just starting to, you know, create principles and rules that prevent people from just hopping from one jurisdiction to another. but with data on the internet,

we are where tax law was the 1950, not realizing that the internet is global. that data is global, that this information can be global. we lack, you know, not only the, the actual institutions to, to police, but we actually lack like principals. and so lawmakers start to understand, actually how the internet works. i don't mean not sarcastically, like, as in that it is actually global. and that we need to create principles that, that him embrace that global ness. lots of wrongdoing can happen. maria, you have been tread since and yet continued your fight. i'm originally from turkey and living in discovery for the last 20 years. and in my country, many journalists are in jail now, and many others are afraid of writing speaking. and so what do you say

about journalism and fear? we've never been as vulnerable as we are today. because power in countries like yours and mine ah, has taken what the internet, what social media, what companies like cambridge analytic and it is, it isn't only cambridge analytics. we now have filipino companies like cambridge analytic, right? ah, they are the ones taking advantage of it. why is it that the bad guys are the ones who are taking these tap? these tools of manipulation, amusing them against us for us, for some one like chandler dar for example, right? he had to flee his country and he made the decision to do that. ah, a for fear of his life. others are dying. we see this and every single report that comes out about journalism. why are journalists under attack? because democracy is under attack because you attacked the truth tellers because

the integrity of facts is ah, gone. right? we're not agreeing on the facts and the internet. the way social media is set up. this one concept of growing it by having you choose friends of friends to grow has polarized our societies. so we have far more polarized societies and then we have no understanding of what the facts are. and then you attack institutions. and when you have someone like your leader and my leader, they become stronger in this environment. they hijack. and this is why democracy him dying in our areas of influence. we need to protect the facts because if you don't have the facts, you can't have integrity of elections. you can't have integrity of markets. how can we have a working society if we don't have

a public sphere where we agree on what the me in the in we've always had the devil of the angel on our shoulders right. the way the social media platforms have been formulated. fans the devil in your ear. why is it that you're allowed to experiment on societies and when real people get killed, there are no actual consequences. it's like they invited people to their house and they gave everyone guns and said it's the wild blood. well, you know me, i'm, or where facebook's systems were being deliberately exploited to propagate, hate messaging contributions to you know, ethnic violence and ethnic cleansing. you came into this, you looked at the code,

you looked at the data and you later realized its impact on society. and waiting for silicon valley to realize that as well, the dictatorships, to democracies, activists to corporations, control of the message is crucial. oil companies have become very good at recognizing ways to phrase what they want him to hear. we care about the environment you do to, you should buy our oil cleared for public opinion or profit. once you make people afraid, you can use that to justify stripping away basic civil liberties. the listening post examined the vested interest behind the content you consume on al jazeera. it's one year since joe biden was sworn in as president of the united states, against the backdrop of rioting on capitol hill from navigating the plan demick to

the withdrawal from afghanistan. we'll look back at his policy, wins and losses, and examined the challenges that remain special coverage on al jazeera, stepped beyond the comfort zone. were assumptions or challenge. travel to the ends of the earth and further experience the unimaginable of the people who live it with probably the most extreme situation i've been involved in how quickly things contract award winning documentary is that also a perception witness on i'll just sierra with lou lou

lou ah. ready ready ready you a new zealand military, a craft is on its way to assess damage in tonga after an undersea volcano triggered us to nami, causing a communications black house. ah, hello, i'm emily anguish. this is al jazeera live from to also coming up more corona virus restrictions in bungler dash where the only com variant has seen infection rights triple in the past week tennis don novak.