coming up on our t.v. u.s. supreme court today ruled that a civil rights group does not have the standing to challenge the government's warrantless wiretapping program an update on the face of fight ahead. and it's a government agency charged with keeping the us safe so one of the biggest threats the secretary of homeland security outlined some of these issues today we'll fill you in. and an apology goes a long way but don't tell the u.n. that the united nations is refusing to compensate haiti's half a million plus cholera victims and their families will look at this case ahead. it's tuesday february twenty sixth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. . well the supreme court today made a decision that could have a big impact on your right to privacy and

a five to four vote the supreme court ruled that people do not have the legal standing to challenge the foreign intelligence intelligence surveillance act the law allows the government to intercept for and communications of the lawsuit is from a group of civil rights advocates in journalist that challenge to the foreign intelligence surveillance act some things you should know about the law allows the n.s.a. to wiretap conversations of u.s. citizens phones without a warrant it was first signed into law in one nine hundred seventy eight and the supreme court today their ruling means that lawyers cannot challenge the law and federal courts what the court did not consider is whether or not the law is constitutional earlier today i was joined by ginger mccall director of open government the open government program at atic and i asked her how this ruling could be a catch twenty two and what it means for your privacy. it is very problematic because standing is a preliminary question that has to be answered before the supreme court can ever

get to the merits that is the constitutionality of self and what the court set out here basically is a scheme understanding that it makes it very difficult for anyone to challenge five because the law and the activities surrounding it are so secret it's very difficult for any plaintiff to obtain the facts necessary under this ruling to actually be able to get standing and to allow the supreme court to then consider the merits of . now the supreme court ruled by can't be challenged in these cases or it's very hard for it to be challenged what's interesting though is that the ruling did not weigh in on the constitutionality of this law can you explain this it did not what we've seen recently is that the supreme court has been rolling very narrowly if there's a way that they cannot reach an issue of constitutionality they will select that path so here they used standing as a way to avoid that question of constitutionality it doesn't necessarily rule out

the possibility that the constitutionality could later be challenged but the factual scenarios under this ruling that would allow for that kind of challenge are exceptionally narrow it would be very difficult for plaintiffs to be able to meet that standard under this ruling so if no one has any legal standing because they can't prove that they're being watched through flags is there any way or what how would it be possible that for the court to ever look into the laws constitutionality it would be very difficult that's exactly the problem here is that the activity surrounding pfizer these intercepts these wiretaps are so secret that it's difficult for anyone to get the facts necessary to be able to make the showing to get standing under this ruling because basically said if and have no idea whether or not they're being spied on is there any way for somebody to know well the supreme court did consummate. laid a factual scenario under which. some five to intercept is for instance used in a case against

a foreign national then that foreign nationals lawyer may be able to challenge under the fourth amendment but the reality of the size of intercepts is that they're very rarely used in any real criminal proceedings they're used to build the backbone of national security information collection and information sharing but ultimately what does this mean for citizens privacy the ruling today just makes it one more layer of secrecy and makes it more difficult to get any sort of judicial oversight of these very secretive programs that the n.s.a. and the other national security agencies are engaging in. it destroys accountability. now for those that are concerned who is more susceptible to government spying to being monitored under this program well pfizer sets it up so that if you are a citizen of the united states and you are communicating with someone who is outside of the united states that communication could potentially be intercepted so people most at risk would be people who are communicating with those outside of the

united states in this instance it was journalists attorneys human rights activists those sorts of people would be very much at risk especially since they may be talking with potential plaintiffs or people who could be caught up in investigations by the federal government so i mean one of the wider implications of this do you think that journalists now might feel that they need to watch out the waiter who they're communicating with and you know the manner in which they're communicating for fear of being wiretapped well we have these very important privileges set up within our system for attorney client privilege we have standards of confidentiality built into our journalism and the integrity standards surrounding journalism and this undermines that. it makes it very difficult for there to be attorney client privilege it makes it very difficult for a journalist to guarantee to an informant or someone who's talking to them that

there's actual confidentiality in those conversations do you think that this could potentially change the way that people communicate this ruling today it could it could chill legitimate speech it certainly makes it very difficult. to expect any sort of candidness in conversations with attorneys with human rights activists with journalists with the very sort of people that we want to be able to talk freely very important ruling today a very interesting case. unfortunately we're not hearing too much about it but we're glad that you could fill us in that was ginger mccall director of open government program at epic. all right we're going to turn now to some breaking news we just got word that chuck hagel has been confirmed we're going to bring you more on that more on this confirmation as soon as we get more information we're going to turn now to dan and politan no who today delivered a state of the homeland security address and while the media who play is all about see questor ation the homeland security secretary covered

a lot of ground we know reach our next year or. three point zero if you will and as you'll see the software metaphor is really accidental at all although paula time to discuss everything from cyber security its immigration and our producer rachel curtis yes was at the brookings institute and joined me earlier with a studio in the studio with a d. brief on a poll it's on i was address secretary. made cyber security a huge portion of her speech so we've edited together some of the more interesting and important moments of that if we'd like to take a listen to it. the cyber realm wasn't even a major priority of the early department and now it is one of our five core mission areas over the past four years we have built and deployed systems to detect intrusions and defend federal cyber networks we've expanded our twenty four seven watch center the end kick we have comprehensive plans in place to manage cyber

incidents and to stay ahead of rapidly evolving threats and technology we are moving aggressively to recruit educate and train our cyber workforce for the future we need greater information sharing so that the government can learn from the private sector where people fight this threat every day and we need to ensure that the government can use information at various levels of classification to help the private sector protect itself. well we've seen an proposed piece of legislation just before example and even and in her speech we just heard this focus on the public and the private sector is working together to share information how did secretary napolitano. reiterate that today sure so first she brought up the idea that there might be some sort of civil liberties issues with this that it might

affect privacy in the way that she kind of got rid of those concerns was by saying listen public public sector and business information sharing is something we already do and she brought up the example of aviation she said listen essentially what happens already is that the t.s.a. and different airlines share information to ensure airline safety and she also talked about who should be in charge of cyber security in the first place she says listen i understand that the department of defense has a much larger budget for dealing with this they have their own cyber command but what's important is that while the g.-o. d. can deal with cyber threats that occur internationally the department of homeland security is better suited to deal with domestic threats the one issue there is that once something is in the virtual realm these distinctions between national and international become a bit of relevant interesting want to shift gears a little bit now because i know that she did cover a lot of ground immigration of course of a very hot topic today what did she say on that front sure so she had a lot to say and most of it was very positive in regards to the work of the

department of homeland security under her tenure if we'd like to take a listen to that. we now enforce our immigration laws according to common sense priorities focused on the greatest threats to our communities previously this was not the case meeting that a college student who came here with her parents when she was a child was considered the same priority as a drug smuggler this is changed last year alone we removed more than two hundred fifty thousand criminals from the united states so can you go into more about what state what stance she was taking what direction does it seem she wants to take the whole immigration debate today in the u.s. yeah absolutely well she would talk to a lot about congress needing to take some sort of action in this regard but i wanted to do a little bit of fact checking on what she just said right there essentially she said we removed a ton of people who were criminals who would have provided a safety threat to people in the united states but as the immigration and customs

enforcement said them themselves and some data they released forty five thousand parents parents who arrived in the country illegally without documentation but whose children are legally american were taken from their children in the first six months of two thousand and twelve alone so figure of those two hundred fifty thousand people that she just mentioned forty five thousand of them in the first six months alone. thing is that deported immigrants who try and enter which often parents who have children still in the united states do are considered felons and they're considered top priority for immediate removal so when we hear that word criminal we really need to think a little bit about what it means in the d.h.s.s. and in regard to these deportations there are some really interesting facts about this a lot of conservatives are saying that obama hasn't been very strong that he's kind of left a soft open border but under president obama and secretary napolitano we're set to reach two million deportations by the end of this year by the end of two thousand and thirteen which is more than all of the deportations from each one from eighteen

ninety set eighteen ninety two to nine hundred ninety seven combined well so that definitely puts puts it all into perspective there it certainly changes the way you're thinking about how that the h.s. is dealing with deportations you know the d.h.s.s. of this organization it is just ten years old or relatively new or part of the cat obama's cabinet issues that are making any big changes that you get that feeling yes so when she was talking about department of homeland security three point zero as you brought up in your introduction she's the idea is that it's supposed to be more flexible more proactive as opposed to reactive in the huge way that they're planning on doing that is as we mentioned before this information sharing the idea is if you get information in real time and you're able to get it to local law enforcement people you know in federal government all of these things we can do a better job of dealing with these threats but but one thing that she never talked about was how getting all of this data might have a very negative effect on the privacy and liberty of people in the united states

very interesting rachel thanks for staying on top of this that was our producer rachel courteous. well we know that drones have become critical to u.s. military strategy and the technology has taken pilots off the battlefield and allows them to fly drones from remote locations far away from any combat zone but while these pilots are physically out of harm's way a new study shows that drone pilots are not spared the psychological trauma the study by the armed forces health surveillance center found that pilots that operate drones experience the same rate of post-traumatic stress disorder depression and anxiety as soldiers deployed in iraq and afghanistan to discuss what's behind this i'm joined now by dr sue dubose he's an emergency medicine physician and iraq war veteran he's also the founder of the battle continues dot org welcome doctor great to have you here it is great to be here think you know this study suggests that even though drone pilots they aren't at imminent danger they still face health hazards what are behind these findings i'm not surprised to hear this it comes down

to mental stress basically i mean even from my personal experience what i saw out there is it's not always the you know patients or the warriors who are injured who get p.t.s.d. it's the ones who are almost injured are the ones who face imminent danger so p.t.s.d. post-traumatic stress disorder is in anxiety disorder and it's defined as an anxiety disorder that is from an out of the ordinary traumatic event that is perceived to be a threat on your life so this can be from combat it can be from assault and it can be for many things and often drone operators there you know doing missions that involve life and death so i'm not surprised by these findings right so it seems whether you're whether or not you're actually in the situation or doing it from afar killing somebody is killing somebody and you're going to face that reality one

way or another. it is i mean in the military we were always taught to follow the mission so you know whether the mission is driving tanks whether the mission is being a medico whether the mission is operating a drone you have to follow your mission and off and combat zones you're in danger or you're making critical decisions in that mission where life and death is involved in this can have psychological impact. you know we hear stories of soldiers that are deployed and you know as you said they witnessed the horrors of war and they come home feeling alienated from civilian life but drone operators even though they aren't actually deployed can they face that same kind of feeling that they gauge didn't and this is a remote warfare but they still have this experience of war and they come out come back come home to their families kind of facing the same kind of alienation definitely i mean these are defined you know out of the ordinary traumatic events

and you know most of us are used to these events and you know usually in the combat zone we see young soldiers who are eighteen nineteen years old and they're basically tossed from high school straight into the combat zone and you know i won't ever forget the story of you know some of these guys who just come up to me and you know hand me their weapon and they're like doc you know i can't take it anymore it's just an incredible amount of stress that the soldiers are going through so similarly you know when operating a drone these are out of the ordinary you know mental mentally stressing advance and this can cause the same symptoms. which is why are there even instances that drone operators can be subject even more stress than traditional pilots i was reading you know just the nature of their work that kind of staring at the same place for hours and days on end and they're kind of they see when they're doing it remotely they kind of keep a close eye on the area and they keep after the traumatic. that has happened they

still continue to monitor the area whereas if you're actually in there you tend to flee and not stick around so could that have these psychological impacts as well i'm not sure if there's like a study to show that is the reason it's happening and that's the whole enigma about p.t.s.d. i mean we don't really know i mean why is it that you know according to the rand studies that you know out of every four. warriors that go to war that one of them comes back potentially with p.t.s.d. what is it in that one person is it how they're hardwired is it what they faced and as we learn more and more and more about this over the years we'll figure out what the moment is certainly we're seeing that there are health health concerns with operating a drone this kind of new war fare. i wonder if drone operators are screened in the same way that traditional military. and military soldiers whether they're you know

when they're in the field if they're screened in the same way. the screening is also very challenging because you know as an emergency room physician myself for instance if i have a patient with a heart attack i can find a heart attack i can do an e.k.g. and look for it i can do a blood test and look for you know the tripled in value and i can see that they have a heart attack but p.t.s.d. these are invisible wounds of mental alertness and i guess it's hard to hard to screen for it even because there's no test that can give the diagnosis it's a clinical diagnosis where you have to just look at the symptoms the patients are having and a lot of times you also have to rely on. the soldiers coming forward and telling you what they're experiencing emotionally and psychologically so it's interesting much of that here a lot of a lot of these soldiers will go undiagnosed right definitely a lot of them go on diagnosed and you know for the listeners out there what i would say is the onus is on the boss the society the family members that have to

recognize this because it isn't going to be a magical test that discovers it's not going to be some sort of a government policy it's going to be that family member that loved one out there who's going to catch this and it's important to recognize the symptoms you know are the symptoms i would say they divide into three categories two of which are very easily recognizable so there's. so hyper vigilance anxiety. getting easily startled there is flashback so you're reliving the event having nightmares still is usually you know those two categories are usually identifiable but the family members out there what they should look out for is also avoidance where things that normally the soldier like to do or the drone operator like to do they're withdrawing from that they're withdrawing from family members to kind of becoming secluded and i think the listeners out there can recognize that and hopefully seek help it's a very interesting study and i appreciate you telling us all about it that was dr

city bose an emergency medicine physician iraq war veteran and founder of the battle continues dot org well now to a country that's in a constant struggle to pick up the pieces it was in two thousand and ten that an earthquake struck haiti killing more than three thousand people the united nations peacekeepers had already been in haiti since two thousand and four and stayed there to deal with the destruction but they hurt more than help a cholera outbreak in haiti that claimed more than eight thousand lives was traced back to u.n. peacekeepers the global peacekeeping organization first denied any involvement now the u.n. has rejected a claim to compensate the more than half a million cholera victims and their families and the victims never got an apology for more on this i'm joined now by alex mayne senior associate for international policy at the center for economic policy research and i had to producer many rabble oh who reported from haiti on the issue welcome gentlemen so i'm going to start off with you i guess the question that is just glaring is why isn't the u.n.

being held accountable well it's a very good question when the u.n. is often associated with humanitarian action in this case they have created an even greater humanitarian crisis in haiti their peacekeepers that were there since two thousand and four peacekeepers from the paul brought the cholera bacteria to haiti and it spread very quickly and although it hasn't been in the news much lately the color situation is actually getting much worse and i guess do you think that this too. agitate could have been effective we're talking about eight thousand lives could have been prevented rather well absolutely i mean had the u.n. screened those troops to the gun and made sure that none of them carried that bacteria that would have been one way to do it but also avoiding dumping their waste into a major waterway and that's in fact how it was spread throughout the country that could have been entirely avoided as well i want to ask you because i know you were in haiti not too long ago so you kind of saw the situation there firsthand haiti has not been spared misery the country has been plagued by natural disasters that

earthquake we mentioned earlier poverty how does something like this make a bad situation even worse i think that that's actually the best way to see to put it because if you look at the u.n. and you talk to the average haitian you ask them what the u.n. is there for the general answer is you know i don't i don't really know the u.n. the fact the matters have been there for almost ten years now since two thousand and four they're seen more as an occupying force more than as a as a helping force and it's hard it's hard to to miss the presence of the u.n. there now one actually important thing that i want to throw in there is that the support the c.d.c. is and the pan american health organization have both said that it would actually cost international community about anywhere from eight hundred thousand to one point one billion dollars to revamp the country's infrastructure to provide possible water clean drinking water to every haitian in the country we're talking about a country of ten million people one time payment of one billion dollars that's the same amount of money that the united nations spends to keep these thousands of u.n.

troops stationed here in haiti every year a billion dollars every year if that when he was just reallocated to actually revamp the infrastructure of the country that would be a big help alex i want to ask you if steps aren't taken to resolve this problem and as you as you have mentioned it's not going away if it seems like it's getting worse how will it continue to devastate the country will absolutely continue i mean the world health organization predicts that you know they'll be something like one hundred thousand more infections. in the coming year of color of something isn't done but there is a plan on the table that exists that the u.n. has actually backed the two point two billion dollars plan because that's what's needed to provide haiti with adequate water infrastructure in order to provide that clean drinking water that can get rid of the cholera epidemic however the u.n. has not really stepped up to the plate in terms of funding they've only provided one percent of that funding so for that they really have a responsibility to do a lot more and as we know haiti. prop poverty is

a huge problem their lack of access to resources and so how dependent is this country on these non-governmental organizations to clean this mess up oh absolutely the i mean he really has a very weak institutions at the moment their health ministry very few people to help deal with this epidemic they've been completely reliant on international help and that help has been dwindling international aid organizations been pulling out despite the fact that the epidemic has actually spiked again last december we saw something like twelve thousand cases the previous december with eight thousand cases of the situation again is actually getting worse at the moment wow appreciate your shedding some light on this really troubling situation over there in haiti that was alex main senior associate for the international policy at c.e. p.r. and many iraq below he is producer breaking the set. and now a look inside iran as the international community continues negotiations and

kazakstan today over the country's long disputed nuclear program the country is might be getting closer to a compromise a compromise i could be the key to lifting crippling economic sanctions are tumour and maria excuse me maria phenomena is on the ground in toronto and gives us a look at how the country is moving forward despite economic hardship. the international ban on iranian oil cost the country around forty billion dollars in two thousand and twelve according to the e.u. but despite this huge gap in iran's income officials have some good news in the harsh sanctions normal experts have increased by least thirty percent from ego. we call it is so what going to look a bad thing well may actually play a positive role that we've been asking our government there may be used to decrease the payments were going to be some two hundred percent which to hoist up around eighty percent on making our economy to vulnerable now some say there is

a huge opportunity to finally get it with this dangerous oil to go into you and iran actually has a lot of tentative resources to feed from the well known copper it's the dates via minerals and stones between wanting to st in particular appears to be driving these days around stream is the stench is coming through tough times in the last couple of years heavy frost terrible droughts have been damaging much box office the same year the country under tough economic sanctions especially is are doing better than ever. about our currency ryall fell by almost forty percent in october but i sell peace bashers both at home and abroad and i benefited from price rise was just given in discussions of a school system more than a hundred countries worldwide even a pharmacy not found in the world confidence business is the main thing. thousands of industry workers also benefit which has been overcome the country's highest ever inflation step the amount of production and price of the special effects of

salaries it really is he adds ten to twenty percent of my salary busy and i have some bonus to my daily payments but producers in most for tax incentive. while international sanctions don't stack the cargo industry current measures effective banking safe and making financial transactions hard knocks. the also. the banks that. are not in u.s. and europe maybe in china or south america they penalize them for dealing with you know the mean that's the main problem which is actually really good internationally people who is of like gold the discussions must be green one least for iran look you say these small knots have great how benefits especially for the man well for the country it also gives strength iran's biggest no less for it has always been a significant social revenue and as the latest round of sanctions ever bite it's

also something iran may have to rely on isn't going to be good for. regional tea from iran. well here in the u.s. tasers are a popular weapon of choice for police agencies but sometimes there's questions over whether a taser should have been used at all and some of the cases have garnered a lot of attention like this one a few years ago but it was. a very brutal. was a low. but there have been cases where suspects have died from tasers now one of the makers has come up with a taser that's equipped with a camera according to the maker every zap can be documented but full audio and camera video. well the hope is that the device will hold police accountable so if any questions come up you can just take a look at the video but what about the person getting the electric shock and will police turned over the footage that might make the officer or that or apartment

look bad we're going to have to wait and see just how this technology is being used and ready to turn now again to that breaking news i mentioned earlier just moments ago chuck hagel secured enough votes and has been confirmed as the next u.s. secretary of defense the senate voted fifty eight yes and forty one no we should note that that forty one knows were voted by republicans including arizona senator john mccain and south carolina senator lindsey graham but one interesting republican yes vote came from kentucky senator rand paul and we are going to leave it all of their budget for more of the stories we covered you can always check out our you tube channel and that is youtube dot com slash r t america our website our team dot com slash usa and follow me on twitter at liz well stay tuned breaking the set is coming up in a half hour.