0 this be the beginning of a robot in every kitchen? >> it could be the beginning of a robot in the kitchen. >> reporter: barbara starr, cnn, boston. >> "ac 360" starts right now. good evening, everyone. breaking news tonight. it's not just the government grabbing your cell phone records. they are online with you as well. new and frankly stunning reports on just how much they know about your life online. also tonight, a remarkable story. she was a warrior beyond compare. as a navy s.e.a.l. commander christopher beck. now she's showing no less courage in her new life, tonight, kristen beck talks about her new life as a woman. plus, the first hurricane of the season comes ashore. tens of millions of people in its path. a lot to get to tonight. we begin with breaking news. it goes far beyond the government just accessing your cell phone records. that was the first shoe to drop. the second shoe fell late today. they're looking at your internet access as well. plugging directly into facebook, google, youtube, yahoo! and five other big names. in short, a direct line into your online life. the fbi, national security agency are doing it, according to a report in the "washington post" and britain's "guardian" newspaper, they have been doing it for the last six years. part of a highly classified, never before disclosed intelligence gathering program code named prism. according to the reporting it began during the bush administration but has grown sharply, exponentially, during the obama years. the fbi and nsa vacuuming up your e-mails, online pictures, audio, video, by tapping directly into the servers of those five companies i mentioned, plus microsoft, pal talk, aol, skype, apple and soon, according to the "post" dropbox. the post and guardian reporting that prism use the data feed as raw material for a massive data mining operation aimed at spotting patterns that might provide early warning of a terrorist attack. as we said, it comes hard on the heels of the revelation the guardian newspaper and elsewhere that must be giving any one of the tens of millions of americans who use a verizon cell phone a chill. word that the fbi and nsa asked for and got a secret court order giving them access to phone records for all verizon cell phone calls, foreign, domestic and local. not the conversations themselves, just everything else that's identifiable. white house officials neither confirming nor denying the story but they are defending the practice of data collection for national security purposes. again, both these programs have their roots in the prior administrations but have grown immensely since then, leading the huffington post today to run a composite photo under the headline, george w. obama. it's turning partisan politics on its head with a number of democrats slamming the president, republicans defending his policy. a lot to talk about with jim acosta at the white house and ron paul. jim, this has been a remarkable day. first, what's the latest you're hearing in washington from this? >> well, i can tell you right now the white house officials are simply not commenting and congressional officials who have oversight over these matters, they are not commenting about these latest revelations, broken this afternoon in the "washington post" and "guardian" newspapers. but we can tell you, we have been talking over the last couple minutes about these i guess revelations that have come out in these stories that the government has been using the servers of about nine internet companies, technology companies, out in the silicon valley, to look at what people have been doing online, but i have to tell you, in the last hour or so, we have gotten a number of statements from some of those companies in question you mentioned google, you mentioned apple. we have a statement from apple saying that they have never heard of this program called prism. they say they do not provide any government agency with direct access to their servers. google put out a statement saying that from time to time, they do disclose data to the government in accordance with the law, they say, but they do not have a back door as they call it into their servers for the government to use. so there is some pushback. there seems to be i guess a contradiction here perhaps if you listen to what these companies are saying at this point, but as you said, a very remarkable day up on capitol hill. members of congress from both sides of the aisle questioning the obama administration trying to get at exactly what is going on with the patriot act and the authority that's been given apparently to the fbi and the nsa to look at phone records from millions of americans who subscribe to verizon communications. but at this point, just no answers from the white house at this point. they're not commenting directly on those stories, only saying that this type of data collection is consistent with the law and that it does protect national security. >> if it's verizon, probably one can assume it's probably others as well. congressman paul will be joining us on the phone. what is your reaction to this news, it's not just phone records but apparently, according to the "washington post" also internet data the government is monitoring. >> well, i guess i wish i could be shocked. not surprised. i think there has been a few of us who have been warning about this, voted against the patriot act, voted against this by the court so it doesn't surprise me a bit. because it's not confirmed by these companies, this means that they are intimidated, they can get in a lot of trouble. i mean, they can turn over these records and are not allowed to even talk about it so it's a horrible, horrible situation. one thing that's doing it, these events are really helping me make my case that i've been working on for a couple years. you've got to watch the power of government. power in government is almost always abused and this is abuse and it isn't democrats and it isn't republicans, it's both of them. it's the toleration of the people, the people put up with it so it's very, very dangerous. i don't think there's anything left to our fourth amendment. this whole idea of needing probable cause to get a search warrant, that's totally gone. this to me is very, very serious but also, it's an awakening call. let's hope that we can get the progressives together with the libertarians and the constitutionalists and say enough is enough. we've had enough of this. we have to stop. our economy doesn't work, the foreign policy's in shambles and now we have no privacy because people say they want to be safe. governments cannot make us safe. to pretend they can make us safe, they have to destroy personal liberty. oh, they can make an attempt. they can make us safe if they turn this into cattle in a cage or something. this is -- >> congressman, let me -- >> i'm not surprised at what's happening. >> congressman, mike rogers, who is obviously head of the house homeland security committee, he said today that going through those phone records prevented a terrorist attack. a, do you buy that and how do you argue against this kind of surveillance if it is in fact preventing attacks? >> well, first thing is i don't believe it. i've heard so many of those stories. there have been dozens and dozens of terrorist attacks over the years. the fbi save us from all this. but no, this is -- this is not justification to turn over your liberties, turn over everything that is precious and say the government can have total control of me because they might stop something sometime. no, that would never be a justification. we've been warned about that. there's a lot of people that would agree with them, i got to be safe, you know, safety is the only thing that i care about. both economically and physical safety is the driving force and it's also the destruction of liberty and that is what we're witnessing today. >> jim, the political reaction to this is interesting. a lot of people in the president's own party are not thrilled by the national security policies. i mean, where do you see this going? what is the next step here? >> reporter: well, it's interesting. lindsey graham came out very forcefully in favor of this program at a hearing earlier today, and was basically saying keep going, president obama, keep going, obama administration, i like this program and there are many of us like that. but he was commenting about phone records, the collection of phone records, and now what we have is sort of an apparent bundling of government surveillance data, not just your phone but also perhaps your internet. and i think that is why you're going to maybe see the dam breaking when it comes to some of the frustrations up on capitol hill. you heard from barbara mikulski, a liberal democrat from maryland, chair of the appropriations committee, telling eric holder at a hearing wait a minute, we're a little sick and tired of this idea that only the people on the intelligence committee are briefed on this. perhaps other members of congress should be briefed on this because they're being blindsided by all of this right now. not only do they have people calling them saying hey, wait a minute, my phone records are being collected by the government. tomorrow they're going to be hearing from americans all over the country who are worried about when they're online, what videos they're looking at, what websites they're looking at. is that being collected as well. >> jim acosta, appreciate it. congressman ron paul, appreciate you calling in as well. i think i said rogers. rogers on the house intel yelige committee. i misspoke before. reaction from both sides defies party politics. let's talk about it. democratic strategist paul begala and republican strategist ari fleisher. paul helped get president obama re-elected. ari served in the george w. bush administration. this is remarkable. the president is now defending a policy he probably would have opposed when he was a senator. does this make sense to you? >> i have no doubt that barack obama would be appalled by this in the past. i would like to know why he's doing it in the present. >> ari, they're saying we don't know the names of the people whose data we're collecting, but i mean, i imagine you can easily piece together, link a number to a name. >> i praise the president for taking the steps he's taken to keep this country safe from potential terrorist threat. across the board when you look at what he's done, he's continued so many of the bush administration policies from drone strikes to military commissions to wiretaps to renditions to you name it, he's doing it. it's like george bush is having his fourth term. i praise president obama for it. now, i think he's a hypocrite. he campaigned against president obama, he said it was a violation of the constitution, he campaigned against president bush, said it was a violation of the constitution to do these things but i think he's learned this is what's necessary to protect the country. he's wise to do it. >> ari, do you not have any concerns about the government collecting all this data, about potential abuses of it down the road? >> here's how i think this worked. it's a very broad collection that detects patterns, not aimed at any individuals, and they haven't listened to any individual's conversations. i presume they will get a proper warrant to do that if necessary. they look for patterns and from the patterns are able to discern what we need to do with intelligence assets and what we need to do about obtaining other legal means. this is legal. >> the data is not just from people known to be terrorists. it's on anybody. >> it's not about any individual. it's about patterns seen from a whole series of mails or phone records. that's because we don't know who from another country is calling but if we see a pattern from another country there are calls going, that gives people at the nsa suspicions, this is how intelligence pieces are put together for them to act on. >> paul, is that acceptable to you? >> no. the short answer is no. i do want my government to protect us from terrorism. i do. but there has got to be a less intrusive alternative than getting the data of every single cell phone call, domestically and internationally. i don't doubt those who defend the program who say it has been efficacious. i don't doubt that. i'm sure it has been. the question what is are we trading in response? my goodness. my conservative friends don't even want the government to keep records of felons who try to buy guns, and they're okay with keeping records on every single cell phone call placed in america. and overseas. it's really, this is not overreaching, what is? >> paul, do you agree with ari that the president is being a hypocrite here, that he ran against this kind of stuff when it was george bush doing it and now, i mean, ari says it's the fourth term in the bush administration. >> i think ari is trying to needle him just a bit. there have been many places where he's put in place better legal strictures and real legal strictures. i think the drone program which he stepped up far beyond what bush did is a terrific program but he also gave an important speech just last week where he outlined the legal framework for that. the guy who wrote the patriot act, very conservative right wing republican from wisconsin, he says that this is excessive and un-american. >> what's fascinating, senator dianne feinstein, democrat in california, has come out in favor of this. you have very unusual changing of position depending i suppose on democrats are supporting, i don't know, republicans are supporting president obama. >> i love president obama. i support him. i spent two years of my life helping re-elect him through that super pac but you got to call it as you see it. i give credit to al gore. president gore, no stronger supporter of president obama, he tweeted right away he found this obscenely outrageous. >> you have the "new york times" saying that the administration has lost all credibility. >> the "new york times" slammed president obama for this and frankly, i was used to that. the "new york times" used to slam george bush for protecting the country and the steps he took. i don't want us to drop our guard. i don't want us to be struck again. it's each of these tools that has allowed us not to be hit by a major al qaeda attack since september 11th. that's vital. as we saw in boston, people are willing to sacrifice their civil liberties, people sheltered inside which was another name for martial law, if the government authorities asked them to do so or told them to do so. >> it is interesting, i saw paul recently, people are less willing to have their civil liberties curtailed now than they were in the days after 9/11. >> well, it has been over a decade and i think the president talked about this in his really important speech he gave on national security at the national defense university recently. we cannot simply have a one part test, does this work. it must also be is this consonant with our values as a free society. >> thanks very much. let us know what you think about this government monitoring program. what do you think? 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