and ayman, the president s position was to continue to collect the telephone records but the government won t keep them. that s not what those companies wanted to hear. now you ve got this privacy panel saying we shouldn t even continue to collect the records, that that in and of itself is illegal. that s right. that is central to the ongoing debate. the use of metadata which depending on who you ask is important or is not important but at the end of the day in the eyes of critics is violating the privacy of citizens whether it s world leaders or whether it is american citizens. the concern is just how pervasive this technology has become and who has access to it, not only the u.s. government but certainly foreign governments may have it and more importantly corporations and what all of that will come down to in terms of the privacy of individual citizens. that is a fundamental question that everybody is trying to grapple with and yet to answer conclusively. thank you very much f
administration is having a big effect among foreign leaders and their attitude and the huge internet companies. you have official in germany, andrea, this week, suggesting that relations between europe and america have not been this bad since the war in iraq when they reached terrible lows. the president reproposed reforms but this had a big impact in europe, perhaps bigger story than it is here and particularly in germany, which is such a strong ally of the united states, where people are very angry about the fact that angela merkel s telephone was intercepted and cause something of a breakdown in relations between europe. now you have the internet companies at davos saying it s not just europeans angry with the government but us losing business. we see this as a threat to american businesses abroad. you see the ceo of yahoo! saying we have to have changes here because this is directly hurting our businesses.
kiev, unbelievable pictures out of the ukraine. you ve got ukraine caught between a desire to pass fi moscow and do trade with moscow and pass fooi europe. opted to go with moscow with strong arming from putin and that infuriated the people on the streets of kiev. they ve been there since november. they are not going anywhere, we re going to take this fight right to the police. we ve had a couple of protesters dying. ayman, you were there not too long ago and seen firsthand how passionate the people are and jay carney saying this is the direct result of the president of the regime not taking into account legitimate grievances of the people. that s correct. that s been the commentary coming out of the political opposition in ukraine since this began. that the government was representing only one person or one part of that society and that is the society that still
kiev, the opposition is protesting against the president s allegiance to russia rather than the european union. clashes have left the capital looking for like a war zone. joining me now to discuss all of this and other foreign policy stories katy kay for bbc world america in washington and aymen moledine. this is a push/pull that involves vladimir putin and caught between two places and ukraine is hugely important in europe. there are certainly echos of the cold war and it looks like from the pictures out of kiev that are astonishing, two sides with pitch battles on other side of the camps in the streets of
thorough review, what he s focused on diplomatically is assuring people we want to strike that balance between privacy and security. having come out of the intelligence community before the state department, i know there are real threats out there. the president knows that. what he talked about with metadata and other things, how we strike that right balance, the changes we re going to make and what we re doing at the state department is going around the world and telling governments what we re doing and not doing, how we want to work together and also telling people all around the world we don t just listen in on average people s phone calls or collect their data if there s not a security reason to do so. i wanted to ask you about the travel alert issued for sochi and all of russia really. experts we talked to say within sochi itself at the venues it might be safe. but that elsewhere in russia, that they don t think that going in public transport, taking trains is safe from terror a