"Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin with news that the National Security Agency has obtained access to the central servers of nine major Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook. The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the top secret program on Thursday, codenamed PRISM, after they obtained several slides from a 41-page training presentation for senior intelligence analysts. It explains how PRISM allows them to access emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, documents and connection logs that allow them to track a person or trace their connections to others. One slide lists the companies by name and the date when each provider began participating over the past six years. But an Apple spokesperson said it had "never heard" of PRISM and added, quote, "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers and any agency requesting customer data must get a court order," they said. Other companies had similar responses.

Well, for more, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, columnist, attorney, and blogger for The Guardian, where he broke his story in—that was headlined "NSA Taps in to Internet Giants’ Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal." This comes after he revealed Wednesday in another exclusive story that the "NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers." According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, the scope of the NSA phone monitoring includes customers of all three major phone networks—Verizon, AT&T and Sprint—as well as records from Internet service providers and purchase information from credit card providers. Glenn Greenwald is also author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. He’s joining us now via Democracy—video stream.

Glenn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Lay out this latest exclusive that you have just reported in The Guardian.

GLENN GREENWALD: There are top-secret NSA documents that very excitingly describe—excitedly describe, boast about even, how they have created this new program called the PRISM program that actually has been in existence since 2007, that enables them direct access into the servers of all of the major Internet companies which people around the world, hundreds of millions, use to communicate with one another. You mentioned all of those—all those names. And what makes it so extraordinary is that in 2008 the Congress enacted a new law that essentially said that except for conversations involving American citizens talking to one another on U.S. soil, the NSA no longer needs a warrant to grab, eavesdrop on, intercept whatever communications they want. And at the time, when those of us who said that the NSA would be able to obtain whatever they want and abuse that power, the argument was made, "Oh, no, don’t worry. There’s a great check on this. They have to go to the phone companies and go to the Internet companies and ask for whatever it is they want. And that will be a check." And what this program allows is for them, either because the companies have given over access to their servers, as the NSA claims, or apparently the NSA has simply seized it, as the companies now claim—the NSA is able to go in—anyone at a monitor in an NSA facility can go in at any time and either read messages that are stored in Facebook or in real time surveil conversations and chats that take place on Skype and Gmail and all other forms of communication. It’s an incredibly invasive system of surveillance worldwide that has zero checks of any kind.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, there is a chart prepared by the NSA in the top-secret document you obtained that shows the breadth of the data it’s able to obtain—email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, Skype chats, file transfers, social networking details. Talk about what this chart reveals.

GLENN GREENWALD: I think the crucial thing to realize is that hundreds of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions—in fact, billions of people around the world essentially rely on the Internet exclusively to communicate with one another. Very few people use landline phones for much of anything. So when you talk about things like online chats and social media messages and emails, what you’re really talking about is the full extent of human communication. And what the objective of the National Security Agency is, as the stories that we’ve revealed thus far demonstrate and as the stories we’re about to reveal into the future will continue to demonstrate—the objective of the NSA and the U.S. government is nothing less than destroying all remnants of privacy. They want to make sure that every single time human beings interact with one another, things that we say to one another, things we do with one another, places we go, the behavior in which we engage, that they know about it, that they can watch it, and they can store it, and they can access it at any time. And that’s what this program is about. And they’re very explicit about the fact that since most communications are now coming through these Internet companies, it is vital, in their eyes, for them to have full and unfettered access to it. And they do.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, as you reported, the PRISM program—not to be confused with prison, the PRISM program—is run with the assistance of the companies that participate, including Facebook and Apple, but all of those who responded to a Guardian request for comment denied knowledge of any of the program. This is what Google said, quote: "We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege [that] we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

GLENN GREENWALD: Right. Well, first of all, after our story was published, and The Washington Post published more or less simultaneously a similar story, several news outlets, including NBC News, confirmed with government officials that they in fact have exactly the access to the data that we describe. The director of national intelligence confirmed to The New York Times, by name, that the program we identify and the capabilities that we described actually exist. So, you have a situation where somebody seems to be lying. The NSA claims that these companies voluntarily allow them the access; the companies say that they never did.

This is exactly the kind of debate that we ought to have out in the open. What exactly is the government doing in how it spies on us and how it reads our emails and how it intercepts our chats? Let’s have that discussion out in the open. To the extent that these companies and the NSA have a conflict and can’t get their story straight, let them have that conflict resolved in front of us. And then we, as citizens, instead of having this massive surveillance apparatus built completely secretly and in the dark without us knowing anything that’s going on, we can then be informed about what kinds of surveillance the government is engaged in and have a reasoned debate about whether that’s the kind of world in which we want to live.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, on Thursday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein told reporters in the Senate gallery that the government’s top-secret court order to obtain phone records on millions of Americans is, quote, "lawful."

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out by the FISA court under the business record section of the PATRIOT Act, therefore it is lawful.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Dianne Feinstein. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, the fact that something is lawful doesn’t mean that it isn’t dangerous or tyrannical or wrong. You can enact laws that endorse tyrannical behavior. And there’s no question, if you look at what the government has done, from the PATRIOT Act, the Protect America Act, the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Amendments Act, that’s exactly what the war on terror has been about.

But I would just defer to two senators who are her colleagues, who are named Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. They have—are good Democrats. They have spent two years now running around trying to get people to listen to them as they’ve been saying, "Look, what the Obama administration is doing in interpreting the PATRIOT Act is so radical and so distorted and warped that Americans will be stunned to learn" — that’s their words — "what is being done in the name of these legal theories, these secret legal theories, in terms of the powers the Obama administration has claimed for itself in how it can spy on Americans."

When the PATRIOT Act was enacted—and you can go back and look at the debates, as I’ve done this week—nobody thought, even opponents of the PATRIOT Act, that it would ever be used to enable the government to gather up everybody’s telephone records and communication records without regard to whether they’ve done anything wrong. The idea of the PATRIOT Act was that when the government suspects somebody of being involved in terrorism or serious crimes, the standard of proof is lowered for them to be able to get these documents. But the idea that the PATRIOT Act enables bulk collection, mass collection of the records of hundreds of millions of Americans, so that the government can store that and know what it is that we’re doing at all times, even when there’s no reason to believe that we’ve done anything wrong, that is ludicrous, and Democratic senators are the ones saying that it has nothing to do with that law.

AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, Glenn, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he stood by what he told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in March, when he said that the National Security Agency does "not wittingly" collect data on millions of Americans. Let’s go to that exchange.

SEN. RON WYDEN: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

JAMES CLAPPER: No, sir.

SEN. RON WYDEN: It does not?

JAMES CLAPPER: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the questioning of the head of the national intelligence, James Clapper, by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: OK. So, we know that to be a lie, not a misleading statement, not something that was sort of parsed in a way that really was a little bit deceitful, but an outright lie. They collect—they collect data and records about the communications activities and other behavioral activities of millions of Americans all the time. That’s what that program is that we exposed on Wednesday. They go to the FISA court every three months, and they get an order compelling telephone companies to turn over the records, that he just denied they collect, with regard to the conversations of every single American who uses these companies to communicate with one another. The same is true for what they’re doing on the Internet with the PRISM program. The same is true for what the NSA does in all sorts of ways.

We are going to do a story, coming up very shortly, about the scope of the NSA’s spying activities domestically, and I think it’s going to shock a lot of people, because the NSA likes to portray itself as interested only in foreign intelligence gathering and only in targeting people who they believe are guilty of terrorism, and yet the opposite is true. It is a massive surveillance state of exactly the kind that the Church Committee warned was being constructed 35 years ago. And we intend to make all those facts available so people can see just how vast it is and how false those kind of statements are.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein. Speaking on MSNBC, she said the leak should be investigated and that the U.S. has a, quote, "culture of leaks."

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: There is nothing new in this program. The fact of the matter is that this was a routine three-month approval, under seal, that was leaked.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Should it be—should the leak be investigated?

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: I think so. I mean, I think we have become a culture of leaks now.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, Dianne Feinstein, being questioned by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Glenn Greenwald, your final response to this? And sum up your findings. They’re talking about you, Glenn.

GLENN GREENWALD: I think Dianne Feinstein may be the most Orwellian political official in Washington. It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we’ve had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we’ve had to learn what our government is doing.

But look, what she’s doing is simply channeling the way that Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power, which is, if you expose what it is that we’re doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we’re doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have been about. It’s what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It’s to create a climate of fear so that nobody will bring accountability to them.

It’s not going to work. I think it’s starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can’t be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we’re certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they’ve been doing.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, we want to thank you for being with us. Is this threat of you being investigated going to deter you in any way, as you continue to do these exclusives, these exposés?

GLENN GREENWALD: No, it’s actually going to embolden me to pursue these stories even more aggressively.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you for being with us, columnist and blogger for The Guardian newspaper. We’ll link to your exposés on our website, "NSA Taps in to Internet Giants’ Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal", as well as "NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily"." - Democracy Now!

Holy hell, how much more food is this guy going to unwrap? Is he Skyping with someone from DPRK and taunting them? Also, he needs a trash bin ASAP.

Imagine skype...

>> ^Reefie:

>> ^schlub:
Ok, I'm ignorant. Can someone explain Asperger, clearly? Everything I've read (which is like, two things) makes it sound like it's just someone who is socially inept... Honestly, the guy in this video is like several people I've encountered in my lifetime... so, I don't get it. What differentiates someone with Asperger from someone who just sucks at talking to people and has what some consider weird hobbies/interests (like 'Bronies')?

I'd recommend looking up "Theory of Mind" because generally autistic people have an impaired theory of mind. A basic explanation of this is summed up by a difficulty to guage/recognise other people's emotional responses to given situations - it's very difficult to perceive what it's like for other people. This can make social interaction very awkward, since conversation is hard to follow unless there is some first-hand experience of the topic being discussed. Think of a lack of empathy except in situations where prior experience allows the autistic person to recall how it affected them. This is a very rudimentary explanation and there is much more to theory of mind and I'd definitely encourage reading a bit more about it since it affects everyone, NT and aspie alike.
There's lots more to Asperger's Syndrome than just an impaired theory of mind. The way the brain files information is another example of a significant difference. Recollection of prior events is a very different process when comparing NT people to aspies. Another difference is the way a lot of background processing of information for most people is actually foreground processing for aspies (i.e. direct awareness of the information being absorbed and how it relates to existing knowledge). An example of this could be the observation of body language - most people absorb that info subconsciously whereas an autistic person has to be trained or train themselves to be aware of the signals and then actively calculate what those signals can potentially mean about the person exhibiting the behaviour.
Hope that offers some insight, just bear in mind that there's no single diagnosis for Asperger's. It's a collection of symptoms that are considered and when enough boxes are ticked the diagnosis can be confirmed. Not all criteria are essential for the diagnosis and it's entirely possible for two aspies to have a number of different symptoms out of the overall list of criteria. That's the way of it, and justifies the use of the word "spectrum" when referring to autism in general.
Good question BTW


This is fantastic, thank you!

>> ^schlub:

Ok, I'm ignorant. Can someone explain Asperger, clearly? Everything I've read (which is like, two things) makes it sound like it's just someone who is socially inept... Honestly, the guy in this video is like several people I've encountered in my lifetime... so, I don't get it. What differentiates someone with Asperger from someone who just sucks at talking to people and has what some consider weird hobbies/interests (like 'Bronies')?


I'd recommend looking up "Theory of Mind" because generally autistic people have an impaired theory of mind. A basic explanation of this is summed up by a difficulty to guage/recognise other people's emotional responses to given situations - it's very difficult to perceive what it's like for other people. This can make social interaction very awkward, since conversation is hard to follow unless there is some first-hand experience of the topic being discussed. Think of a lack of empathy except in situations where prior experience allows the autistic person to recall how it affected them. This is a very rudimentary explanation and there is much more to theory of mind and I'd definitely encourage reading a bit more about it since it affects everyone, NT and aspie alike.

There's lots more to Asperger's Syndrome than just an impaired theory of mind. The way the brain files information is another example of a significant difference. Recollection of prior events is a very different process when comparing NT people to aspies. Another difference is the way a lot of background processing of information for most people is actually foreground processing for aspies (i.e. direct awareness of the information being absorbed and how it relates to existing knowledge). An example of this could be the observation of body language - most people absorb that info subconsciously whereas an autistic person has to be trained or train themselves to be aware of the signals and then actively calculate what those signals can potentially mean about the person exhibiting the behaviour.

Hope that offers some insight, just bear in mind that there's no single diagnosis for Asperger's. It's a collection of symptoms that are considered and when enough boxes are ticked the diagnosis can be confirmed. Not all criteria are essential for the diagnosis and it's entirely possible for two aspies to have a number of different symptoms out of the overall list of criteria. That's the way of it, and justifies the use of the word "spectrum" when referring to autism in general.

Good question BTW

>> ^njjh201:

OK as a piece of comedy this may or may not be any good (not going to watch all 12 minutes, that's for sure) ... but ... why are people on YouTube thinking this is real? Since the recording starts before the guy picks up the Skype call.
YouTube people... stupider than you think.

Well them I'm stupid too, I assumed he was using another piece of equipment to video himself, as his line of sight is looking down at the screen but the video seems to be coming from higher up. No need to watch all 12 minutes either, you can skip ahead every 30 seconds, watch 10 seconds and still witness carnage

Does it have to be a Christian church? Maybe atheists need to establish The Church of No God and attend regularly, possibly attending by way of webcast or Skype conference call.

What about churches such as those attended by members of the cult of Scientology? Does attending the church of a religion based upon a blatantly false premise exclude an individual from having to pay this proposed tax? Maybe this is an opportunity for religions to prove they are genuine, any religion that is unable to prove that it is based on genuine deities doesn't count and therefore its congregation must pay the tax.

There's potential in this idea if it gets thought out properly in such a way that causes problems for organised religion instead of benefits. Or maybe my mind is just too twisted and I should accept that it's a crazy idea that will never make it into any legislation

Some points:

* No sir, you are completely WRONG about vertical videos, they are hard to watch, and are ridiculous. You not being bothered to hold your phone horizontally is the problem, not people who don't want to watch something where the majority of visual information is in the direction our eyes are not.

* His gripes against Apple are largely correct. I mean, they do prescribe how you must use things and what you must have on your device, but that's not entirely unfair. I mean, it's kind of fair for an OS to be able to expect that certain components just will be there. The camera app, the email app and so on.

* Not being able to remove them from your 'home screens' because Apple doesn't differentiate between a 'desktop' and a list of all installed apps is kind of the problem here. Android has google apps that you can't get rid of unless you root your device and then risk it not working properly. But you don't have to really ever see those apps because you just don't put them on your homescreens.

But in general he's quite correct (except the vertical video thing, he's wrong on that), and it's why I just soooo dislike using apple products in general. I think their hardware is largely nice (although the original iPad lacking a camera at all, then the iPad 2 rocking an amazingly crap one, much in line with the iPhones' original crappy cameras), but when using software to interact with iOS devices I end up going insane. I HATE iTunes, it's insanely restrictive and locked down and... urgh... I dislike not being able to make an iPhone or iPad have nicely clutter free 'desktops' with what I want on them, but am restricted to just rows of icons and folders.

And people flock to them... and ooh and ahh as Apple announce features that have been around for years in other devices and crow about them like they're brand new and amazing. (Facetime anyone? Really, it's been around for yeeeeeaaaars in Australia over the mobile networks, no WiFi needed. And you know what? Pretty much no one uses them. It's as easy as just making a call, except you do it as a video call, but no-one cares, no-one uses it.

And yet Apple launch facetime and everyone goes nuts.

Do you know anyone at all who uses it?

Skype, sure... because when you're at home or office or in a hotel room, that's when you want to be able to talk to someone and see them, and it being on an object on a table works really well... when you're on a phone? Not that many applications.

Sweet! Do you guys use Skype/Vent? Is that the name of a server or just the area in-game? I've not played at all yet but yes I'm already all pre-loaded and ready to go for tonight. Hit up my profile w/ info if you'll let me into your secret club!

Introducing the new Apple iPerson complete with multi touch and volume control, doesn’t it feel good to touch, doesn’t it feel good to touch, doesn’t it feel good to touch.

My world is so digital, I have forgotten what that feels like.
It used to be hard to connect when friends formed cliques, but now it’s even more difficult to connect now that clicks form friends.

But who am I to judge…

I face Facebook more than books face me hoping to book face to faces, I update my status 420 space to prove Im still breathing; failure.
To do this daily means my whole web wide world would forget that I exist. But with 3000 friends online only 5 I can count in real life, why wouldn’t I spend more time in the world where there are more people that LIKE me. Wouldn’t you?

Here it doesn’t matter if I am an amateur person, as long as I have a pro-file, my smile is 50% genuine and 50% genuine-HD, you will need blu-rays to read the whites of my teeth, but im not that focused.

Ten tabs open, hoping, my problems can be resolved with a 1600 x 1700 revolution, this is a problem with this evolution, doubled over, we used to sit in tree tops, till we swung down and stand up right, then someone slipped a disc, now we’re doubled over at desktops.

From the Garden of Eden, to the branches of Macintosh, Apple picking has always come at a great cost.
iPod, iMac, iPhone, iChat, I can do all of these things without making iContact.

We used to sprint to pick and store Blackberries, now we run to the Sprint store to pick Blackberrys, it’s scary.
I can’t hear the sound of mother nature speaking, over all that Tweeting, and along with it is our ability to feel as it’s fleeting.

You would think these headphone jacks inject in the flesh the way we connect, the disconnect, power ON. So we are powerless, they got us love drugged. Like e-pills, so we e-trade, e-mail, e-motion like e-commerce because now money can buy love, for 9.95 a month – click!

To proceed to checkout – click! To X out where our hearts once were – click!
I’ve uploaded this hug, I hope she gets it – click!
I’m making love to wife, I hope she’s logged in – click!
I’m holding my daughter over a Skype conference call while shes crying in the crib in the next room – click!

So when my phone goes off in my hip, I touch and I touch and I touch, because in a world where there are voices that are only read and laughter is never heard or I’m so desperate to feel that I hope the technologic in reverse the universes so the screen can touch me back, and maybe it will, when our technology is advance enough to make us human again.

I might do it, I'm still figuring out if I'm going to play though. I guess I'll reply back later. I'll have either vent or skype available.

It's cool and all, but isn't also a factor of hardware and what is in the "startup?" I feel like my pc booted hella fast when I first got it, but as you use it and add applications (skype, steam, etc) that start up automatically, the machine isn't really usable for a bit longer than it was when you first got it...

Based on other videos in this series, we know where he is heading, removing the first past the post vote system. I agree that is needed. However, as the US doesn't have a parliamentary system we have a couple of other issues to address.
First is that we've had 435 Reps since 1911 (save for a couple years where it went to 437). We had a tad over 92 Million people here in 1911, or one Rep per a bit over 200,000 people. The population is now over 298 Million, or one Rep per 680,000 people. If we went back to just the 1911 ratio we would have 1,400 Reps today, and the US population gets better representation, especially if tied with one of the alternative vote systems he's talked about already (or the one he hasn't gone into detail about yet, which I guess is coming up soon). That would require a pay cut for being a Rep, and most Reps would have to stay in their home district and cast their vote via Skype or something like that. However, I doubt that would ever happen. It would make it harder for Reps to be purchased the way they are now, and they like being paid to screw us over.
Next, even with a greatly increased number of Reps, you wouldn't get enough small states to agree to remove the Electoral College and the problems that comes with, which forces us to take another method to handle that, and it is simply remove the winner take all. Each Representative district keeps its electoral vote, and that vote has to go to whomever won the popular vote for that district alone. So states like Florida, Ohio and the like would have their electoral votes split many ways. The two electoral votes go the the overall winner of the state, unless the percentage is close enough (and what defines close enough I don't know, perhaps under 40/60? but that would be for Congress to find an agreement on) to warrant splitting those last two electoral votes. This essentially gives a popular vote while keeping the electoral college intact, though on rare occasions one could still win the popular vote and loose the electoral vote, but it would be closer. It also means that you no longer just have to win a few key areas of a few key states, but you really have to try and win over much larger areas, and third party candidates may take an electoral vote or two. This only changes the outcome of the Presidential election, and I think this one could be pushed through...
Of course getting rid of First Past the Post should perhaps be priority one, but I think the two parties are too entrenched in the US to allow it to happen, and the American public too brain dead to know there are alternative methods out there, or how to use them if they came... considering how many got confused by the butterfly ballot... a ballot where you write numbers down may be a bit much. <sigh>

>> ^MarineGunrock:

Um, I wasn't talking about Cenk. Even Tits McGee's audio is terrible. Also, bandwidth? What bandwitdth are they paying for? Last I checked, Youtube was free. >> ^BoneyD:
>> ^MarineGunrock:
God, I hate TYT. Why the fuck is their audio recording so shitty? My cell phone has better clarity than these morons' set-up.
Also, why the fuck can't I just watch a newsclip?

Because Cenk is in New York, talking via PolyCom back to their Los-Angeles studio. Previously, they were using Skype while he was over there, which was just a god-awful experience; constantly breaking up or cutting out.
Why isn't it better? Well... I guess despite TYT turning over $1 million a year from member fees, advertising and YouTube partnership, their 11 employees and bandwidth costs must be expensive. The stream from the LA studio itself has improved over what it was a couple of years ago and the YouTube clips are generally much higher quality.
I dunno. For a non-corporate media outlet, I think they do okay.



They broadcast their whole 2 hour show on the site, looping 24 hours a day. Statsholic shows ~45k unique visitors a day and similar from freewebsitereport. How much data they actually use, I have no idea; but I didn't suggest that bandwidth was their sole expense.

BTW, I had watched this segemnt from the live stream. When I went back and watched this YT clip, it was WAY clearer. Is it 1080p? No. But does it really, really need to be that good?

Um, I wasn't talking about Cenk. Even Tits McGee's audio is terrible. Also, bandwidth? What bandwitdth are they paying for? Last I checked, Youtube was free. >> ^BoneyD:

>> ^MarineGunrock:
God, I hate TYT. Why the fuck is their audio recording so shitty? My cell phone has better clarity than these morons' set-up.
Also, why the fuck can't I just watch a newsclip?

Because Cenk is in New York, talking via PolyCom back to their Los-Angeles studio. Previously, they were using Skype while he was over there, which was just a god-awful experience; constantly breaking up or cutting out.
Why isn't it better? Well... I guess despite TYT turning over $1 million a year from member fees, advertising and YouTube partnership, their 11 employees and bandwidth costs must be expensive. The stream from the LA studio itself has improved over what it was a couple of years ago and the YouTube clips are generally much higher quality.
I dunno. For a non-corporate media outlet, I think they do okay.