...our republican opponent here on this stage has voted for donald trump twice. mr. garvey, you voted for him twice... as your own man, what is your decision? garvey is wrong for california. but garvey's surging in the polls. fox news says garvey would be a boost to republican control of the senate. stop garvey. adam schiff for senate. i'm adam schiff, and i approve this message. danger which ones are most vulnerable. macy's stated reason for leaving union square is business restructure. but our media partner, the san francisco standard, talks to employees who say rampant shoplifting is also to blame. but first, california

march primary is just five days away and one of the biggest battles in the bay area is for south bay. congressional seat. you are watching, getting answers. i'm kristen sze. thanks for joining us. we'll get to those conversations in just a moment. but first, the storm door is open and rain is moving through this weekend. we are tracking a level one storm today on our exclusive abc7 news storm impact scale. we'll see rain and wind here in the bay area. in fact, you're seeing it now from this emeryville camera looking at i-80 and across the bay raining right now. and of course, that means snow in the sierra. abc seven news meteorologist lisa argen has a look at what's in store for this evening and the weekend. the rain and wind continue to push through the bay area with our level one system, and this is just the beginning of several rainy days, so light to moderate rain continues throughout the day. >> today. and these winds already have been quite breezy to gusty 25 to 35 miles an hour out of the southwest. and that makes for a slippery evening commute. so if we go hour by

hour throughout the rest of the afternoon soon, notice this cold front slicing through the east bay and the peninsula right in time for that afternoon drive, and then it kind of falls apart into the south bay. but throughout the later evening hours, we still are going to see some showers. and that's when our colder air moves on in. and that's going to set the stage for some low snow levels and some more downpours. with a level two for your friday rainfall estimates through tonight, anywhere from just a couple of hundredths from the bay shore. parts of the peninsula upwards of about a third of an inch in santa rosa. so this one really not a biggie. just setting the stage for what's to come with a pretty good system throughout the next several days, or a series of systems. here's our wind, our wind, and you'll notice that it continues to die back throughout the evening hours, but still, keep that in mind if you're headed home or out and about and of course, the blizzard warning that continues throughout the afternoon, noon and right on through the weekend, bringing anywhere from 5 to 10ft of snow in the sierra nevada. so waking up tomorrow to some downpours,

the possibility of a thunderstorm 40s to near 50 in the accuweather seven day forecast, our level one system today a sloppy evening commute. level two tomorrow and lingering showers with some downpours on saturday and into sunday. >> you can get the latest forecast and track the rain and snow anytime with our live doppler seven radar. just search abc seven bay area in your device's app store to download it now. next tuesday, californians will go to the polls on super tuesday along with 12 other states. there are two high profile congressional seats in the bay area up for grabs, so this week, getting answers is having conversations with some of the leading candidates. it's longtime south bay congresswoman anna eshoo is retiring and not running for reelection in california. 16th congressional district. although the district has been redrawn, this essentially opens up a long held seat for the first time in 32 years. the district includes portions of san mateo, santa clara, and santa cruz counties in a crowded field. a recent poll shows up to one third of voters are still undecided, and

so we asked each of the three candidates who have raised the most funds and previously held elected office to chat with us, and each has accepted our invitation to come on the show. the top two vote getters in march will move to on the general election in november. joining us live now in the studio is current santa clara county supervisor and former state senator joe simitian. supervisor simitian, nice to have you on the show. nice to see you again. thanks for driving into san francisco. no worries. all right. well, of all the candidates, i think your name has certainly been out there the longest in this arena. but tell the new voters something about yourself, your life story in brief. >> sure. i you know, i, uh, grew up in the east coast and then the rocky mountain midwest and made my way to the peninsula just in time to start high school. and this really was the place i should be to be the person i should be. and it's just been a marvelous opportunity in so many ways, personally, professionally and in terms of public service. i started my life out on, uh, or my public service life, at least as a school board member, which i like to say is the toughest

job there is because you're dealing with the thing that is most precious to people, their kids served as a local mayor, county supervisor, state assembly member, state senator. so, uh, one one uh, wag sort of described me as the swiss army knife of public officials. got a you know, experience that ranges across all of those different areas. and have felt good about the fact that i've been able to accomplish good things and improve the lives of the people i represent. >> i think a lot of people associate you most with your there ought to be a law contest that you ran. yeah, well, we get to suggest, you know what we think you should push to become. well, i was in the state capitol for a year, and, you know, quickly came to the conclusion that i wasn't hearing enough from my constituents and that you know, while interest groups were going to parade through the office and say, here's what we'd like to see, i wanted to find a way to get folks at home the opportunity to participate directly. >> so we had a contest, we called it there ought to be a law a little bit hokey, but by the time i wrapped up my time in sacramento, we were getting 400

plus suggestions for legislation every year, and i should tell you and your viewers that, gosh, more than 20 of those ideas were actually bills that i authored got passed, signed into law, and were living with them today. >> all right, now you want to make federal law and running for this position? of course. so i want to talk about a couple of the biggest issues in your district. in district 16, housing and transit. certainly, key, expensive, often frustrating. what do you see as the role of a congressman in trying to make that better locally here? well well, you know, clearly we're going to need more federal funding devoted to affordable housing. >> that's just part of the equation. but we're also going to need the federal government to sort of reevaluate how it looks at housing across the country. you know, our region is different. it's a very pricey region. a lot of folks were shut out trying to get folks in washington to understand the unique challenges of our high cost area is not going to be easy, but i am game for that effort. again we're going to need more money specifically devoted toward affordable housing. we need more what are called vouchers to make federal housing programs work. but we're

also going to need the folks in washington, d.c, to have a different take on how they do their work. i sometimes think they're stuck in a model that's 50 or 60 years old. i was able to help save a mobile home park in my community that had 400 folks who were about to be tossed out into the street, lost a loss of 100 units. if we didn't take action and you know what i discovered? talking to the federal housing authority folks, is they said, well, we don't do mobile homes. i said, well, maybe you need to rethink that. maybe we need to be a little more creative. so so part of it is just the dollars part of it is rethinking the way things happen and part of it is helping them understand the high cost out here in california, all of those are challenging, but i'm up for the effort and i think we can have some impact. >> all right. i also want to talk about the homeless issue, um, growing crisis because the latest point in time count shows nearly 10,000 unhoused people in santa clara county and more households, over 4000 new households experiencing homelessness. what could be done on a federal level there? >> well, again, you know, it's one of those issues where

everybody says somebody ought to do something, but they think somebody else ought to do something. and my view has been, i don't care what level of government you serve in or at, you got to step up and do your part. so i've been working on these issues as a county supervisor because local cities in santa clara county haven't been able to create the affordable housing, haven't been able to address the challenges in their communities at the federal level. again much of it's going to be about funding. much of it's going to be about sort of rethinking what housing programs are all about, not just conventional housing, but addressing housing issues. but a lot of it also has to be about the root causes of homelessness. folks who have mental health issues, folks who have substance abuse issues, folks who are, you know, really just got knocked off their feet by a tough economy. you don't address those root causes. you're going to be chasing the problem forever and ever. and i sometimes think it's sort of easy to give a speech or talk about some of this stuff in washington, but tougher to get folks to focus on the root causes of homelessness. >> district 16 is tricky in that it's also home to leading tech

company is what kind of legislation would you push for that would balance that drive for innovation, supporting investments, but also watching out for the folks who use i and use social media apps. >> yeah, it it can't be an either or. you have to accept your response ability, particularly as a silicon valley legislator, for to regulate the industry where it needs regulation. but you also have to be careful that you don't stifle innovation or job creation in the area. i've done both. i authored privacy legislation when i was in the state legislature. if you've ever gotten one of those notices saying, hey, your information has been stolen, i have. yeah, well, that's because i wrote the law that says, you've got to tell a consumer when their information has been stolen so they can protect themselves. i got pushback from the industry at the time. over the years, they've learned to work with the law. but over the years, millions of consumers have been able to protect themselves because they know they are compromised. as a result of that law, our time is short. >> but i do want to ask you about immigration, an because that's an important issue. certainly in this diverse district. what kind of

immigration policies would you support in the house? >> well, the whole i mean, our immigration system is broken has been for 25 years. i think we have to start finding ways to fix the system where we can. i think if we keep holding out for a wholesale reform, which is ideal, but it just hasn't happened for 25 years. one very tangible area there are 3 million people in this country, and that's that's the right number, 3 million who haven't had their asylum cases heard. that means they're here in the country, don't know what their status is. it means that the system has broken down effectively for them and for all of us. we need to pump up the number of folks who are judges in those asylum courts, staffing those asylum courts. hear those cases. and i think that's a place where republicans and democrats should be able to find common ground and rule of law, make the system work that would be good for our entire nation, and certainly for the 3 million folks who don't know what their status is. >> all right, all right, santa clara county supervisor joe

simitian and running for california congressional district 16. thank you so much for coming in to chat with us. and share your views. >> good to be with you. all right. >> our meet the candidate chats continue tomorrow on getting answers. we'll wrap up the week with latifah simon running in california's 12th congressional district. so please join us for that conversation again with lateefah simon. before you vote on super tuesday. coming up next, doorbell camera safety concerns are those cameras that many homeowners install for safety, actually compromising their cyber security. consumer reports has a new report you need to hear about and advice

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in instead of keeping them out. a new report from consumer reports found that to be a problem. joining us live now are david de la rocha and steve blair. privacy and security researchers for consumer reports. david and steve, thanks for your time. thank you. so why do consumer reports do this study? >> consumer reports is known for testing consumer products obviously, but more and more, those products are connected to the internet. and therefore there's a possibility for them to be hacked or otherwise take advantage of consumers. so therefore, we now test privacy and security as products. >> okay. so as part of the testing, what did you do and what did you find. and so we test specifically we're looking for any privacy and security concerns. >> um, mainly exposure of sensitive information, which is what we found in these particular video doorbells. there was a lot of sensitive information exposed. uh, but one of the larger concerns we found was, uh, unauthorized and unauthenticated access, uh,

remote access to a server that hosts still images from the video doorbells, which, you know, could allow a malicious actor to kind of, you know, have unfettered access and intimate knowledge to what's going on at your front door. >> so how did they get in there? >> well, there's a couple of ways we were able to gain access through just looking through the network that the doorbells were connected to. but, uh, a little more alarming was the ability to just take complete control of the device, uh, just by pushing a button. um, i think we were able to get access in under a minute. >> yeah, under it took under one minute to completely take ownership of the doorbell. >> so you can start watching people in their homes. you can do that. you can get their ip addresses, wi-fi, network names. i imagine all that which is frightening. so let me ask you which particular brands or models seem most vulnerable. um, did you find that to be a difference?

>> these two particular brands, hacking and tuck, where we found these extreme vulnerabilities, were by far the most egregious in terms of vulnerability. uh, they also seem to have a bunch of other parrot brands. they're the same. they look exactly the same, but they're under different brands. there's about 10 or 11 other brands that are exhibit the exact same behavior. uh, we tested fishpot and drake blue as well. we were able to replicate the same issues on those devices as well. >> so where are these manufactured and sold and. >> well, these are manufactured mainly in china. um, like dave was saying, they're white box kind of devices, whereas they'll take one and just rebrand it over and over again and sell them on different markets. we found them on amazon. we found them on walmart, we found them on, uh, a whole bunch of different timo. teemu. yeah, a whole bunch of different retailers. so so amazon specifically was problematic as it was showing that, uh, it was the amazon choice. >> oh my gosh. but that is just

based on reviews, right? if customers like and don't know about this, it'll get good reviews and be pushed up to an amazon choice. right. so have you pointed this out? does amazon know this problem associated with this particular camera. and are they taking action to either crack down or warn buyers. >> yeah. so far temu and amazon have committed to removing these from being sold. uh i know there's been outreach to several other online retailers. um and as far as we know, to the moment of the publication, it appears that most of them are, uh, either have already taken action to remove them from sale or are going to be taking action. >> oh, good. okay. so does price point seem to make a difference? that is, are the more expensive ones less vulnerable or is that not an issue that's not normally the best way to determine. >> unfortunately. i wish you could say you get what you pay for, but in iot world, the security. unfortunately, that's not always the case. although in this particular instance, the

cheaper products, um, in this batch that we've tested seem to be exhibiting the worst behavior. >> i mean, i asked you that because i think people sitting here watching this are thinking, okay, well, then which one should i buy? do you have any advice for people for how to vet the products out there? >> it can be difficult to vet that type of information. that's kind of like the invisible behaviors that a lot of consumers aren't aware of. um, i would suggest going to consumer reports and taking a look at the work that we're doing. uh, we're digging pretty deeply into these types of devices, and we score on privacy and security, as well as the general usability of these types of products. >> do you have any recommendations for people who might have already purchased one of those products that you show, one of those brands that you found problematic? i mean, should they throw a mouse, stop using them? that seems like a waste of money. is there a way to safeguard yourself while still using it? >> i would absolutely, uh, throw the $30 in the trash, uh, unplug it and take it off of your front door immediately. if you have an ec in a talk, uh, rate blue or fish bot. uh, and if you if you

don't know what you've bought, you can google those brands. and if they look similar to any of these doorbells behind us here, you can probably bet that they're, uh, vulnerable. >> are there any brands that you would say these are absolute safe, at least according to this particular study we did, there was never in the computer security world, there's never anything as completely safe if it's plugged in, there's a chance, um, some have better behaviors than others, particularly. >> these were absolutely outrageous. uh, how poorly? uh, they had, um, done their security. so >> so this raises the question of how many other products that are in our homes that are vulnerable to this type of hacking, right? so we're going to wrap it up, but real quickly for 30s, there's something else in our home that we need to watch out for. >> there's a myriad of products that, um, you know, the more connected you get, the more risk you have, right? it's a interconnected world in particular. all these iot

products, smart home products, um, they all have risk associated with them, some more than others. uh, but in particular, these devices with the sensitive information exposed, it could open up, uh, other attack vectors to other devices on your network. >> yeah. at consumer reports, we test a very wide variety of connected devices for privacy and security. so a lot of that information, uh, those types of products you can find on the website. >> all right. david de la rocha and steve blair with consumer reports. thank you. so much. >> thank you. thank you. >> coming up, macy's workers react to the news of the union square store closing their view of what's to blame is much different from what macy's and mayor london breed are saying. our media partner, the san francisco standard, joins us with their eye opening conversations

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potential factors in the future of the upscale shopping district . macy's stated that it's closing 150 underperforming stores nationwide, driven by changing consumer shopping patterns away from big department stores towards smaller niche stores. but our media partner at the san francisco standard is hearing another reason from employees who actually work at the union square location. they have this new article out quoting workers who say ramped shoplifting is also to blame for the closure. joining us live now to talk about it is joel umanzor, a reporter for the standard. joel, thanks for coming on the show. >> thanks for having me again. >> you're part of a team of reporters that went out and talked to macy's employees after the news broke on tuesday. what did they tell you? >> so i and two other reporters were able to talk to various employees over five about the reasons why uh- macy's at union square is teaming, shutting down. it's due to because of a, you know, rampant retail theft as well as a lack of sales, but primarily because of the retail

theft that comes in droves, which is very different from what mayor london breed said this week. >> let's listen. >> we've had even this past holiday season between november 20th and the end of the year. we've seen a significant decline in crime. and so we know this has nothing to do with that decision. it's really a larger business decision that macy's has made. >> so what she's saying is not the crime, not the city, but of course, you know, there's so many different sides. and these employees, what did they tell you in terms of how often did they witness shoplifting? >> so the employees that we spoke to said that it's almost a daily occurrence that people will come in, whether that be in uh, you know, teams or just individuals that come in and try to, you know, stuff things in their bags that it'll be almost a daily occurrence and usually more so around the time that macy's is closing around nine, 10:00 at night. and what types

of items do employees see being taken? so you know, the items range from, you know, fragrance boxes is in that particular department out of the store in the men's department. we spoke to employees who said blazers men's underwear, um, you know, wallets as well as, you know, high end sunglasses at the sunglass hut kiosk that's in the store as well. >> i see. so some of the items worth hundreds of dollars, i imagine. >> yeah, that particularly that sunglasses incident that was mentioned was a pair of glasses that are worth over $1,000. >> and did they describe what the shoplifters like? i think they categorize in your article the two types of shoplifters. yeah, yeah. >> what are they? so from when we spoke to one of the employees who has like knowledge of the asset protection side of things at macy's, they mentioned that often shoplifters will come in two categories. one of, you know, people out there using drugs that will come in and try

to steal items from a list that those at the fences will try to be selling, um, as well as juveniles who will come in and kind of more brazenly stuff things in their bag and try to leave without paying. >> and of course, those are things the city is struggling with as a whole and has been trying to resolve both drug use and also so, you know, as a state, the whole retail theft thing. so let me ask you what the union is saying about this. did you reach out to them to see what they feel? if this is a factor? >> so yeah, we spoke to the union that represents the employees at at macy's. they they did acknowledge the retail theft at the store, but also were quick to add that it's part of a broader issue that macy's is facing. i know you mentioned that the 150 locations nationwide. um, so yes, they acknowledge the retail aspect of it. the retail theft aspect of it, but also said that it's part of a broader issue that's, you know, facing retail in san francisco, right. >> and well, i'm not saying that analysts may say all those things could be true in

different portions because it's never just one thing usually. right okay. so the closure date is not set pending on macy's selling that building. eventually though, there will be layoffs. so what did these employees hope will happen. >> so some of them, you know, were are not too worried in the immediate future. i know that you know, timeline were different from the people that we spoke to. some were saying two years, you know, we're more anticipating like 3 or 4 years. so some weren't thinking, you know, or panicking in the immediate future, but some were also just questioning how long they want to, you know, they want to stay around and stick around working at that particular location. >> well, let's hope that whoever comes in next will also be a job creator. joel umanzor, thank you so much. >> thank you very much. >> you can check out joel and others san francisco standard story. whether it's on this one or other original reporting on their website, sf standard .com, and a reminder abc seven news is streaming 24 over seven. get the abc7 bay area app and join us whenever you want. wherever you

are, we'll let's go win this thing! then we hit the road and never stopped. you shared with me your frustration at working harder to barely get by and afford a place to live. your fears for our democracy and freedoms and your dreams for yourself, your family, and the future. it is not too late to realize those dreams. i'm adam schiff, and i approve this message because together we can still get big things done.

tonight, the border and dueling visiting. president biden and donald trump both there. also, the flight from new york city, the emergency landing in boston. and this new major storm, the blizzard warnings already tonight. first, this evening, immigration and the border. president biden, donald trump, both on the southern border tonight, arriving at nearly the same time. and president biden's invitation to donald trump tonight. mary bruce is there.e