announcer: building a better bay area. moving forward, finding solutions. this is abc7 news. to state whether he supports the cash payment part of reparations proposal approved by the california reparations task force. we will talk with a member of the task force to break down the proposal and how they came up with the figures that could pay some black residents up to $1.2 million. also, you know that fake parking ticket scam? today, a cyber security firm will join us to explain how you can protect yourself. but first, senator dianne

feinstein makes her long-awaited return to the senate. senate majority leader chuck schumer pushed her in in a wheelchair. this marks the 89-year-old senator first return to the capitol since she contracted shingles in february. joining us live is phil matier. >> it certainly was an interesting day in washington and california. kristen: what is the reaction? >> so far, it has been either happy or silent. supporters include nancy pelosi and gavin newsom. it is a good day for them. diane feinstein is back on the senate. it is not such great news for progressive democrats who have been calling for her to step aside. in part because of her condition, but also politics. they wanted the governor to appoint someone even more liberal than dianne feinstein, something he was hesitant to do.

kristen: can we first address her health. is she still suffering lingering effects from shingles? phil: yes. what happened was in february, she was diagnosed with shingles. this came after she had other health issues. she is 89 years old. as you can see, she is not the same person she was four or even two years ago. she has also had questions about her mental acuity. it came to a head when she came down with shingles. it turns out one of the shingles areas was close to her ear and that led to a number of complications including questions about balance, being able to handle herself. that led her to a prolonged stay at the hospital. and then a prolonged stay at home as well until it was deemed by the doctors she was ready to come back. kristen: today we saw video of her being wheeled in in a

wheelchair. her statement did make reference to that. there are some balance issues and she may need a wheelchair from time to time for a while. talk about what this means in terms of her schedule. phil: she said she is going to be on a later schedule. that is because, like you said, she is frail. but she is not the only u.s. senator who is having health issues or have had health issues. she is going to be going on what is called a light schedule. she to every committee hearing. she may not be participating in caucuses. what she will do is show up for the votes when it is critical. these days, that is happening more often because of the 50/50 split in the u.s. senate. it means every vote counts. if you don't have all the votes, you might as well have no votes. her presence on the judiciary committee might likely mean she may be able to help move judges

who are up for approval by the senate into approval. democratic judges can get on the bench faster. there is the debt ceiling vote coming up. she will be there for that, the hope is. she will be wearing the democratic jersey and voting. aside from that, it remains to be seen how active she is. kristen: we've got her statement on the screen she issued today on returning to washington, d.c. after three months absence, she says the senate faces many important issues. the most pressing is to ensure our government does not default on its financial obligations. talking about the debt ceiling. i also look forward to resuming my work on the judiciary committee in terms of voting to confirm biden's nominees, considering the president's judicial nominees. realistically, what does she miss? i do not know how many votes she missed, but that that at a stop

to the democratic agenda? phil: no. she missed 91 votes in her absence. but it is not the number of votes you miss because a lot of these votes are pro forma. it is the important ones that make the difference. so far she has not missed an important vote. her presence on the judiciary committee however is critical. if the democrats and president biden want to put their judges into the judicial chambers in federal courts around the country, they need those votes. republicans were not going to allow her to be replaced. so, her vote is going to be needed. that is part of the pressure that was on her. i would like to say that for all the talk of the pressure on dianne feinstein to return, from what i have heard from those close to her, she was the one putting on the pressure saying, i want to return. it was family and doctors saying they were not sure she was ready.

she had a meeting with nancy pelosi who is also from san francisco and they talked about a lot of things. they came to the conclusion that yes, she is ready to go back. and so that is what she decided to do. kristen: you mentioned there have been questions about whether she has been the same. and then this. has her return quieted the calls from her own party? we are talking about aoc and prominent voices, to resign, have those voices gone away? phil: i wouldn't think they will go away, but i think they will quiet down for a while. we are going to have to see how things play out. the governor is in no rush to replace dianne feinstein. he has said that if he did, it would be with an african-american woman. this comes at a time when we already have three democrats running to replace her. the idea of her leaving early is not a comfortable one for the governor ran for a number of democrats. a lot of people would say it is

time for youngblood in washington and others would say it is time for an election to decide who the next generation is going to be. critics will be quiet, but not silenced. kristen: has this raised the issue as to whether the senate should change their rules? phil: it has brought up two sticky issues. one, does a senator have to be present to vote? so far, that has led to some pretty traumatic votes where senators have been rolled in on your knees in wheelchairs in order to vote. a second question that came up in all of this, how do you decide when a senator is incapacitated? when the president is incapacitated, we have a constitution that says it goes to the vice president. we do not have that in the constitution for senators or members of the house of representatives.

there is no constitutional or legal way to say somebody is unfit physically or mentally to be a senator, except for the senator themselves. kristen: has this brought up questions surrounding term limits? phil: we always have questions about term limits. two questions are constant. one is term limits, because you can't do age limits. the second one is, should every state get two senators or should it be broken up by population? the second one is not going to get resolved anytime soon. we have to remember it was just two years ago, no, four years ago? a couple years back, dianne feinstein ran for senate. four years ago she ran for u.s. senate and the voters of california were aware of her age and questions about her frailty but they voted her back in overwhelmingly. it is ultimately up to the voters to decide every six years on a senator and it is up for

the senator to decide between. kristen: she is not going to run again next year. her term expires in early 2025. there will be a change. thank you. up next, california's proposal for reparations payments.

simcoe governor newsom declined to exclusively support reparations payments. cash payments are one of the recommendations in the report issued over the weekend by the california repar force was state lawmakers and signed into law by governor newsom. joining us is the a member of the california reparations task force and chair of the

department of geography at uc berkeley. thanks for your time. >> thanks for having me. kristen: governor newsom created the task force after george floyd's murder. it was the first in the nation for a state to do this. what were you tasked with doing? >> the task force was charged with first creating an accounting of the history of harms against african-americans in the state and for coming up with recommendations on how to remedy those harms, including compensation. kristen: after years of work, you proposed a list of proposals that will now go to the state legislature. the headline is, if you look at the newspaper headline, up to 1.2 million dollars for every eligible black resident but it is not that simple. can you break it down for us? >> it is not that simple. just to clarify, the task was charged with coming up with a methodology for how to

potentially compensate african-americans in the state for the history of harms. we were never asked to come up with a specific figure. we have come up with methodologies across three key areas. we identified five areas that we could calculate responsibly, but within the timeframe we were able to do the calculations for three. what we proposed was a series of recommendations around how the state could in fact calculate the losses of economic in areas for african-americans in key areas including mass incarceration, housing discrimination and health harms. we accounted for the actual losses to the community as a result of state policies that have brought about a history of discrimination. kristen: can you talk more about that? i understand the economist but the money on your broad outline. you looked at this -- of three areas in which discriminatory practices resulted in actual harm.

give us a little more insight into how those areas, how the harm played out due to discrimination at the time and due to slavery, which california was not a slave state, yet that was the broader context of the country at the time. >> it is important to understand that what we are recommending really are not reparations for slavery, what we have been asked to do was trace slavery's lingering effects. it is important remember that slavery in the united states was a policy that was put into practice for political and economic the betterment. -- economic development. despite california not being introduced to the union as a slave state, we saw there was a perpetuation of similarly discriminatory policies against african-americans. that is what we have identified the state has been responsible for and has participated in.

what we did is goes back to the founding of the state, discrimination against african-americans. we took the first whole year to hear these accounts which we arrived at through witness and expert testimony. we identified 12 key areas of harms that have been the ongoing experience of harm for african-americans. and then we asked, what of these areas can we actually respond to economically. meaning, which of these qualify as an economic harm. we identified housing discrimination is being an economic harm, meaning african-american communities through eminent domain, predatory lending and discriminatory lending practices, lost homes. in a state like california where we understand the value of a home is front of mind, we recognize that for over half a

century, africans americans were losing d due to housing to that housing discrimination. we came up with methodologies for housing alone. we looked at the housing disparity in 2019, or looking directly at the effects of redlining, which as you know was a discriminatory practice based on mortgage lending that began in the 1930's. kristen: governor newsom was asked whether he supports the task force's call for cash payments. he did declined to endorse that specifically, but instead said dealing with the legacy is about much more than cash payments. if there are no cash payments, could the package of policy recommendations were task force made still actually be considered reparations technically? >> in hearing the governor's comments, i think there are are a couple of ways to interpret it. the policies we have been asked

to come up with actually do extend beyond cash. we have 12 areas we have identified good in each of those areas, we have come up with dozens of recommendations. the cash based compensation is three out of the 12. literally, the reparations proposal we have come up with is much more than just cash. the truth is that the a lot of work to be done. the task force in the past two years, we have done our job to come up with recommendations as put forward to us by the bill. we have identified the harms. we have identified the community and we have identified methodologies for how the state can in fact calculate the historical losses to this community. at this point, it is up to the state legislature to decide what recommendations they want to take up. what i can say with full honesty and actual pride is that we have come up with a very robust,

honest and sincere set of recommendations that respond to the historical harms and what we think are the terms of satisfaction for the community as well as the responsible set of policies that should -- of the state can take up should they choose to do so. chris and co. i know you are outside the political realm. you were tasked with figuring out a formula and it is up to lawmakers and policymakers to figure out what's what. nonetheless, it is political. within the political realm, there are people who feel more supportive of this without the cash part. i wonder if you are looking at it saying, we have 12 recommendations, only three are cash. if you do not do cash, could still be considered reparations? >> sure. the truth is that reparations does require direct compensation because we are talking about cash that is not a handout. we are talking about cash that represents economic losses to this community.

i think we have to be very careful about how we are thinking about money in this context. i think the normative idea is that reparations for slavery are so abstract, why should cash be an appropriate means of recognizing the harms of slavery? we are not talking about the economic harms of slavery, we are talking about the fact that jim crow segregation, eminent domain, disparate policies and lending have led to economic losses for this community. therefore, economic growth -- economic reparations are the only -- are the only appropriate means to respond to those harms. if the governor decides not to respond to those economic harms, that is a choice. but of course, there is a direct relationship between economic loss and economic restoration. that is what we have put forward through our recommendations. kristen: the ball is in the legislature's court. thank you for your time. >> thanks for having me.

kristen: next, phony parking tickets. the latest scam circulating san francisco. how can you avoid becoming a

kristen: we told you this story last week. a parking ticket scam. reddit users posted photos of the phony tickets like this. they have a qr code directing people to a fake website that looks a lot like sfmta. the fake site has been taken down. how can drivers like you and me avoid being scammed? joining us live is greg pepper, head of data center virtualization and cloud security architects at check point software technologies. really quickly for folks at home, what does checkpoint do? >> we are a leader in the cybersecurity space, helping secure enterprise network's.

kristen: how -- i guess, let us know what this cyber attack in particular, it was surprising to a lot of people. i guess scammers are always coming up with new things. is this something we can be wise to and prevent ourselves from falling victim to? >> there are many look-alike domains. clicking on a qr code like that did not just link you to a legitimate website, but a malicious website as well. i would encourage people, if they did receive a ticket like this, go directly to the sfmta website rather than clicking on an anonymous qr code. kristen: is this becoming common? scams using qr codes? >> it is an easy way to obfuscate tension. hide behind an anonymous website. it is easy to replicate and download legitimate websites. attackers are doing this easily

to individuals. kristen: when you look at that, i don't know, i thought it looked fake. but if it takes he to a fake website, how real did that look? how did that compared to the real sfmta site? >> the look and feel of the website is exactly the same but there are certain differences. both in terms of the url, digital certificates and if you sometimes click further inside the website, they have only replicated the homepage as opposed to other areas of the website. in this case, they were trying to direct you toward paying a citation. that redirected you to a legitimate payment processing site, only the payment processing was for the criminal actors. kristen: one of the url was like -- what was it? .app instead of .com. >> in either

spelling errors in the websites are indications of phishing. kristen: what are the telltale signs? what are the things you can fish out? >> hopefully if you went to the legitimate website, you should see some type of certificate verification in the browser header. if it is something malicious, it might give a warning. that is a red flag that would cause me to stop moving further. i would go directly to the individual website, whether it is the mta or your banking website, then navigate from there. never click on random links on emails, texts or other things you do not think are legitimate. kristen: in this case, they are going after the individual by pretending to be a city. but our cities vulnerable to this type of thing? >> of course. think about a lot of our critical infrastructure.

public sector, health care, these agencies are highly targeted, underfunded and underequipped. kristen: what kind of information are the bad guys after instead of money? in this case they wanted payment for but, scammers are not just always after money. >> you are -- your personal information has monetary value. whether it is name, id, social security number, driver's license info, there's many types of personal identifier information they can use to monetize on the dark web. and potentially impersonate you individually and do other bad actions on the web. kristen: is it all on us to notice these things and be wise to it? is there a responsibility on the city's side to do something so that it makes it more clear that theirs is the real one? >> at the end of the day, we all have our own responsibility.

mobile devices because we realize it is the most critical portion of a person's connectivity to the digital world. we are all dependent on our cell phones but many people don't actually secure those devices. whether it is an enterprise, a government or individuals themselves. having some type of security on your mold device is only going to help you are the government of san francisco, or an individual. but also understanding you may or may not have the right security controls associated with that. kristen: greg pepper, thank you so much. (bell dinging) how's john? oh, much better. that was quite a scare. got us thinking about a lot of things. like life insurance. if sometnge u we'd really be in but where can we get coverage with john's health problems on a fixed income?

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kristen: thanks for joining us. we will be here every weekday at 3:00 answering questions from experts. >> tonight, chaotic scenes of congressman george santos pleaded not guilty to federal charges and 13 count indictment. the embattled congressman pushing his way through crush of cameras and arrangement lasting ten minutes and what he said to the judge and federal prosecutors accused him of wire fraud, money laundering and theft of funds. santos using money f meant for his campaign for personal ex-personses, designer clothe and paying bills prosecutors say and receiving unemployment funds during the pandemic, even though he was employed at the time. what house speaker kevin mccarthy said about santos running for reelection. rachel scott outside the courthouse. title 42 on the