welcome to news room, i'm thuy vu. we're bringing you a special edition of our program, we've taken the show on the road. last week kqed experienced a computer outknowledge because of a hack tack so we're not able to come to you from our regular studio. we're taking you to the electronic frontier foundation to discuss cyber security. first we begin here at uc hastings college of law to talk about the week's big political and legal news. yesterday senate republicans released their long-awaited health care reform bill. and earlier in the week the u.s. supreme court decided to hear a case on political redistricting. a closely watched congressional race in georgia has september r -- september ripples throughout the country exposing deepening divisions in the democratic

party. joining us uc hastings law professor rory little. james taylor, university of san francisco political scientists. and marisa lagos. senate gop leaders finally unveiled their health care bill yesterday. what are some of the key provisions? >> it's not as different from the house bill as a lot of folks expected. we're still seeing these massive repeals of the tax hikes that funded obamacare on the rich. we're seeing deep, deep cuts to medicaid. in california that's the medi-cal program. the house version would have been that faster, so the senate version is a slower rollout. but it would still slash payments and put a cap on that really kind of making it not an entitlement program anymore. it would allow states to drop what is considered essential benefits under obamacare, like maternity care, mental health care, emergency services. it does keep more subsidies for the exchange than the house bill. but i think on balance, this is

a very draconian change. would be for a lot of americans. >> how does this affect california? because california had the most to gain under the affordable care act. does it now have the most to lose? >> i think it does. we have seen a massive expansion of our medicaid program in california. we have seen a really aggressive push to get people on the health care exchange. and the advocates in california who really pushed these expansions and governor jerry brown immediately came out really slamming this bill as being draconian, as potentially hurting california even more than some of the states -- especially red states that really didn't embrace this expansion of health care. >> this plan was hashed out behind closed doors. senate majority leader mitch mcconnell wants a vote as early as next week. that gives lawmakers very little time to study it before voting on something this major. >> no, this is about politics and process. and the way in which this is being sort of rushed through echos a lot of what the republicans, especially john

boehner, when he said hell no you can't, when he talked about and enumerated the ways in which he felt the democrats had done this to the republicans with the affordable care act in the past. so to see the republicans sort of flip the script. and now sort of meeting in secret for days and then we're talking about 400 pages to be read in a short period of time, then to vote, then the political process that followed that, it's really a problem. >> i think we should say that while that was a gop critique of obamacare, i don't think it's fair to say these are in any way similar processes. there was over 100 hearings on that bill. gop republican senators and house members themselves made over 50 amendments to the bill. so this is a very different situation. >> california lawmakers have taken a tough stance on fighting scaling back core provisions of aca. realistically how much pow do they have to prevent an overhaul? >> i think a lot. the old tradition of both parties has been localism. especially democrats, that's how they've governed for 50 years in the south, even longer, local

im. i thought when trump came into power this would be a new feature of american politics, that the liberals would be arguing states' rights as ways of protecting themselves against federal initiatives in this way. >> so the bottom line, then, do you think that there are enough vote in the senate for this to pass next week? >> with the vice president, yes. right now. but there are about three republicans who are talking about coming out very soon to sort of express concerns that they have with the current state of the policy and they're not willing to vote for it. that is a problem for mitch mcconnell and for paul ryan ultimately. so this is a problem for them. it's not a done deal. and i think the defeat as much as the republicans are excited about these local victories, defeat again in health care would be a major setback as we thought it was recently. >> they could pass it even if two republicans said no. but three becomes a problem. >> it's interesting though. it's like they have political -- sort of pitfalls if they pass it and people feel like it is too draconian. and if they don't they can't

deliver on a promise they made that swept them to victory in 2016. >> we're going to bring you into the discussion at this point, rory, turning to another big story which is the u.s. supreme court has agreed to take up this fall wisconsin gerrymandering case that could have huge implications for future elections. can you take us through the key points of this case? >> this is a blockbuster case. the arguments won't happen until next october. but legislatures around the country have tried to embed their party by drawing districts that basically block the other side from electing state representatives, even though they may have a majority. and this has been avoided by the supreme court for the last two or three decades. this case in wisconsin, some brilliant social scientists have come up with a mathematical formula to test what's partisan gerrymandering. if the court accepts that idea, then i think they would have to strike down the idea that you can block one person, one vote by defining your districts in a

sort of unfair way. the real issue, will they review it or not? that's going to be the argument. if they decide to review it, that's big news. then you're going to not be able to do this. if they decide not to review it, that's also big news. it will basically eliminate the constitution alimonying of one person, one vote. so this is a very big case. >> we've seen in the past a lot of challenges on the basis of racial inequality and a sort of other things beyond this partisan question. but politically this is a really interesting moment. republicans were brilliant in 2010. they overtook statehouses and governorships and managed to draw the maps for ten years in a way that enabled them to take back congress and the senate last year. and when you look at this case combined with the 2013 decision on the voting rights act and the fact that they took a lot of power away from the federal government there in reviewing states' election laws, including redistricting ahead of time, this could kind of --

potentially if they ruled in favor of democrats, really, in this case, turn the tide. but i do think it's interesting. democrats did this just as much as republicans. in california we don't have this problem anymore because we have an independent redistricting commission. both sides fought that tooth and nail, even though republicans were in the minority. because there was always a lot of backroom deals in those cases when are at least they were drawing some safe districts for the other side. i think both parties are as guilty as the other of this and have fought any reforms. >> the name gerrymandering comes from in american politics 205 years ago from jerry dee, the massachusetts govern history drew the districts that were so -- >> salamandered. >> yes, that's right. >> it gets it name, we know this history. this has been a practice and democrats have been masters, republicans have learned the new technology, the log rhythms and the modeling, the game theory, and figured it out better than democrats right now. now they have an advantage as

the democrats had. we saw this in texas. when the state legislature redrew the maps to give republicans the advantage they hadn't had in 20 years that the democrats had dominated. this is an ongoing feature of american politics and the american political system. >> the democrats and republicans have been, if you will, gaming the system. and if you break it down further, what is at the core here is that who gets to decide on major issues? do you want the politicians picking the voters through gerrymandering? or do you want the voters to have a voice and actually have their decisions mean something as opposed to politicians who are in such safe districts that they never have to be accountable? >> when you say who gets to decide, justice gorsuch makes a huge difference. the court was unable to grant review because they were tied 4-4 until gorsuch came on. this is one where president trump's election, the loss of merrick garland as opposed to gorsuch, is going to make a huge difference. if they vote along political lines in this case, the

republicans in a sense say we're not going to review this, you never know when the pendulum could swing back. so you're absolutely right that this is a case where they've got to be careful as to which way they vote because the future is a long road. >> without this case, if they grant review and say this is unfair, it could have bigger implications because only about half the states have direct democracy where you can put ballot initiatives on the ballot. that's one of the big things, experts say why california's model of an independent commission couldn't actually catch fire across the u.s. unless there was -- it was basically forced by the court. >> so this could be a landmark case. we'll be watching that. also want to turn attention to something that has been very much in the headlines this week. a georgia vails but with implications here in california as well. that congressional race was won this week by republican karen handel, sending reverberations throughout our state. it was thought to be perhaps a bellwether case, that a democrat could take over, that could

indell signal some really good momentum for 2018 for the democrats. but that didn't happen. so what does this mean for california and for the democratic party? >> i mean -- i think that there's a little danger. democrats maybe went out a little too hard on this. this is a seat the gop has held for 40 years in georgia. >> by 20%. >> by 20%. so, you know, this is clearly a win for the republicans and for trump. but i would say that i don't think we can look at the tea leaves and say automatically in 2018 this means republicans will keep the house. what was interesting about this race, and you touched on it, was how much california played a part, both in donations -- i mean, the democratic candidate raised -- this was the most expensive house race in history. something like nine times as much money came from california as from georgia, to the democrats. and in almost all the ads that the republicans ran, they targeted not just the democrats but nancy pelosi specifically. and they really tied office to

her. even though he was far more moderate. i think that it speaks to some bigger divisions in the party that we could get to. but also it's a little hard. all of the special elections we've had this year, the gop has won. but these are, again, in seats where they carry them by double digits last year and are losing by only a few percentage points. >> it's always smart to understand there's something going on locally in all these elections we may not see that may have a more direct impact on the outcome than what we see as national issues and national politics. >> so you know, but president trump's ratings are low. there's backlash against the health care bill which we discussed earlier. amid that backdrop, the democrats still lost four special elections. not only in georgia but also in kansas, montana, and south carolina. why is that? why couldn't they get the job done? >> i have a joke that i say the democrats elect new jersey generals, nobody knows who the new jersey generals are until you mention they're the team that automatically loses to the harlem globetrotters. that's what the democrats seem

to be doing. this goes back to the comment about not belonging to an organized party, being a democrat. that's a real issue in our situation. the democrats lost to donald trump. think about that historically. and they haven't done anything to -- they haven't learned from it, they haven't had a real moment of reflection where they've had something that they could say, hey, america, we got your message. they haven't had a victory since donald trump. and they're equally unpopular and nancy pelosi is as unpopular as donald trump in some cases. >> what do they need to do to show they connect with the fears and anxieties of everyday americans? >> tap into what bernie sanders tapped into. the true reputation and legacy of the democratic party going back to fdr. going back to the liberal democratic legacy of fdr i think is the only way forward for the democrats. the demographics of this country will meet them there if they move in that direction with the

browning of this country. what we see through the current situation, the democrats don't have a strategy. they don't know what to do in terms of dealing with cultural issues that most people don't want to talk about but it's culture that has driven the trump moment. it's culture that has driven the politics we're dealing with. it's culture that plays around health care policy, et cetera. so for the democrats to not get that is i think a real issue that they're missing on. they want to just continue on as usual. take their constituent groups for granted and think that's going to be enough. but they have to do politics. >> did you want to add something? >> they've got a great candidate running against paul ryan, the democrats. these four districts were republican districts, there was no doubt really the republicans had a majority. but they've got a guy running against paul ryan right now, a democrat, who's wearing a hard h hat, he's an ironworker, that's all he does. that's what the democrats have to do is connect with the working class and the people who really feel besieged. the same people donald trump spoke to, they ought to be democrats. >> before we wrap up i want to turn attention to something else

that a lot of people are watching, the supreme court is considering an appeal by the trump administration to allow an order restricting travel to the u.s. from six muslim majority countries. when do you think we can expect to hear the supreme court announce whether it will take that case or not? >> well, there are two thing pending. one is whether to stay the lower court decisions that have already put the ban on hold. should that be removed, in a sense. the other is to review the case. both of those orders i think will come on monday. and they could go in different directions. that is, they could deny the motion for stay but grant review and then hold argument in the fall or hold argument over the summer that the solicitor general has asked for an expedited argument schedule. i think you'll see orders on monday, and of course here's another one where justice gorsuch is going to make the difference, the fifth vote on this most people think. although the president has offended the federal judiciary by criticizing them along the way. it wasn't just the ninth circuit that ruled against the travel ban, it was also the fourth

circuit which is based in virginia, which is not a liberal pa bastion. >> he hurt himself with the tweets he keeps putting out -- >> the chief justice doesn't want his district court judges attacked. it's hard to predict on the merits where this goes. >> the virginia case which really had a ruling which said this is discriminatory, and the hawaii case which california has joins as friend of the court on behalf of our attorney general, saying the president stepped out of bounds with his authority granted by congress. the supreme court has options here. what could come down may not be as sweeping as either side wants. >> it's possible that they'll deny review, say it doesn't matter because we seem to be doing fine, they're now vetting the procedures, and so let's just deny review and see what happens. >> that's sort of the irony here. >> deny review what does that mean in the lower court rulings stand and for all intents and purposes the travel ban not enforced? >> this travel ban. the president could issue

another travel ban tomorrow. the president has the authority by executive order to do lots of things with immigration. so this has become more of a political fight than it is really a legal fight. >> we will leave it there. we will look on monday to see if it comes down as you have predicted, rory. pressure's on. >> that's true. i'm always wrong. >> all right. he'll be tweeting that out. >> yeah. >> thank you all. uc hastings law professor rory little, marisa lagos kqed's political and government reporter, and university of san francisco political scientist james taylor, good to have all of you. honda temporarily halted production at its japan facility after discovering attempts to hack its computer systems. this comes on the heels of a massive attack in may where companies in more than 150 countries were targeted and it affected hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide. last week kqed had its own temporary outage when we noticed suspicious activity on our

computers. all these incidents have something in common. they're called ransom ware attacks. they prompted us to dig deeper. i'm at the office of an electronics frontier foundation in san francisco to talk with cooper quinton about how ransom ware works. what is ransom ware? >> a type of malicious computer software, malware, that encrypts all your files so you no longer have access to them, you can no longer review them. then it charges you to decrypt them. it usually asks for payment in bit coin, a type of digital currency. >> and on a computer screen, if you're attacked, what does that look like? >> i have a demonstration here. here's my computer screen. and i have all my important files. here's my picture of my cat. here's other pictures of my family. tax forms, et cetera. and i have this file here which is a file that was maybe sent to me by somebody that i know or it was on a usb drive or maybe i

downloaded it from the internet. and it says silly fun time and tacos. i'm about to run it because tacos sound great. when i run it, though, i get -- oops. all of your important files have been encrypted. suddenly none of my files are accessible anymore. if i try to open my cat picture, it's no longer there. if i try to open my taxes, they're no longer there. all of my files now are completely inaccessible. in a minute, this window is going to pop up telling me what to do and how i can regain access to my files. >> by paying a ransom. >> by paying a ransom, exactly. there's the window. what happened to my computer? your important files have been epcrypted. there's a countdown here. i have three days left to pay the ransom. >> what happens if you don't pay the ransom? >> if i don't pay the ransom all my files will be encrypted forever and i won't be able to recover them. i won't be able to view them, i won't be able to read them or anything. >> if this happens, what should you do? >> hopefully you have backups.

if you have backups, you can wipe your computer and completely reset and it restore all your file fwrts backups. if you don't have backups, the situation becomes more difficult. you have to decide whether or not the files are important enough to pay the ransom. if you pay the ran sol, you still might not get your files baaing. you have to decide if it's worth potentially losing that money to recover your files. >> all hard decisions. >> all hard decisions. >> and we're being joined now by elizabeth weese, tech reporter at "usa today," and cooper quinton with the electronic frontier foundation to talk about the broader implications. how big is the ransom ware problem? >> it's global. the fbi had numbers a couple of years ago that we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars being sucked out of businesses and individuals across the world every year by large criminal enterprises who this is how they make their money. >> some of these enterprises are

thought to make between $30 million and $60 million a year on ransom ware. >> it's like a business, they actually have consumer hotlines that you call. if you want to pay up the ran m ransom. >> right, it's not some teenager in his garage. these are effectively organized crime. they have offices. they have office workers who come in help desks available in multiple languages. they are organized to extract money from you by putting ransom ware on your computer. >> cooper, is there a common thread to who is targeted in these types of ransom ware attacks? >> anybody can be targeted by ransom ware attacks. it's a very opportunistic thing. you want to make money wherever you can. so you send the ransom ware out to everyone and hope that some people will click on it. >> what about health care? does that seem to be sort of a new niche? 16 national health organizations in england were hit. >> the biggest thing in england was that the national health

service was running some computers that ran microsoft xp, which is very old, and no longer supported version of microsoft windows, and those were vulnerable. health care systems often have those kinds of old programs because they are wary of updating them because they don't know if it will knock out the rest of their system. >> the more recent attacks reportedly stem from a secret spy tool allegedly used by our own government's national security agency. i know you've reported on this. it was a hacking group shadow brokers that published 15 exploits used by nsa? >> they published 15 exploits that had been allegedly written by nsa and released them online to anybody. the problem with that is, it's kind of like putting out the bloou blueprints to something, then anybody can take them and try and build something. they try and weaponize it, they can try and monetize it. they tried to monetize it turning it into ransom ware.

shadow brokers say they have a lot more coming from nsa. they've said they're going to do a dump sometime in july. so there could be more coming. >> so the concern is that there will be further ransom ware attacks or other malware attacks from. >> how do you stop ransom ware attacks if there are copycats and variants constantly being put out there? >> like we said, it's a business. the way you stop a business is by making their business model unsustainable. so if people stop paying the ransoms, then ransom ware no longer becomes profitable. >> how hard is it to try to track down those responsible for ransom ware? >> almost impossible. attribution is very difficult. they're very good at moving -- having the messages go from server to server to server so you don't know where they're coming from, you don't know where they're based. the belief is that a lot of these criminal groups are based in eastern europe. it's very difficult to say for certain where they are, though. we know that their help desks tend to work on certain time

zones that are in eastern europe. we know they take certain holidays sometimes off that are only celebrated there. but really -- and it's across national boundaries. so you can't file a lawsuit against a criminal enterprise that are working out of belarus because you're never going to get anywhere. >> with ransom ware, the perpetrators want to be paid in bitcoin. not necessarily with dollars. what is bitcoin, why is that the preferred currency? >> bitcoin is an untraceable electronic currency, they call them crypto currencies. >> the way it works is you have a -- what's called a wallet in the bitcoin terminology. think of it like an envelope with a long random number written across it. and i can take one bitcoin from my envelope with my long random number and place it in another envelope with another long number written across it. and there's a public let meerle every public transaction. envelope 1, 2, 3, 4, which

belongs to me, gave one bitcoin to novel 4321. the hard part is knowing which real person owns which envelope. so there's no way to know that you own envelope 4321 unless you publicly say so. >> so these crypto currencies are the preferred payment system because they can't be traced by anyone. >> how much is one bitcoin worth? >> right now a bitcoin is worth about $2,600. >> we have it increasingly networked world, so many things are internet-reliant in your work, at your home. it makes things more convenient, yes. it also opens up a lot of vulnerabilities. this is a wakeup call to all the risksassociated with that? >> certainly. as we connect more things to the internet, we invite more potential vulnerabilities into our home and into our private lives. so i think this should definitely be treated as a wakeup call. if you have a heater or an air conditioner that's hooked up to

the internet and the air conditioner gets affected by ransom ware, suddenly your house is 100 degrees because your air conditioner is useless. so you pay the ransom ware. so yeah, this is definitely something we should be thinking about as we connect more things to the internet, as we connect our lives more to the internet. >> how can people protect themselves from ransom ware this. >> people can protect themselves from ransom ware by practicing basic digital security hygiene. the most important thing is back up your important files. back up all all your files. external hard drive, to the cloud, but back them up somewhere. >> what about thumb drives? we get freebie thumb drives at conferences, conventions all the time. are they safe? >> thumb drives are kryptonite. think of them as kryptonite. . you don't know what's on them. you don't know who touched it before you did. i tell people, go buy your own, don't take the ones people give you. and then make sure that you run it through some sort of security program first to make sure that

it's clean. it's not 100% guarantee but it's a 99% guarantee. a lot of this is lined are kind of like you may never protect yourself against ever getting the common cold, but there are a lot things you can go to reduce the risk that you're going to get sick. >> then the other important thing is to make sure that all of your software is up to date. make sure windows is up to date, browser is up to date. when the popup says update your software, then update your software. then not click on attachments or links sent to you, even from somebody you know. call them and verify that they actually sent you this thing if you weren't expecting it. >> i talked to a woman who worked at a small hardware business in the midwest about ransom ware. she was almost in tears, she basically destroyed her family's business by clicking on something. the one silver lining was, i had all our family photos backed up to the amazon cloud. so at least i know that all the pictures of my kids were safe.

so use cloud. cloud is safe. so that's where you can put things. >> that is a good cautionary tale to end on. elizabeth wiese with "usa today," cooper quinton with electronics frontier foundation, thanks to you both. and that does it for us. thank you for joining us. from uc hastings college of law, i'm thuy vu. for more coverage kqed.org/newsroom.

robert: the healthcare debate under the microscope. i'm robert costa. we examine what's inside the senate republican's rewrite of the affordable care act tonight on "washington week." >> we agreed on the need to free americans from obamacare's mandates. we'll repeal the individual mandate so americans are no longer forced to buy insurance they don't need or can't afford. robert: senate republicans rolled out their healthcare plan after weeks of closely guarded discussions. democrats argue the bill is even worse than the version that came out of the house. >> simply put, this bill will result in higher costs, less care, and millions of americans will lose their health insurance. robert: but a revolt by a handful of republicans could put this newest bill in jeopardy. >> we need common-sense reforms in the bill