he didn't wait for people to call him, he called in, and he said either you carry salman rushdie's books you take my books off the shelf. liz: brilliant. it's brilliant, but what about -- do you bring to congress a spending bill that would bring government money to protect companies because the united kingdom back then spent millions of dollars protecting salman rushdie who was a resident there in the u.k. at the time. should we be doing more from a government standing point to protect companies so they can continue their freedoms here in the u.s.? >> the legislation that i and the author, mike rogers, who chaired the intel committee, the legislation we have introduced would instead look at how we change sort of the cybersecurity protections in the united states and put a higher standard in order to better protect our infrastructure. i think looking at that is the practical way in which we can get the government involved in setting these higher standards so it's harolder in the future. and -- harder in the future. and you've just reported on your network how now there's a discovery that

the united states is going to have to do something in response because this is very much like salman, rushdie that the iranians, issued against him and the world responded you have no right to do that and we'll read salman rushdie. although this is probably not a very good movie but one everyone should be seeing over christmas. eric: watch the movie. we can send a message. whoever thought we would have seth rogan about that? >> this is very serious problem. i agree with lynn and it will require a serious response from the united states. eric: absolutely. we'll hear from the president about that two hours from now. lynn, judy, thank you solve as always. >> thank you. heather: good conversation about that. "wall street journal" has an interesting idea in its pages today and that is there is a famous north korean dissident in south korea, take a bunch of b drives and drop them by balloon over north korea. that is interesting idea nonetheless. >>> the obama administration drawing up a controversial new plan to rate colleges and universities across the country. proponents say it will steer federal

well, either you carry salman rushdie's books or you take my books off the shelf." was the way the publishing houses reacted, the way that authors reacted. i think when it come tots freedom of expression, freedom of speech, pushback. >> that was one of my first stories when i got into this business about 27 years ago, the salman rushdie "satan verses." thank you so much for remind megaof how old i am. thank you so much. >>> still ahead, the rage and protests against police spreading now to another american town. it's milwaukee, folks. look at your screen, it's outrage after the district attorney there decides not to charge a cop in the shooting death of a mentally ill african-american man. so this time there's a different method that was employed. no grand jury. we'll take you the scene with the latest. also, got travel plans this holiday? if so, stick around and get up your internets because you'll see pictures like this and, oh, i hope it won't be where you're going. a huge winter storm threatening to wreak havoc on your potential plans. sorry to be the bearer of

they put the fatwa on salman rushdie and we beat that because all the publishers got together and collectivelyshed his book. if the hollywood studio would say do what the publishers did and if we make sure that every time they try to censor, more people will see it, more people will read it, then it will backfire and that will send the most powerful message. >> allan, who do you blame to where we're at. last week we were talking about the titillating e-mails but so much has changed since then. sony has canceled the movie. now they're desperately seeking other partners to get it out. do you blame theater owners for being wary. do you blame american citizens for being fearful of threats that don't seem to be backed up by capabilities? >> i blame the media that is the hollywood studios and the television stations and movie theaters. they think they have a fiduciary duty only to the shareholders. no. everyone who is covered by the first amendment, they have a fiduciary duty to the first amendment. they should have said, north korea, more people will see this film because of what you did than anyth

i lived through the salman rushdie nonsense in the '80s.. >> so it's nothing, nothing new. i sort of expected something hike that. adam: yeah. but in the 1980s, gary, you couldn't shut down whole internal, you know, i.t. networks, and now you can. i so how will the future, you know, whether it's the north koreans or the hackers who are working with them, how might they attack the united states not physically, but in a future hack? will they go after theater chains, or will they go after an event in their anger? >> they're definitely going to go after critical infrastructure if they can. not physically in the u.s., that would be very difficult for them to get operatives here, but through remote access trojans and phishing attacks where people become victimized from the inside out. and if we get a little smarter -- this is kind of a wake-up call to all of america to start to harden our networks in ways that sony didn't do. sony had silos where different parts of organization were separate, and the csio who left in september said he had a hard

you know, i came to penguin a few years after the publication of salman rushdie's book, and in that instancer one thing it was pre-9/11 obviously, but even there with the fatwa and some people were killed in that instance, there were -- the entire industry came together around penguin. the publishers, the book sellers always stocked the book, and the authors all came out and supported the book. that did not happen in this instance. in this instance we stood alone in trying to get a movie out. i think now part of the reason for that i suspect is because the conversation got caught up in all of these e-mails, many of them were deeply unfortunate, a lot of them involved selects and people didn't understand what the real issue at stake was, and the real issue at stake was we now discover it's north korea, but we had a group of individuals who were hell bent on making certain that this movie not show up in movie theaters, and we were hell bent on making certain that it did show up in movie theaters. and the problem was in part that that support that i sort of saw at the very end that was there fo

>> when there was a death threat against salman rushdie for "the satanic verses" all the publishers camen companies is appalling. >> do all roads lead back to china here? is china involved? >> no. they may be involved, but it's irrelevant. this is a north korean effort done by the north koreans, they have a very robust cyber program. individual companies cannot stand up against a foreign dictatorship. i agree that they might have shown more courage. but the truth is for the last couple weeks, this has been coming. the u.s. government has done nothing to protect them. it has done nothing to communicate to north korea and it's pretty shameful that it took the collapse yesterday of the will of american theaters to run the risk frankly of their people being killed. which is what was happening and the u.s. government finally today may be about to name north korea this is a pathetic failure by the u.s. government and require as much more robust policy. this is a war, this is an act of war and we should be clear about what's involved here. >> newt gingrich. jim sciutto, jeffrey toobin, thank yo

we stood up to the iranian fatwa against salman rushdie, it's the idea that you can intimidate. response. i think it will be more, it's a more complicated story. so one of the things we can do as cyberattack goes both ways, i very much hope and i suspect that the nsa is looking into what it can do. >> retaliatory or a counter, sort of? >> if there were a way to shut down the unit in the north korean military that does this, remember, the problem in north korea is 12 people have computers. but those 11 of those 12 are engaging in the cyberattack. that's an 1800-man unit in the north korean military that must be connected to the world possibly through chinese servers. we'll have to have a very serious conversation with beijing and say you've got to let us do this and assist us in doing this. otherwise we will you know there are things we can do that will make china's life tough. the second story i think longer-term is cuba. if this becomes an opening, if this has a snowball effect, you see the stories in the"the new k times" about american companies desperately trying to make mone