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CNN Live Today

Cybercrime Epidemic; Operation Spear Declared Success; Office Germs

Aired June 21, 2005 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

TONY HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The search resumed this morning for an 11-year-old boy lost in the Utah Mountains. Brennan Hawkins last seen at a boy Scout camp Friday. Searchers on horseback, ATV and on foot are back to work today. A swollen river is also being searched. A parallel criminal probe is under way, but authorities say they have no reason to suspect foul play.
A search-and-rescue organization from Texas is expected to join the search for Natalee Holloway later today. The Alabama teen has been missing on the island of Aruba for more than three weeks. The teen's family has hired a local attorney to help them join the prosecution case as the victimized party. That would give them a greater access to investigators' information.

Senate Democrats dealt yet another blow to President Bush's nominee for ambassador to the U.N. Democrats again mustered enough votes to stall the final vote on John Bolton, and in fact GOP support has eroded slightly. Democrat Joseph Biden rejected an offer from the White House to provide only some of the information his party wants.

And now there's a whole new way to get your news on the Web, with free video at CNN.com. Just logon to our Web site and click on "watch" to check out the most popular stories. It's free video under your command, now at CNN.com.

Well, if you turned on the news or picked up a newspaper, you know that the crime of identity theft has surged. Just since the first of the year, tens of millions of Americans have learn that they maybe the next victims. So who's at risk and who's to blame?

CNN's Christine Romans looks for some answers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Identity theft is becoming an epidemic.

OPERATOR: Welcome to Citibank automated service.

OPERATOR: (SPEAKING SPANISH)

OPERATOR: If you believe you have recently been the victim of identity theft, press 6.

ROMANS: So ubiquitous, it's the first prompt when you call Citibank, which recently lost the information for 3.9 million customers. In the past five months, a staggering number of identity breaches. From February to June, information for almost 50 million accounts has been lost or stolen from some of the biggest, most well- known companies.

And it's not your fault. You're at risk simply if you have a bank account. Buy a pair of shoes, or pick up paper towels. At the very least, these companies look sloppy, and in many cases they may be liable.

SUSAN CRAWFORD, CARDOZO LAW SCHOOL: It's fair to ask consumers to take care of their own financial lives, yes, absolutely. That's fair. It's not fair for vendors, people who are dealing with this sensitive information, not to be subject to federal law about the security protections that they have to meet.

ROMANS: For the banks, retailers, credit card companies and stock brokers who have lost information, a reminder. They are required by federal banking law to prevent fraudulent access to confidential financial information.

JOHN PALFREY, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: And I think you will see a rise in the liability of these companies, either through federal or state law, which has clearly become more of an issue, or possibly through lawsuits under tort regime.

ROMANS: Thirty-two states now are considering security breach notification laws. And legislation proposed in Washington would fine a company $1,000 for every piece of data it loses.

(on camera): Of course, if you don't trust that these companies can keep your personal information safe, you can buy identity theft insurance. Ironically, many of the financial institutions that have lost your information also sell the insurance.

Christine Romans, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: This guest is an expert on cybercrime and often testifies before Congress on consumer and financial issues. Ed Mierzwinski is the consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Ed, good morning.

ED MIERZWINSKI, PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP: Good morning, Tony.

HARRIS: Well, let's start this off. There is a difference between the Mastercard case of last week and the CitiFinancial case not too long ago where there were tapes lost with Social Security numbers on it, is that correct?

MIERZWINSKI: Absolutely. When you lose Social Security numbers, the bad guys can create new accounts in your name. When you lose credit card numbers, all they can do is violate your credit card account, or your checking account if it was a debit card. So this is fraud, not what we call identity theft, but it's just as bad.

HARRIS: Ed, what about these debit cards? We're using them just like cash, and if someone gets that information, how difficult is it to get your bank to put your money back in your account?

MIERZWINSKI: It's a nightmare, according to the consumers we've spoken with. And remember, when it's a credit card, you're arguing whether you owe the bank money. When it's a checking account, you're arguing to get your own money back. You might have had other checks bounce. I would never, ever use a debit card on the Internet. It's just not worth the risk.

HARRIS: Whoa! Never?

MIERZWINSKI: No. Absolutely not. Use a credit card, yes, because the risk is $50. Debit card, you could lose all the money out of your checking account. Big mistake.

HARRIS: Hey, Ed, are thieves targeting these debit cards?

MIERZWINSKI: Well, the thieves are targeting all of the cards. And when you use a debit card without a pin, it's treated just like a credit card. So many of these 40 million accounts that were breached in last week's breach could have been debit cards, because a lot of people use them.

HARRIS: OK, now there is a bill being considered in New Jersey right now that would -- I guess the chief feature of it is that it would create a security free system. Is that a good idea?

MIERZWINSKI: Absolutely. And New Jersey PIRG is the impetus behind the proposal. We believe that consumers need control over their information, Tony. Right now, if a bad guy has your name and your Social Security number, he can apply for credit. The credit report is issued, and they get credit in your name. But if you have a freeze on your credit report, it cannot be used to issue new credit. The banks and the credit bureaus hate the freeze, but a number of states have already passed. New Jersey's would be the strongest and most pro-consumer.

HARRIS: Got to ask you, let's break it down, I want to build -- I'm frightened, nervous. I'm seeing these reports and the really don't know what to do. I want to build a buyer wall around my personal data. What would that require of the companies I deal with? What would that require of me?

MIERZWINSKI: Well, as the pre-story pointed out, the companies aren't liable enough. They don't get sued enough. They don't have enough responsibility. We need higher standards for the companies so they know they'll be punished when they make mistakes.

As a consumer, I would think, first off, you'd have to get a plain old ATM card, not a debit card, a card that could only be used with a pin number, and you've got to get your Social Security number off every document, and insist that nobody takes it when they want to do business with you, except banks and employers, who are legally required to collect it. No one else should have the right to ask for it.

HARRIS: Yes, that's good advice. All right, what about theft insurance? You recommend it? You like the idea?

MIERZWINSKI: I don't like theft insurance. I think it's overpriced and unnecessary, and it only helps you after the fact. You've got to be vigilant. If identity theft happens. If you're one of the 10 million each year that it happens to, just be ready to fight back. Go to ftc.gov, find out your rights, find out how to fight back. But the theft insurance, it's too expensive. If it's only $20 or something, get it for peace of mind, but not worth it.

HARRIS: All right, I want to throw you a little curveball here.

MIERZWINSKI: Sure.

HARRIS: There ought to be a law that says if you want my personal information, it you want to know where I shop, what I buy so that you can market me more effectively, you should have to pay me for it, not some company that's mining, trolling out there for information. You should pay me, and if you don't pay me, you should be punished.

MIERZWINSKI: Privacy advocates absolutely support that position, Tony, but we can't even get the Congress to consider giving us the right to require companies to ask our permission, let alone pay us.

We believe, at a minimum, companies should be required to give us the right to say no. We'd prefer that they ask us, and then we say, yes, what we call an opt-in. Getting us to be paid for our information is a concept that this Congress has not embraced.

HARRIS: OK. Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Ed, we appreciate it. Thanks for your time this morning.

MIERZWINSKI: Thank you, Tony.

HARRIS: And still to come on CNN LIVE TODAY, we take you on the ground for the latest in Operation Spear, pictures you'll only see on CNN.

And later, you'll never be the same after this story. Dr. Germ is tracking disease-causing bacteria in the workplace. You'll never guess what we found on our own Anderson Cooper's desk.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Now the latest in the fight for Iraq. A suicide car bombing in the northern town of Halabja killed an Iraqi security chief and two guards. The bomb exploded near their convoy last night. Reports say insurgents attacked a water pipeline in Baghdad, leaving two million people without running water. The temperature in Baghdad reached 107 degrees Monday. And British police have made an insurgent-related arrest in Manchester. The man arrested, a former housemaid of the 41-year-old French man. That man is suspected of traveling from Britain to Iraq and blowing himself up at a suicide attack on U.S.-led forces.

The U.S. military is declaring Operation Spear a success. The four-day operation was designed to clear the western Iraqi city of Karabila of foreign fighters. CNN's Jane Arraf was embedded with U.S. Marines and has this exclusive report on the mission.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JANE ARRAF, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After four days of fighting, this city, a stronghold of foreign fighters, is a safe haven no more, the Marines say. Troops from Regimental Combat Team Two, along with Iraqi security forces, searched houses in Karabila, believed to have been taken over by insurgents and foreign fighters. When they found them, they killed them.

Marines say they did detain one suspected insurgent, and killed about 50 of them. One Marine was killed, and three others wounded in a house where foreign fighters were using a civilian for cover. His company commander says...

CAPT. CHRIS IEVA, U.S. MARINE CORPS: Marines entered the building, saw a civilian, described as an older man. He said, no mooj (ph), no mooj, no mooj. Simultaneously, a foreign fighter of African descent came down the stairs, throwing frag (ph) grenades, shooting an AK-47. The Marine was hit, as well as three others.

ARRAF: They say they destroyed two car bomb factories, including one with 16 car bombs in the making, believed destined for other parts of Iraq.

COL. TIM MUNDY, U.S. MARINES CORPS: Wires, propane tanks, extra gas tanks, all set around the vehicles, plus some of them that must have had some other munitions in them.

ARRAF: At a complex with two other car bombs, U.S. and Iraqi troops found and freed four Iraqi hostages, two of them former members of the border police who had been tortured for more than two weeks. Outside this house, they detonated a car bomb in the street. Inside, they found sniper rifles with scopes and ammunition.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

ARRAF: Although some resident remained, many had left this city of 60,000 people near the Syrian border, described by military officials as a transit point for foreign fighters.

(on camera): The battle has left parts of the city deserted, except for the Marines and the soldiers and the people they're fighting. Any civilians who are left here have been told to leave for their own safety.

(voice-over): After telling residents to evacuate this neighborhood, the Marines set off more than 3,000 pounds of plastic explosives to clear the way to move further into the city. Four civilians were wounded and medevacked by U.S. forces for treatment after the Marines opened fire on a gunman inside their house. A woman and two children in the house were killed in the attack. Among the 1,000 troops here were more than 100 Iraqi security forces, working with the Marines to be able to take over this fight in cities like this.

Jane Arraf, CNN, Karabila, Iraq.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARRIS: You can't see them, but they can still make you sick. So just how many germs do you think are lurking in your office? A disturbing report just ahead. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARRIS: Many of us spend more of our time with co-workers than with our own families. But it's more than time that you're sharing. CNN's Heidi Collins take a rather disconcerting look at office germs.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HEIDI COLLINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Sushi, sandwiches and salads all sharing space with computers, phones and files.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It saves time eating at your desk. There's really no time to eat out.

COLLINS: Add to that shared workspaces and sick colleagues, and you have a veritable petri dish of illness-causing organisms.

DR. CHARLES GERBA, MICROBIOLOGIST: People don't realize that office space is their personal space. They really don't -- most people don't clean their desk until they start sticking to it.

COLLINS: And Professor Charles Gerba should know. To many, he is Dr. Germ. Gerba has been tracking disease-causing bacteria in the office as part of several studies sponsored by Clorox. What he found is, even though we nearly live at the office, we definitely don't clean it like we should.

GERBA: An area we call a high-touch zone.

COLLINS: He and his team collected more than 7,000 samples from workplaces across the country. He found, on the average work space, 21,000 bacteria per square inch, and before you touch that elevator button, might want to put on a glove. He found 3,500 bacteria per square inch. That may not mean much to you, but compare it with the average workplace toilet, just 49 bacteria per square inch.

That means your workspace may have a whopping 400 times more bacteria than your office toilet. To make things worse, on many of the surfaces he tested, he found para-influenza, and that will just plain make you sick. DR. ROSLYN STONE, COO, WELLNESS, INC.: People don't wash their hands and they've brought their germs from outside into work. They come to work often sick, and our hands transmit those germs to our desks, to the break room, to the sponge, you know, to the refrigerator handle.

COLLINS: Roslyn Stone is the COO of Wellness, Incorporated, and is the chairman of the CDC's Workplace Flu-Prevention Team. She says people who come to work sick have become a pricey problem for employers.

According to a Harvard Business review, companies lose $150 billion a year in lost productivity and higher health care expenses.

STONE: These germs stay alive for 72 hours, which is longer than we thought, you know, three full days. But, what we find is when you use a disinfectant, it does keep that surface relatively germ-free for 24 hours. So you need to do it every day.

COLLINS: But are we doing it every day, especially since most of us hardly have enough time to eat a proper lunch, much less clean up. Here at CNN, we do have disinfecting wipes like these, but this is a busy 24-hour news operation. So, we began to wonder. What might be lurking on our desks, phones, and conference tables, and is anyone cleaning them? So we brought in the germinator himself.

Armed with a cooler full of swabs and a germ meter, Professor Gerba arrived at our offices ready to put us to the test.

Do you think this is going to be a particularly germy workplace or does it look relatively clean to you?

GERBA: Well, some of the germiest workplaces are actually news media offices.

COLLINS: Already, things weren't looking good. With his germ meter at the ready, Dr. Germ wanted to see exactly what we gamble with every day.

GERBA: It's reading the energy molecules of bacteria. It's going to give me a relative idea how many bacteria are on it and usually, if it's really bad, it's going to beep here and it's going to say fail.

COLLINS: Then the beeping begins.

GERBA: That's not a good sign.

COLLINS: He tested the phones, the workstations, the mouse, and that conference table where we hold our meetings every morning.

GERBA: Yes, it looks like -- right here, this looks bad. Oh, 5.5.

COLLINS: 5.5!

GERBA: That's a record. That's the record. That means there's about -- more than 50 million bacteria.

COLLINS: Fifty million bacteria?

GERBA: Wow.

COLLINS: The breakroom was so bad he sent the samples off to the lab where they came back at astronomical levels. The lab technician stopped counting when the number hit 100,000 bacteria per square inch on the break room sponge. Remember, the average workplace toilet is only 49 bacteria per square inch.

Just when we didn't think it could get any worse, we found Richard's desk. When Gerba checked his germ meter, it came back...

GERBA: 4.3.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: 4.3?

GERBA: That's off the charts.

COLLINS: That's the highest we've had, isn't it?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow. That's embarrassing.

COLLINS: Gerba went on to test Richard's keyboard and found it, too, was high.

GERBA: 3.5.

COLLINS: When Dr. Germ is amazed, this is not good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Not good.

COLLINS: After all that, we weren't sure we could take anymore, but there was one place we hadn't tested and we just had to know about, anchorman and colleague Anderson Cooper. Conveniently enough, the day we were testing, he was away.

This is Anderson's office.

What we found was horrifying.

That's heinous.

GERBA: This guy needs to wash his hands once in a while.

Well, I certainly wouldn't use this desk. I'd leave this guy alone.

COLLINS: We just couldn't resist telling Anderson our results when he came back into the office.

You failed miserably.

COOPER: So, 2.5 is passing.

COLLINS: Yes.

COOPER: I got a 3.7.

COLLINS: Yes.

COOPER: Wow.

COLLINS: That fails miserably. The next one is your keyboard here, OK? You got a 4.1, and I can tell you that four, the number four, equals about 10,000 bacteria per square inch.

COOPER: Wow, and again, it's 2.5 to pass?

COLLINS: 2.5 to pass.

COOPER: Wow, so my keyboard is...

COLLINS: I would not -- I would not even touch it again. And then your phone is dismal, OK, 4.6, which, once we hit the number five...

COOPER: It doesn't look that bad.

COLLINS: I mean, you are talking about 1 million bacteria per square inch.

COOPER: It smells a little...

COLLINS: Did you put your nose on it?

COOPER: Yeah.

COLLINS: I wouldn't do that either.

Even Professor Gerba was disgusted.

GERBA: Well, this is pushing a two or three in terms of the germiest places I've ever seen. We haven't found one pass in the whole office area we tested all day, which is really unusual.

COLLINS: So, what should you do? Gerba says you should wash your hands frequently for at least 60 seconds. You say you don't have time? Then Gerba says pick up a hand sanitizer and wash your hands with that and wipe down your desk with disinfectant every day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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