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Massive Nor'Easter Headed For East Coast; Massive Winter Storm Slams The Midwest; Antarctica Rescue Mission Complete; Newspapers Push For Snowden's Clemency; Well Wishers Urge Barbara Bush Recovery; North Dakota Railway Reopens After Crash; Kerry Arrives In Mideast For Peace Talks; Group Says Snapchat Hack Was Meant To "Raise Public Awareness" Of Security Risk; Banker Declared Dead, Nabbed In $21M Fraud

Aired January 02, 2014 - 10:00   ET

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

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN GUEST ANCHOR: It's bringing frigid temperatures with it. Get this. Temps have dropped so low in some parts of Minnesota that it's literally been colder than the surface of Mars. Meanwhile, another storm, a powerful nor'easter, is forming off the east coast. You guessed it, this will all spell trouble for people falling home after the holidays. There have been more than 1,000 flight cancellations already this morning and more are expected.

We have correspondents span across the region covering the weather for us. CNN's Ted Rowlands is just outside Chicago. Let's begin with Margaret Conley in Boston -- Margaret.

MARGARET CONLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fred, Boston has declared a snow emergency and the worst is yet to come. The snow started to come in overnight. It is going to pick up this afternoon particularly into this evening and through until tomorrow morning. Now you can see from our measuring stick right here, we have less than two inches. That's nothing. We're expecting up to a foot of snow here in some areas and temperatures as low as three degrees below freezing.

Now that's going to be -- that's going to have a lot of travel challenges for people because we have light snow. We're expecting some blizzard warnings in some areas. Boston has only near blizzard conditions, but that's because the light snow could blow with the strong wind. So that's going to impact travel. It's going to impact travel in the air. It's going to impact travel on the ground.

I spoke with a Department of Transportation official and he said that the concern right now is black ice on the ground. Also, some flights have been canceled. There are delays there. Be sure to check that if you're going anywhere. Finally, public schools in Boston have declared a snow day on Friday. If you have kids in school, check with your school before you send them.

WHITFIELD: All right, nice, long weekend. What a way to start the New Year. Those kids are lucky, I think. All right, Margaret Conley, thank you so much, in Boston.

All right now to CNN's Ted Rowlands in Naperville, Illinois, just outside of Chicago. Ted, I understand, because we do like to make comparisons every now and then, there was a 115-degree temperature difference between Key West, Florida, and International Falls, Minnesota.

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I believe it. Thank goodness we're not in International Falls, Minnesota. It's cold here in Chicago. It's been hovering in the mid-20s. It's supposed to get down to single digits tonight. We've been getting snow, Fred, since New Year's Eve day. It keeps coming and coming. The big problem is trying to keep the roads clear.

Luckily, it's a holiday week. Traffic hasn't been horrible. They've been going 24/7, trying to tackle these roads. And, as Margaret talked about, the flights, O'Hare has had numerous cancellations yesterday and today as well. So, if you are flying through Chicago, be prepared to possibly be delayed.

WHITFIELD: Nasty stuff. What's about the temperature where you are?

ROWLANDS: We're about -- in the mid-20s right now. But it's supposed to get down to single digits in the next few hours, moving into tonight. That is when everybody stops playing in the snow and gets inside and huddles around the fire. Just keep warm. In Chicago, when you add those temperatures and the wind, it is absolutely miserable.

WHITFIELD: That is brutal stuff. All right, thanks so much. Ted, appreciate that. Stay warm, as best you can.

All right, mission accomplished this morning. All of the 52 passengers on board that research vessel trapped in ice in Antarctica have been rescued. After facing major problems and delays, researchers and journalists who were stuck on the ship since Christmas Eve are now rejoicing. But it could still take weeks before they actually get home to Australia.

CNN's Matthew Chance is live for us from London. So what's the hold up? Why does it take so long?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Fred. It's funny, isn't it? The weather conditions so bad across the United States, but in Antarctica it's actually cleared up a bit to the extent that a helicopter from a nearby Chinese ice breaker was able to get to that stranded Russian research vessel with 74 people on board and air lift 52 passengers including scientists and some tourists as well to the safety of a close-by Australian ice breaker ship.

You mentioned there is going to be a delay to where they're going to get back. They're in a remote area of Antarctica for a start. It's making its way through the open water of pack ice. It will get orders to where it will go next. Capital of the Australian state of Tasmania in the next few days, possibly a week or so. Mid-January, they'll be off that pack ice on to dry land finally.

WHITFIELD: My goodness, all right, good news to them. They've had, indeed, quite the adventure. CNN's Matthew Chance, thank you.

Today, two major newspapers published editorials, urging the Obama administration to have mercy on NSA leaker, Edward Snowden. "The New York Times" and Britain's "The Guardian" are praising Snowden's leaks, calling him a whistle blower and pushing for the government to either drop its case against him or offer him a deal so that he can return to the U.S. without the threat of life in prison.

The "Times" editorial board writing this, quote, "Considering the enormous value of the information he has revealed and the abuses he has exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a great service. It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home," end quote.

Snowden is currently in Russia where he was granted temporary asylum. He faces espionage and other charges in the U.S. for giving journalists classified information about the NSA's mass phone and internet surveillance programs.

CNN justice reporter, Evan Perez, is live for us now in Washington. So what more -- what's the reaction coming from these editorials?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN JUSTICE REPORTER: Well, Fred, you know, this is a question that's been hotly debated in the last few months. That since Edward Snowden started releasing these leaked documents. The fact that he's in Russia makes him a bit different from other whistle blowers in the past. In the past, people who have done this type of thing have stayed in the country, been part of the debate.

Here he is in the protection of the Russian Secret Service. He is not able to really move around very easily. I'm sure he wants to get out of there. Coming back to the U.S., he would most likely be facing justice. The Obama administration has had a very complicated view of this whole issue.

On one hand, they welcomed the debate that has been started by these leaks. But at the same time, they're rejecting the idea that he deserves any kind of leniency or deserves, perhaps, some clemency. I asked the Attorney General Eric Holder about this a few weeks ago and I think we have some sound of what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: It's not something that I would support. I think that he has clearly broken the law and harmed the nation that he claims to love. The conversation that we are engaged in is one that I think is certainly worthwhile, to try to determine how do we safeguard privacy and keep the American people safe, how do we find balance in that effort with regard to our surveillance activities, but I would not say that what he did is worthy of clemency.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PEREZ: Fred, Snowden has been working with a group of journalists in Brazil, Germany and in the U.S. It's not clear whether you try to do some kind of clemency whether they would have to be in on the deal to give up those documents. I'm sure that's something that the U.S. government would want. WHITFIELD: Meantime, what kind of changes has been provoked, if any, in the NSA programs as a result of this?

PEREZ: Well, you know, there is a big discussion going on in Congress and even the president says of next month he is going to address some of this. He appointed this had panel of intelligence experts that took a look at this issue and some of what the NSA was doing was perhaps not that useful. But the question of whether or not the government should be doing this, that's something for Congress to decide, something for the president to decide. These guys are politicians, right?

These are people who when there's another terrorist attack -- we all know that everybody thinks there's going to be another one. The question will come back, well, what the NSA was doing, could that have prevented such an attack, Fred? Politicians are always very nervous about making changes that will be called into question later on.

WHITFIELD: Justice Reporter, Evan Perez, thanks so much.

Still to come, a popular photo sharing app is hacked putting millions of users at risk. We'll talk to a former hacker about what you can do to protect yourself, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right, checking your top stories, well wishers are pouring in to a Houston hospital where former first lady, Barbara Bush, is now entering her third full day. The 88-year-old is being treated for the record a respiratory problem and according to family and friends, flashing her trademark feistiness and good humor.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHASE UNTERMEYER, FORMER BUSH ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL/FAMILY FRIEND: Well, Barbara Bush is a tough old gal who will outlive us all, but our love is with her because she's not just the former first lady of America. She's the first lady of our hearts. So we know that she'll pull through and it will be a happy New Year for everybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: President Obama has wished her a speedy recovery. And former President Bill Clinton fired off this tweet, referring to Mrs. Bush and her love of Texas college football, saying this quote, "I'll be rooting for Barbara Bush's full recovery while she's rooting for Baylor today, all my best to her and George H.W. Bush.

A rail line in North Dakota is open again after a fiery crash. Meantime, federal investigators say they found broken axel parts at the site. They also say one of the trains involved in the crash derailed at a switch in the tracks, but they found nothing unusual about the tracks or any signals. According to the NTSB, all tank cars have been removed from the rails and crews are now working to rebuild the track. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hours ago landed in Tel Aviv for peace talks. He will meet with the Israel prime minister then head to Ramallah to meet with the Palestinian president. For now, the Israeli government reportedly has delayed an announcement about new settlement construction. The move avoids a potentially high-profile dispute during Kerry's visit.

And Skype appears to be the latest victim of hackers tied to Syrian President Bashar al Assad. The Syrian Electronic Army took credit for busting open social media accounts run by the internet calling service. The group also posted contact information for the retiring CEO of Microsoft, which owns Skype, along with a message that accuses the software giant of selling user data to the government. Microsoft officials have not immediately commented.

Yet another tech company is dealing with an embarrassing data breach. Snapchat, a popular smart phone messaging app that allows people to send photos and videos that quickly disappear. Hacking group has posted the names and phone numbers of more than 4 million of its users online. CNN's Laurie Segall is following the story for us from New York. This makes a whole lot of folks very nervous.

LAURIE SEGALL, CNNMONEY TECH CORRESPONDENT: If you're on Snapchat, have kids on Snapchat, you have to be taking a step back and saying I'm a little bit concerned, as you said, 4.6 million accounts exposed in this hack, so pretty significant number. Phone numbers revealed in this. User names revealed and also, Fredricka, this information was posted on the web and available for anybody to download.

The hackers that posted it, they blurt out two digits of the phone number to say we're going to respect your privacy to a degree, but they also said that this would be subject to change. Have you to say if you're trying to do good things, why did you put this information on the web in the first place?

Let me read you a statement on why they did it. They said, "Our motivation behind the release was to raise the public awareness around the issue and also put public pressure on Snapchat to get this exploit fixed. I spoke to the security researchers who initially found the vulnerability. They weren't the ones who put this online, but they found the vulnerability in it. It was there apparently for months and they never heard back from Snapchat.

And when I said, OK, are we good now? Have you patched up this hole? What they told me last night was they may have patched it, but with a couple of minor modifications, you can actually utilize this exploit. Pretty eye opening -- Fredricka.

WHITFIELD: My gosh, indeed, it is. Let's bring in Kevin Mitnick, the president of mitnicksecurity.com and formerly the most wanted computer criminal by the FBI, but now he hacks for the good guys. Good to see you, Kevin. If Skype and Snapchat are vulnerable, is your private information safe anywhere?

KEVIN MITNICK, PRESIDENT, MITNICKSECURITY.COM: I think the NSA has proved what was said years ago. You have no privacy. Get over it. With respect to that Snapchat hack, it wasn't that the hackers actually broke into Snapchat. What they were able to do is to -- what you can do is you could abuse their service so if you have a valid telephone number of a Snapchat user, you could associate what user name or display name that that phone number is attached to.

All these guys did was basically take up telephone numbers and you could download these telephone numbers at sites like TelcoData, us.net. They ran through this list incrementally to rebuild the database, to see that that phone number actually had a valid snap chat user associated with it.

So it was a way they were able to abuse their service, because Snapchat did not limit how many requests somebody could do to their database. So, this was easy to do because they were just able to make these requests over and over and over again until they were able to get 4.6 billion users.

WHITFIELD: So, Kevin, how do we protect ourselves? Every time you sign up for something, a service, make a purchase, you have to put in your personal information, your address, phone number, maybe you have to create a password. What really can we do to protect ourselves since it seems like every site is vulnerable to hackers?

MITNICK: Well, first of all, with Snapchat you can always just elect not to put your phone number there. That eliminates that vulnerability. Across the board, you could do -- like if I sign up for -- if I order something online, I set up a special e-mail address just for orders so all the orders only go to this one particular e- mail address, I guess you could also set up a mail drop or type of service like mailboxes, et cetera, UPS store, so you only use that particular address that's not associated with your home address.

But to tell you the truth, there are databases out there that anybody can subscribe to where you could look up anyone's Social Security number, date of birth, current address and a lot of personal information. And it costs about 25 to 50 cents a look up. So the bad guys want to get your information, there's really not anything out there stopping them.

WHITFIELD: All right, very sobering information for me. And I know for you, too, Laurie. And you're miss tech savvy over there. So Kevin Mitnick, Laurie Segall, hopefully, we all learned a little something and can better protect ourselves as we go online. Thank you so much.

MITNICK: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: All right, still to come, everyone thought he was dead, suicide, after being accused of stealing tens of millions of dollars from investors. How police finally nab this had former banker and where he was hiding all of this time.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Justice may have finally caught up with a former banker from Georgia. Aubrey Lee Price vanished in 2012 in an apparent suicide. At the same time, he was wanted for embezzling more than $20 million. A year ago, Price was declared legally dead, but just this week, police say they recognized him when they pulled him over for having tinted windows and they knew right away that he had much more to hide. Here is Ana Cabrera.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANA CABRERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hiding in plain sight. Aubrey Lee Price, a man wanted by the FBI for wire fraud vanished more than a year ago in an apparent suicide. Nearly a year after he was presumed dead, the fugitive was apprehended by police in a traffic stop on New Year's Eve.

TRACY MORRIS, FRIEND OF FRAUD VICTIM: I cannot believe he had the nerve to hide out so close to home, number one.

CABRERA: Price is alleged to have embezzled $21 million from more than 100 investors between 2010 and 2012. Prosecutors say instead of investing money held at Montgomery Bank and Trust where he worked, he created a dummy company in New York to funnel the funds through fraudulent wire transfers and phony investments.

Before going on the run, Price wrote a 22-page confession letter to his family saying he planned to kill himself off the Coast of Florida by jumping off a ferry boat. The letter was the beginning of an elaborate plan to stage his own suicide. These photos show Price dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, arriving at the Key West Airport, carrying a suitcase. This is the day of his disappearance of that year.

JOHN CHAPMAN, ATTORNEY FOR INVESTORS: He has a bag he's towing behind him. Might be packed with investor money for all I know.

CABRERA: Surveillance video from that day shows him at the ferry terminal in Key West where he led investigators and his family to believe he took his own life. But without evidence of a body, the FBI continued to look for him. That search ended on Tuesday, thanks to a Glynn County, Georgia sheriff who stopped Price's vehicle for having darkly tinted windows. The bold fugitive will now be brought to justice. He faces up to 30 years in prison.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WHITFIELD: Ana Cabrera joins us live now from New York. So Ana, where is the money?

CABRERA: Well, we don't know where the money is. We don't know where he has been hiding. We don't even know, for sure, whether his family knew he was alive all this time, Fred. There are a lot of questions that police are still investigating.

Again, he could get 30 years in prison or in jail just for the money fraud crimes, let alone the additional crimes now he will be facing, charges he will be facing for escaping and eluding police, faking his own death so a lot more to this one.

WHITFIELD: The plot thickens. All right, thank you so much. Ana Cabrera in New York, appreciate it.

All right, still ahead, a big storm headed for the big apple. CNN Alexandra Field is there, live.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fredricka, we're talking about bone-chilling temperatures in the forecast and a whole lot of snow in New York City. Officials have crews working around the clock. We'll bring you a live report, coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: Welcome back. Nasty weather is slamming the northeast, prompting a snow emergency in Boston and blizzard warnings for Long Island and Cape Cod. Officials there say travel is extremely dangerous and it's about to get even worse with a powerful nor'easter now headed to the region. Forecasters say the big apple will get five to ten inches of snow.

CNN's Alexandra Field is there. Officials are taking this very seriously. They're getting ready. Aren't they?

FIELD: A lot of snow, bitterly cold temperatures. Yes, there's a plan of attack in place. It's already under way right now, Fredricka. Behind me is the warehouse full of salt. Trucks have been coming in all morning, trying to get the roads ready for this. More than 2 inches of snow in New York City that prompts the plows. So there are 1,600 plows attached to New York City garbage trucks right now.

The Department of Sanitation says starting now, its crews will be out there, around the clock, working 12-hour shifts, 2,300 people out at a time. That's because we're talking five to ten inches of snow, maybe in the six to eight range here in New York City and more than that out on Long Island where they're also expecting blizzard-like conditions.

So it's a cold and snowy start to the New Year here, but again, the crews are trying to get out in front of thing. If you can stay home and enjoy the end of this holiday weekend, it's cold out here. Why not, Fred?

WHITFIELD: I guess the timing is pretty good that it's up against the first weekend of the New Year. So at least folks, if they haven't made it quite back to work yet, they still have a little bit of extra time. Alexandra Field, thanks so much.

FIELD: Hopefully, no travel in your future.

WHITFIELD: Yes, exactly. Stay put. Thanks so much in New York.

All right, checking our other stories now, a car bomb has ripped through a residential neighborhood in Beirut, killing four people, adding to tensions in the Lebanese capital. This is video just now coming in. Today's blast was so violent that it was felt in nearby neighborhood. Just last week a car bomb killed a former ambassador to the U.S.

And all of the 52 passengers on board a research vessel trapped in ice in Antarctica have now been rescued.