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ByJudyLin Associated Press SACRAMENTO Inhiseffort to diversify the judicial branch, Gov. Jerry Brown on Monday nominated a deputy assistant U.S. at- torney general to fill a va- cant seat on the California Supreme Court The governor selected Leondra Kruger, a 38-year- old Los Angeles native, to replace Associate Justice Joyce Kennard, who re- tired earlier this year. If approved, Kruger would become the second African-American woman to serve on the high court. "Leondra Kruger is a distinguished lawyer and uncommon student of the law," the Democratic gover- nor said in announcing the nomination. "She has won the respect of eminent ju- rists, scholars and practi- tioners alike." It's Brown's third ap- pointment to the court this term. Earlier this year, he nominated Mariano-Flo- rentino Cuellar, a Mexi- can-born Stanford law pro- fessor to be an associate justice on the seven-mem- ber court. In 2011, he ap- pointed University of Cal- ifornia, Berkeley law pro- fessor Goodwin Liu after Republicans in the U.S. Senate blocked his nomi- nation to the 9th U.S. Cir- cuit Court of Appeals. Kruger currently serves in the Obama administra- tion in the legal counsel of- fice of the U.S. Department of Justice. Previously, she was acting principal dep- uty to the solicitor general and argued 12 cases on be- half of the federal govern- ment before the U.S. Su- preme Court. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he will miss working with Kru- ger. He said she will "be an excellent and thought- ful Supreme Court justice who will serve the people of California with distinc- tion for many years." Kruger graduated from Yale Law School, where she was editor-in-chief of the Yale Law Journal. She earned her bachelor's de- gree from Harvard Uni- versity, where she gradu- ated magna cum laude and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. Kruger's nomination will be submitted to the state bar's commission on judicial nominees and must be confirmed by the state Commission on Judicial Appointments. The commission is com- prised of the state Su- preme Court chief justice, the state attorney general and the presiding justice of the California Court of Appeal. The high court position pays $225,342 a year. Sen. Holly Mitchell, D- Los Angeles, who serves as chairwoman of the Califor- nia Legislative Black Cau- cus, thanked Brown for the appointment. "As a caucus, we applaud Gov. Jerry Brown for his selection and appreciate his hearkening to our con- tinuous request for more African Americans to be appointed to the Califor- nia judicial system," Mitch- ell said. JUSTICE As si st an t US a tt or ne y na me d to s ta te h ig h co ur t By Justin Pritchard The Associated Press LOS ANGELES Against the team of hackers, the poor car stood no chance. Meticulously over- whelming its computer networks, the hackers showed that — given time — they would be able to pop the trunk and start the windshield wipers, cut the brakes or lock them up, and even kill the engine. Their motives were not malicious. These hackers worked on behalf of the U.S. military, which along with the auto industry is scrambling to fortify the cyber defenses of commer- cially available cars before criminals and even terror- ists penetrate them. "You're stepping into a rolling computer now," said Chris Valasek, who helped catapult car hacking into the public eye when he and a partner revealed last year they had been able to con- trol a 2010 Toyota Prius and 2010 Ford Escape by plugging into a port used by mechanics. These days, when Va- lasek isn't working his day job for a computer security firm, he's seeing how Blue- tooth might offer an entry point. Automakers are bet- ting heavily that consum- ers will want not just the maps and music playlists of today but also Internet-en- abled vehicles that stream movies and the turn dic- tation into email. The fed- eral government wants to require cars to send each other electronic messages warning of dangers on the road. In these and other con- nections, hackers see op- portunity. There are no publicly known instances of a car being commandeered out- side staged tests. In those tests, hackers prevail. One was the Defense De- partment-funded assault on a 2012 model Ameri- can-made car, overseen by computer scientist Kath- leen Fisher. Hackers demonstrated they could create the elec- tronic equivalent of a skel- eton key to unlock the car's networks. That may take months, Fisher said, but from there it would be "pretty easy to package up the smarts and make it available online, perhaps in a black-market type situa- tion." The project's goal is more than just to plug vul- nerabilities — it is to recon- ceive the most critical lines of computer code that con- trol the car in a way that could make them invulner- able to some of the major known threats. The model code would be distributed to automakers, who could adapt it to their needs. That should take a few more years. The industry is partici- pating — and not waiting. One major association representing brands in- cluding Honda and Toy- ota is helping establish an "information sharing and analysis center" patterned after efforts by big banks to try to thwart cyberattacks. "Before, when you de- signed something, you looked at how might com- ponents fail," said Mi- chael Cammisa, director of safety for the Associa- tion of Global Automakers. "Now, you have to look at how would somebody ma- liciously attack the vehicle." The so-called Auto-ISAC will allow participating companies to evaluate the credibility of threats and, in the event of an attack, let one warn others so they could test their own sys- tems. The effort was an- nounced this summer at the Cyberauto Challenge in Detroit, one of an increas- ing number of programs fo- cused on auto hacking. DETERRING CRIME Au to ma ke rs ai m to d ri ve a wa y car c om pu te r ha ck er s CHRISCARLSON—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Chris Valasek is seen at the during the Los Angeles Auto Show on Wednesday in Los Angeles. Valasek helped catapult car hacking into the public eye when he and a partner revealed last year they had been able to control a 2010Toyota Prius and 2010Ford Escape by plugging into a port used by mechanics. The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO San Fran- cisco's pristine tap water from mountain runoff in the Sierra Nevada soon may be a little less pure. City officials plan to mix groundwater into the sup- ply starting in 2015 or 2016 in an effort to diversify and increase water reserves during California's ongoing drought, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday. San Francisco's water comes mostly from Sierra Nevada runoff stored in the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park. It is a source of great pride in the city and often a preferred choice over bottled water. Incontrast,thegroundwa- ter the city plans to use was found to contain nitrates, which can make people sick in high doses. But city offi- cials say the nitrates will be diluted to safe levels when the water is mixed with Si- erra runoff. "Wedon'tthinkpeoplewill notice a difference with what they are drinking," said Jeff Gilman, groundwater proj- ectmanageratSanFrancisco WaterPowerSewer. "It tastes the same. Color is the same. Odor is the same." The groundwater will be treated with chlorine in ad- dition to being diluted with runoff at doses of between 10 and 15 percent. Experts say drawing groundwater, which is ex- pected to cost $66 million, is a good way to ensure the city has water in case an earth- quake severs its ties to Hetch Hetchy Reservoir or climate changereducestheSierraNe- vada snowmelt. "The city is thinking ahead. ... Having this other local water supply is a really good thing," said David Sed- lak, an environmental engi- neering professor at the Uni- versity of California, Berke- ley. About 80 percent of Cal- ifornia residents rely on some amount of ground- water, Sedlak said. The roughly 45-mile ba- sin San Francisco will draw from for its groundwater was the city's main wa- ter supply before the pipe- line to Yosemite was com- pleted in 1934, the Chroni- cle reported. Other nearby cities that receive Hetch Hetchy water already tap it for groundwater. Agreements have been drafted to ensure the basin is not overdrawn, according to the newspaper. WATER Am id o ng oi ng d ro ug ht , Sa n Fr an ci sc o is t ur ni ng t o gr ou nd wa te r fo r it s ta ps By Gillian Flaccus and Amy Taxin Associated Press SANTA ANA Steven Dean Gordon spent hours me- thodically telling a police detective how he and an accomplice randomly chose five women to rape, strangle and throw into trash bins. He grew agitated when the detective failed to ask about the women in the order in which they were killed, according to a grand jury transcript unsealed Monday. During the 13 hours of interrogation, Gordon told Anaheim police Detective Julissa Trapp that there was one victim that she didn't know about. He also re- ferred to a newspaper arti- cle about a string of missing women who included sev- eral of the victims, Trapp told the grand jury. "He would actually stop me and tell me he wanted to talk about them in or- der," Trapp said. "I mean, he had actually rearranged the photographs I had shown him and put them in order." The grand jury returned four murder and rape in- dictments against Gordon, 45, and co-defendant Frank Cano, 28. The fifth victim described by Gordon has never been identified. The crimes, carried out in Orange County during a five-month period ending in March, attracted wide- spread attention when it was revealed that the sus- pects, both convicted sex of- fenders who were homeless, were wearing electronic tracking anklets. Gordon told police he picked up the women in his car while Cano hid in the back seat and overpow- ered them when they got in. The women were raped behind an Anaheim paint and body shop where Gor- don and Cano camped out. Cano strangled the women and Gordon punched them in the stom- ach "to get the air out faster," Trapp told the grand jury. At one point, he grew enraged when one of the victims noticed his elec- tronic anklet, she said. "He ultimately made a statement that once he started, he couldn't stop," Trapp said. Gordon and Cano have pleaded not guilty. Cano's attorney, Houman Fakhimi, and Gordon's attorney, De- nise Gragg, did not return calls and emails. Gordon told Trapp that he didn't want to kill Jar- rae Nykkole Estepp, the last woman to die, because she was beautiful, but when she refused to stay with them, he decided that she had to be killed, too. She fought back and sprayed them with mace. Even then, Gordon said, he tried to kiss her after she was unconscious and when Cano was looking away. "This infuriated Cano and he told me that Cano proceeded to stomp on her neck several times to kill her, and then they dis- carded her in the trash can," Trapp told the grand jury. 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