Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/559706
RICHPEDRONCELLI—THEASSOCIATEDPRESSFILE A Samsung Smart TV is for sale in Sacramento. ByJuliaHorowitz TheAssociatedPress SACRAMENTO Read- ers who scanned the user manual for a new Samsung smart TV may have been surprised to learn their household conversations could be recorded without their knowledge. State Assemblyman Mike Gatto certainly was. "The passage was al- most word-for-word com- parable to a passage of the book '1984,'" Gatto, D- Glendale, said, referring to a line in the privacy policy that said conversations, in- cluding personal or sensi- tive information, could be captured and transmitted to a third party if users turned on wireless voice recognition. After taking a lashing in the media and online, the company changed its policy and the user manu- als in February. Samsung now says it will only record voice commands if a user clicks an activation button and talks into the remote or a microphone. Still, Orwellian anxi- eties have already taken hold, and Gatto's Commit- tee on Privacy and Con- sumer Protection is push- ing a bill to rein in spying TVs before the problem be- comes worse. His AB1116 is the first legislation of its kind in the United States, accord- ing to the National Con- ference of State Legisla- tures. After unanimous passage in the Assembly, the bill now goes before the full Senate before the Legislature finishes on Sept. 11. It would require that us- ers be explicitly informed when their smart TVs are installed that the devices could start collecting con- versations. It also forbids TV manu- facturers and related third parties from using or sell- ing stored conversations for advertising purposes, and would allow manu- facturers to reject law en- forcement efforts to use the feature to monitor con- versations. Samsung declined to an- swer questions from The Associated Press but said in a written statement that it supports Gatto's legisla- tion. "Protecting our consum- ers' privacy is one of our top priorities. Our TVs are designed with privacy in mind," the company said in a written statement. Despite the bill's limited scope — it requires prom- inent notification but al- lows manufacturers to de- cide what is sufficiently ex- plicit — Gatto said he has struggled to garner sup- port from the technology manufacturing industry and said it was "news to us" that Samsung now sup- ports it. Privacy experts say the changes, while important, may not go far enough to protect consumers. Potential uses for the in- formation could go "way above and beyond adver- tising," said Jim Dempsey, director of the University of California, Berkeley's Center for Law and Tech- nology. The information col- lected could still be used to make psychological or cul- tural assessments of peo- ple for insurance or cus- tomer relations compa- nies, he said, noting that human resources com- panies already use au- tomated systems to pro- file callers based on their voices. "It could determine what kind of offers you get made," Dempsey said. The legislation is also technology-specific — a potential issue as voice control spreads to other technologies such as cars, Dempsey noted. Statebillaimstowarn about recording TVs ORWELLIAN ANXIETIES By Ellen Knickmeyer The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO The car- casses of salmon, trout and more than a dozen other newly extinct native spe- cies lie in dry streambeds around California. Exhausted firefighters in the Sierra Nevada bat- tle some of the biggest wildfires they've ever seen. And in Central Valley farm towns, more and more par- ents hear the squeal of empty pipes when they turn on water taps to cook din- ner. A new report by the Pub- lic Policy Institute of Cali- fornia nonprofit think-tank paints that distressing pic- ture of California for the next two years if the state's driest four years on record stretches further into the future. Written by water and wa- tershed experts working at the policy center, at the Uni- versity of California, Davis, and elsewhere, the report urges California to do more now to deal with what re- searchers project to be the biggest drought crises of 2016 and 2017 — crashing wildlife populations, rag- ing wildfires and more and more poor rural communi- ties running out of water entirely. A separate study pub- lished Thursday in the jour- nal of the American Geo- physical Union warns that climate change is making drought the new normal in California. By the 2060s, climate models show California in a condition of semi-perma- nent drought, broken only by short, hard rains, re- searchers said. Already, higher tempera- tures from climate change have made the current drought at least 15 percent worse, they said. So far, of all the sectors dealing with the current drought, California cities are doing relatively well thanks to the lessons of past droughts, researchers said in the analysis by the Pub- lic Policy Institute of Cali- fornia. Meanwhile, farms have been able to turn to pump- ing well water to make up for having half as much sur- face water for irrigation as normal. With California wildlife, by contrast, "we're really looking at widespread cri- sis" if the drought contin- ues, Ellen Hanak, director of the think-tank's water policy center, said in an in- terview Wednesday. California's fresh-water habitats and forests, along with their wildlife, have ex- perienced the most severe impacts of the drought so far, the study concluded. Lack of water means 18 species of native California fish, including most native salmon and steelhead trout, face an immediate threat of going extinct in the wild, the report said. Greatly reduced water deliveries to bird refuges and rice fields — the flood- ing of which provides cru- cial habitat — means there is dangerously little room and food for the 5 million migratory birds that fly through the Central Valley each year and a high risk of deadly disease for the birds, the study said. For California's envi- ronment, officials should be thinking more strategi- cally about how best to use what water is left for wild- life, and preparing "conser- vation hatcheries" to safe- guard native fish species that are on the verge of ex- tinction in the wild, it said. Hanak also called wild- fires a tremendous risk as overgrown forests dry in the drought. Fire and for- est agencies already are working to reduce the over- growth that contributes to making those fires bigger and harder to control, re- searchers said. After the environment, rural communities have been hardest-hit by the drought, the study said. As of last month, more than 2,000 domestic wells were reported to have gone dry, mostly in the Central Val- ley and Sierra Nevada. More than 100 small public-water systems around the state have been cited as needing emergency water supplies. State and federal efforts to help those communities have been increasing but remain stop-gap, the study concluded. It urges the state to do more to track areas in need of help and come up with longer-term water supplies to replace wells that have likely gone dry for good. The study advises against counting on El Niño, a spo- radic weather pattern that can bring strong storms, to break the drought. State water officials similarly have tried to temper pub- lic hopes for a wet El Niño year. Historically, El Niño is associated with wetter winters in California only half the time, and climate change makes that even more uncertain, the state Department of Water Re- sources has said. CALIFORNIA St ud y se es d yi ng w il dl if e, bigger fires if drought lasts JIM GENSHEIMER — SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS The dried-up bed of the Guadalupe River is shown in San Jose. By Judy Lin The Associated Press SACRAMENTO Califor- nia's health insurance ex- change is still sluggish when it comes to resolving customer service problems, leaving many people unable to access health care or fi- nalize their tax returns, a consumer advocacy group said Thursday. Covered California has been slow to fix enrollment mistakes entered into its computer system, accord- ing to the Health Consumer Alliance, which is made up of legal aid groups through- out the state. Exchange staff has a limited ability to update a state computer program for determining whether people are eligible to enroll in Covered California or in Medi-Cal, the state's low- income health program, the group says. Covered California's ex- ecutive director, Peter Lee, responded Thursday at the board meeting that "a very small percentage" of cus- tomers file appeals when they are rejected, and the exchange is commit- ted to resolving problems quickly. Since March, the agency says it has added staff to try to resolve dis- putes informally without having to go through an administrative law pro- ceeding. "We still have work to do," Lee said. The agency will provide a detailed report on the num- ber of appeals and their sta- tus at the next board meet- ing in October, he said. The alliance also claims Covered California has failed to correct tax sub- sidy forms in a timely manner, preventing peo- ple from getting tax cred- its or amending their taxes. For example, advocates said a woman from the Inland Empire has not been able to correct her tax subsidy form since Jan. 28. "We are concerned that public support for the (Af- fordable Care Act) will erode as more and more consumers encounter these types of tax problems and face exposure to IRS debts and penalties," the group wrote in a letter to ex- change board members this week. Covered California said it is looking to troubleshoot those information technol- ogy problems. "The challenges with big IT, it does not necessarily mean nimble IT," Lee said. "We're working to speed those up. But the issue of having effective and as prompt as possible reso- lution to appeals is some- thing we take very seri- ously." Earlier this year, Covered California apologized for sending out about 100,000 incorrect tax forms to peo- ple who received sliding- scale subsidies to help them purchase private health in- surance. The exchange acknowl- edged sending inaccu- rate coverage information on 1095-A forms when 800,000 forms went out for the first time this year. The federal health care law requires most people to have insurance or face a tax penalty that increases each year. The penalty for a per- son who makes $40,000 a year will increase from $299 in 2014 to nearly $600 this year. And a fam- ily of four with that same income would see fines in- crease from $500 to nearly $1,000. HEALTH INSURANCE EXCHANGE Group says Covered California slow to fix problems The Associated Press SACRAMENTO The Cali- fornia Senate has approved legislation requiring com- munity college applicants to disclose if they've been previously expelled for sex- ual assault. Transfer students would also need to share if they were expelled for rape or sex- ual battery at other schools or are currently undergoing an expulsion review. Local community col- lege governing boards would have hearings to de- cide whether to admit those students. The Senate approved AB969 by Democratic As- semblyman Das Williams of Carpinteria Thursday on a 35-0 vote, sending it to the governor. APPLICANTS Community colleges could require assault disclosures THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Mike Marty, of the California Fish and Wildlife Department, hoists a net full of splashing rainbow trout as one jumps back into the holding tank at the San Joaquin Hatchery near Fresno. 525AntelopeBlvd,RedBluff (530) 527-5272 Mon.–Fri.8am-5pm Saturday by appointment Locally owned & operated Celebrating 42 Years Visitournewlyremodeled show room &signuptowinsetof4newtires 9 locations throughout California & Oregon | NEWS | REDBLUFFDAILYNEWS.COM FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2015 6 A