11/19/03

LC031119


Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

These days, taking a snapshot is as easy as making a phone call,
but do cell phone cameras invade your privacy?

Denise Howell>> People in gyms or in other private
circumstances where compromising, perhaps unclothed, situations
certainly don't expect or want to have their photograph taken on
one hand and distributed on the other.

Val>> And then, where does the road to the White House begin?
We go inside the Presidential Library for a new exhibit on the
roles that prepared Ronald Reagan to be president.

All this and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Hello, I'm Val Zavala. We're all used to surveillance
cameras in banks and stores and at ATMs, but what happens when
cell phones become cameras? More and more people are
discovering the gadgets that allow you to not only send a call,
but send a photo of whatever you can point your cell phone at.
As Toni Guinyard tells us, like all new technology, it has its
uses and abuses.

Toni Guinyard>> Camera-enabled cell phones are quickly becoming
must-haves for many people who not only want to talk while on
the go, but also want to share what they see with the person on
the other end of the line.

Edgar Ovasapyan>> When you want to take a picture, you press
the black button here on the side. It comes on with a light you
can see already. I'll move it a little bit. We can even up
close it or back it up a little, so it zooms out and it zooms
in. When you want to take a picture, you press that top black
one, boom, the picture's there.

Denise Howell>> There is no question that we are becoming a
technology-saturated society. Camera cell phones, tiny little
cameras, the ability to instantly publish that information on
line makes everybody a journalist.

Toni Guinyard>> Attorney Denise Howell specializes in appellate
law and intellectual property litigation. She says the new
technology may be getting ahead of the law and is raising new
concerns about privacy. It's a situation that immediately made
her think --

Denise Howell>> Open legal issues, lawsuits on the horizon most
likely.

Toni Guinyard>> Why?

Denise Howell>> Because people don't necessarily expect to be
photographed in situations as readily as these phones enable.

Toni Guinyard>> The camera phones are already raising red flags
in some courthouses. Security is the concern. This standing
order was issued by the Los Angeles Superior Court presiding
judge. On its face, it appears to ban the use of any image-
capturing technology in any part of any court building.

Denise Howell>> It basically spells out that, yes, we consider
these photographic devices that we treat just like other cameras
in the courtroom.

Toni Guinyard>> When media lawyers complained, a court
spokesman explained this was a proposal. The issue attracted
the attention of attorney Howell. She wrote about it on her
log.

Denise Howell>> "Bag and Baggage" is the name of my web log.

Toni Guinyard>> Consider it a chronicle documenting her
thoughts and opinions published online. She writes, others
respond.

Denise Howell>> Mostly because they're curious about what it is
that they're doing and concerned that they not, you know, wade
into any troublesome waters by writing up their impressions of
things and posting them on the Web.

Toni Guinyard>> The popularity and use of camera-enabled cell
phones has only increased those concerns. Store owner, Edgar
Ovasapyan, sells eighty to ninety camera phones each month.

Edgar Ovasapyan>> You can use it for business. It's very
helpful for some businesses that you need to take a picture and
send it to the person for the person to see, what you're selling
or what you have. The schools, they use it just to take
pictures of, you know, young ladies, young men. You know, just
to play around in classes, they send pictures to one another.
So it's a fun thing for youngsters.

Mike Margaryan>> I use it for fun. When you go to a party and
you don't have a camera handy, just take a picture right over
there with your friends. Take funny pictures.

Toni Guinyard>> But it may not be so funny when you don't know
you're being photographed.

Mike Margaryan>> You can see me dialing numbers, but you can't
see me taking a picture of you. I can take a picture right now.
A small sound comes out, but you can't hear it.

Toni Guinyard>> Mike showed us how it works. Snap the photo,
type out an e-mail address on the keypad and then press send.

Mike Margaryan>> That's all you have to do.

Denise Howell>> They may not realize it, but they do have to
play by the same rules. The privacy laws and protections don't
go away simply because somebody has a cell phone camera in their
hand. People in gyms or in other private circumstances where,
you know, they're in a compromising, perhaps unclothed,
situation certainly don't expect or want to have their
photograph taken on the one hand and distributed on the other.
Those situations are fairly obvious. Other situations are less
obvious, but also happening.

John Dresden>> There is a lot of over-reactionaries. You know,
something happens and right away everybody wants to slam the
door shut on certain things.

Toni Guinyard>> John Dresden has a lot of experience
surreptitiously photographing subjects. He is the owner of Spy
Tech Agency and Probe, Inc. He provides private investigation
services and his store provides a wide array of equipment to be
used in covert situations. The camera phones he sells are a lot
different from the ones most people are buying.

John Dresden>> This one actually would film live video and, you
know, has a transmission distance of about a hundred feet.
There is a transmitter that comes with it that someone else, you
know, an accomplice, could walk into a building with, have that
transmitter plugged into a VCR or a recording deck, transmit the
signal from here to there, it could be ten, twenty or thirty
feet away, and you've got whatever video you need.

Toni Guinyard>> We are all being watched every day in public
places and also private spaces. Some cameras are designed to be
noticed, but others are designed so you don't notice them at
all.

John Dresden>> Well, this right here is a camera that we use in
most covert installations. That is a little hole right in the
center, a little pin hole, hence the name the pin hole camera.
The only thing that has to be unobstructed is that little hole
and, with that, we've built those into all sorts of things, all
sorts of appliances, apparatuses. We've actually installed them
in the walls before, just about any place imaginable.

Toni Guinyard>> You simply never know who might be watching or
where they'll be watching from.

John Dresden>> What we have here is a button camera. It's
another small pin hole camera, but it's been disguised with a
little button on it. It shoots right through that button.
There's nothing that we sell here that is illegal. It's just
that if it was used illegally.

Toni Guinyard>> And in Dresden's real world of I Spy, these
camera phones are of little concern.

John Dresden>> I thought it would be something that most people
would have just a lot of fun with, you know, which is probably
ninety-nine percent of what people are doing. But then you have
that one percent that crosses the line and uses it for the wrong
reasons.

Denise Howell>> What I wanted to do was just show you how
quickly -- there you are on the phone.

Toni Guinyard>> And if you think technology is moving too fast
now, think about this. Attorney Howell says the next wave is
about to hit. A new version of her camera-enabled phone just
went on the market.

Denise Howell>> Much like this with a little bit faster memory
and RAM and full-motion video.

Toni Guinyard>> It's the next generation in cell phone
technology.

Val>> Cell phone cameras can also be crime fighters. In New
Jersey, a man tried to lure a fifteen year old boy into his car.
The boy, who had a cell phone camera, managed to take a picture
of the man and his car license plate. The suspect was arrested
and jailed shortly thereafter.

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Philip Bruce>> Looking back, it can seem like the good old
days, a time when the typical blue collar job was more than
enough to afford a house and provide for a family in Los
Angeles. In this era of two-income families, that seems like
ancient history, but just how big is the gap? That's what the
Weingart Center has been trying to figure out.

We talked to Paul Tepper, one of the people who's been crunching
the numbers, and he draws a fairly dramatic picture for us of
what working people have today to show for their efforts
compared to their moms and dads from thirty years ago. Paul
Tepper, we've been hearing for years that the rich are getting
richer and the poor are getting poorer and you've got the
numbers to prove it now. Just how grim is the outlook in Los
Angeles County?

Paul Tepper>> Well, from 1975 to roughly the present, the
middle class and below all lost income. The next group above,
the sixty to eighty percent stayed flat and the very top group,
the eighty to one hundred percent saw sixty-six percent increase
in their income.

Philip Bruce>> So practically speaking, what does that mean?
The fact that we're working longer and having less to show for
it?

Paul Tepper>> The bottom line is that, for middle class people
and poor people, it's much harder to get by now than it was
thirty years ago. Folks are working more hours, folks are
earning less and the daily cost of living, particularly housing,
costs way more.

Philip Bruce>> Now you drew some pretty interesting parallels
between thirty years ago and now what an average person got for
their labor. Thirty years ago, a typical person could afford a
home, they could afford basically their slice of the American
dream. Now in Los Angeles, that's harder and harder to come by.

Paul Tepper>> That's right. The median home price in Los
Angeles is now over $300,000. The median rent for a one-bedroom
apartment exceeds $1,000 a month. If you think of this in terms
of an income, it takes an income of about $70,000 to purchase a
home.

Philip Bruce>> So thirty years ago, what was the situation? A
person could have "a normal job", whatever that might be, but
they could afford a pretty decent life.

Paul Tepper>> Well, exactly, what you see is that someone could
graduate from high school and get a job and support their
family. Today both parents are working and the family is
struggling to get by.

Philip Bruce>> Now we've seen the picture of Los Angeles's
economy change dramatically over the past decade, the past
fifteen years especially, with all the big defense contract jobs
that used to be here, the aerospace industry is not the force it
used to be. Is that the source of our problem? Is that the
reason that so many people in Los Angeles are under-employed or
having trouble getting this kind of life that their parents had?

Paul Tepper>> It's certainly a piece of the puzzle. There has
been a loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs over
the last thirty years, jobs that typically paid better, that
supported blue collar workers and permitted them to purchase
homes. What we've seen is an enormous growth, I think 700,000
service jobs that pay less and make it much harder for working
families to get by.

Philip Bruce>> So how much of this is that we've essentially
redefined what a blue collar job is? I mean, today a blue
collar job, is that working in McDonalds versus working in a
plant somewhere?

Paul Tepper>> Well, there has certainly been a hollowing of the
manufacturing sector and a growth in the jobs like McDonalds or,
more typically, janitors, security guards, as you mentioned,
food prep workers. These are the jobs that have the greatest
job growth in Los Angeles County. In fact, eight of the top ten
jobs projected to have the most openings make $25,000 a year or
less.

Philip Bruce>> And for $25,000 a year, what kind of life can
you have in Los Angeles if you have to find housing and provide
for yourself?

Paul Tepper>> Well, certainly you struggle and certainly you
have both the mom and the dad working just to get by.

Philip Bruce>> So what you're doing, it seems, is drawing a
picture of what amounts to almost a third world economy. Is
that over-dramatic or is that fairly accurate?

Paul Tepper>> Well, there are some researchers who see us
heading towards a third world model where you have very wealthy
segments who continue to live well. As you know, the housing
market for the wealthy in Los Angeles continues to boom.
Housing prices continue to rise. You have a large service
sector who may not be living in the same areas who are
concentrated in other parts of Los Angeles who provide support
for the infrastructure in Los Angeles.

Philip Bruce>> So this gap is widening, but what about the
people in the middle? What about the folks who do own a home.
They were lucky enough to buy something a while back and they've
got a job that's paying them enough, maybe not to live
luxuriously, but they're getting by? What's the outlook for
them?

Paul Tepper>> Well, what we're seeing both nationally and
locally is a diminution of the middle class. The middle class
is getting smaller. In Los Angeles, it's slipping to the poor.

Philip Bruce>> So you're talking about growth on the lower end.
There's also growth on the upper end, is there not? You're
saying an explosion of opportunity for people in the big-six
figure salary level?

Paul Tepper>> That's right. You're seeing growth at the upper
end. It's not all doom and gloom, but it is getting much more
challenging for middle class and poor people.

Philip Bruce>> Well, now the typical response when we hear
studies like this is, oh, we need better education. That's
going to be the salvation, that's going to be the thing that
pulls us out of this. Is that true?

Paul Tepper>> Education is certainly a help. The statistics
show that you need to get a college degree or, in some cases,
higher to actually improve your economic situation. But the big
question that's hanging out there is will there be jobs for
higher-educated people or will we simply have better educated
security guards?

Philip Bruce>> So what's the solution? Are there any?

Paul Tepper>> It's a big question. I don't know the answer. I
think that's where the Institute is going to be looking next.

Philip Bruce>> Is it going to take more manufacturing jobs? I
mean, is that the problem or is it that simple?

Paul Tepper>> I don't think it's that simple. It's trying to
find a way to rebalance costs and income so that an average
family can comfortably afford to live, to raise their children,
to send their children to good schools, to have childcare which
now averages around $400 a month for each child, and to provide
some hope for the family.

Philip Bruce>> So when we look back at the good old days, they
really were pretty good.

Paul Tepper>> For many poor and middle class people, yes.

Philip Bruce>> Well, Paul Tepper, thank you very much for
putting some numbers to what we've all suspected anyway and,
hopefully, things will turn out for the best.

Paul Tepper>> Thank you. It was a pleasure talking with you.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Val>> When Arnold Schwarzenegger was inaugurated as Governor,
four former governors gathered for the special occasion. The
only one who could not be there was Ronald Reagan who suffers
from Alzheimer's, but at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi
Valley, the life of Reagan as governor and actor and athlete are
on display. Patt Morrison took a tour exploring the life of
this extraordinary Californian.

Patt Morrison>> This is the entrance to a new exhibition of
Ronald Reagan memorabilia, the personal, the intimate, the up-
close, the movie star Ronald Reagan, and John Langellier is the
curator of this new exhibition. What is behind this? We know
Ronald Reagan was a movie star. Why do we need to know more
about that part of his life?

John Langellier>> I think we need to set up the fact that he
wasn't born president of the United States. Like his father
said, he looked like a fat little Dutchman to him more than a
president.

Patt Morrison>> Hence Dutch.

John Langellier>> Precisely, the nickname. But this is to
humanize the individual, hopefully for our youngsters to
particularly think that, my goodness, why not one of us being
the next president of the United States when our time comes?
Whether he or she is at that point in their life. His
background, previous to being a movie star and certainly during
his Hollywood days, set the person he was once he came to the
oval office.

Patt Morrison>> John, he went to school as a young man and
excelled at athletics. He wasn't a political figure then.

John Langellier>> That's true. As a matter of fact, he wasn't
very large as a young chap. He's standing behind you there,
young Dutch. But he had an interest in sports, in baseball,
football, swimming particularly, and swimming was great for him
because it got him his first really good job as a lifeguard.

Patt Morrison>> Here, of course, are his letters, his ribbons,
from college.

John Langellier>> Right. He was a swimmer on the team. He's
the captain of the swimming team in his sophomore year at a
small college in Eureka, Illinois. It's a liberal arts college
where he studied economics. He letters, of course, and is a man
about campus. He gets involved in student politics by this
time. He also becomes much more interested in theatricals, so
he was in the amateur theatrical club as many people are,
performing maybe in Chicago or on campus or elsewhere in
Illinois.

Patt Morrison>> What did he do in politics at Eureka?

John Langellier>> Well, actually he was a student
representative and, during the time period when there were going
to be cutbacks in the faculty because it was, again, the
Depression and times were economically difficult, he along with
other students protested that the administration was going to
cut the faculty, cut their educational opportunities, so he was
a student protester.

Patt Morrison>> Ronald Reagan pursued the next step in his
career. This, of course, is not the same desk, is not the same
chair or the same microphone, but he did go on the air.

John Langellier>> He did. He had a great deal of bravado, if
you will. He stepped into a studio in Iowa and he convinced the
program manager that he could become a sportscaster. The Big
Ten games, Cubs games, you know, race cars with Barney Olfield,
one of the big drivers of the period. He got to be quite a man
about town.

Patt Morrison>> He came here to the Cubs field on Catalina
Island, the Wrigley Field that had been established there
because he had broadcast Cubs games.

John Langellier>> Precisely. It was just simply a kind of
lark, a road game as it were, during off season and a chance to
travel somewhere he had never been. He had pretty much spent
his life in the Midwest. While he was here, someone said, you
know, there's a possibility. He's a nice-looking kid, he's
athletic, he's got a good speaking voice. Why don't we try and
get him a chance at a movie shot? What was there to lose?

Patt Morrison>> It really happened that way?

John Langellier>> It absolutely happened that way. The old
Schwab's Drugstore really worked in those days. You didn't have
to necessarily have an agent working twenty-eight hours a day to
get you on screen. He passed his screen test and he got a
seven-year contract with Warner's, which wasn't going to make
him a wealthy man, but was really part of his career that, while
he might have dreamed of it, as he would later say in life, he
might as well have said I want to go to the moon. It was that
unrealistic for somebody from his background ever hoping to make
it this far.

Patt Morrison>> His first role was as a radio broadcaster --
talk about typecasting -- breaking up a corrupt political ring?

John Langellier>> Precisely. So he got a little bit of real
life there for later life and early life combined. It wasn't an
outstanding movie, but it led him from one role to another,
including as The Gipper --

Patt Morrison>> -- George Gip.

John Langellier>> In the "Knute Rockne - All American" story.
That kind of put him on the radar screen.

Patt Morrison>> It was really in Hollywood that he became
politicized, when he became the president of the Screen Actors
Guild.

John Langellier>> And to keep a union together, which it is,
and on the same kind of focal plane is not that easy. He
learned about real politics from that standpoint, but he also
learned at that time, as president of SAG, he was called before
the House for Non-American Activities during the McCarthy era.

Patt Morrison>> And here's the transcript there, and they
misspell his name throughout.

John Langellier>> That's right. They misspelled his name, but
he was, like many other people, asked a lot of questions that
were difficult questions to answer.

Patt Morrison>> What tripped him from being a Democrat to a
Republican?

John Langellier>> In many respects, he felt that, as of World
War II, the government had grown so big, so invasive into every
area of personal freedom --

Patt Morrison>> -- like this?

John Langellier>> Like this, and taxes were huge. Now he's
making a decent salary and he was taking home almost less
because of the massive income tax structures and such. He felt
that taxes were high, government was bloated and also invading
peoples' privacy. He felt that it was FDR, the same man who was
essentially someone he looked up to as a youth, and FDR's party
that was responsible for that.

Patt Morrison>> Two things really changed Ronald Reagan's life.
One of them was television and another was an actress named
Nancy Davis, his second wife.

John Langellier>> Precisely. Ms. Davis was one of two
actresses with that name. One of them had evidently been
identified as a fellow traveler, a member of the Communist
party, so she met with SAG president to say what can I do about
making sure I'm not blacklisted? One thing led to another and
ultimately they were here in this booth at Chasen's where he
popped the question at one of his favorite dining spots in the
old Hollywood days.

Soon Ms. Davis would put aside her career with MGM to raise a
family and Ronald would segue from the big screen to, as you
mentioned, television where he was GE Theatre's spokesperson not
only on the air, but traveling all over the country sometimes as
much as three months of the year. But his travels around the
country allowed him to speak to groups of people anywhere where
there was a GE plant or offices, so he got really good on his
feet of becoming a political speaker.

Patt Morrison>> This is the point where entertainment and
politics seemed to have converged.

John Langellier>> Precisely, and the power and the image, he
was a household word because millions of households seeing him
on television. What an easy way to segue when he wanted that
opportunity to stump around the state to go and become governor.

Patt Morrison>> But it was when he was elected governor in 1966
that Ronald Reagan really came into his own to exercise the kind
of conservative politics that he became known for as President
of the United States. Welfare reform, reform in the UC system,
all sorts of things that we now identify him with, John.

John Langellier>> Precisely, and also the fiscal conservative.
Actually, he was a moderate in the sense that he had pretty open
ideas on abortion.

Patt Morrison>> He did legalize abortion in California.

John Langellier>> Precisely, and he also started one of the
first governmental agencies in California on the environment.

Patt Morrison>> Now what you're trying to do here is not only
to make this a library, a scholastic resource, but a visual one
as well where you've got some qualities of entertainment, I
think is the word you used, along with information. Is that
worrying the "infotainment" quality that some people are going
to see Ronald Reagan the star, Ronald Reagan the jelly bean
eater, and not really have a comprehension of the presidency?

John Langellier>> Actually, we give you a lot of inkling into
the presidency. It always has to be based on scholarship.
Education is our first and foremost area. We're part of the
National Archives and Records Administration. We have fifty-
five million pages or so of documents from his administration
and from his gubernatorial years, thousands of videos and stills
and that sort of thing. So we want to have that balance.

Patt Morrison>> Well, John Langellier, for ninety years in nine
minutes or fewer, you've really done a wonderful job and thank
you very much for hosting our tour.

John Langellier>> My pleasure. Come back soon.

Patt Morrison>> Thank you.

Val>> You may have noticed a plane in the background of that
last shot. That is Air Force One, the jet that transported
President Reagan. Like the president, Air Force One is now
retired, but it is being prepared to go on exhibit so that the
public will soon be able to step aboard. That's our program.
I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for
watching.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Tomorrow on Life and Times, she's called a professor in
residence. That means she lives on campus among her students,
but does this kind of closeness really work?

>> It's a professor. I mean, people aren't supposed to know
what goes on in your resident halls.

Val>> That's tomorrow on Life and Times.