Can Kate Steinle's family sue San Francisco over its sanctuary city policy?

Looking for justice? Move to Mexico. When it comes to looking to the U.S. courts for protection, you may have a better chance if you’re from south of the border.

Kathryn "Kate" Steinle was shot dead on July 1, allegedly by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a Mexican felon who was in the U.S. illegally. Lopez-Sanchez would have been deported but for the fact that San Francisco is a "sanctuary city," which is why officials there chose to release him and ignore an ICE detainer. This effectively put him back on the street. And yet, if Steinle's family tries to sue the city for this travesty, it may be thrown out of court.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, a judge has just denied a motion to dismiss a case brought by the mother of a Mexican teen who was shot by a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a cross-border shooting. You read that right. The teen was Mexican, shot in Mexico, and the judge still ruled that his mother may sue the Border Patrol agent. U.S. District Court Judge Raner Collins opined that "the Mexican national may avail himself to the protections of the Fourth Amendment and that the agent may not assert qualified immunity." The ACLU attorney on the case applauded this ruling, saying, "The court was right to recognize that constitutional protections don't stop at the border."

Perhaps they begin there. If Kate Steinle's family cannot use our laws to get justice in her name, and yet the family of this Mexican teen can, the immigration debate has truly become the twilight zone.

If Kate Steinle's family cannot use our laws to get justice in her name, and yet the family of this Mexican teen can, the immigration debate has truly become the twilight zone.

There is good reason to suspect that Steinle's family will have an uphill climb in any lawsuit it may pursue. In January of 2011, a California appeals court upheld the dismissal of a similar suit. In that case, Anthony Bologna and his two sons were murdered by Edwin Ramos, a Salvadoran. Bologna’s wife sued the city of San Francisco over the sanctuary policy in place at the time, and the appeals court unanimously agreed that the case did not fall under a legal exception allowing such lawsuits against governmental entities. The court ruled that none of the laws cited in the lawsuit were specifically aimed at preventing violent crimes by illegal immigrants. Instead, the court ruled, they were intended to combat the drug trade and to curb illegal immigration.

However, there are other ways for the Steinle family to pursue their case against San Francisco. First of all, less than a year after the Bologna family's case was dismissed, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Arizona v U.S. that the states can't overstep the federal government's immigration enforcement authority. While many felt that ruling took away Arizona's ability to combat illegal immigration, it also may have opened the door for the Steinles. If, as the court ruled, only the federal government has the power in the area of immigration, then any sanctuary city or state law is unconstitutional. This alone should provide the basis for a lawsuit against the city of San Francisco.

Sanctuary cities may violate the Illegal Immigrants Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Under that federal law, states and cities may not limit their governments from maintaining records regarding a person's immigration status, or bar the exchange of information with federal entities.

Officials in San Francisco seem to know they are on thin ice.

Gretchen's Take: Does DC take cyber security seriously?

Does Washington take cyber security seriously? Today the director of the office of personnel management in DC resigned -- but is that enough to take on the real problem of cyber security growing more serious every day?

The massive OPM data breach is just one event -- where 21 million federal employees private information was stolen. But it gets worse: Turns out these federal employees may have also listed family members, neighbors, co-workers and even college roommates' personal information on their applications too. The implications of all of those peoples' identities now compromised is chilling.

Add to that, this week alone we've had the United Airlines, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Wall Street Journal "glitches" ... and now TD Ameritrade today.

Russia and ISIS may top the list of our greatest national security concerns -- but cyber security should be right up there too. The big question now is how does the government plan to respond and how is it going to deter future attacks? Does anyone really know those answers?

Gretchen Carlson currently serves as anchor of FOX News Channel's (FNC) The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson (weekdays 2-3PM/ET).

What US must do -- right now -- to combat growing cyber threat

The cyberattacks just keep coming. Our enemies are inflicting real damage on our national security and the American economy. Make no mistake, the United States has never been more unprepared for a conflict than it has been against the Cyber War.

Just this week, we learned that in addition to last month’s disclosure of a massive cyberattack that compromised the personal data of at least 4 million current and former federal employees, there was a second, related breach of U.S. government computer systems. This time, hackers stole social security numbers from more than 21 million Americans. And earlier this week, a computer “glitch” was blamed for the suspension of trading on the New York Stock Exchange for nearly four hours, the grounding of all United Airlines airplanes, and the malfunction of the Wall Street Journal’s homepage – all on the same day.

I’ve never been a big believer in “coincidence.” Let’s hope it was just a glitch, but the forces we’re dealing with are savvy and sophisticated enough to make cyberattacks look like glitches.

Don’t forget that “Jihadi John,” one of the ringleaders of ISIS, has a degree with honors in computer programming from the University of Westminster.

The 9/11 Commission said that 9/11 was “above all, a failure of imagination.” The equivalent of a 9/11 in the cyber realm has the potential to be even more devastating on our economy.

Furthermore, it can take a while to distinguish between a glitch and a cyberattack. For example, the massive cyberattack on OPM that we now all know about was announced by the federal government on June 4 of this year. Our government didn’t discover the cyberattack until April of this year, while the attack itself occurred last December.

Also, remember the U.S. drone that went down in Iran in 2011? The federal government immediately said it was a “malfunction.” Later, an Israeli intelligence report stated that it was an Iranian cyberattack on the drone which disabled its communication system and brought it down in almost perfect condition.

Cyber warfare is the most complicated national security threat that the U.S. has ever faced because technology is changing so quickly. In fact, the speed of change in the cyber technology realm is changing faster than the Pentagon and that of our broader national security apparatus’s ability to analyze and adapt.

In recent years, we’ve seen an exponential surge in cyberattacks on our nation’s critical infrastructure. I’m concerned that hackers, be they “lone wolves” or supported by a hostile state, can cause more harm to our financial institutions than anywhere else. The five biggest banks in America have assets equivalent to 56% of America’s GDP. This is up from 43% in 2006. The “too big to fail banks” have only gotten bigger. Securing our financial system must be a top priority in the cyber war.

The 9/11 Commission said that 9/11 was “above all, a failure of imagination.” The equivalent of a 9/11 in the cyber realm has the potential to be even more devastating on our economy.

At the beginning of World War II, Nazi Germany’s “Enigma Code” appeared unbreakable. As shown in the recent movie, “The Imitation Game,” the British brought together the best cryptographers and in the end, under the genius of Alan Turing, built a machine to crack the Nazi’s Enigma machine. It was a game-changer for the Allies.

Similarly today, the United States needs to assemble our best minds to tackle our ever-increasing vulnerability in cyber warfare.

Recently, there is strong evidence that the science of quantum computing can provide for the generation of truly random numbers. Once this technology has matured, it would greatly reduce, if not eliminate, the likelihood of hacking into any system. There is also strong evidence that the technology could actually be put on a chip. Fortunately, the US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has done a great deal of research and work in this area.

It’s time to save sharks, not destroy them

The headlines about recent shark attacks on humans along the North Carolina coast have many people feeling frightened, even though such attacks are statistically rare.  But the truth is that the world’s 450 species of sharks, most of which pose no danger to humans, have a lot more to fear from humans.

Consider this:  Each year, for every person killed by a shark, about 10 million sharks are killed by humans.

Across the planet’s oceans, vast numbers of sharks are being wiped out, at a rate faster than they can reproduce.  It’s a harvest that eventually could disrupt aquatic ecosystems, and even hurt the food supply upon which much of the world’s human population depends.

And the real tragedy is that humans are killing most of these sharks not because they’re dangerous or for food, but out of carelessness.  Commercial fishing operations, which are out to catch tuna, swordfishes and other high-value food fishes, use methods that inadvertently hook many sharks as well.  In fishing circles, this is known as “bycatch.”

It’s still in our abilities to save sharks, but the window of opportunity is closing rapidly. Because sharks are highly migratory, it’s not enough for the U.S. to take steps by itself to protect shark populations. It’s essential to have a joint international effort among the world’s fishing nations.

In the open ocean, for example, ships use fishing lines that are up to 30 miles in length, with thousands of hooks attached.  They often use J-shaped hooks, which can get caught in a shark’s throat or stomach and cause fatal injuries, so that they can’t be released back into the ocean.  Closer to shore, fishing operations use gill nets, which are made of a nearly invisible monofilament that efficiently traps large numbers of fishes—including sharks.

Terrorists aren't the only ones who terrorize

As we struggle to comprehend the growing evil of the terrorist group ISIS, we need to look no further than our own neighborhood bullies to understand key weaknesses within ISIS’s tactics in order to thwart them.

Terrorists aren’t the only villains who use violent acts to create fear in part by targeting innocent, non-combatants. Bullies do so every school day in America, causing more than 160,000 children to stay home and motivate others to take their life. Bullies also wed power to fear and target innocent classmates, except bullies do so to gain social status as terrorists strive to usurp political power.Both ISIS and schoolyard bullies endeavor to dominate a target’s psyche through addling fear, foreboding powerlessness, and threat of future cruelty. Both groups sneer at others with disdain and contempt, believing they are a kind of master race, destined to rule and superior to their targets who “deserve” to be treated with unspeakable cruelty.

Most of us have no opportunity to thwart terrorism. We rely upon our courageous men and women in uniform for that. But we can muster a more common courage to thwart terror from bullying in our schools

“Terrorism,” wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks, “is not an act of war but of taunting,” and taunting is among a bully’s sharpest knives.

A taunt is a battle cry intended to demoralize another and make a target abandon self-defense, such as the late Alex Moore of Jemison, Ala., who in May, 2010 took her life in part due to taunts from classmates who called her “fat bitch,” among other slurs for more than two years.