♪ sharyl: welcome to full measure. i'm sharyl attkisson. we begin with a border story we broke this week that the federal government seemed to want to keep quiet. two active duty u.s. soldiers were arrested at the southern border allegedly trying to smuggle in two mexican citizens. even more shocking, one of the soldiers told investigators there's an entire smuggling ring operating out of the fort bliss army post in el paso, texas. the soldiers, marco antonio nava, junior and joseph cleveland, were arrested a week

falfurias, texas border patrol station checkpoint. two mexicans were riding in the back seat. nava told investigators it was the second time that he and cleveland had smuggled in illegal immigrants for pay and described a smuggling ring allegedly involving other fort bliss soldiers. he said that the week before the group smuggled in six illegal immigrants. according to nava, each of the soldiers involved was paid $1000. the border has been something of a revolving door for the two mexican citizens who were arrested, between them they had six prior removals on record. now today's cover story, which is all about jobs and how hard it is for some americans to find them. the search is made more difficult by time consuming and expensive licensing process required for thousands of jobs. and, believe it or not, it can be a lot easier to become a medical professional who treats patients than to get licensed to trim trees or pack boxes. we investigated and found out

that so-called occupational licenses are sometimes occupational hazards and could be shutting down millions of americans. melony: so professional hair braiding, the art of hair braiding, of course has been passed down from generation to generation in the african american or african culture. >> a few years back, melony armstrong decided to change her career to professional hair braiding. she was stunned to find out what it would take in her home state of mississippi. ony: i was going to have to go to cosmetology school and get a 1,500 hour cosmetology license. >> that's right, to braid hair, she would have to go to beauty school for a year and a half. >> i was going to have to quit my full-time job because i was an assistant director at a boys home at the time. i also would have had to pay about $10,000 because that'

cost at the time. a person can go and become certified as an ambulance driver in that short amount of time, and here in the state at the time was requiring someone like myself, who just wanted to hair braid, to have to go to school for a year and a half. sharyl: it's estimated millions of americans are hitting the same brick wall. they want to learn a new job or start a business only to find arduous regulations standing in the way. andy: the issue here is what's called occupational licensing, and these are regulations in states and local government that require people to get certifications or licenses before getting a certain job. sharyl: andy koenig is with the conservative freedom partners chamber of commerce, and says there's bipartisan concern about over-licensing. andy what's happened in the past : 50 years or so is that these have been drastically expanded to cover a wide swath of careers and jobs that have nothing to do with public safety, that's had the adverse impact of keeping people who want to get a new job or get a new career out of a

sharyl: today, koenig says more than a thousand professions require state or local licenses, from interior decorators to the guy who boxes your deliveries. who's hurt by this process in your view? andy: millions of people, according to recent studies, are now out of the work force because of these requirements, and it really disproportionately hurts the least advantaged. people who are graduating high school or college and looking for a job. people who lost their job in the recession and are looking to start a new career, become entrepreneurs. veterans returning from iraq and afghanistan trying to get back into the workplace. sharyl: let's say a military vet returns from a war and wants to kind of hang out a shingle and cut hair. what would that take in a given state? andy in the state of nevada that : would take you almost a thousand days, 890 days of training to become a barber in the state of nevada. sharyl:

andy: three years. not to mention about $500 worth of fees, which may not sound like a lot of money to you or me or somebody who's established in their career, but to people who are just starting out, this can be a real barrier to pursuing that career. sharyl: a spokesman for the professional beauty association, which represents salon professionals, told us, with the potential to spread diseases or risk of injury to a client, consumers are better served by mandatory licensing. what if the people who are requiring the licenses say, this is a training and safety issue. you can't have just anybody poking people with scissors at the barbershop? andy: i'd think we'd all agree that there are a number of professions that's very important to make sure people are educated and licensed. but if you look from 1950, the number of jobs that require licenses has risen from 5% to 30%. there are a nu

have fallen under this i think that most reasonable people would agree not public safety issues. i think one good example is here in virginia, where it takes four times as long to get a license to become a massage therapist as it does to become an emergency medical technician. >> in fact, on average, you can become an emergency medical technician or emt with about 33 days of education and training. but cosmetologists require more than a year. commercial carpenters and cabinet makers? 450 days in school. and tree trimmers, in seven states, 369 days. but stephan szoke argues that's not excessive. to start a tree service in maryland, he had be an apprentice for 5 years and pass a state exam. he says the process weeds out those with no training or insurance who may be unsafe. stephan: in this business, you don't get a papercut. you're being hauled off in an ambulance if you get hurt. it's a tough, it's a tough thing. >> koenig says there are often competitive reasons behind all the licensing requirements. andy these have been set up to : protect the existing businesses and keep people who want to enter that field out. so you'll see organizations who represent barbers go to state capitals and lobby against reforms when they're moving through the legislature. sharyl: and they're lobbying

against making it easier for other barbers to enter the market? andy that's 100% right. : they want to keep up these@ artificial barriers to opportunity in order to protect themselves from competition. sharyl: szoke admits there is a competitive element behind his support of the licensing requirements. steffen: it's not fair to me that i had to go through all the steps and then you have guys come out and we have a lot of now, we have a lot of illegals in the country. i mean, they're just, they're just walking up to doors, knocking on doors and they're doing the tree work without any, any, any coverage or anything. sharyl: melony armstrong tried to take on the tangled bureaucracy standing in the way of her hair braiding. finally, a licensing official told her she should get a wigologist license, which takes a fraction of the time. >> and i said really? what is a wigologist license? and they said, well, it's a license. the curriculum involves the application of wigs, the sizing of wigs, the cleaning of wigs, the fitting of wigs. and i'm thinking, ok what does this have to do with me? do

wigs, well they said well if you went to a school and got this license, the state would allow you to be able to open a hair braiding salon. sharyl: so armstrong, whose aspirations had nothing to do with wigs, went to wig school. meantime, she contacted a powerful mississippi state representative, steve holland, and found a sympathetic ear. >> i said i thought everybody learned to braid on their front porch from where i'm from, and they do a good job, and i don't see the need for much licensure on that, and that's how we started our story, and thank goodness i was chairman of the committee. sharyl: the powerful mississippi state committee over cosmetology licenses. and it seems holland had grappled with his own licensing challenges over the years. steve: i am a licensed embalmer and funeral director myself in the trade, i own funeral homes, and it was so laborious for me to get my license. i mean i understand the academic training, i understand all the testing, but i mean, sitting be

occupational licensures are self-serving to a large degree. they are egotistical to the profession. sharyl: together, he and armstrong worked up a bill to deregulate hair braiding. steve: i don't think you'll find one death certificate at the mississippi state department of health vital statistics division that said cause of death, hair braiding. sharyl: but that's when the beauty brigade launched a full force assault. holland remembers it as one of his finest battles in thirty years in the mississippi state legislature. mr. holland the cosmetologists : by the hundreds descended on me, and the cosmetology board, trying to tell me what i would do, and i finally got my belly full of them, and i stood up in my committee, and i said 'i'll tell you what you're going to have to, what i'm going to do to you. i'm abolishing the board of cosmetology if hair braiding has to be licensed, so y'all can get

room right now and not come back because i'm the chair, and that's the way it's going to be. in 2005.hat was holland says the bills opponents still remember the battle of the braids. mr. holland: but i don't think we had a vote against us on the floor of the house. now, the senate chairman didn't feel as strongly as i did, and i basically told her to go to hell. you could either have a cosmetology board, or you could accept my language and she accepted it. sharyl: a happy ending for one profession in one state. but nationwide, it's estimated licensing restrictions reduce job opportunities by 2.85 million, mostly in low and middle income professions. veterans and immigrants are among the hardest hit. >> entrepreneurs are backbone of this country. then for the government to come in and make it almost impossible to even start small businesses, to even be an entrepreneur, that that is just really you know

just unfair, and is very unfortunate. sharyl: professional barber and beauty groups told us all the training is for safety and you can be a barber in some states in 11 months. but, they are looking for ways to reduce the time and funding necessary. ahead on full measure, as if hospitals weren't frightening enough, we look at a new cyber threat of hacking the

sharyl: hacking, the unauthorized access to data, is so common these days, it was actually news this week when there were reports of a dip in chinese hacking incidents. much of the evolving cyber-wars exist in critical areas of high finance, military and intelligence circles. but there is a potential critical concern. most life-saving hospital equipment contains almost no cyber-security. not only can it be hacked, it's easier to break into than your smartphone or nintendo and the results can be lethal. full measure correspondent lisa fletcher has more. lisa when you're sick or : injured, you depend on life-saving medical equipment. mris, ct scans and drug infusion pumps that deliver everything from pain medicine to chemotherapy are all designed to save you. but the way that equipment is built could put you in more danger than you ever imagined. the cybersecurity on my smart phone versus the cybersecurity built into these medical devices. which has more security? billy: your smartphone, definitely. light years ahead.

: cybersecurity expert who's identified serious threats for the department of defense, google, microsoft and others. in their spare time and with their own money, he and his business partner, jonathan butts, buy and deconstruct vital hospital equipment to find access points hackers can exploit, and they report their findings to the department of homeland security. lisa: how bad is it? billy: it's really bad. i don't think i've ever walked away from a medical device that didn't have some pretty serious issues. there's a medical device that we looked at, it literally had over 4,000 vulnerabilities in one device. lisa: 4,000 in one device? billy: 4,000. lisa here's the deal, there are : no federal requirements for cybersecurity standards on hospital equipment, which means once these machines are on a hospital's network, and there are thousands in every hospital, rios says most are easily hacked and settings and critical information can be changed.

and the fda. billy we demonstrated that : someone could take over an infusion pump and essentially change the dosage of medicine that's being given to somebody. make them overdose on a medicine essentially. there's not a chance for the doctor or patient to intervene. we've shown that we could crash the patient monitor or modify the data from a patient monitor so the data that's going to the physician isn't the right data. we've shown that devices like supply cabinets, where drugs and medicines are being served from, we showed that we can take those over. we can open up all the drawers or lock all the drawers. lisa and his latest undertaking? : this x-ray machine, it took rios and butts less than 24 hours to hack it and reconfigure the system.

that could do everything from incapacitate the machine, to deliver lethal doses of radiation without anyone being the wiser. and for much of the equipment they've researched, like commonly used drug infusion pumps, the hacker can be on the other side of the world. >> someone doesn't have to be near it. doesn't have to be close to it. 1,000 miles away and they can run some software and basically take over your device. lisa: this is a frightening example of what rios handed to homeland security, with just a few key strokes, he remotely enters a generic passcode, unlocks a drug infusion pump and pushes the entire vial of medicine into a would-be patient at once. the fda reacted in may of 2015 by issuing the first ever cybersecurity advisory. >> they actually recommended that hospitals stop using a particular infusion pump. lisa: but, to this day, rios says the problems have not been fixed. likewise for other vulnerabilities they've discovered, like hundreds of unsecured device passwords that allow access to everything from anesthesia machines to ventilators.

billy: the manufacturers are the ly people who can change the software on the devices. lisa: and that, rios says, is the fix. but remember, there are no requirements for them to do so. billy: the hospitals are in a really bad situation. they have devices they know are not secure and they're essentially trying to put band-aids on these issues. we're talking about tens of millions of dollars the healthcare industry as a whole is spending on something that can be patched by the manufacturer for less than $5,000. lisa the fda declined our : request for an interview but did provide a written response to some questions, stating, the fda plays an important role in assuring safety of medical devices and our regulatory abilities allow for us to take appropriate actions to protect public health. both men told me the fda is not doing enough to protect the public and that there is no reason the

evaluating those for cybersecurity concerns. -- i asked billy about it >> have their been any instances of fatal or harmful hackings of hospital equipment? had a heart cheney surgery, they had to disable the wi-fi to his pacemaker because they knew it could be hacked and he could have been killed. sharyl:

woman: i have a masurprise for you.are you? man: you have a surprise for me? narrator: at dominion, 1 in 5 new hires is a veteran. and when they're away, they miss out on a lot. but they won't miss out on financial support. because we cover any difference between their military pay and their dominion salary, and continue benefits for them and their families. why do we do it? because our vets sacrifice enough. "dominion. depend on us for more than energy." ♪ stand by me.

our next story takes us

america. where the government's search for the mysteries of deep space is in full swing. people there can't use cell phones or wifi because it might interfere with equipment conducting the scientific research. now, a russian businessman is bankrolling part of the search for aliens from this sensitive no wi-fi zone. and full measure's joce sterman says some scientists think he's saving the day. >> in the digital age, we live on an electronic leash, and sometimes we dream of a life not on a tether. you'll find it in this town of less than 200 people. green bank, west virginia, is the kind of place where chickens roam free, country songs spill from the lone am station, and the sound of crickets is drowned out only by a passing car on a country road. it's not the shelter of these mountain hills that shields green bank from the intrusions of technology. it is the demands of technology itself. dave: their life does not revolve around that technology, that cell phone. >> life for sheriff david jonese

revolves around a monstrosity in white you can see for miles a 17 -- miles. a million pound telescope 17 installed 15 years ago. it is the crown jewel of the national radio astronomy observatory built in 1956. the observatory, specifically its green bank telescope, the g.b.t., is king, dictating life since its installation back in 2000. it's the largest steerable radio telescope in the world, listening for faint radio waves in deep space. the truth is out there, but the telescope has a few demands of its own. >> they knock on the door and say you're bothering our scope. >> and by bother, we mean breaking the universal rule of green bank, no one interferes with the g.b.t. it sits near the heart of the united states national radio quiet zone, 13,000 square miles in three states where transmissions are limited. in green bank though, the rules are even stronger, so much that people here can't use cell

phones, wifi, not even a microwave oven. and finding someone requires dialing back the clock to 1980. >> these signals are sent directly to the computers. >> the technology is so advanced, it picks up signals so weak they're in scientific terms we don't even understand. what does it mean for me? mike: for a layman, that would be equivalent to detecting the energy given off by a single snowflake hitting the ground. >> the future of the telescope is as much a mystery as the universe it explores. the national science foundation has funded this facility and its $12 million-$14 million annual budget since its inception. in 2012 it announced it was divesting, cutting back money starting in 2017. >> we absolutely worry about the

future of the gbt all the time. >> karen o'neil is the director of this facility. she's an astrophysicist who understands the theory of relativity between science and budget. karen: it's not that the national science foundation wants to shut us down. they don't wish to shut us down. it's that the national science foundation has a budget that is only so big and within that budget they've got to figure out how to make scientists around the country as happy as possible and be able to pursue new ideas at the same time they're trying to keep old ones there. >> the lifeline for the telescope may come from an unlikely source, one that would not have been possible during the cold war. but funding gaps create fast friendships. >> there are about 200 billion galaxies. >> yuri milner, a russian billionaire, is pumping cash millions facility, $10 alone on a recent equipment upgrade. his project, breakthrough initiatives, is committed to using 20% of the g.b.t.'s time for the next decade, the project setting its sights on the search for life beyond the stars. yuri: i can report today that a few days ago we did our first observation and did not find anything.

>> now the idea is to embrace the world of pay as you go science, soliciting partners to keep the g.b.t. scanning the skies for decades to come. >> in the space race, people looked at the russians as the enemy, now they're the savior of a facility like this? >> it's a funny world out there. if you look back at the 1950's, back when this organization came into being, we were racing with the soviet union. we were trying to get their -- get there first. so i think we're in a wonderful new era, where instead of racing up against other countries and organizations to try and get there first, it seems like people are cooperating to try and get the best possible science out of what we have. >> in green bank, west virginia, i'm joce sterman for full measure. >> by the way the u.s. didn't , publicly express any security concerns over allowing a foreign entrepreneur to, in essence, rent telescope time in the middle of a zone where s

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sharyl: coming up on the next "full measure," we revisit our examination of the islamic extremist terrorist attacks of americans at benghazi. we found critical facts that indicate it was a case of a rescue interrupted. that's on the next episode of "full measure." that's all for this week. thank you for watching. i'm sharyl attkisson. until next time, we'll be searching for more stories that hold powers accountable.

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>> from washington d.c. and around the world, this is "government matters" with francis rose. >> thanks for watching the weekend edition of "government matters" following the latest topics that matter to the business of government like technology, defense, workforce, security and industry. i'm your host, francis rose. >> the chair wishes to make an announcement. >> we start with workforce matters. house speaker paul ryan called for initiatives that restrict spending habits. they came with this quote, just