0 he works. you got to love it. joe johns is filling in for jake tapper today on "the lead." that starts right now. get used to it. spying on you and everyone else in the country is the new normal according to a judge. i'm joe johns. this is "the lead." the national lead. a few days after a judge ruled the other way, a different federal judge says the nsa's mass collection phone data program is legal because of 9/11. she's a young teen who has been declared brain-dead by doctors and a judge agrees but her family is still hoping and praying for a miracle and wants her moved. will the hospital that already considers it too late help them? the world lead. you thought breaking the ice with your in-laws was tough. the race to reach a ship frozen in place off the coast of antarctica hits a snag when a vessel made to crack the ice gets stuck in the ice. i'm joe johns in for jake tapper. we begin with the money lead. if you still rely on the stock market to predict how americans view the economy, then you're probably also to blame for making mood rings a thing for as long as they were. even with the record highs and end of year rally on wall street, it seems most americans still have a pretty glum outlook on how the economy is doing. according to a new cnn/orc poll released this morning, 68% think it's in bad shape while only 32% give it a good rating. despite reports of booming home and auto sales and unemployment hitting a five-year low, most people say they mainly hear bad news about how the economy's doing. joining me now live from the new york stock exchange is cnn business correspondent zain asher. what's with this disconnect? >> reporter: well, certainly there's a difference between the reports you see in the media about the economy getting better and what people see when they go outside and they see their neighbors struggling to find work. or they see empty storefronts. there is certainly a disconnect between what they read and how they feel. a majority of people based on that cnn/orc poll think that economic conditions won't get much better a year from now and when they were asked if the economy has made them put off making major purchases, 50% actually did say yes. here's what's going on. the economy is certainly getting better but there are major holes in this ship. on the one hand, stock market is surging, we have seen 50 record highs so far this year thanks in part to the fed stimulus but only half of americans are even investd in the stock market to begin with. so where's the trickle-down. also, we have seen the housing market recover, home prices rise but mortgage rates are creeping up as well. we saw the yields on the ten year note crossing 3%. so that could have an impact on mortgage rates which could reverse the gains we have seen in the housing market. lastly, with the job market, we have seen signs of improvement two straight months of payroll numbers over 200,000 but at the same time, 1.3 million americans might be losing their long-term unemployment benefits as well. so certainly a disconnect between the rich and the less well off. joe? >> we also learned some information today about that target credit card hack. what are you hearing on that? >> reporter: right. so hearing from target today that they have confirmed that in that hack, pin data was actually stolen but target is also saying at the same time that that data was heavily encrypted and they don't believe that the hackers will actually be able to unscramble the pin numbers. so target at this point really just sort of desperate to salvage any piece of trust they have left with consumers so they did get pin data, but the data was heavily scrambled. that's what they're saying. what's interesting is what target told us yesterday. they told us something very different yesterday. they told us yesterday that to date, there is actually no evidence that unencrypted pin data was compromised. now today they are actually coming out and saying that pin data was compromised but they don't believe the hackers would be sophisticated enough to actually unscramble those pins and actually steal people's numbers. little bit confusing, but one hacker i spoke to is actually optimistic about the pin numbers not being compromised hopefully. fingers crossed. >> zain asher, thanks. good to see you. it's getting pretty confusing when it comes to figuring out how the u.s. judicial system feels about the legality of the nsa's spying practices. earlier this month, a district court judge ruled that the phone record collection program likely violated the fourth amendment but today, a different federal court judge, this one in new york, ruled the program is legal, dismissing a challenge by the american civil liberties union, he writes while robust discussions are under way across the nation, in congress and at the white house, the question for this court is whether the government's bulk telephone metadata program is lawful. this court finds that it is, but the question of whether that program should be conducted for the other two coordinate branches of government to decide. i want to bring in cnn's justice reporter, evan perez. we just want to read a little bit of that earlier decision from judge richard leon this month. the court concludes that plaintiffs have challenged the constitutionality of the government's bulk collection of metadata, that they demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of their fourth amendment claim and they will suffer irreparable harm. what's the take-away now that you have these two competing rulings going in completely opposite directions? >> well, yeah, exactly. you have two judges who are of the same rank so basically, the two opinions cancel out each other. what we have to do now is the nsa -- and the nsa is going to continue doing its program, its metadata collection. it will be some time before the appeals work themselves out, probably another couple years before this maybe finally makes its way to the supreme court, and they can once and for all decide whether or not this program is legal or not. at the same time, the president has this blue ribbon panel that just came back with a recommendation that said it should be taken out of the hands of the nsa and this program should be put in the hands of the phone companies that collect the data in the first place, and then the nsa would have to get a court order to be able to access that data. so that may yet be another change that's in the works. >> so they are always struggling to try to find the right balance. want to read another part of the opinion. liberty and security can be reconciled and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. the success of one helps protect the others. he says they sort of complement each other but he is strongly implying that security wins out, at least as far as he's concerned. >> well, he begins, the judge today in this ruling in new york, he begins at 9/11 so you can see where he is coming from. he says that in 9/11, the government failed to catch certain things and could have prevented the attack, and if you look at the ruling last week from judge leon in d.c., he begins from the point of view that what the nsa is doing might be almost orwellian and it is a problem with our liberty. so this judge is basically saying that security is the issue and it wins out here. >> the case that inevitably gets cited in all of this stuff is from 1979. stated in this case, too, smith versus maryland. it said people who use the phones have no legitimate expectation of privacy, but that case really didn't say anything about metadata itself. we weren't talking about metadata in 1979. so this is kind of new ground for the courts, isn't it? >> that's the ruling that the fisa court that oversees surveillance repeatedly cites to say that this is legal, and they reauthorized this thing periodically, every year. so what's going to happen now i think is you see the supreme court already kind of heading this way. justice sotomayor hinted that perhaps it might be time to look at whether or not the privacy rights from 1979, the way they were interpreted in 1979, still applies today given that the amount of data, the amount of information that we are providing to the phone company is so much more than it was in 1979. >> all right. thanks. always good to see you. talk back to you again soon. okay, everybody. grab those tissues and dvds. it's flu season, the time of year where that sick co-worker who just refuses to stay home ruins your physical well-being. thanks a lot, overachiever. the centers for disease control and prevention say that ten states are reporting widespread flu activity which means over 50% of counties or regions in the state. for answers on all things flu-related, let's bring in dr. anthony fouchi from the national institutes of health. he joins us on the phone. doctor, looking at this report, what struck me was that the most common strain being reported is the h1n1 which our viewers who have been watching for awhile better know as swine flu, that caused a pandemic in 2009. should we be concerned about this? >> well, we have to remember now that we're not really calling it swine flu anymore because it's really turned into and morphed into a seasonal flu. ever since 2009, the h1n1, that same strain, has really been the predominant seasonal influenza strain we have seen through 2010, '11, '12 and now into '13-'14 season. it really has sort of incorporated itself into the standard seasonal flu. there should not be any additional concern that this is going to be anything like the pandemic flu season when virtually the large proportion of the population had never been exposed to anything like the 2009 h1n1. now we have multiple years of experience not only with exposure but also with vaccinations, seasonal vaccinations, because our vaccines have included the 2009 h1n1 ever since the 2009 pandemic, and we have been having our vaccinations every year since then. so it really is a totally different story than it was in 2009. >> so doctor, break this down for me a little bit. back in 2009, the h1n1 was new and now it's not so new and you know how to deal with it and that's why it's not going to be as big a problem? >> yes, there are two reasons. first, you remember in 2009, by the time we got the vaccine available for individuals throughout the country, the pandemic had already peaked. right now, the vaccine has contained the 2009 h1n1 in it for the last several years. but also importantly, a substantial proportion of our population has had some experience with this flu either through exposure, infection or even vaccination. so there's a lot of background immunity to it. that doesn't mean you want to put down the potential seriousness of any flu season, because flu is a serious disease. but this is not now being confronted with a brand new virus. this is a virus we know about and that we've had experience about, and that is contained in our vaccine this year. >> so looking at this data with our expert eye, ten states reporting widespread flu activity, how would you describe the start of the flu season? not particularly bad? >> this what is we would really call a typical flu season. you start to see these spikes in the winter and we have just turned over into the winter now, it's the end of december. it usually peaks in january or february. so if you look at the numbers, the number of states that have widespread and the number of states that have high level of influenza-like illness, it's not really substantially different than a typical flu season. again, you always have to stay heads up because you don't know what's going to happen in the next several months, but based on what we know now, there is not really anything that's significantly different than what we've seen in previous flu seasons. >> dr. fauci, thank you for your time. when we come back, a mom still believes her daughter can recover after being declared brain-dead. but the hospital says all hope is lost. what will jahi's mother do now as the december 30th deadline approaches? and later, it's about to be the end of an era in new york if the city's new mayor has his way. why is he vowing to stop horse-drawn carriage rides in central park?