[Congressional Bills 108th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[S. 1927 Introduced in Senate (IS)]

  1st Session
                                S. 1927

To establish an award program to encourage the development of effective 
                       bomb-scanning technology.


_______________________________________________________________________


                   IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

                           November 21, 2003

 Mrs. Clinton introduced the following bill; which was read twice and 
   referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

_______________________________________________________________________

                                 A BILL


 
To establish an award program to encourage the development of effective 
                       bomb-scanning technology.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ``Airliner Protection Act of 2003''.

SEC. 2. ESTABLISHMENT OF AWARD PROGRAM.

    Section 44912 of title 49, United States Code, is amended by adding 
at the end the following new subsection:
    ``(d) Bomb Scanner Development.--
            ``(1) Definitions.--In this Act:
                    ``(A) Bomb scanner.--The term ``bomb scanner'' 
                means a machine that is used to thoroughly examine the 
                contents of a piece of baggage, without opening the 
                baggage, in order to detect and signal the presence of 
                explosives.
                    ``(B) False positive rate.--The term ``false 
                positive rate'' means the average rate at which pieces 
                of baggage that pass through a bomb scanner trigger an 
                alarm despite not containing any explosives.
                    ``(C) False negative rate.--The term ``false 
                negative rate'' means the average rate at which pieces 
                of baggage that pass through a bomb scanner do not 
                trigger an alarm despite containing any explosives.
            ``(2) Award program.--(A) The Under Secretary is authorized 
        to award grants under this subsection to eligible entities to 
        produce bomb scanners.
            ``(B) For purposes of this subsection, an eligible entity 
        is an entity that has headquarters in the United States and has 
        demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Under Secretary an 
        ability to produce bomb scanners--
                    ``(i) that have a false positive rate of less than 
                10 percent;
                    ``(ii) that have a false negative rate of less than 
                2 percent; and
                    ``(iii) the installment of which in airports 
                nationwide would not be cost prohibitive.
            ``(3) Authorization of appropriations.--There is authorized 
        to be appropriated $20,000,000 to carry out the award program 
        under this subsection, to remain available until expended.''.
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