[Senate Hearing 110-103]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-103
INTERRUPTING TERRORIST TRAVEL: STRENGTHENING THE SECURITY OF
INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL DOCUMENTS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON TERRORISM,
TECHNOLOGY AND HOMELAND SECURITY
of the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MAY 2, 2007
__________
Serial No. J-110-32
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
36-943 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2007
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COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont, Chairman
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
HERB KOHL, Wisconsin CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California JON KYL, Arizona
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JOHN CORNYN, Texas
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
Bruce A. Cohen, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Michael O'Neill, Republican Chief Counsel and Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California, Chairman
EDWARD M. KENNEDY, Massachusetts JON KYL, Arizona
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
HERBERT KOHL, Wisconsin JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York JOHN CORNYN, Texas
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
Jennifer Duck, Chief Counsel
Stephen Higgins, Republican Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Feinstein, Hon. Dianne, a U.S. Senator from the State of
California..................................................... 1
Schumer, Hon. Charles E., a U.S. Senator from the State of New
York........................................................... 17
Kyl, Hon. Jon, a U.S. Senator from the State of Arizona.......... 4
WITNESSES
Donovan, Patrick D., Assistant Director for Diplomatic Security,
Director of Domestic Operations, Bureau of Diplomatic Security,
Department of State, Washington, D.C........................... 7
Ervin, Clark Kent, Director of Homeland Security, Aspen
Institute, and Former Inspector General, Department of Homeland
Security, and Author, Washington, D.C.......................... 26
Everitt, Michael P., Unit Chief, Forensic Document Laboratory,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland
Security, Washington, D.C...................................... 9
Morris, Paul, Executive Director, Admissibility Requirements and
Migration Control, Office of Field operations, Customs and
Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security, Washington,
D.C............................................................ 12
Noble, Hon. Ronald K., Secretary General, Interpol, Lyon, France. 23
Simkin, Andrew, Director, Office of Fraud Prevention Programs,
Bureau of Consular Affairs, Department of State, Washington,
D.C............................................................ 5
Zimmer, Brian, Senior Associate, Kelly, Anderson & Associates,
and Former Senior Investigator, Committee on the Judiciary,
U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C................. 28
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Responses of Andrew Simkin to questions submitted by Senators
Feinstein and Schumer.......................................... 37
Responses of Paul Morris and Michael Everitt to questions
submitted by Senators Schumer and Feinstein.................... 45
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Donovan, Patrick D., Assistant Director for Diplomatic Security,
Director of Domestic Operations, Bureau of Diplomatic Security,
Department of State, Washington, D.C., statement............... 61
Ervin, Clark Kent, Director of Homeland Security, Aspen
Institute, and Former Inspector General, Department of Homeland
Security, and Author, Washington, D.C., statement.............. 66
Everitt, Michael P., Unit Chief, Forensic Document Laboratory,
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland
Security, Washington, D.C., statement.......................... 72
Kephart, Janice, former Counsel, 9/11 Commission and President,
9/11 Security Solutions, LLC................................... 84
Morris, Paul, Executive Director, Admissibility Requirements and
Migration Control, Office of Field operations, Customs and
Border Protection, Department of Homeland Security, Washington,
D.C., statements............................................... 87
Noble, Hon. Ronald K., Secretary General, Interpol, Lyon, France,
statements..................................................... 94
Simkin, Andrew, Director, Office of Fraud Prevention Programs,
Bureau of Consular Affairs, Department of State, Washington,
D.C., statement................................................ 115
United States Department of State, Washington, D.C., Visa and
Passport Security Strategic Plan............................... 127
Zimmer, Brian, Senior Associate, Kelly, Anderson & Associates,
and former Senior Investigator, Committee on the Judiciary,
U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., statement and
attachments.................................................... 167
INTERRUPTING TERRORIST TRAVEL: STRENGTHENING THE SECURITY OF
INTERNATIONAL TRAVEL DOCUMENTS
----------
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2007
United States Senate,
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and
Homeland Security,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:00 a.m., in
room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Dianne
Feinstein, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Feinstein, Schumer, and Kyl.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Chairman Feinstein. I would like to call this Subcommittee
meeting to order. My Ranking Member, Senator Kyl, is here. I
believe we will be joined by Senator Schumer, who has asked to
make a statement, and, of course, we will afford him that
opportunity.
We are going to try to move this as quickly as possible.
Senator Kyl has a critical appointment at around 10:30, and I
have one at noon. But this is an important Subcommittee, and I
would just like our witnesses to try to think about what they
are going to say and say it in as close to 5 minutes as you
possibly can. And I will begin with a statement that hopefully
will set the parameters for the hearing.
For terrorists, international travel documents are as
important as weapons. Now, that is not my statement. That is
the conclusion of the authors of the 9/11 report over 5 years
ago. The 9/11 report pointed out that international travel
presents greater danger to terrorists because they must surface
to pass through regulated channels. They must present
themselves to border security officials or attempt to
circumvent inspection points.
The moment that the terrorist presents a false document to
Border Patrol inspectors is a critical moment in the protection
of our borders. In that short, brief interview at the border
point, the officer must be able to determine whether the person
attempting to enter the United States intends to harm the
people of this country.
Today there are many tools that a border inspector or the
consular officer or other Government agents can use to identify
real travelers from those with bad motives. The ongoing
question and the reason we are here today is whether United
States Government agencies are taking advantage of all those
tools.
This is a subject we come back to over and over again in
this Subcommittee, and this is a subject that is extremely
important to me. I am not going to rest until I believe that
the United States Government is taking all the security
measures it can take to interrupt terrorist travel.
The point of this hearing today is to assess where we are
and where the Government still needs to improve when it comes
to document security. We cannot be complacent when it comes to
this subject. The evidence has shown repeatedly that false
travel documents provide a gateway for organized crime and
terror.
The 9/11 terrorists devoted extensive resources to
acquiring and manipulating passports, all to avoid detection of
their nefarious activities and objectives. We know, for
example, that at least two of the 9/11 hijackers used passports
that were altered when they entered this country, and as many
as 15 of the 19 had some other irregularity with their travel
document.
In the 5 years since 9/11, of the 353 individuals who the
Department of Justice classified and prosecuted as
international terrorists, 24 were charged with document crimes.
For example, in September of 2005, Mohammed Khalil was
convicted on several visa fraud charges. Mr. Khalil was the
ringleader of a massive visa fraud scheme operating out of a
mosque he established in a Brookyln basement. Over a 10-year
period, Khalil sponsored over 200 fraudulent applications for
individuals seeking religious work visas to enter the United
States, charging cash fees ranging from $5,000 to $8,000
dollars. Prosecutors claim that he netted more than $600,000
from the scheme.
Although Khalil has not been linked to specific terrorist
activities, prosecutors pointed to a taped conversation in
which Khalil reportedly praised Osama bin Laden and called for
Muslims to arm themselves for another attack.
In another case, defendants Cedric Carpenter and Lamont
Ranson were prosecuted and sentenced in Mississippi for
conspiring to sell false documents to individuals they believed
were members of Abu Sayyaf, a Philippine-based group designated
as a foreign terrorist organization.
In my own home State of California, seven counterfeit
document mills in Los Angeles were seized on March 30, 2006.
ICE agents arrested 11 individuals on charges of supplying a
significant number of the fraudulent identity and immigration
documents being sold on the streets of Los Angeles.
Now, it is true most of this is to bring people illegally
across the border, but, nonetheless, there is no safeguard on
how these false documents can be used.
And just this past December, the United States Department
of State's Diplomatic Security Service charged 25 defendants in
Los Angeles for attempting to obtain and actually obtaining
United States passports using fake identities.
Today, over 5 years later, Interpol reports that they have
records of more than 12 million stolen and lost travel
documents from 113 different countries. Now, these are the only
ones we know about, but Interpol is a vast source of
information. And as far as I know--and I am sure these
witnesses will correct me if I am wrong--the Government does
not scan passports to pick up on the Interpol data, which I
think is a significant lapse if, in fact, it is true. Interpol
estimates that 30 to 40 million travel documents have been
stolen worldwide.
We know that over the past few years, passport and visa
forgery has become more sophisticated thanks to new technology.
In the past, the tools of the counterfeit document trade were
typewriters and pieces of plastic. Today's document forgers use
computer software and high-resolution digital scanners to ply
their trade. Criminal organizations are also using the Internet
to market and distribute fake documents and immigration
benefits to customers.
It is not only foreign passports that can be forged. Forged
and fraudulent United States passports can be most dangerous
when in the wrong hands, because with a U.S. passport criminals
can establish American citizenship and have unlimited access to
virtually every country in the world.
Despite evidence that these crimes are widespread and that
millions of travel documents are on the black market, in 2004
the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service reports that
it made about 500 arrests for passport fraud with only 300
convictions.
For these reasons, I believe that our job is not over.
Senator Sessions and I have introduced a bill to strengthen
current passport and visa laws in a number of key ways. Our
bill would create strong penalties to punish those who traffic
in fraudulent travel documents. This must happen. The current
law makes no distinction between those caught with multiple
false travel documents, the very worst offenders who are often
part of organized crime rings, and those with only one false
document. Our bill would change that.
We would also add provisions to the current passport and
visa fraud laws to ensure that conspiracies and attempts to
commit these crimes are investigated and prosecuted just as
vigorously as the completed crime. Currently, offenders who
engage in passport or visa fraud generally serve less than a
year in prison, providing little incentive for U.S.
Attorney's Offices to expend scarce resources in
prosecuting these crimes, and that is a big problem.
So we think our bill provides much needed reform. It
strengthens the penalties against people using documents to
illegally gain entry to this country and empowers the agents
and prosecutors who enforce our borders to take swift and
strong action against these criminals.
So I hope my colleagues, including my colleague on the
right, will join Senator Sessions and me in cosponsoring this
important legislation. But legislation is not enough. The
Department of Homeland Security and State Department must work
with Interpol to ensure that the front-line inspectors, those
at airports and consular offices, have real-time access--real-
time access--to lost and stolen passport databases. The
inspectors must be trained to use these databases to ensure
that no one carrying a stolen passport is allowed into this
country.
So that is what this hearing is all about. We have very
credible and informed witnesses, and I would like to turn it
over to my Ranking Member, with whom I have worked now on this
Committee I guess for at least 10 years.
Senator Kyl. Over 12 years now.
Chairman Feinstein. Over 12 years.
Senator Kyl. Time flies when you are having fun.
Chairman Feinstein. It has been a great pleasure for me.
Senator Kyl.
STATEMENT OF HON. JON KYL, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF
ARIZONA
Senator Kyl. Madam Chairman, thank you, and let me begin by
thanking you for holding this hearing.
First let me say that I agree with everything you have
said. This is a bipartisan issue. We have worked in this
Subcommittee in a very constructive and bipartisan way now for
over 12 years, and it is a pleasure always to work with you,
now to be your wing man now that the political tables are
slightly turned here. It does not make any difference in this
Subcommittee.
But this is an excellent complement, actually, to a hearing
that we held last September when we focused on ways of how to
improve the security of international flights to the United
States without necessarily interfering--or disrupting, I should
say, the travel for many millions of people who fly here every
day.
But Senator Feinstein is absolutely right that complacency
could be one of our main enemies here. We should recall that 9/
11 began, with all due respect, to the State Department's
inadequate interviews--actually, they had contracted it out to
private parties--and inadequate review and document inspection,
which allowed the 9/11 hijackers to come in and stay in the
United States.
It seems to me the question now is not so much how much
progress we have made, but how much more we need to do. If
another 9/11 were to happen, people would ask would more could
have been done, and I think everybody here today--and judging
from some of the statements that I have read of the witnesses,
it is clear that everyone agrees that more reasonably can be
done.
I would like to thank all of the witnesses for being here
today and especially a couple that I have contacted, Secretary
General Ron Noble of Interpol, for joining us. Our office has
been in contact and working to improve security, and Senator
Feinstein has discussed that. And also Mr. Brian Zimmer. The
appendix in Mr. Zimmer's testimony on the Federal laws that
Congress has passed to improve Federal identity documents is a
very good summary, and I think that will be very helpful to us.
The arrival of international terrorism to our shores has
made us all aware of the need for improved security at our
borders and ports of entry. We have had to adapt to a much more
sophisticated enemy than I think any of us had thought when the
terrorist attacks first occurred. And we have had to adapt with
more sophisticated screening mechanisms, identity documents,
data sharing, and the like.
So the testimony that I think we will hear today, again,
while it shows that we have come a long way, I think will also
reveal how much more work remains to be done. And our
obligation here in Congress will be to continue to initiate
efforts such as Senator Feinstein mentioned, as well as to work
with the administration to improve domestic security, pass
meaningful legislation that addresses the gaps in security, and
importantly then to provide the funding that is necessary to
effectuate the changes that we all believe are necessary. So
again, Senator Feinstein, thank you for holding this very
important hearing.
And as Senator Feinstein said, I will have to leave just
before 10:30, and please know that that in no way detracts from
my interest in this. And I may have questions that I will want
to submit to the witnesses as a result of the oral testimony
here.
Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator.
I might say that Ron Noble is the Secretary General of
Interpol, and he has come here from Lyon, France, and we very
much appreciate it. He will lead off on the second panel. But I
would like to introduce the first panel to you, and we will go
right down the line.
The first person testifying will be Andrew Simkin. He is
the Director of Fraud Prevention Programs, the Bureau of
Consular Affairs of the Department of State.
The second person will be Patrick Donovan, the Assistant
Director for Domestic Operations and Acting Director of
Diplomatic Security for Counter Measures of the Department of
State.
And Michael Everitt, the Unit Chief of the Forensic
Documents Laboratory, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the
Department of Homeland Security.
And then, finally, Paul Morris, the Executive Director of
Admissibility Requirements and Migration Control, Office of
Field Operations from United States Customs and Border
Protection.
So as you can see, this is a very qualified and credible
panel, and I just hate to do it, but we would like to ask
questions. So if you could say what you mean in 5 minutes, it
would really be appreciated, and I will ask the clocks to be
started. Thank you very much.
Mr. Simkin, may we start off with you.
STATEMENT OF ANDREW SIMKIN, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF FRAUD
PREVENTION PROGRAMS, BUREAU OF CONSULAR AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF
STATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Simkin. Thank you, Chairman Feinstein, Ranking Member
Kyl. I appreciate this opportunity to discuss the work that we
do to interrupt terrorist travel. It is a tremendously
important topic for America, and it is one to which I have
dedicated a lot of thought and effort over my 20 years of
service as a consular officer.
As you indicated, Chairman Feinstein, the staff members of
the 9/11 Commission identified travel as some of the key
moments for interrupting terrorists' activities. One comparison
that I heard was comparing terrorists to submarines operating
in hiding most of the time, but needing to surface at key
moments, making them more vulnerable to detection. When a
terrorist applies for a visa to enter our country, it is a key
moment of opportunity for us to interrupt his travel. Airline
check-in and port-of-entry screening are other key moments.
I would like to describe some of the things that we are
doing to take maximum advantage of those opportunities.
Our systems for checking names and biographic data against
terrorist watchlists and other databases are more comprehensive
and sophisticated than ever before. Thanks to interagency data
sharing, we are making good progress in international sharing
of data on known terrorists and data on lost and stolen
passports. We have added biometric capabilities using both
fingerprinting and facial recognition technology to identify
persons who may be applying for visas under false identities.
We recently began the rollout of an upgrade from a two-
fingerprint system to ten prints. This transition should be
finished by December of this year.
Bearing in mind that many persons with criminal intent have
no known record and, thus, do not appear in any biographic or
biometric database, we take advantage of personal interviews
conducted by consular officers specially trained to observe
demeanor and detect inconsistencies, who ask applicants all
sorts of questions. In addition to the interview, consular
officers use an increasingly sophisticated array of techniques
and technologies to defeat visa fraud.
By law, the burden of proof is on the applicant. On an
average day at over 200 posts around the world, we turn away
5,000 foreign nationals who do not qualify for visas because
they fail to meet that burden of proof.
The terrorist's travel may be deterred by the risk that he
might not only be refused a visa, but that information we
gather from his application, including fingerprints, phone
numbers, et cetera, may compromise his entire operation. We
work closely with DS, DHS, and other U.S. Government colleagues
to follow up on cases of suspected fraud or security concerns.
Along with our efforts to prevent terrorists from receiving
U.S. travel documents, we also seek to safeguard the integrity
of visas and passports against alteration, forgery and misuse.
We share our U.S. visa and passport databases with our Customs
and Border Protection colleagues so that any document can be
electronically verified.
The U.S. passport was also recently completely redesigned,
incorporating multiple new security features, including an
electronic chip, and I have brought samples of the new
passports for the Committee.
Chairman Feinstein. These are fraudulent passports?
Mr. Simkin. No. These are genuine. I believe you each
should have one sample of the e-passport, which is the regular
passport, with the symbol on the cover indicating electronic
chip. And the other sample is the emergency photo digitized
passport.
Chairman Feinstein. This is the symbol?
Mr. Simkin. Correct, yes. The other is the new emergency
photo digitized passport, which is now in effect at all of our
posts overseas, issued to persons who have emergency travel,
such as having lost a passport overseas. These are issued for
up to one year of validity.
Chairman Feinstein. Could you provide the Committee with
some samples of fraudulent passports so we might--
Mr. Simkin. We certainly could.
Chairman Feinstein.--see the different technique used.
Mr. Simkin. We would be happy to.
Chairman Feinstein. Please continue.
Mr. Simkin. OK. In conclusion, I thank you for your
interest in the work of consular officers, who truly work the
front line in interrupting terrorist travel while at the same
time serving as the public face of America, showing fairness
and consideration in dealing with millions of legitimate
travelers.
I look forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Simkin appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Simkin.
Mr. Donovan?
STATEMENT OF PATRICK D. DONOVAN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR
DOMESTIC OPERATIONS OF THE DIPLOMATIC SECURITY SERVICE, BUREAU
OF DIPLOMATIC SECURITY, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Donovan. Good morning, Madam Chair and Ranking Member
Kyl. I am honored to appear before you today with my
distinguished colleagues. I would like to thank you and the
Committee members for your continued support and interest in
the Bureau of Diplomatic Security's protective and
investigative programs. I would especially like to thank you
for your support in strengthening passport and visa
legislation. Through congressional support, DS safeguards
American diplomats and facilities around the world and protects
the integrity of U.S. travel documents. With your permission, I
would like to present a brief statement and submit a copy of
our Visa and Passport Security Strategic Plan as my full
testimony for the record.
One of the most critical national security challenges that
the American people will face for the foreseeable future is the
desire by terrorist groups and individuals to inflict
catastrophic harm upon the United States. A key element in all
terrorist operational planning is access to the target. Such
access requires the acquisition of travel documents, including
visas and passports--
Chairman Feinstein. Could you pull the mike down just a
little bit, please?
Mr. Donovan. I am sorry, ma'am?
Chairman Feinstein. Pull the mike a little bit down. I
think you will pick up better. Thank you.
Mr. Donovan. Such access requires the acquisition of travel
documents, including visas and passports, that allow terrorists
to enter, and move freely within, our country.
As the law enforcement arm of the Department of State, DS
is responsible for upholding the integrity of the U.S.
visa and passport through enforcement of relevant portions
of the United States Criminal Code. DS is the most
geographically extensive Federal law enforcement agency in the
United States Government, with approximately 1,400 Special
Agents dispersed among 25 field and resident offices
domestically, with representation on 26 Joint Terrorism Task
Forces, and with assignments to U.S. embassies and consulates
in 159 countries. DS is uniquely positioned and committed to
meet the serious national security challenge of travel document
fraud. Our agents conduct investigations into passport and visa
fraud violations wherever they occur. Our partnership with the
Bureau of Consular Affairs has enabled us to jointly focus on
protecting the U.S. passports and visas.
Overseas, we work with foreign partner nations to target
and disrupt document fraud rings and human smuggling networks.
Domestically, we work with local, State, and Federal law
enforcement agencies to investigate, arrest, and seek
prosecution of fraud violators. Throughout this global network
of law enforcement professionals, DS Special Agents are on the
front lines of combating terrorist and criminal travel.
Terrorists targeting the U.S. attempt to discover,
manipulate, and exploit vulnerabilities within our travel
document system. To successfully counter this threat, DS has
crafted a Visa and Passport Strategic Plan that leverages our
international expertise and worldwide presence. The plan
provides the framework for a Visa and Passport Security Program
and will significantly augment the Department's ongoing efforts
to prevent terrorist travel. Our approach incorporates the
principles of the National Strategy to Combat Terrorist Travel
and the objectives of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism
Prevention Act of 2004.
The Strategic Plan requires the deployment of additional DS
personnel to critical posts worldwide, resources to enhance our
intelligence and data-sharing efforts, and training and
technical assistance to our foreign partners. Presently DS
Special Agents assigned to consular sections abroad focus
solely on travel document fraud. By the end of this year, DS
will have 33 Special Agents assigned to key posts investigating
document fraud. By the end of 2008, we will have 50 agents in
this capacity. Since 2004, the results have been promising,
yielding nearly 1,050 arrests for document fraud and related
offenses, in excess of 3,400 visa refusals and revocations, and
more than 6,200 foreign law enforcement and security personnel
trained.
The plan is built on a cornerstone of three strategic
goals: to defend the U.S. and our foreign partners from
terrorist attack through aggressive, coordinated international
law enforcement actions and initiatives; to detect terrorist
activity, methods of operation, and trends that exploit
international travel vulnerabilities; and, lastly, to disrupt
terrorist efforts to use fraudulent travel documents through
strengthening the capabilities of our foreign partners by such
highly successful programs as the DS' Anti-Terrorism Assistance
Program.
Our Strategic Plan offers a comprehensive and proactive
approach to ensuring the integrity and security of U.S.
passports and visas.
Thank you for the opportunity to brief you on this vital
aspect of DS's mission. I look forward to answering your
questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Donovan appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Feinstein. Thanks, Mr. Donovan.
Mr. Everitt?
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL P. EVERITT, UNIT CHIEF, FORENSIC DOCUMENTS
LABORATORY, IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT, DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Everitt. Good morning, Chairman Feinstein, Ranking
Member Kyl, distinguished members of the Subcommittee. I am
pleased to be here today to discuss strengthening the security
of international travel documents to prevent terrorist travel.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Forensic Document
Laboratory is dedicated exclusively to fraudulent document
detection and deterrence. The FDL is accredited by the American
Society of Crime Lab Directors-Laboratory Accreditation Board
(ASCLD/LAB) in questioned documents and latent prints and
enjoys a worldwide reputation for excellence in the detection
and identification of fraudulent travel and identity documents.
The FDL provides a wide variety of forensic and support
services to all Department of Homeland Security components,
including ICE, CBP, USCIS, the Secret Service, and the Coast
Guard. The FDL also supports all Federal, State, and local
agencies, as well as foreign government law enforcement and
border control entities upon request. The FDL is an integral
part of a comprehensive approach to disrupting terrorist travel
and works both domestically and internationally to strengthen
the security of international travel documents.
The FDL is like many other forensic laboratories in that it
has a cadre of highly trained and experienced forensic
scientists and support staff who conduct forensic examinations.
These FDL employees make up the Forensic Section of the FDL and
include forensic document examiners, physical scientists, ink
chemists, fingerprint specialists, forensic photographers, and
seized property specialists. This team of experts processes
over 5,000 submissions each year.
The training requirements for the forensic section
positions are rigorous. As an example, before conducting their
first solo examination, forensic document examiners must
successfully complete an in-house, 30-month, full-time training
program. Comprehensive training programs such as these are
necessary to acquire and maintain laboratory accreditation and
personal certification.
The FDL differs from most forensic laboratories in that it
also has a separate group of employees who collect and analyze
information developed by the Forensic Section about fraudulent
documents and distributes that information to the field via
publication, real-time support, and training. These employees
are senior intelligence officers that make up the Operations
Section of the FDL. Many of the senior intelligence officers
working at the FDL have previously worked at large ports of
entry and have extensive experience with international
travelers and the documents that they use.
Operations Section personnel provides real-time support to
field personnel throughout the world with questions about
suspected documents. These personnel include Department of
State consular officers adjudicating visa requests, USCIS
personnel adjudicating requests for immigration-related
benefits, and ICE and CBP personnel working in the field and at
ports of entry and other Federal, State, and local law
enforcement officers. In fiscal year 2006, the FDL received
over 5,200 inquiries of which more than 2,400 were from non-DHS
agencies.
Publications produced by the Operations Section include
Document Alerts, Intelligence Briefs, and Reference Guides.
These publications are printed and distributed to more than
over 800 law enforcement and border control agencies worldwide
to assist officers in identifying fraudulent documents. Many of
these documents are also posted on DHS Internet portals to make
them available to other law enforcement entities.
Senior intelligence officers also design and provide
fraudulent document recognition and training programs for DHS
personnel and other Federal, State, and local law enforcement
officers. This fiscal year alone, the FDL has trained more than
1,900 individuals in locations around the world, including the
United States, South Africa, El Salvador, Botswana, Jordan,
Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya, Turkey, and Yemen. Much of this
training is in support of Department of Homeland Security,
Department of Justice, and Department of State initiatives. The
FDL also receives requests for training from State and local
law enforcement and from private concerns.
The problem of fraudulent documents is a perplexing one.
The wide availability of technology to create high-quality
fraudulent documents demands that the producers and issuers of
legitimate documents develop and use new security features and
production techniques that cannot easily be duplicated. Many
new security features and production techniques have been
developed; unfortunately, they are not always used in many
travel and identity documents issued in the United States and
other places throughout the world.
Travel and identity document producers and those who issue
legitimate documents are in a constant battle to develop new
production and security features and make travel and
identification documents more secure. We try to assist in that
and providing counterfeit deterrence studies to those who
produce travel and identity documents.
It is important to understand that fraudulent travel and
identity documents are not only a challenging problem for the
United States, but for law enforcement officials throughout the
world. As long as identification is required to travel and
obtain services, criminals and terrorists will attempt to
produce fraudulent documents. The ICE FDL will continue to work
diligently to combat the production and use of fraudulent
documents through our efforts in document examination, the
development of higher-quality documents, and the training of
law enforcement and border control officers throughout the
world.
On behalf of the men and women of ICE, and specifically the
men and women of the Forensic Document Laboratory, who are the
country's subject matter experts on travel and identity
documents, I thank the Subcommittee and its distinguished
members for your continued support. I would also extend an open
invitation to members to visit the ICE Forensic Document
Laboratory as I believe you would find the visit both
interesting and enlightening.
I would be pleased to answer your questions at this time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Everitt appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Everitt.
Because Senator Kyl has to leave, he would like to ask you
a couple of questions.
Senator Kyl. I just have one main question, and I will try
to submit written questions to the rest of you. But with proper
training, could a person detect the counterfeiting of a U.S.
passport if that passport has been screened into a computer
from an off-site computer to, let's say, a DHS office here in
Washington?
Mr. Everitt. I am sorry, sir. I am not sure I understand
your question.
Senator Kyl. You take the passport in Omaha, Nebraska, and
you screen it into a computer, which is connected to DHS.
Mr. Everitt. Yes.
Senator Kyl. A trained individual looks at that computer
screen with the passport on it. Can you detect--to what degree
of certainty could you detect a counterfeiting of that U.S.
passport?
Mr. Everitt. That is a service that actually the FDL
provides through real-time support. What we would do then is we
work--it is not a matter of us just looking at that scanned
image. We would be on a two-way communication with that person.
We are looking at the image. We are asking them questions--Do
you see this? Do you see that?--looking for specific security
features in the document.
That two-way transaction, oftentimes we can help them make
a determination, which is a probable cause determination, of
whether or not that document is valid or not.
Senator Kyl. Excuse me. How trained would the person on the
transmitting side have to be?
Mr. Everitt. Basically trained enough to have the initial
suspicion that the document was bad.
Senator Kyl. Let us assume that this is simply being used
to determine something like eligibility for employment and
there is no training involved, but simply an individual who is
putting it on a computer screening device to transmit to, let's
say, the Department of Homeland Security for a determination of
validity, and you have the basic information typed in, but then
you are looking at the photograph and other features on it.
Mr. Everitt. They would have to at least have some cursory
amount of training to understand what we are asking, the
questions that we are asking them. In other words, they would
have to understand what a hologram was or what a kinegram--not
the technical aspects of those, but at least to know what we
are referring to or what we are asking them to look at.
Senator Kyl. What would be involved in that cursory amount
of training?
Mr. Everitt. It is training that we do that can last
anywhere from 4 hours up to a couple days.
Senator Kyl. So it would be impractical if every employer
in the country were required to do this, to assume that they
could be adequately trained for this to work, for this to
provide some high level of confidence that you can detect a
fraudulent passport?
Mr. Everitt. It would require some pretty extensive
training, yes, sir.
Senator Kyl. OK, just by the simple mechanism of screening
it into the computer.
Mr. Everitt. Yes, sir. Using that process, yes, sir.
Senator Kyl. Because you use a specifically designed piece
of equipment at the ports of entry for--or do you? Let me ask
that question. Is this strictly a visual thing with the
inspectors? Or is there a piece of equipment that is used?
Mr. Everitt. It is a visual examination of the document.
The equipment that is used is a reader that is reading the
machine-readable zone, the MRZ.
Senator Kyl. Right.
Mr. Everitt. And then is making queries against databases
based on that information.
Senator Kyl. OK. Good. Thank you very much.
Mr. Everitt. You are welcome.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Senator.
Mr. Morris, would you like to proceed?
STATEMENT OF PAUL MORRIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ADMISSIBILITY
REQUIREMENTS AND MIGRATION CONTROL, OFFICE OF FIELD OPERATIONS,
CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Morris. Good morning, Chairman Feinstein, Senator Kyl.
I am very pleased to be here today to discuss how the
Department of Homeland Security, particularly U.S. Customs and
Border Protection, is moving forward on programs that will
facilitate travel, but still provide the level of security
required to protect the United States and, of course, interrupt
terrorist travel. This is an enormous challenge. We share more
than 7,000 miles of borders with Canada and Mexico and operate
325 official ports of entry. Each year, CBP front-line officers
inspect more than 422 million travelers through official land,
air, and sea ports of entry.
I begin by expressing my gratitude to the Subcommittee for
the support you have shown for important initiatives that
enhance the security of our homeland. Your continued support
has enabled CBP to make significant progress in effectively
securing our borders and protecting our country against
terrorist threats.
DHS is committed to working with Secretary General Noble of
Interpol on the implementation of the Stolen Lost Travel
Document (SLTD) system this year. CBP has taken the lead in the
implementation of this program, and we are currently on
schedule to become the first major country to use the SLTD as
an integrated prescreening tool.
Since its inception on March 1, 2003, CBP has worked
diligently to facilitate the flow of legitimate travelers into
the U.S. A small percentage of travelers, however, attempt to
enter the U.S. illegally through the use of fraudulent
documents or other fraudulent means. In response, CBP has
implemented a number of complementary programs, both
domestically and internationally.
The standardization of travel documents is a critical step
to securing our Nation's borders. Currently, travelers can
present thousands of different documents to prove their
citizenship when attempting to enter the U.S. The Western
Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) requires all travelers to
present a passport or valid travel document to enter the U.S.
The initial phase of WHTI went into effect January 23,
2007, obligating all air travelers to present a passport or
other acceptable secure document for entry to the U.S. The
implementation of the air portion of WHTI was highly
successful, with documentary compliance rates of 99 percent and
no interruption to air transportation.
As early as January 1, 2008, travelers arriving by land or
sea will be required to present a valid passport or other
secure document, as determined by DHS, working with the
Department of State.
US-VISIT uses biographic and biometric information to
enhance the security of U.S. citizens and visitors. Biometric
data obtained overseas when the Department of State issues a
traveler's visa is verified with the biometric data collected
at the port of entry, confirming that the individual applying
for admission is the same person who was granted the visa.
Biometrics protect our Nation and our visitors by making it
virtually impossible for anyone else to claim their identity
should their travel documents, such as a visa, be stolen or
duplicated.
Each year approximately 15 million people from designated
Visa Waiver Program, or VWP, countries enter the U.S. free to
travel for 90 days without a visa. In an effort to provide for
secure verification of passport validity and to better detect
fraudulent passports from VWP countries, e-passports were
mandated for participating countries in October 2006. These e-
passports, which have an embedded electronic circuit chip--
similar to the one used by the U.S.--contain biographic and
biometric data, and they assist CBP front-line officers in
detecting fraudulent passports and passports in which the
photograph was substituted or altered.
In a continuing effort to extend our zone of security
outward, the Immigration Advisory Program (IAP) posts officers
overseas at high-volume, high-risk airports to screen
passengers before they board aircraft destined for the U.S.
Since the IAP became operational, more than 1,624 passengers
have been prevented from boarding planes bound for the U.S.
Current IAP locations include Amsterdam, Warsaw, London-
Heathrow, and Tokyo-Narita.
Additionally, the Carrier Liaison Program was developed to
enhance our border security by helping commercial carriers to
become more effective in identifying improperly documented
passengers destined for the U.S. And in December 2006, we
established three Regional Carrier Liaison Groups that provide
24/7 points of contact for carriers and assist them in making
recommendations not to board aliens identified as fraudulently
or improperly documented. These RCLGs in fiscal year 2007 so
far have denied boarding for 419 improperly documented
travelers, 150 of whom were carrying fraudulent documents.
In January 2005, we established the Fraudulent Document
Analysis Unit to collect documents, provide ports with analysis
of document trends and intelligence information, and target
persons being smuggled into the U.S. using fraudulent
documents.
In addition to those initiatives, we have been working in
four areas to improve the data CBP gathers and maintains on
lost and stolen passports:
First, we have been refining the use of targeting systems
to search for ``near misses'' to account for alterations of
passport numbers by forgers attempting to defeat the watch
listing of lost and stolen documents.
We are currently accessing the Interpol SLTD, and as we
continue that work with Interpol, we will increase our ability
to access that information in different ways.
We are working with Australia and New Zealand on the
Regional Movement Alert System pilot, and this is a trilateral
pilot that enables participating countries to access data on
lost, stolen, and otherwise invalid travel documents in real
time.
And we are working to become the first point of intake for
all lost and stolen passport information to the U.S. This would
ensure that this critical data is immediately directed to the
border screening system.
Chairman Feinstein, Senator Kyl, I have outlined today some
of the ways that CBP and DHS, working with our key partners,
detect and intercept fraudulent documents at or before the
border, while facilitating legitimate trade and travel. I
appreciate this opportunity to testify and would be happy to
answer any questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Morris appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Gentlemen. I
appreciate it.
I would like to refer you, Mr. Morris--and you will have to
just take these numbers down and read it--pages 11, 12, 13, and
14 of the transcript from a hearing held in this Subcommittee
on September 7, 2006, and the Homeland Security witness was
special counsel Mr. Rosenzweig, and I asked some questions, and
I would like to quickly go over them. And I am talking about a
GAO report here that has been done on the Visa Waiver Program,
and it says, ``It also recommends that DHS develop and
implement a plan to make Interpol's stolen travel document
database automatically available to immigration officers at
primary inspection points.''
And then we go on to, ``What four countries do not share
lost or stolen passport information with Interpol?'' And the
countries at that time are Holland, Japan, Norway, and Sweden.
And then I would like to quote to you Mr. Rosenzweig's
testimony. ``My goal would be to have the operational
difficulties resolved, at least in theory, by the end of this
year and then operational in the second or third quarter of
next year. That is an aspirational goal, I should add.'' And
then I say, ``Of 2006? I am writing it down, and I am going to
get you to sign it afterwards.''
Rosenzweig: ``Absolutely.''
Feinstein: ``Operational when? ''
Rosenzweig: ``My goal is the second or third quarter of
next year, 2007.''
Mr. Ahern: ``Senator, if I might add a little more, give my
colleague here a break for a second, if I might,'' and he goes
on: ``...it is reflected that we get a considerable amount of
lost and stolen passport information directly into our systems
today through the State Department. We also get a direct feed
from the U.K. Government to the State Department on lost and
stolen passports. So we have a considerable amount of lost and
stolen passports in our system today, so that is fed in through
the Department of State's class system into our integrated
border inspection system. So we do have access to a
considerable amount.''
Now, I have been trying on and on and on to get a time for
a real-time Interpol connection, and here we have testimony
that it will be in place by the second or third quarter of this
year. My question: Will DHS meet this goal?
Mr. Morris. I believe that we will, Senator. We--
Chairman Feinstein. So your answer is ``yes, I believe,''
or ``yes''?
Mr. Morris. We are currently designing the system within
Interpol. We intend to test the system in early fall of this
year, and we will have a pilot test at a major U.S.
international airport in place shortly thereafter. Immediately
after that brief pilot test, we intend to have a rapid
deployment to the balance of our border control system.
Chairman Feinstein. Well, I will be asking Mr. Noble these
questions, but I assume--let me try and extrapolate what I hear
from that. There will be a pilot test by the second or third
quarter of this year. That pilot test will go on for how long?
Mr. Morris. Approximately 30 days.
Chairman Feinstein. Thirty days, and then after the 30-day
period, a full system will be put in place. And that will take
how long to put in place?
Mr. Morris. If the pilot is successful and we are able to
address any issues or concerns that may arise at that point, it
should be a rapid deployment.
Chairman Feinstein. And what does that mean?
Mr. Morris. That as soon as we can put the system in place,
it will be in place.
Chairman Feinstein. Well, are we talking about 1 month, 6
months, a year?
Mr. Morris. Without knowing what the success of the pilot
may be at this point, I would say it would be much more rapid
than that. We are hoping for immediate implementation after the
pilot if the issues can be addressed.
Chairman Feinstein. I guess my problem always is hope, you
know, goal, and generally no time deadline is ever kept. So I
really hope this is an exception because I really believe the
security of our Nation is at stake. And I think this is a very
worthwhile program.
Mr. Morris. And we agree 100 percent, Senator. And perhaps
I should correct my statement and say that we expect that it
will be a rapid implementation immediately after the pilot is
concluded.
Chairman Feinstein. OK. I will have you back after the
third quarter, and I will pull out this transcript of today and
read it back to you, and hopefully we will be there.
Mr. Morris. Do I have to sign it, Senator?
[Laughter.]
Chairman Feinstein. With that understanding. All right.
If I might ask a question, and then I see we are joined by
Senator Schumer, and he wants to make a statement and ask some
questions, so I will turn it over to him. The two passports,
Mr. Simkin, that you gave us, one of the passports looks like
the face page is embossed onto the passport. Is that correct?
And that is the passport of Allen Ethan, or Ethan Allen.
Mr. Simkin. This one is an emergency photo digitized
passport. This is the new system for issuing passports in
emergencies at our posts overseas, and it is actually printed
on a sticky foil that is then placed in the passport book. And,
yes, there are some security features there over the photo and
over the biographic data.
Chairman Feinstein. Is this a process that is easy for
somebody to replicate?
Mr. Simkin. It is not easy to replicate.
Chairman Feinstein. But can it be replicated outside of the
Government?
Mr. Simkin. We are not aware of any successful attempts to
replicate this at this point. Of course, there are people
always trying to duplicate our documents, so it is a constant
effort to stay ahead of those efforts.
Chairman Feinstein. Right. Well, I have a relatively new
passport, and it has a chip embedded in it.
Mr. Simkin. Yes.
Chairman Feinstein. And the face page is very different
than these face pages.
Mr. Simkin. Is it similar to the model--
Chairman Feinstein. It is blue. It is a regular--yes, it is
not an official passport. So I am puzzled by this. It is a much
thicker page, and I thought all new passports were being done
that way.
Mr. Simkin. This exemplar is the current exemplar, and it
is the only one that has the chip in it.
Chairman Feinstein. Which one is that?
Mr. Simkin. The one with the symbol on the cover with the
two bars and the circle in the middle.
Chairman Feinstein. Right. All right. So this has a chip in
it?
Mr. Simkin. Yes.
Chairman Feinstein. And this, too, is blended onto the
page. I guess--
Mr. Simkin. Yes, in this case it is printed on this page.
It is not on a foil that is stuck into the passport. And then
it is protected by a crystogram, and it is hard to tell, but we
have actually an image of the U.S. Capitol in the center of the
crystogram, an image of George Washington in the upper right,
which make it difficult to alter or forge.
Chairman Feinstein. Yes. I do not see either of them, but--
Mr. Simkin. I found it hard in this light. You sort of have to-
Chairman Feinstein. Right.
Mr. Simkin. Yes.
Chairman Feinstein. OK. One other question. Mr. Everitt,
today there is no law that prohibits the trafficking in ten or
more passports or other travel documents. And one of the things
I have learned from reading intelligence is that within visa
waiver countries, there are large numbers of stolen passports,
Geneva Convention travel documents, international driver's
licenses.
In your experience, has the number of document mills that
produce false documents for sale been increasing?
Mr. Everitt. It is hard to say whether they have been
increasing or not. There has always been a large number of
document mills for producing fraudulent documents. It is one of
those things that you do not know they are there until you find
them.
I can say that there is a huge number of fraudulent
documents circulating throughout the world.
Chairman Feinstein. What effort is made to round up the
stolen passports that are stolen--and I cannot mention the
countries, but they are European countries--by the thousands?
What effort is being made to secure those documents?
Mr. Everitt. Well, I think that all the countries, just
like us, you know, have investigative elements that are out
there looking for these documents, trying to find them whenever
they can. And, of course, anytime that these documents are
encountered at ports of entry or exit, whether it be in Europe
or in the United States, they are immediately seized.
We get reports on a fairly consistent basis of these
documents--
Chairman Feinstein. Do we have the methodology to be able--
let's say a Central European country experienced a large theft
of counterfeit-proof passports and it is a visa waiver country,
and that passport can be bought by someone who would do us
harm, who comes into this country with the passport from a visa
waiver country. What is being done to see that that does not
happen?
Mr. Everitt. Well, hopefully the country that had the
passports stolen would report those to Interpol. Those numbers
would then be transmitted to CBP through the National Targeting
Center. That information is passed amongst all the different
types of entities. Lookouts are placed for them, and then
hopefully when that person attempts to use that passport, it
will be interdicted and they will be stopped.
Chairman Feinstein. Well, I would be curious, then, because
I have sent your agency the intelligence report on the theft,
and I would be very interested in knowing exactly what action
was taken, if any. So might I ask you that question, and we
will follow that up with a letter as well.
Mr. Everitt. Yes, ma'am.
Chairman Feinstein. OK. Thank you.
Senator Schumer, thank you for joining us.
STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES E. SCHUMER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF NEW YORK
Senator Schumer. Well, thank you, Senator Feinstein. I want
to thank you for holding a very important hearing. Securing
international travel documents is a critical building block of
the larger project of border security. And as a representative
of a border State, like Chairman Feinstein, I fully agree with
her. We need security and efficiency at our international
borders. We need both.
My question today is going to focus on a specific travel
document, the so-called PASS card, People Access Security
Services card. As everybody is probably aware, this is the card
Department of State and Homeland Security are proposing to
issue to travelers as part of the Western Hemisphere Travel
Initiative. I am very dubious of the PASS card. I have serious
questions about it. Again, I think that in a certain sense it
is bureaucracy at its worst, taking an overall solution that
has worked in other places and not looking at how it works when
you go across the border, that people travel from Fort Erie,
Canada, to Buffalo daily--every day back and forth--and they do
not get passports. They do not apply in advance to travel. It
is expensive and will really hurt commerce.
At the same time, I have some privacy concerns, and I am
disappointed that Homeland Security once again, instead of
trying to be creative and find a solution that both will deal
with our security needs as well as the travel back and forth,
does not try to do that. And they say, well, passports work
when you fly from Detroit to Munich; therefore, they can work
when you go from Hamilton, Ontario, to Detroit. It is just
different, and we are not looking at that.
I am really troubled by everything about it, and one would
hope that we would have an executive branch that would deal
with the problems, the unique problems that citizens have in
Washington State, in North Dakota, in Michigan, in New York, in
Maine, instead of just saying we are going to try to shove this
round peg through a square hole, call it by a slightly
different name, and not deal with the problems that it will
create, or, oh, they will adjust to it.
What if people do not? What if commerce across the Niagara
River slows down by a third and the economy, which is tough
enough in wester New York, plummets?
So I am disappointed, I have to say. I want security. I do
not want to back off on security. I would prefer not to delay
anything--but not if we just get these kinds of answers, which
I think we have gotten, Madam Chairman, throughout the whole
system.
So that is where my questions are aimed. I am worried about
the PASS card because of the inefficiencies, without the
security. In a sense, we are getting the worst of all worlds.
And when I say security assurances, I am concerned both about
the security of the borders and about the privacy and security
of individuals' personal information.
DHS has said they want to require these passports in
January 2008--that is pretty soon--even though the final
deadline is not until June 2009, about 18 months later. Yet we
have yet to see a regulation, a final regulation on the WHTI or
on the proposed PASS card. So there are a whole lot of
unanswered questions, and it is supposed to be less than 6
months away. It is mind-boggling.
I hope we will get the answers soon, maybe even in a few
minutes. In the meantime, we have to deal with the issue.
The State Department has said it will process PASS cards
just like passports, but it is now a 10-week wait for a
passport. Are we going to have a 10-week wait for somebody who
learns of a wedding, say, and wants to go across the border in
6 weeks? Or for a school bus, a bunch of school kids that want
to go look at something in Buffalo and they are from Canada? It
is going to change the whole way of life because the Niagara
River is not unlike the Hudson River in the sense that people
cross it regularly, day by day, and that is true in Detroit and
it is in true in Washington State and it is true in Maine. It
is true in other parts of New York State.
So, I do not know, I just do not see the concern here. We
need to be careful that we are maintaining efficiency and
protecting security. And I hope this hearing will advance the
cause.
So my questions are mainly directed at Paul Morris and
Andrew Simkin of DHS and State. First, you said you want to use
radiofrequency vicinity-read technology in the proposed PASS
card. That is not the most secure technology available for this
type of card. The PASS cards lacks many of the security
features that are possible for, say, the e-passport. However,
State and DHS have claimed that the proposed PASS card
technology will be more efficient. I appreciate and agree with
the goal, but I want to look behind the claim that the PASS
card would both be secure and efficient, that it would let us
have our cake and eat it, too.
So my question to you two gentlemen is: The proposed
technology for the PASS card is different from the technology
used for existing U.S. border documents like e-passport and
Nexus registered traveler card, right? I assume that is
correct. Yes?
Mr. Simkin. Well, the technology is actually still subject
to some testing and analysis before a final decision will be
made. But the proposal is, yes, it would be vicinity-read.
Senator Schumer. All right. Now, Mr. Morris, if you
disagree with any of that, you can chime in. But you agree it
is different, I presume. OK. Given this specific technology has
not been used for U.S. travel documents before, have the
proposed PASS cards themselves been field tested in a real
border environment?
Mr. Simkin. No.
Senator Schumer. No. And we are supposed to have this fully
implemented in 9 months, right?
Mr. Simkin. Well, actually the time range could be as early
as January 2008 by law, or it could be as late as June of 2009.
Senator Schumer. OK. And you do not have a set date yet by
which you will be ready?
Mr. Simkin. We do not have a set date.
Senator Schumer. OK. What about the machines to read the
PASS cards? Has DHS or State done any field test of these cards
readers, Mr. Morris?
Mr. Morris. Well, it comes down to the final technology
that is selected for the card and testing in conjunction with
that. We have done some field testing of various technologies.
It is certainly in general a viable technology. The final
solution, we will have to take a look at it.
Senator Schumer. But the type you aim to use has not been
tested yet in the field?
Mr. Morris. That is correct, sir.
Senator Schumer. OK. So you have stated, both State and
DHS, that PASS cards will be readable at 20 feet away as a car
approaches the border crossing. Is that a guess? I mean, do we
know when there is a traffic stream with different lanes and
different cars going back and forth that it will work 20 feet
away?
Mr. Simkin. The passport card is an alternate to the paper
passport. As you know, we have a proposed rule, and I know that
you submitted comments, and many of your constituents did.
Those comments are being evaluated now prior to the issuance of
a final rule, and it is a joint State and DHS effort.
We are committed to working closely with the National
Institute of Standards and Technology to ensure that whatever
technology goes into the card is a workable one.
Senator Schumer. Yes, but we do not know if it is readable
at 20 feet yet. We have not done an on-the-ground experiment
yet or--
Mr. Simkin. It is going to require extensive testing.
Senator Schumer. It is? OK. So we have not done that yet.
OK. The current plan also requires CPB to have a database
that will store and pull up personal information based on the
PASS cards. That database would be a gold mine for identity
theft thieves and terrorists. What testing has been done to
make sure the database is protected from hackers and from
physical attacks? Because it is going to be in a lot of places,
I guess, or accessible in a lot of places. Mr. Morris?
Mr. Morris. As with all of our systems of law enforcement
information, they are appropriately firewalled, appropriately
secured to ensure that none of the Privacy Act-protected
information is going to make it into the hands of anyone but
those that need it and have appropriate access to the--
Senator Schumer. Well, that is a general hypothetical
statement. What specific plans have been done, put in place? I
mean, you are saying you are going to implement it as early as
8 months from now or 7 months from now. What practical steps
have been taken, what tests have been done, to make sure that
it cannot be--that identity thieves cannot prey on this?
Mr. Morris. I would have to take that back as a question
for the record, sir.
Senator Schumer. OK. If we could by unanimous consent, I
would be happy to get an answer in writing. In a week?
Mr. Morris. Certainly.
Chairman Feinstein. So ordered.
Senator Schumer. Thank you.
So it is a real concern that the proposed PASS card will be
just as inconvenient and inefficient at busy border crossings
as a passport book and will be a double whammy because it
provides less security than the new e-passports. And I do not
see a change here. Let me just ask a couple of other questions.
What is your answer to the 10-week backlog that we now have
with passports given the needs that people have right away,
given the fact that only 7 percent--I get the numbers mixed up.
It is 7 percent of either Canadians or Americans have a
passport and 9 percent of the other, at least in the western
New York area.
Mr. Simkin. OK. Nationally, we believe it is about 27
percent of American citizens hold passports at the present
time. That is going up. As a result of the Western Hemisphere
Travel Initiative, we have seen a very strong surge in passport
demand. Last year, we issued a record 12.1 million passports.
This year, we are on track to issue over 17 million passports.
We have all of our passport agencies working extra shifts,
working mandatory overtime. We have task forces operating in
Washington.
We have not been able to get the delay down to where we
would like it to be. We are committed to following the rigorous
adjudication processes to make sure that we only issue
passports to persons entitled to them.
Senator Schumer. So what do you say to somebody, if this
plan were in effect, who gets an invitation to a party, to a
wedding, to something on the other side of the border 3 or 4
weeks from now and they do not have a passport?
Mr. Simkin. We take a lot of steps to try to accommodate
emergency situations. We have walk-in service at most of our
agencies. We have an expedited service that can cut that time
down considerably from 10 weeks.
Senator Schumer. Have you made any plans to improve things
on the border areas so we will not have long waits, so that
people who on the spur--I mean, this does not even deal with
the issue, about a quarter of the fans, for instance, who see
the Buffalo Sabres are Canadians. I bet a lot of them decide to
go that day. Now, are there plans to deal with these kinds of
things? Let us take something that is not just a hockey game.
Let us say, you know, there has to be a business meeting, there
has to be a serious gathering of different people for one thing
or another--a funeral.
Mr. Simkin. Well, it is a legal requirement under the
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, under the IRTPA
legislation. We are trying to do everything we can to provide
the best customer service to enable people to travel in the
time that they wish to. We get hundreds of thousands of calls,
and many of those calls we can prioritize the passport
application for short-term travel. We can also route people to
walk-in counter service to be able to try to meet their travel
needs.
Senator Schumer. Walk-in counter service? Do you have plans
to open up lots of these walk-in counter places throughout
western New York and throughout eastern Canada by January of
2008? Do you have any plans for that?
Mr. Simkin. No.
Senator Schumer. OK. I mean, my questions are pretty
obvious here in terms of where we are going.
You would both agree that if there is a 6-week wait to
get--let's say it is not 10 weeks, it goes back to 6--a 6-week
wait before anyone could travel across the board, that would
greatly hurt commerce along the whole Northern border
dramatically and hurt the economy significantly? Do you agree
with that? Yes or no.
Mr. Simkin. I am really not an expert in commerce. It is
obvious that there is an inconvenience factor to this--
Senator Schumer. No, no, no. I did not ask inconvenience.
That belittles it. A serious economic effect.
Mr. Simkin. I really could not say what the effect is. I am
not aware of any studies of what the effect would be.
Senator Schumer. Isn't it common sense that if people who
are used to traveling across the border in a totally different
way now have to wait 6 weeks before they travel?
Mr. Simkin. One thing I would point out with regard to the
documents required for entry to the United States, this is a
requirement that is levied at the port of entry. State and DHS
work together on these things. Our job in the State Department
is to issue the passports properly to people entitled to them
in as fast and efficient a way as we possibly can.
Senator Schumer. Now there is a 10-week wait.
Mr. Simkin. Correct.
Senator Schumer. That is not very fast.
Chairman Feinstein. Senator, if I may?
Senator Schumer. Yes.
Chairman Feinstein. If you could truncate--
Senator Schumer. I am almost finished.
Chairman Feinstein. Because we have got another panel.
Senator Schumer. OK. You agree, Mr. Morris? What is your
view? Would a 6-week or a 10-week wait interfere with commerce
across the Northern border from Seattle over to Presque Isle,
or wherever the eastern order of Maine is?
Mr. Morris. I think I would have to suggest, Senator that
stating that it is a 6-week wait is perhaps not entirely
accurate.
Senator Schumer. No, but if it were. If it were.
Mr. Morris. Well, we have launched a significant media
campaign to make individuals aware of the current requirement
for air travel. We are going to continue that to make any
individuals aware of the land border and seaport requirement as
well. Our hope would be that they would plan in advance to get
the passport that they need so that there is no interruption in
their travel when the actual requirement is put in place. And
for those--
Senator Schumer. There are certain things you cannot plan
for, right? Funerals, emergencies, business meetings.
Mr. Morris. That is true, and within Customs and Border
Protection's discretionary authority, we can address those
types of cases on a case-by-case basis as they arise.
Senator Schumer. OK. I would just say--and I just have one
more. I know you want to move, Madam Chairperson. I mean, we
work with both of your Departments on these case-by-case bases,
and sometimes it works out and sometimes it does not. And all
of us have dealt with this because we get calls from our office
regularly, and I would urge you to give more thought to this
and not just treat it as business as usual or say, ``We will
work it out on a case-by-case basis,'' because if this is
implemented and then it creates a real problem, you all know
that it is going to be worse than if it is--well, it is going
to create huge problems.
Just one more question. Many of us like the idea of using
driver's licenses, the special new driver's licenses, as a
better way to do this. It is a document people are familiar
with. It is more inconvenience to you, less problems for the
people at the border. Washington State is doing a pilot project
in this regard. Can you tell us how it is going?
Mr. Morris. I can tell you, Senator, that we have been
actively engaged with the State of Washington in looking at
this particular pilot. We would be happy to provide you more
information through a--
Senator Schumer. You are not familiar with it right now?
Mr. Morris. No, I am not, sir.
Senator Schumer. OK. Please, if you would. That is very
important.
Mr. Morris. Certainly.
Senator Schumer. And I would urge you to look at
alternatives like the driver's license alternative, which, as
you can imagine, most everyone has a driver's license, they are
used to a driver's license, they do not have to apply in
advance, they do not have to pay, they have it anyway. I would
urge you to look at that rather than sort of stick to business
as usual, which does not quite work for our border.
Thank you, Madam Chairperson.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you, Senator.
Before I close out the panel, I would like to bring to
their attention an article on the front page of the New York
Times this morning, and that is the article entitled ``U.S.
Seeks Closing of Visa Loophole,'' by Jane Perlez. And it points
out that the head of the London bomb attack actually has a
passport through the Visa Waiver Program and could have come to
this country at any time under the Visa Waiver Program.
I truly believe that the Visa Waiver Program is the soft
underbelly of this Nation. The predominance of stolen passports
makes it so easy and there are so many countries in the Visa
Waiver Program. I just want to quote a part of it. ``Among the
options that have been put on the table, according to British
officials, was the most onerous option to Britain, that of
canceling the entire Visa Waiver Program that allows all
Britons entry to the United States without a visa.''
I think--and I have been following this program closely for
some amount of time--that the way it is run and the sloppiness
with which it has been run really places this Nation in serious
jeopardy. And I have said this over and over and over again. I
was the one who fought against getting rid of the 3 per cent
visa refusal rate for countries that want to participate in the
program. I think we have a big problem there in that millions
of people come in, well over 15 million people a year,
essentially on a program where there is no check and no
balance. And I would just like to leave you with those
thoughts. And I think we are going to have much more to say
about it in the future.
So thank you very much for your testimony this morning. It
is appreciated, and if you gentlemen have a chance to stay to
listen to Mr. Noble, it might well be edifying.
Chairman Feinstein. I would like to ask the second panel to
come forward: the Honorable Ronald K. Noble, the Secretary
General of Interpol; Clark Kent Ervin, Director of Homeland
Security, Aspen Institute, former Inspector General, Department
of Homeland Defense, and Author, ``Open Target: Where America
Is Vulnerable to Attack''; and also Brian Zimmer, Senior
Associate, Kelly, Anderson & Associates, and former Senior
Investigator, Committee on the Judiciary, United States House
of Representatives.
If we can, we will begin with Mr. Noble, and let me thank
you so much for coming here. It is very much appreciated. And I
think you can note from my questions the interest that I have
in the subject, and so I would very much appreciate your
comments, if you can, addressing these points.
STATEMENT OF HON. RONALD K. NOBLE, SECRETARY GENERAL, INTERPOL,
LYON, FRANCE
Mr. Noble. Thank you very much. Chairman Feinstein,
distinguished members of the Subcommittee, good morning. I will
broaden the focus of my oral testimony to lay the foundation
for why urgency should be felt by us all as we deal with the
issue that brings us together today.
Al Qaeda and al Qaeda-inspired terrorists are trying to
kill and harm the world's citizens. They are doing so right
now. Depending on the group, the circumstances, and the
opportunities, they would love nothing more than to kill U.S.
citizens and the friends of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. But
they also love targeting U.S. embassies, U.S. military vehicles
and personnel, U.S. businesses, and U.S. citizens anywhere--
anywhere they might be found in the world. They know the
combustible ingredients that attract worldwide attention. Al
Qaeda strikes U.S. targets.
There are those who blindly take comfort that the U.S. has
not been hit hard within its borders since September 11, 2001.
I know one high-ranking U.S. Government official who was so
dedicated and committed to protecting U.S. citizens on U.S.
soil that on any given day he could tell you how many days it
had been since September 11, 2001.
In my capacity as Interpol's Secretary General, I take no
comfort, absolutely no comfort, in the fact that al Qaeda has
not struck the U.S. within its borders since 9/11. Of course,
we all should be thankful that no innocent lives have been
taken or harmed. But viewing the absence of terrorist attacks
on U.S. soil for a certain amount of time as a success is the
wrong approach. And you talked about complacency earlier. It
can give one a false sense of comfort, and it can make you
falsely conclude that al Qaeda cannot strike as opposed to that
al Qaeda has not yet chosen to strike.
For me, I use different points of reference in terms of
time and comfort. I see the time since the last terrorist
attack as a time bomb that must be defused before it explodes.
My point of reference is not the number of days between
September 11, 2001, and today, which happens to be 2,059, but
the number of days between the first World Trade Center attack
by al Qaeda on February 26, 1993, and the second set of attacks
on September 11, 2001. Al Qaeda waited and prepared for more
than 8 years, 3,119 days, before striking the U.S. again on
U.S. soil.
This means that we cannot and should not take any real
comfort from the fact that the U.S. has not been hit again
since then. As I said, I use time bombs as my points of
reference. I see members of al Qaeda, terrorists linked to al
Qaeda, or individuals who are inspired by al Qaeda as human
time bombs. They have almost 200 countries in the world where
they can operate, whether they can plan or prepare and through
which they can travel. The challenge for our generation and
maybe for generations to follow is how can we individually and
collectively prevent these vicious terrorists from killing or
harming us and those we love and represent.
Since September 11, 2001, Interpol has been regularly
transforming itself to help each and every one of its member
countries to disrupt, to prevent, to investigate, to track
down, to apprehend, and to prosecute terrorists the world over.
We have done so by thinking about this issue almost every
minute of every day, by meeting and consulting with our member
country national central bureaus and law enforcement officials
from around the world, by engaging elected officials, appointed
Government officials, reporters, business leaders, and citizens
in discussions about what they see as weaknesses in their
countries' or even other countries' antiterrorist efforts.
The best way to describe Interpol's state-of-the-art
approach to enhancing the border security of each and every
country is to visualize tripwires interconnected around the
globe and in the paths of terrorists and other dangerous
criminals. Depending upon the type of tripwire that is tripped,
either a silent or a loud alarm is triggered and alerting law
enforcement that they might have a person of interest to
another law enforcement agency somewhere in the world standing
right in front of them, permitting them to move the person from
primary to secondary inspection.
Interpol's tripwire system is in place and is working.
Between 2000 and 2006, the number of annual checks on our
databases increased nearly tenfold, from 81,000 to over
703,000. Between 2000 and 2006, the number of international
wanted persons notices issued annually by us has nearly tripled
from 1,000 to 2,800. The number of diffusions, or what we would
know in the U.S. as Be On the Look-Outs, issued annually
through Interpol has more than doubled from 5,000 to over
12,000. The number of annual arrests of individuals who were
subject to Interpol Red Notices or diffusions has surged from
534 to over 4,000, a 698-percent increase.
Now, despite the success that Interpol and its member
countries have achieved working together in terms of gathering
and sharing information from a wide variety of countries on
suspected terrorists, and especially on stolen travel
documents, there seems to be an intractable resistance in some
corners of the U.S.' and other countries' bureaucracies to
using information coming from global sources. These entities
prefer to use the systems that were in place prior to the first
World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and prior to the September
11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
As I said in my written testimony, if this view continues
to reflect the attitude of those whom we expect to protect us
from the next wave of terrorist attacks, we are in serious--and
I repeat--serious trouble.
Chairman Feinstein. Would you be specific on that point?
Mr. Noble. Yes. If you were to read this morning's Wall
Street Journal article regarding this hearing, you would see a
quote given by the spokesperson from Customs and Border
Protection saying that the Interpol system is not there yet, is
not where it should be yet. And I believe this attitude
courageously spoken on the record reflects the view of those
people who remember Interpol 5 years ago or 6 years ago or 10
years ago when this was true. We have changed. The world has
changed. We believe it is important for that to be recognized.
I will conclude with my formal remarks to say that,
Chairman--and I say this with all sincerity--since you have
organized these hearings, Interpol and our Stolen Lost and
Travel Document database has gotten more attention from the
U.S. than we received in my 6\1/2\ years as Secretary General--
not that the U.S. has not been trying and has not helped us. In
fact, it is for that reason that we have the system in place,
because they complained about the old system that was only an
investigative tool. So thanks to the feedback, the work of the
USNCB, and the hard work of individuals in U.S. Customs and
U.S. Border. Now it is different. Progress has been made, but
what I feel as Secretary General and the point I want to make
is the time bomb, the ticking, your reference to what was
promised last year, it will happen this year, we hope it will
happen this year. But until it happens this year, there have
got to be interim measures we can take.
When I was 9 years old working in my father's store, we
used to have a book with the numbers of all the credit cards
that were reported stolen or that were no longer valid that we
would refer to. So what Interpol is saying, the perfect system
may never be developed, but the system we have in place now
that is being used by Switzerland over 300,000 times a month is
coming up with 100 hits each month. The system that we put in
place in the Caribbean before the Cricket World Cup, the
Caribbean countries, whom people oftentimes criticize as not
being aggressive or hard-working enough, put the system in
place in 4 months and now have gotten more hits in 4 months
than they got in the prior 6 years.
So we need the U.S. not only to put the system in place,
but to advocate that other countries should put the system in
place. Without the U.S. support, without the support of the
elected Members of Congress, this Congress and other congresses
and parliaments around the world, we believe people will take
their time to make sure the system is put in place. And
Interpol believes that time continues to run out for us.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Noble appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you, Mr. Noble. I have many
questions.
Mr. Ervin?
STATEMENT OF CLARK KENT ERVIN, DIRECTOR OF HOMELAND SECURITY,
ASPEN INSTITUTE, AND FORMER INSPECTOR GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF
HOMELAND SECURITY, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Ervin. Thank you very much, Chairman Feinstein, for
inviting me to testify on this very important topic, and I want
to thank you for being the leader on this issue of dealing with
the Visa Waiver Program and the related problem of stolen and
lost passports. As you know, I have submitted a lengthy
statement for the record, so I will only summarize it here.
Like you, I believe that the single greatest vulnerability
with regard to international documents is the Visa Waiver
Program and, as I say, the inextricably interrelated problem of
lost and stolen passports.
As we put it back in a 2004 report during my time as DHS
Inspector General, ``In the post-9/11 world the visa is more
than a mere stamp in a passport. It is the end result of a
rigorous screening process that the bearer must undergo before
travel. By the end of the process, U.S. authorities have
collected and stored considerable information about the
traveler and his or her planned journey. When the visa is
waived for broad classes of travelers, those travelers avoid
this extensive examination, and the United States does not
collect comparable information regarding them.''
Visitors from non-visa waiver countries are nowadays almost
always interviewed at an American embassy or consulate abroad
about 90 percent. Many, if not most, of our interviewers are
conversant in the language of the applicants, familiar with
their customs, and trained in fraud detection techniques.
Consular officials have the further luxury of spacing the
interviews apart so as to maximize the time they have to
question applicants.
By way of contrast, there is no time for port-of-entry
inspectors to interview visa waiver travelers. Hundreds of
passengers, as we all know, disembark at any one time from
international flights, and, understandably, inspectors feel
pressure to clear them within 45 minutes. And even if they did
interview passengers, most inspectors speak only English. The
relative few who speak another language tend to speak Spanish,
not languages like Arabic, Farsi, or Urdu, spoken in countries
of concern.
Far more written information is collected from non-visa
waiver travelers than visa waiver travelers, and the finger
scans taken at the port of entry from non-visa waiver travelers
can be compared with those taken at the embassy or consulate
where the visa application was made, establishing to a
certainty that the person at the port of entry is the very same
person who applied for the visa abroad.
It is not, then, for nothing that shoe bomber Richard Reid
was a British citizen. It is not for nothing that Zacarias
Moussaoui, whom some believe to have been the 20th 9/11
hijacker, was a French citizens. Terrorists prize passports
from visa waiver countries because visa waiver travelers are
subjected to much less scrutiny. That is why passports from
visa waiver countries are occasionally stolen and used to
attempt to enter the United States.
We do not know the full extent of this problem, but we do
know that it remains a serious one. The latest figures that I
am aware of are from January to June 2005, when, according to
GAO, 298 stolen visa waiver country passports were used to try
to enter the United States. We do not know, of course, how many
times customs inspectors failed to spot stolen passports. At
least when we looked into this problem back in 2004, we found,
incredibly enough, that DHS customs inspectors admitted
travelers with stolen passports into this country 73 percent of
the time when they knew that the passports were stolen.
I want to take issue, if I may, with Mr. Everitt who said
that it is invariably the case that when stolen passports are
discovered by port-of-entry inspectors, they are confiscated.
At least when we looked into this problem in 2004, on occasion,
also incredibly, the passports were given back to the traveler
so that he could go back to his country and attempt to use the
stolen passport yet again.
Instead of jettisoning the Visa Waiver Program, the
administration, the President himself, and some Members of
Congress want to expand it to reward certain countries for
being good allies. There are other ways to show our
appreciation than by further widening a security gap, it seems
to me. Doing away with the Visa Waiver Program need not hurt
tourism, trade, and our international image. As a committed
internationalist and a former State Department official
myself--I was the Inspector General there before becoming the
Inspector General at Homeland Security. It was I, incidentally,
and my staff who recommended that we increase the number of
visa applicants who were interviewed. I have always believed
that the State Department in general, and its consular bureau
in particular, are seriously underfunded. If significantly more
resources were provided to State, they could hire the
additional consular officers needed to process applications
from these 27 countries so that their travelers would not need
to wait unduly long for a visa to visit the United States. And
while we would lose, admittedly, our reciprocal right to visa
waiver countries without a visa, that, it seems to me, is a
rather small price to pay to close a big security gap.
I just want to mention, in my statement I talk also, as you
know, about the Visa Security Officer Program, the importance
to my mind that the deadline with regard to the Western
Hemisphere Travel Initiative, with regard to American
passports, as to land and sea, be implemented on the deadline
that is in the law, and we can talk about that, I hope, during
the course of the question-and-answer period.
But I just want to end by noting, as you did, the New York
Times article this morning. If, in fact, the Secretary is
considering either ending the Visa Waiver Program with regard
to Britain entirely or applying it to British citizens of
Pakistani descent--which seems to me is ethically questionable
and would be politically difficult. So as between the two, if
either is chosen, it seems to me likely that the administration
would jettison Britain from the Visa Waiver Program.
If we are going to do that, if we are contemplating doing
that with regard to our closest ally, then I question whether
we should extend the Visa Waiver Program to countries like
Estonia, for example.
Thank you very much, Madam Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ervin appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Ervin. I
appreciate it.
Mr. Zimmer?
STATEMENT OF BRIAN ZIMMER, SENIOR ASSOCIATE, KELLY, ANDERSON &
ASSOCIATES, AND FORMER SENIOR INVESTIGATOR, COMMITTEE ON THE
JUDICIARY, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Zimmer. Chairman Feinstein, thank you for this
opportunity to share my thoughts on strengthening the security
of international travel documents.
If one thinks of homeland security measures to prevent
attacks and subversion by foreign terrorists as a patchwork
quilt, it is evident that many of the patches which were absent
before 9/11 have been put in place. The important premise is
now generally accepted that identity documents needs to be
physically very secure, very counter-resistant, and issued to
people only after a thorough adjudication and authentication of
source documents. This was not true before 9/11.
Some important security patches are still missing, and
others in place are only stop-gap measures and require more
work. The missing ``security patch'' of greatest concern to me
is the lack of substantial use of passport and identity card
reading technology to authenticate documents at ports of entry.
Another critical ``security patch'' that continues to be put on
the back burner is the establishment of exit controls at every
port of entry. The sophistication of our terrorist opponents
requires that the Federal Government close these holes in the
blanket of homeland security.
Much has been accomplished to interrupt terrorist travel,
and worthwhile initiatives have been undertaken by the
administration to improve the security of travel documents,
many of which are the result of congressional mandates and some
initially proposed by Senator Feinstein and Senator Kyl.
In the appendix to my written testimony, I have listed
legislation since 2001 affecting travel and identity document
security, and those of us familiar with the work of Senator
Feinstein and Senator Kyl will recognize many of their
initiatives.
As a former House Judiciary staff member, it is
particularly satisfying to see so much of the legislative
branch's vision for improved security becoming reality.
The adjudication for U.S. passports is highly dependent on
the identity authentication prior to issuing driver's licenses,
and so the REAL ID Act is included among the legislation in the
appendix to my written testimony. It needs to be recognized as
a critical element in securing international travel documents
that we issue. Since some of the other witnesses have pointed
out, as have the Senators, some of the absences of the
administration, I would like to point out a few of the recent
accomplishments they have completed.
It is my view that the implementation of Western Hemisphere
Travel Initiative for air travel to and from the United States
in January of this year went off very effectively, to many
people's surprise, including my own. This success occurred
because of the thorough public outreach by the Federal agencies
involved, the post office, and DHS's coordinated planning with
airports and airline carriers.
There has been a continued active outreach, and
comprehensive planning for the next phase of WHTI at land ports
of entry. DHS is undertaking a renovation of the border
infrastructure to improve inspections and expedite travel, and
also accommodate new readers for the PASS card and passport.
The continued expansion of the Immigration Advisory Program
is an accomplishment of this administration, required by
Congress but, nonetheless, largely moving at a faster pace than
I would have envisioned 2 years ago. It stops people from
getting on planes bound for the United States when their
identity documents do not measure up and, more importantly,
when close inspection identifies them as high-risk travelers
with actual or potential terrorist affiliations. With reference
to Great Britain, this seems to me to be one of the more
obvious immediate solutions that could be imposed prior to
determination that they have to be dropped entirely. An effort
should be made to see what could be done with that as soon as
possible.
There have been continued improvements at US-VISIT. This
goes on behind the scenes, but there is an improving
consolidation of watchlist indicators which works and directly
applies to travelers under the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, and I
think it is extremely important work that is going on there. I
applaud those who are completing it.
I think we have to acknowledge the administration has
expanded use of terrorist watchlists to screen passenger
manifest lists of international flights and has moved it from a
largely unautomated process 6 years ago to one that is highly
automated today in which information is quickly put into the
filters that apply to manifests.
There has been--not as rigorous as some would like, but
much more rigorous than occurred before--enforcement of
requirements on countries participating the Visa Waiver
Program. We have to feel that, notwithstanding it was slower
than we might have liked, today the passports of Visa Waiver
Program countries are far more robust, and most of them have an
improved adjudication process before issuing them.
In conclusion, I think the Administration has met many of
the mandates, but I think is struggling to meet the rest, and I
thank you for this opportunity.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Zimmer appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much, Mr. Zimmer, and
let me thank all of you.
I would like to begin with Mr. Noble. And, Mr. Noble, I am
going to ask you about ten quick questions. I want it for the
transcript. If you can answer yes or no or briefly fill in, you
may want to fill in in writing later.
What kind of information is available on the Interpol
database?
Mr. Noble. The stolen or lost passport number, the issuing
country, whether the passport was stolen blank or lost, and the
date of reported theft or loss. So no personal, no privacy
information.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you. How many passports are
registered in the database?
Mr. Noble. We have over 6.7 million passports registered
and over 14 million total stolen travel documents. And I might
add, Chairman, since your last hearings--and we monitor your
hearings--Norway, Japan, and Sweden are all now participating
countries.
Chairman Feinstein. Oh, good. That is excellent.
How many passports are from visa waiver countries?
Mr. Noble. From visa waiver countries, we have about 2.7
million.
Chairman Feinstein. And how many countries now contribute
their data?
Mr. Noble. 123 countries, and just to highlight, 5 years
ago when we started, we had less than 12 countries and 3,000
documents, and now we have 123 countries and over 14 million
documents.
Chairman Feinstein. How does data get into the database?
Mr. Noble. The country that is the owner of the passport
enters the data directly.
Chairman Feinstein. So who owns the data?
Mr. Noble. The country that issues the passport. Only they
can enter it, only they can modify it, only they can delete it.
Chairman Feinstein. Can another country add, delete, or
modify U.S. data in the Interpol database?
Mr. Noble. No.
Chairman Feinstein. How fast is the search of the Interpol
database?
Mr. Noble. Instant, 2 to 4 seconds.
Chairman Feinstein. Is it expensive to connect border entry
points to the database?
Mr. Noble. The image that we have here for you is
Switzerland. Switzerland was able to connect 20,000 of its law
enforcement officers to Interpol's system for about 100,000
euros. And up there on that screen, you see the hits that have
occurred between December 2005 and April 2007. And highlighted
in red for you, Chairman, is the visa waiver country hits.
Chairman Feinstein. And we do not currently use this
database?
Mr. Noble. The U.S. uses this database for investigative
purposes and also has run samples to see whether or not it
works. But on a real-time basis, when people are entering the
country, the system is not yet being consulted regularly by the
U.S. But as you heard and as I read in the newspaper, the plans
are for it to occur by this fiscal year or at the latest this
calendar year.
Chairman Feinstein. I am very pleased to hear that. One
last question. How much training is required to use the system?
Mr. Noble. The same training that is required to scan the
passport for purposes of it being searched at the national
level. Once the passport is scanned, a light flashes up, either
green or red, indicating whether or not there has been a hit.
So very easy.
Chairman Feinstein. Well, let me just say to you, I really
hope we get into this system in a robust way. I am very
worried. This country is still like a sieve. You know, Mr.
Zimmer mentioned the US-VISIT program. We still cannot tell if
people who come into this country ever leave. And I do not
think the American people understand how lax our controls
really are.
I am going to follow up, and I am very grateful for you
being here to see that we do get into this system. I think it
is important.
Mr. Noble. Could I just follow up with one other point that
you made?
Chairman Feinstein. Yes, please. go ahead.
Mr. Noble. Because there have been some strong comments
made about what should happen with regard to visa waiver
countries. I do not want to get involved in a matter that does
not concern me directly, but I would say that if the U.S. is
thinking about eliminating the visa waiver for all of those
countries that right now are some of your strongest partners in
the fight against terrorism, I would try an interim response
first. An interim response, I believe, is the same response
that we use every day with our credit cards. If our credit card
is lost or stolen, it takes us a matter of seconds or minutes
for us to report that and even less time for the credit card
company to cancel it.
If we were to require all countries to report theft of
stolen blank passports, which you highlighted, which is a major
problem, and if it was put into the system instantly, and if
all countries were required to have the system to check it
instantly, it would have no value to--
Chairman Feinstein. What do we need to do that?
Mr. Noble. This is what the U.S.--I am sorry for pointing.
This is where they were sitting before. Excuse me, sir. The
U.S. is planning to do that, and I want to give you one case
example to explain this.
On April 23, 2003, there was a theft of 850 passports in
Cyprus, 850 blank passports, on April 23rd--
Chairman Feinstein. Of this year.
Mr. Noble. 2003. 2003.
Chairman Feinstein. OK.
Mr. Noble. On January 20th of this year, 11 Iraqis were
stopped at Monterrey, Mexico, because an immigration officer
asked one of them a question that made him suspicious.
Eventually, it turned out that these 11 Iraqis had 8 of the
passports that had been stolen way back in 2003. But for those
immigration officers stopping the persons in Monterrey, their
plans were to get to California and then claim asylum.
For us, we cannot take comfort by the view that there are a
number of people, honest people, hard-working people, who want
to claim asylum. We have to remember that the first World Trade
Center attacks occurred by Ramzi Yousef carrying a stolen Iraqi
passport and claiming asylum in order to get into the U.S.
These same passports, after Interpol got member countries
together, turned up in March and April in Spain and in Poland,
and from this one case were able to dig down and identify 14
people and identify a trafficking ring.
So it is one thing to connect to the system, but we also
need to make sure that, as my colleague to the left said, that
if and when there is a hit, we do not give them the passport
back and we do not ignore that the hit has occurred.
Thank you.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you very much.
Just in response, I do not think the United States is
preparing to do away with the Visa Waiver Program per se. I
hope there is a greater recognition of the hazards it presents
because we do not even know if these people go home.
Mr. Noble. Understood.
Chairman Feinstein. I mean, once they come to this country,
they are lost, effectively. And this is over 15 million people
a year from 27 countries. This is a lot of people.
So if I might, Mr. Zimmer, you mentioned that you think
progress is being made with the US-VISIT program, and I am
delighted to hear that. Do you think there is much progress
being made with respect to identifying when people are actually
leaving the country who are here?
Mr. Zimmer. No, I do not, and personally, a Congressman
that I worked for--and, of course, I worked with your staff
over the years--it remains a deep concern to me that people at
the State level are so indifferent to this, because a majority
of the States would have the same option of adding lost and
stolen passports from Interpol. They would not have to go
through the Federal Government. None of them are interested in
this project that I know of, despite its wide publicity. And a
majority of them will issue a driver's license, at least a
temporary one, but many will issue one for the full term based
on any passport presented with no other identification. So it
is a serious issue.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you.
Mr. Ervin?
Mr. Ervin. May I add something to that, Chairman?
Chairman Feinstein. Yes, you may.
Mr. Ervin. As you know, surely, a few months ago, I think
about 6 months ago or so, Secretary Chertoff or the Department,
anyway, announced essentially that the Department had given up
on the notion of having an exit feature to US-VISIT because of
the cost. And it seems to me, as you said, that this is a huge
vulnerability. If, in fact, it is subsequently learned that we
have inadvertently admitted a terrorist in this country, as you
say, we have no way of knowing whether that person definitively
has left the country.
The US-VISIT system is incomplete and, to some degree,
ineffectual, as long as it does not have a complementary exit
feature.
Chairman Feinstein. I would agree with that 100 percent.
Mr. Noble, over 420 million travelers come into the United
States each year. This gives, I think, Americans the scope of
this. So many people come here. Is the Interpol database
equipped to handle that many inquiries?
Mr. Noble. Recognizing how careful you are about the record
that is established here, I want to be very careful.
Interpol's system can handle triggering the fact that a
passport that has been reported stolen or lost is being used.
But then afterwards, there is a verification process that is
required, where human beings have to determine whether or not
the passport has been stolen, whether or not the passport has
been lost. And for that volume of people, we are going to need
human resources.
Right now, as Secretary General of Interpol, I do not have
one human being from the Department of Homeland Security
assigned to Interpol headquarters in Lyon. We do not--
Chairman Feinstein. Is that right?
Mr. Noble. Not one. We have Secret Service--
Chairman Feinstein. Homeland Security has--what?--over
200,000 employees. That is amazing.
Mr. Noble. To me it is amazing, and I am going to try to
beg the Secretary tomorrow to change that.
The USNCB, which gets 10,000 messages per month, has
vacancies. We believe we are a hub that can leverage the
support that the U.S. gets around the world. But if the U.S.
does not think it is important enough for Homeland Security to
send people to work at Interpol, even though we developed these
systems, even though we are the ones that invented it based on
the U.S. feedback, it is hard for us to persuade other
countries to dedicate the resources.
I think with all of the human beings they have working in
the Department of Homeland Security, they could find a handful
of human beings to send to the USNCB and to Interpol
headquarters to work on this important issue.
Chairman Feinstein. Well, I would agree, and I hope to see
Secretary Chertoff this afternoon, and I will mention it to
him, that is for sure.
Is it possible to screen people through Interpol before
planes land in the U.S.? If so, how would that work?
Mr. Noble. When I used to be the Chairman of the Financial
Action Task Force, we were working for the system of currency
transaction reports and suspicious activity reports where banks
are required to send to the U.S. Government any currency
transactions above a certain amount.
In our view, if you required the same thing of airlines or
airline reservation companies or of banks, you do not have them
send personal data; you have them send to the U.S. Government
the numbers of the passports being used for purposes of getting
on an airline, making a reservation, or opening a bank account.
Then a U.S. agency can get the information and actually decide
whether or not the hit should lead to a disruption or actual
monitoring and following of the individual.
So I believe that could be a very important legislative--
Chairman Feinstein. I just asked my staff, isn't that being
done now? And you are nodding yes. Perhaps could you just add
to this.
Mr. Bartoldus. That is part of the AFIS transmission to the
United States collected by CBP. The passport and the passport
number is transmitted, and that will be what is used to bounce
against the SLTD system by CBP.
Chairman Feinstein. So, in other words, the manifest
information comes before the plane leaves. Is that not correct?
Mr. Bartoldus. There is a rule out right now to change it
from 15 minutes after departure to before the plane leaves. The
final rule is about to be announced.
Chairman Feinstein. OK. That is helpful. Would you let us
know when the rule is announced?
Mr. Bartoldus. Yes.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you.
Mr. Noble. That is very helpful and very positive, but I am
proposing that we could consider pushing it out even further
before the person gets on the plane, before the person gets a
ticket, to alert law enforcement in the country concerned that
this person is, in fact, possessing a passport that has been
reported lost or stolen. That would give the investigative
agencies in the country where the person boards the opportunity
to do something. It would give the law enforcement in the U.S.
an opportunity to do something. And it would not involve any
kind of privacy violations whatsoever for the individuals
concerned.
Chairman Feinstein. In other words, the passport number,
when you make your reservation, would automatically be
checked--we should look at that, too.
Mr. Noble. Yes, and then the hits would be sent out to the
country that the airline will transit through, the end
destination, and the origin of the passport. And that way, like
with the Bank Secrecy Act, you can determine whether or not to
investigate it overtly or investigate it covertly.
Chairman Feinstein. Do other nation's airlines do this now?
Mr. Noble. No.
Chairman Feinstein. No one does it now.
Mr. Noble. No one does it. No one does it. It is the first
time it is being proposed, here today. And the goal is--I do
not know how to think about this. Sometimes I think of borders
of the U.S. as being the front-line defense, and sometimes I
think of them as being the last line of defense. And one of
Interpol's goals is for countries around the world to view the
effort as being a mutually important sharing of responsibility.
So if we could get the airlines to send this information to
Interpol's database--and we do not kick the information back to
the airlines, so we do not tell them whether there is a hit or
not. We just have it go to the law enforcement agencies, and
they can make the determination about what to do. And we would
have more than the time that it takes for the plane to take off
and land in a country. I think it would be an extraordinary
contribution to the problem of--
Chairman Feinstein. I think it would, too, and it would
certainly prevent mistakes being made on board, you know, by
crew and pilots. So it might be very, very useful.
I think the time is moving on, but let me say thank you
very much to the panel, and let me ask Mr. Ervin and Mr.
Zimmer, do you have anything you would like to add at this
point?
Mr. Ervin. Well, there are a number of things, Senator, but
if I could just make one point on this last issue.
Chairman Feinstein. OK.
Mr. Ervin. I do not have it in front of me, but I noted in
my book last year that there was an offer made to Secretary
Chertoff that I became aware of, and I think it was a September
2005 letter from the Air Transport Association, that lobbying
organization, and the Association of European Airlines to make
the passenger manifest available to the United States
Government at the time of check-in--not an hour before, and
certainly not 15 minutes after the flight leaves, but at the
time of check-in. And we all know now in the post-9/11 world,
the check-in happens probably 2 to 3 hours before the flight
leaves.
Chairman Feinstein. That is right.
Mr. Ervin. To my understanding, the Department has yet to
take these two key institutions up on that offer. Obviously, if
the passport numbers were then checked at that time, that would
be a tremendously useful tool.
Chairman Feinstein. I agree with that. I think that is a
very good idea, and we will write a letter to Secretary
Chertoff with that in it.
Mr. Zimmer, any farewell comments?
Mr. Zimmer. I will be brief. U.S. passports issued prior to
the latest passport will remain in circulation and active use
for border entry until 2016. Every major Mexican city near the
border has a fairly substantial black market in lost and stolen
passports and B-1 and B-2 crossing cards, which are often
rented, by the way, by their legitimate owners. And, by the
way, you could probably arrange for a clandestine visit and see
one yourself if you are willing to disguise yourself. They are
not at all secret and subtle, and these cities are easy to
find. In fact, you just hold your hand up like this, and
someone may walk up to you and take you there.
Chairman Feinstein. Is that right?
Mr. Zimmer. That is correct. Even though you would have to
be a little bit less sophisticated in appearance than you are
today.
But the reason I point that out is that these markets are
open to all comers, whether you are Iraqi, Polish, Argentine.
They are available. Americans buy documents there when they
have issues with their identities in the United States and can
come back in with a valid passport containing a photo to which
they have a close resemblance. This is the most difficult thing
to detect at the border--an imposter who looks like the photo
in the passport and who has memorized the details on the
passport.
Much of that could be stopped by changes in the procedures
of the border inspectors and by the introductions of machines.
This has been resisted by CBP since long before 9/11, and the
machines themselves have been out there for 4 or 5 years. They
are used extensively throughout Scandinavia. They are rolling
out across Europe where countries are becoming more aware of
this. The technology is there. It is backed by software that
lists thousands of documents and to which lost and stolen
passport data could easily be added so that they could be read.
It also determines whether they are counterfeit documents.
This is not that expensive, and it would absolutely stop
most of this market in Mexico, and I understand it is growing
in Canada, which makes sense.
So I think this is an unbelievably overlooked opportunity.
All the legislation is there. It is not expensive, but it is
going to take a change in culture and concept at Customs and
Border Patrol.
Thank you.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you. I think that is a very
helpful suggestion. We know the machines are there, but I am
told the readers are not. They cannot read the machines, and so
that is a problem.
Mr. Zimmer. Excuse me, ma'am. Your legislation in 2002
required them to put 1,000 scanners, and they do work, and so
far they are using less than 500 of them. They have been mostly
sitting in warehouses.
Chairman Feinstein. So you are saying they can read--
Mr. Zimmer. Absolutely. They simply choose not to use the
reading machines they already purchased, nor have they upgraded
with the more sophisticated readers that are available and are
regularly purchased by countries like Iceland and Sweden, which
read, again, thousands of documents.
These have been demonstrated at some of the technology
conferences. I think I was here at one 18 months ago on the
Senate side where there was a choice of three of these machines
from three different vendors. So you do not even have a sole-
source issue.
Thank you.
Chairman Feinstein. Thank you. Well, I think this has been
very interesting, and I know Senator Kyl's staff is here, and I
think we might do some joint letters and flesh out some of the
things that have been developed here this morning and get more
information and hopefully encourage some changes.
I would like to thank you very much for being here,
especially you, Mr. Noble, for coming all the way across the
Atlantic. We appreciate it very much.
Thank you, gentlemen, and the hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Questions and answers and submissions for the record
follow.]
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