committee will now come to order we will start our unanticipated third panel appreciate the two of you being here to answer questions before this committee it is my understanding having worked with both sides and my understanding from the two of you  to speak with that should this panel run short that is members not be allowed to fully ask all the questions that we have here today that you both will personally agree to come back and participate in another hearing as a follow up will call this part one of part one of this hearing and i would hope and expect that the two of you would also be able to attend that second hearing we will come to it by mutual agreement in terms of the date it will be your own panel so in order to allow time for discussion we would ask is allow you to each take five minutes for your opening statements please adhere to the red light that will appear before you we will give you some leeway with that keep your comments to five minutes and then we will allow you to submit any additional testimony that you are not able to give verbally into the record for the full committee so at this time we will recognize first mister kane for five minutes mister kane good afternoon chairman chaffetz ranking member tierney ranking member cummings and distinguished members of the subcommittee we appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the transportation security administration's risk based intelligence driven approach to aviation security and specifically the use of advanced imaging technology the chief technology officer i will focus on the technical aspects and our director of security operations lee kair will discuss the human aspect before going into more detail let me state it clearly the technology is vital to our nation's ability to keep air travelers safe in this post mister chairman the united states faces a determined creative enemy bent on the destruction of our way of life the threat is everywhere last year the fbi arrested a man planning an attack on the d c subway system a few weeks ago a young saudi man was arrested under suspicion of plotting terror attacks in texas a lone wolf jihadist and whether it was a failed attack on christmas day two thousand and nine the disrupted cargo plot last october or the latest intelligence we see every day we know al qaeda and other terrorist groups continue to target our aviation system our security measures must focus on detecting and disrupting today's threat not yesterday's today we have a nimble aviation security system that deploys multiple layers of risk based intelligence driven security measures the checkpoint is a central piece of the puzzle and one aspect of the checkpoint is what we are here to discuss today mister chairman well concealed nonmetallic improvised explosive devices are now among the gravest threat to security and while there is no silver bullet ait the advanced imaging technology gives us the best day two thousand and nine attack we accelerated it in our ongoing testing and development we know that well concealed devices like those used on christmas day two thousand and nine can be detected by ait it is then up to the image operator to recognize the anomaly beyond officer reviewing the image does not see the passenger and the officer assisting the passenger cannot see the image ait also does not produce photographic quality images that would permit personal identification we are now testing other detection software that further enhance privacy by eliminating passenger specific images and instead highlighting anomalies on a generic outline testing is ongoing to ensure that this software provides the same detection capability as previous versions of the advanced imaging technology passengers appreciate it and we hope to roll it out nationwide in the near future on safety this technology is safe for all passengers and employees the radiation dose from backscatter advanced imaging technology machines has been independently confirmed by the food and dr national institute of standards and technology johns hopkins university and the u s army among others all this testing confirmed that the radiation dose is well within established standards as constructed backscatter ait is incapable of producing the energy required to generate radiation at a level that would exceed the established standards failsafe mechanisms are installed to automatically shut the machines down should they begin operating in unexpected ways multiple tests occur on each individual unit before it is ever used to screen passengers ongoing testing occurs on every unit consistent with national standards to confirm continued safe operation additional testing is conducted if a machine is relocated or requires other maintenance contractors are required to notify both tsa and f they find radiation levels above the standard we recently committed to publishing all future radiation tests online so the public will be able to see for themselves that their home airports have safe technology while reviewing old reports we identified errors in some of the contractors record keeping unacceptable and we are taking steps to ensure they are not repeated including we are retesting those where they had an error we are retraining the workforce that are doing those surveys we are expanding our independent evaluation of the safety security administration's use of imaging technology at airport security checkpoints as my colleague stated current intelligence reminders us that commercial aviation remains a top terrorist target on christmas day two thousand and nine umar f attempted to blow up a plane bound for the u s using a nonmetallic explosive device that was not and could not have been discovered by a metal detector our success in staying ahead of dedicated adversaries is dependent upon our ability to utilize the latest technologies and procedures as the head of tsa's security operations overseeing the work of tsa's frontline security employees i can assure you that our nearly fifty thousand officers and managers at over four hundred and fifty airports nationwide are dedicated to our important security mission every day tsa screens nearly two million passengers to ensure they arrive safely at their destinations we use a variety of security techniques to ensure our transportation systems remain secure including advanced imaging technology or ait i want to reemphasize that while there is no silver bullet when it comes to aviation security advanced imaging technology in combination with our checkpoint procedures and the work of our dedicated workforce provides us with the best tools to detect dangerous threats advanced imaging technology remains optional to all passengers who may request alternate screening to include a pat down as we have deployed advanced imaging technology tsa has continued to evolve it pat down procedures as well as to mitigate threats there are a few things i want to clarify regarding tsa's pat down procedures first only a small percentage of passengers require a pat down during the secondary screening process p downs are conducted by same gender officers and all passengers have the right to request private screening at any time during the screening process in addition any passenger may choose to be accompanied by an individual of their choosing such as a parent guardian or traveling companion throughout the screening process while it is necessary to ensure that all passengers are properly screened tsa is sensitive to passenger needs for example our officers are trained to work with parents and passengers with special needs to ensure a respectful screening process for the entire family additionally tsa's office of civil rights and civil liberties maintains a coalition of more than seventy disability related groups who partner with tsa to inform  checkpoint screening procedures including the use of advanced imaging technology we continue to work closely with these groups to ensure we are constantly improving the training we provide to our officers which ultimately enhances the passenger experience while we continue to work with stakeholders and partners we are dedicated to also continuing to engage and inform the traveling public regarding the use of technologies such as ait as well as our procedures we want to ensure the traveling public understands the screening process while protecting the information terrorists could use in an attempt to circumvent screening protocols as part of that effort we have worked with our airport partners to post signage at airports regarding ait on our website through the media and  hundreds of press conferences as well as social networking platforms through these mechanisms tsa has reached millions of individuals nationwide to inform them about airport security policies and procedures additionally tsa is committed to answering questions and receiving feedback from the public regarding their screening experience to achieve this tsa utilizes a number of communication tools including the tsa contact center the talk to tsa web feedback tool local customer service managers and input on the tsa blog among other avenues tsa is committed to building upon best practices to mitigate risk and make our transportation systems as safe as possible earlier  administrator pistole outlined his vision for the future of airport security screening as we develop additional risk based initiatives that shift away from a one size fits all approach at airport checkpoints tsa anticipates that this type of innovative approach will enable tsa to better focus its resources while enhancing the passenger experience we want to thank the subcommittee for holding this hearing on tsa's use of advanced imaging technology and for its diligent work in overseeing the agenc efforts to ensure the transportation security we are pleased to answer any questions you might have mister chaffetz thank you i will now recognize myself for five minutes we have a great need in this country to secure aircraft and transportation in general the threat is real let there be no mistake from anybody anywhere the threat is very real i appreciate the good hard work that the tens of thousands of tsa agents do i think most are trying to do a good job they are working hard they are placed in a difficult situation in fact i think a lot of them who probably signed up to do this didn't envision that they were suddenly going to have to be involved in some very invasive pat downs and doing some things that when they probably first signed up they weren't anticipating to do and i appreciate both of you in your degree of participation with public service mister kane for instance your twenty years in the coast guard and what not we appreciate that nevertheless i am very frustrated by the lack of candor coming from the transportation security administration the tsa has earned a notorious reputation of doing things a bit different than the way they say they are doing it that is not a personal attack on you two as individuals and i  want to note at the beginning it is not a direct criticism on any one of you personally but given that you are sitting here and i am glad you are sitting here and we are going to have this discussion i just want to note that it is our role and responsibility to make sure that we improve security and still protect people with their fourth amendment rights that we minimize the invasive nature in which this technology is being deployed not just the technology but  well with that said i want to start to dive in here a little deeper on these machines and start i guess for instance with you mister kane these machines as i understand it were built to the specifications that came from secretary napolitano is that true mister kane the machines in the airports cannot store transmit images the software packages on those machines does not allow that in the airport we do have machines the specifications were put out let me read a few things enabling and disabling of imaging filter shall be modified by users as defined by the user access levels and capabilities index let me go when in test mode the whole body imaging machine the wbi shall allow exporting of image data in real time shall provide secure means of high speed transfer of image data shall allow exporting of image data raw and reconstructed did i misread anything here is that accurate mister kane i believe you are referring to probably a prior specification some of which we have cleaned up in subsequent engineering change proposals to make sure that those test modes are separate so you  reference mister chairman a test mode that mode does not exist in the airport environment the machines in those airports have a different software package that does not exist mister chaffetz you said the same machines have those capabilities my understanding is the network that each of them are machines today are networked in the airports that capability is in the hardware of those machines they are not networked in the airport mister chaffetz so they do have the capabilities of doing it and you actually do capture and transmit images right just think about this from the very standpoint of point is we don't save those images we don't retain them we don't transmit them i would argue that is the same part of the machine and that image review station is part and parcel of that advanced imaging technology machine and of course we have a display ever have you done that mister kane captured in airports i am completely unaware of us ever having done that so i would say no under oath we do not transmit images from the airport mister chaffetz have you ever done that  we developed this type of technology like any other piece of technology we have we have to do extensive testing we have to do extensive training to be able to deploy those machines therefore we have the capability on those machines to operate in the test mode to capture images to be able to transmit those images to other machines in our networks that we use in testing facilities we have that capability we don't have that capability in the airports we separated that capability completely out from anything that is in the airport and the other piece we do have images that we use that were taken from volunteers and typically those are paid volunteers that we use in our testing processes to capture those images mister chaffetz what about this so called level z access make sure we gave greater confidence to people that we were not doing the things that people are talking about we removed some of those capabilities from the z user access typically those are maintenance technicians and some of my folks in my labs have that type of u be stored transmitted or printed and deleted immediately once viewed that is fundamentally false is it not it does have that capability it is a matter of flipping the switch turning it off and on mister kane it is not a matter of flipping a switch and turning it off and on the software that is on the airport machines does not allow that capability in the airport the software in our testing machines is a completely separate software and has that capability in our labs mister chaffetz has it ever had that capability when you first deployed it did it have that capability  initial the first i believe forty seven that we rolled out that capability was on the machines to flip that switch at that z user level access that you are referring to we recognize that we wanted to change that and we made a change on the machines that are in the airports and retrofitted it to all those machines that are in the airports mister chaffetz the committee would appreciate it if you would provide that paperwork my apologies to the ranking member i did not realize how far over time i was i will now recognize the gentleman from massachusetts for five minutes on that i am reading the requirements on sensitive security information and it says tsa policy dictates that passenger privacy is maintained and protected during passenger screening to ensure passenger privacy safegu place ait systems will prohibit the storage and exporting of passenger images during normal screening operations while not being used for normal screening operations the capability to capture images of non passengers for training and evaluation purposes is needed to ensure that image capturing maintains passenger privacy the ait systems will provide two distinct modes of operation screening mode and test mode during screening mode the ait system shall be do is somehow give assurances to people that are doubtful on that and how do you suggest we do that mister kane it is very difficult at times to do that we have talked about it we have offered up the specifications we have made some of those changes that you referred to we have actually changed in the specification to make it more clear of how we intend to operate the machines we put out a private impact assessment that talks about how we intend to operate the machines and we try to be very straightforward with the public with the signage and the other  messaging mechanisms we have to make it clear to the public how we intend to operate the machines and the fact that we don't store transmit retain any of the images and they are deleted when they leave the machines once we have resolved any anomalies mister tierney is the ability to do all of those things you just said basically contained in the software out and both met those specifications in very near similar levels and they flipped a big depending on where you were using them mister tierney i don't accept your answer that you can't tell us in open session but i am going to for the moment on that because my basic point here is that are saying they are interchangeable and the tsa would be satisfied with whatever machine happened to be at a given airport that it was doing the job you wanted done mister kane that is a fair statement congressman mister tierney okay now the only reason you don't go just to the wave scanners where there is no issue at all with respect  as we have tested it independently many times but the other is it is useful for us to have multiple technologies as we talked about we do need to address the threat having a number of people working on the problems of addressing the threat is useful to us having competition in our  that and not expose it i mean it is done all the time mister kane radiation wise we certainly have done that with independent validators we have had johns hopkins we had national institute of standards and technology just making it available to the public to look at those machines no  we wouldn't be able to do that mister tierney but other than making it generally available to the public you would make it available to other independent sources that were qualified to make an evaluation you have done it and you would do it again if it was set up appropriately  do you know whether or not the materials that were used by the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber whatever you want to call them could have been detected or would have been detected by the ait machines mister kane those types of materials what advanced imaging technology does i that you find that are similar to those types of materials as well mister tierney one of our previous witnesses testified that the department of homeland security and tsa had basically funded a national academy of sciences report where made a recommendation at the end for evaluating the effectiveness of all initiatives in a systematic way and then had a whole process out there do you follow that process when you are evaluating the different i think if you are talking about the process we use for developing our technologies yes we use a systematic process in doing that mister tierney did you use the one that was recommended by the national academy of sciences for which you paid mister kane we use our process as mandated by the department of homeland security in their acquisition i think their words were limited in its intrusiveness as it is consistent with satisfactory of the administrative need that justifies it so limited in the intrusiveness i think is kind of key there but take a look at downs this is a child there are people who would go to jail for touching a child like that do you really think these are the least intrusive means you can come up with to ensure security mister kair sir mister kane and i actually sit every morning in an intelligence briefing where we learn what is coming at us from our attackers and what is evident to us is that those that wish to do us harm are very willing to u three with the placement of a bomb that used all nonmetallic components so we have done extensive testing in what techniques we can use in order to be able to detect items like that using both process and technology so that we can mitigate that threat while also being as conscious as possible about the passengers experiences coming through as well as allowing passengers to expeditiously get  also indicate in your testimony that only a small percentage of passengers have undergone a secondary screening i have had the misfortune of being one of those passengers and i was taken into a private room not offered the opportunity to stay in public or have anyone have an anomaly in a sensitive area we do want to make sure that we properly screen that area using a pat down any passenger is authorized to have a  at the airport see what i was subjected to let me move on i am concerned also about the safety of your hardworking tsa officers why should none of those officers that work around these x ray machines in particular not wear the same safety badges that any body who works at a hospital is required to wear this seems like a low cost way to ensure the safety of the people working for you mister kane congressman these are different and they are very very low levels of radiation used by these machines and they are well within public use limits and there are national standards for when you would implement a dosimeter type of program that you are referring to and we are well well below any of those levels that would cause us to look at scientific community to test the amount of radiation that these machines emit mister kane sir we have done a number of independent tests and we have ongoing independent tests for all of these machines in the airports john would be some of it depends on what the final capability of the machines is especially with this automated target recognition software you can get more people through those types of machines than you can with the image operator we think that number is going to be something less there a concern that you have if those were all in place with the new technology and the time to get through it would not change the time that it takes to get x number of people through an airport in a day at every one of those entrances congressman we are very sensitive to that that is why i say the final number will depend on what the technology becomes capable of and how fast it can process a passenger right now you see it in an airport you see it sitting next to a walk through metal detector to alleviate just that concern we are going to keep that for two hundred and seventy five additional machines so that would bring the total to one thousand two hundred and seventy five at that point mister quigley you mentioned the new capabilities and the new technology that would be less would be more generic i guess in terms of what body images are shown yes you would see at the machine itself a very generic outline it is the same outline for everyone and you would just see that and any anomalies would show up on that outline and that allows for one to just do the resolution right at the machine and to a very limited pat down or targeted pat down so if i keep my blackberry in my pocket you know it is going to show on my pocket and the officer will just have to resolve that alarm right there in my pocket mister quigley and the reason i am asking is  if it seems like it is a reasonable period of time before that technology will be available you would want to start shifting over to those right away before you purchase two thousand two hundred of them mister kane we think it is a reasonable amount of time that that technology will be available and we have stated a number of times that machines transmitted have you emailed have you sent anything back to the headquarters and i believe your answer to that was that you were unaware of any right mister kane correct mister chaffetz why isn't the answer to that no it doesn't even have capability see that gives me a pause to think you had to think about that and you came to the conclusion when i gave you a few more minutes to think about it well not that i am aware of isn't quite definitive as no it is not even capable of doing it inception and i don't know some of what occurred earlier in the program's inception i am virtually certain but i can't say for certain because i wasn't the one who would have been witness to what was in the airports and how they were used in the airports but t has always been on the record as saying no we don't do this we have never had this capability so i couldn't say authoritatively though from before my time there mister chaffetz i appreciate that but just because you are on the record that is the concern that i find the inconsistency between sometimes what the record is and i have some personal experiences that i won't take the time of this committee but that is the concern instead of hearing a definitive no it is not even capable what i read are specifications that say well we have an ethernet cable we  you have a very very tough job you weren't here a little bit earlier when i said that you have to protect the public and at the same time you have to try to make sure you have a fair there has been overhanging this hearing and i think with the chairman's statement just now there is a very very significant i want to believe that just like members of congress raise their hand and swear to protect the people we represent that you all go in there every day trying to figure out how you can best protect every single person that use our airways so how would you all suggest given all that i just said and what you know to do things in a way that is least intrusive but there has to be a level of trust for people to believe that you are doing it in the least intrusive way so such as the richard reid shoe bomb they recognized at the time that using a nonmetallic improvised explosive device going through a metal detector was a viable way of going through so from a tsa perspective we have to look every day at what are we seeing from a threat perspective and trying to put processes or technology in place to be able to thwart that type of a risk or threat and at the same time be able to communicate with the traveling public so they know what to expect when they come through the checkpoint so it is a balancing act that we have to balance every day and it boils down to having a very active dialog with the american public we use a variety of ways of trying to do that including  pretty robust dialog on the internet we have an award winning blog for example where we encourage the american people to have that discussion with them about why it is that we are doing what it is we do every day and we want to make sure that the traveling public is able to navigate our screening process mister cummings i am running out of time but i want to ask you this when i heard the representative earlier she testified one of the things that she talked about was training and that there seemed to goes a long way towards trust also just comment and my time is up mister kair yes sir i couldn't agree with you more on that we emphasize to our officers i think our officers are probably some of the most trained and tested of any profession out there and one of the things that we do emphasize with our officers is proper communication to de escalate the traveling process just traveling much less screening is a stressful proposition for particularly like a family going through so our officers are trained and for the most part do a very good job of de escalating stresses of going through that process we actually retrained our entire workforce about two and a half years ago to emphasize customer service as well as security because the two actually go hand in hand we also have another training initiative this year to get at that same exact issue of good communication which de escalates stress to assist them in getting through it is a partnership with the american for your patience in getting through a long day this is an important panel we have waited for you two because this committee has serious doubts about the effectiveness and efficiency and  authority for some of the things you are doing i think that is pretty clear the chairman is particularly interested in the full body scanners i am interested in the overall process so as someone who was here on who remembers president george w bush telling us it wouldn't change america i am concerned that it has you represent fifty seven thousand well meaning people i debate well trained because your turnover is still pretty darn high and it is awful hard to have that many newbies and all we say they are well trained almost every time i go through security i see training which is a good thing but the bad thing is i see the need for training every time i go through mister kair let me go through something that isn't full body scanners i will give you a little relief i fly more than forty round trips a year plus many overseas trips for more than six years i carried in my carry on baggage on every single flight a pair of folding scissors that of folding scissors was taken away two weeks ago that pair of folding scissors if you open them up and elongate them has one inch of blade times two and its overall length is two inches i have researched and cannot find a basis for taking that away do you have an explanation for that kind of subjectivity were they wrong two hundred let me rephrase that forty times two is eighty  what was prohibited mister issa i remember my toothpaste being taken away after we discovered that liquids could be a problem in the british situation you didn't have an answer you just took them all away then you made the answer three ounces but specifically the scissors as i described kair during that analysis in november of two thousand and five that time frame we actually changed the prohibited items list and scissors with a length of less than four inches from the fulcrum are not prohibited so i don't have an explanation for why they would have been  analysis that was done and there is some discretion on tools where if it could be used as a bludgeon in the discretion of the tso then it would be prohibited if it is just a normal inch worth of point and cutting plus another two inches of the rest of a scissors are somehow dangerous but they only do it very infrequently and please as a guy with a motorcycle  don't ask me to explain how i had a twelve millimeter open box that i had gotten on the wrong coast but these things happen the fact is you don't have a consistent system to test today you are saying we are safer w in fact only a fraction of the people are going through these full body scanners and the full body scanners are repeatedly false positiving in huge numbers isn't that true i understand all the good at work and the improvement and the trying but isn't it true that my statement is fair that only a fraction of the people go through them and they have huge false positives today mister kane today only a fraction of the people go through them they have false positives not a huge number of false  about in san diego it is about every fifth person that goes through gets a secondary mister kane that would be possible mister issa okay so twenty percent is not huge but it is close enough to huge if you are one of the people getting a pat down you have heard testimony here today that in fact low level x ray is longstanding to be a problem what assurance do we have here today that you are not going to be the next fluoroscope you are not going to be the next situation in which you say well it is not a problem but members on the dais who go back and forth across this country literally forty fifty round trips a year aren't getting overexposed if in fact you eventually get to implementing full time this procedure mister kane the machines have been tested repeatedly to show how safe they are and independently to show how safe they are and they are tested against national standards that are set by standards making body who have a host of experts on them and they set those standards that we work towards trusted traveler granted it went bankrupt all of that contributes to the whole question that year after year after year each time you find out what you didn't know which right now includes you can't detect a bomb sewn into a human being as a result you are not going to pick up the bomber willing to have surgery to implant explosives under their skin that has been said here today it has been well documented i am just going to close with one thing consistency i go through those checkpoints all over the country regularly what i don't see is i don't see anything that says here is a traveler's right you have a right to a private  you have a right and i know mister chairman i have gone over but i know a lot of us have i have seen repeatedly tsa individuals tell people who are traveling with another person that is being held for secondary stand back go over there they are deliberately denying what you said was a right here today and i hold you to post the tsa to post that i have a right to have my spouse you have a right to have your child or whatever with you during any secondary and not be told they must go over there stand over there you could be arrested if you don't move away the exact opposite has happened in the experience of thousands of travelers will you agree to post so travelers know that you wave i am interested in finding out the contacts of the former secretary with tsa either prior to during or at some time of the acquisition can you check your machines we have them in the airports today we will finish up with the specific testing we have to do on those probably by the end of this month there is about a forty five to sixty day test mister mica well i can't believe it because five years ago that software was available  so we didn't have to have and objections were raised five years ago and we were told that technology was available  you were going to deploy the equipment and it was fully tested mister kane i am not sure there was a specific time frame that we did that congressman i know in our budget request clearly when we the failure rate was totally unacceptable would you concur with that evaluation mister kane i think we look at different types of testing and we think the machines are very effective against the types of threats we are looking at  would like to think that we could perform very well at one hundred percent mister mica do you find the level of failure acceptable that gao has reported now that you have the equipment in place rate the american public would be outraged at that expenditure but it seems that you have opted for sort of a popularity poll you said that eighty percent of the people do  fair to the members i appreciate the public and those that have traveled here to do this nevertheless we will continue this hearing at a date to be determined we stand in recess thank you