Some context for my remarks is appropriate. The threat of terrorism was significant throughout the 1990s; a plot to destroy 12 U.S. airliners was discovered and thwarted in 1995, for instance. Yet the task of providing security to the nation’s aviation system is unquestionably daunting, and we must reluctantly acknowledge that any form of travel can never be made totally secure. The enormous size of U.S. airspace alone defies easy protection. Furthermore, given this country’s hundreds of airports, thousands of planes, tens of thousands of daily flights, and the seemingly limitless ways terrorists or criminals can devise to attack the system, aviation security must be enforced on several fronts. Safeguarding airplanes and passengers requires, at the least, ensuring that perpetrators are kept from breaching security checkpoints and gaining access to secure airport areas or to aircraft. Additionally, vigilance is required to prevent attacks against the extensive computer networks that FAA uses to guide thousands of flights safely through U.S. airspace. FAA has developed several mechanisms to prevent criminal acts against aircraft, such as adopting technology to detect explosives and establishing procedures to ensure that passengers are positively identified before boarding a flight. Still, in recent years, we and others have often demonstrated that significant weaknesses continue to plague the nation’s aviation security. Our work has identified numerous problems with aspects of aviation security in recent years. One such problems is FAA’s computer-based air traffic control system. The ATC system is an enormous, complex collection of interrelated systems, including navigation, surveillance, weather, and automated information processing and display systems that link hundreds of ATC facilities and provide information to air traffic controllers and pilots. Failure to adequately protect these systems could increase the risk of regional or nationwide disruption of air traffic—or even collisions. In five reports issued from 1998 through 2000, we pointed out numerous weaknesses in FAA’s computer security. FAA had not (1) completed background checks on thousands of contractor employees, (2) assessed and accredited as secure many of its ATC facilities, (3) performed appropriate risk assessments to determine the vulnerability of the majority of its ATC systems, (4) established a comprehensive security program, (5) developed service continuity controls to ensure that critical operations continue without undue interruption when unexpected events occur, and (6) fully implemented an intrusion detection capability to detect and respond to malicious intrusions. Some of these weaknesses could have led to serious problems. For example, as part of its Year 2000 readiness efforts, FAA allowed 36 mainland Chinese nationals who had not undergone required background checks to review the computer source code for eight mission-critical systems. To date, we have made nearly 22 recommendations to improve FAA’s computer security. FAA has worked to address these recommendations, but most of them have yet to be completed. For example, it is making progress in obtaining background checks on contractors and accrediting facilities and systems as secure. However, it will take time to complete these efforts. Control of access to aircraft, airfields, and certain airport facilities is another component of aviation security. Among the access controls in place are requirements intended to prevent unauthorized individuals from using forged, stolen, or outdated identification or their familiarity with airport procedures to gain access to secured areas. In May 2000, we reported that our special agents, in an undercover capacity, obtained access to secure areas of two airports by using counterfeit law enforcement credentials and badges. At these airports, our agents declared themselves as armed law enforcement officers, displayed simulated badges and credentials created from commercially available software packages or downloaded from the Internet, and were issued “law enforcement” boarding passes. They were then waved around the screening checkpoints without being screened. Our agents could thus have carried weapons, explosives, chemical/biological agents, or other dangerous objects onto aircraft. In response to our findings, FAA now requires that each airport’s law enforcement officers examine the badges and credentials of any individual seeking to bypass passenger screening. FAA is also working on a “smart card” computer system that would verify law enforcement officers’ identity and authorization for bypassing passenger screening. The Department of Transportation’s Inspector General has also uncovered problems with access controls at airports. The Inspector General’s staff conducted testing in 1998 and 1999 of the access controls at eight major airports and succeeded in gaining access to secure areas in 68 percent of the tests; they were able to board aircraft 117 times. After the release of its report describing its successes in breaching security, the Inspector General conducted additional testing between December 1999 and March 2000 and found that, although improvements had been made, access to secure areas was still gained more than 30 percent of the time. Screening checkpoints and the screeners who operate them are a key line of defense against the introduction of dangerous objects into the aviation system. Over 2 million passengers and their baggage must be checked each day for articles that could pose threats to the safety of an aircraft and those aboard it. The air carriers are responsible for screening passengers and their baggage before they are permitted into the secure areas of an airport or onto an aircraft. Air carriers can use their own employees to conduct screening activities, but mostly air carriers hire security companies to do the screening. Currently, multiple carriers and screening companies are responsible for screening at some of the nation’s larger airports. Concerns have long existed over screeners’ ability to detect and prevent dangerous objects from entering secure areas. Each year, weapons were discovered to have passed through one checkpoint and have later been found during screening for a subsequent flight. FAA monitors the performance of screeners by periodically testing their ability to detect potentially dangerous objects carried by FAA special agents posing as passengers. In 1978, screeners failed to detect 13 percent of the objects during FAA tests. In 1987, screeners missed 20 percent of the objects during the same type of test. Test data for the 1991 to 1999 period show that the declining trend in detection rates continues. Furthermore, the recent tests show that as tests become more realistic and more closely approximate how a terrorist might attempt to penetrate a checkpoint, screeners’ ability to detect dangerous objects declines even further. As we reported last year, there is no single reason why screeners fail to identify dangerous objects. Two conditions—rapid screener turnover and inadequate attention to human factors—are believed to be important causes. Rapid turnover among screeners has been a long-standing problem, having been identified as a concern by FAA and by us in reports dating back to at least 1979. We reported in 1987 that turnover among screeners was about 100 percent a year at some airports, and according to our more recent work, the turnover is considerably higher. From May 1998 through April 1999, screener turnover averaged 126 percent at the nation’s 19 largest airports; 5 of these airports reported turnover of 200 percent or more, and one reported turnover of 416 percent. At one airport we visited, of the 993 screeners trained at that airport over about a 1-year period, only 142, or 14 percent, were still employed at the end of that year. Such rapid turnover can seriously limit the level of experience among screeners operating a checkpoint. Both FAA and the aviation industry attribute the rapid turnover to the low wages and minimal benefits screeners receive, along with the daily stress of the job. Generally, screeners are paid at or near the minimum wage. We reported last year that some of the screening companies at 14 of the nation’s 19 largest airports paid screeners a starting salary of $6.00 an hour or less and, at 5 of these airports, the starting salary was the then- minimum wage—$5.15 an hour. It is common for the starting wages at airport fast-food restaurants to be higher than the wages screeners receive. For instance, at one airport we visited, screeners’ wages started as low as $6.25 an hour, whereas the starting wage at one of the airport’s fast- food restaurants was $7 an hour. The demands of the job also affect performance. Screening duties require repetitive tasks as well as intense monitoring for the very rare event when a dangerous object might be observed. Too little attention has been given to factors such as (1) improving individuals’ aptitudes for effectively performing screener duties, (2) the sufficiency of the training provided to screeners and how well they comprehend it, and (3) the monotony of the job and the distractions that reduce screeners’ vigilance. As a result, screeners are being placed on the job who do not have the necessary aptitudes, nor the adequate knowledge to effectively perform the work, and who then find the duties tedious and dull. We reported in June 2000 that FAA was implementing a number of actions to improve screeners’ performance. However, FAA did not have an integrated management plan for these efforts that would identify and prioritize checkpoint and human factors problems that needed to be resolved, and identify measures—and related milestone and funding information—for addressing the performance problems. Additionally, FAA did not have adequate goals by which to measure and report its progress in improving screeners’ performance. FAA is implementing our recommendations. However, two key actions to improving screeners’ performance are still not complete. These actions are the deployment of threat image projection systems—which place images of dangerous objects on the monitors of X-ray machines to keep screeners alert and monitor their performance—and a certification program to make screening companies accountable for the training and performance of the screeners they employ. Threat image projection systems are expected to keep screeners alert by periodically imposing the image of a dangerous object on the X-ray screen. They also are used to measure how well screeners perform in detecting these objects. Additionally, the systems serve as a device to train screeners to become more adept at identifying harder-to-spot objects. FAA is currently deploying the threat image projections systems and expects to have them deployed at all airports by 2003.