Catching Operational Vulnerabilities by Ensuring Random Testing Act of 2008

CATCHING OPERATIONAL VULNERABILITIES BY ENSURING RANDOM TESTING ACT OF 2008-- (House of Representatives - June 18, 2008)

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Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this bill and yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 5909, the Catching Operational Vulnerabilities by Ensuring Random Testing Act of 2008, or the COVERT Act of 2008, was introduced by Congresswoman Lowey of New York.

The COVERT Act of 2008 was introduced to eliminate the practice of giving advance notice to transportation security workers of covert tests before the tests happened. I want to thank Congresswoman Lowey and the other members of the Committee on Homeland Security for working together in a bipartisan manner to approve this measure unanimously.

I also want to thank the Transportation Security Administration for recognizing the need for this legislation and working with us to ensure that the bill accomplishes its goal without impeding the way in which TSA conducts its covert testing.

This legislation is vital to protecting the integrity of covert tests of transportation security systems. We know of at least three incidents where covert tests were compromised by individuals who inappropriately warned security officials.

This bill will prohibit individuals from providing advance notice of these important covert tests to any persons, unless authorized to do so by the Assistant Secretary of TSA, the Inspector General of DHS, or the Comptroller General of GAO.

Covert testing efforts by TSA, the DHS IG, and GAO have helped to increase the effectiveness of our transportation security systems by highlighting vulnerabilities and keeping the screening workforce on their toes. Any effort to compromise these important testing efforts, whether intentional or accidental, should not be tolerated by this Congress.

If we choose to ignore the problems of the past, we will provide future opportunities to compromise a worthy program intended to educate the workforce and benefit the security of our transportation security systems throughout the country.

I strongly encourage all my colleagues to support H.R. 5909, which complements the work the committee has done on H.R. 1684, the DHS authorization bill that is pending before the Senate.

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Mr. THOMPSON of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot emphasize how important these covert tests are to
protecting the country's transportation security systems. A single tip-off of a covert test is too many. We have already had three we know of. We must do our part to stop the next one from happening. We must do whatever we can to ensure that these tests remain covert and candid so we can truly evaluate our transportation security workers.

I look forward to working with my colleagues as we move forward on this important legislation that will make our transportation systems more secure. I ask my colleagues to support this important legislation.

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