Hearing of the House Judiciary Committee on the Deadline for Biometric Passports - Transcript

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE

SUBJECT: DEADLINE FOR BIOMETRIC PASSPORTS

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE JAMES SENSENBRENNER (R-WI)

WITNESSES: SECRETARY OF STATE COLIN POWELL; AND SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY TOM RIDGE

LOCATION: 2141 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.

BODY:

REP. SENSENBRENNER: The committee will be in order. Mr. Conyers and I will give opening statements. Secretary Powell is caught in traffic somewhere between the White House and here, but with Secretary Ridge's permission, we decided to get going.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
REP. ROBERT SCOTT (D-VA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And with the indulgence of our two secretaries, I'd like to submit several questions for the record --

REP. SENSENBRENNER: Without objection.

REP. SCOTT: -- that you can answer, and let me just go over what they will be.

Exactly what are the technological barriers to meeting the October deadline? And why should we have any confidence that you'll be able to overcome these barriers within two years?

The second is, have you evaluated the problem of false positives and false negatives in the identification?

Third, what privacy concerns have been studied and what were your conclusions?

And fourth, what provisions have been made to make the new passports tamper-resistant?

And if you could, between the two of you, respond to those I'd appreciate it.

Let me ask a couple other questions. If we require-if we don't extend the deadline and we require visas for people visiting the United States, will they require visas for United States citizens visiting them?

SEC. POWELL: That will be a judgment each country will have to make on their own. We had a recent experience where one country was not happy with the US-VISIT program and reciprocated in kind against our people coming into their country. I think we've kind of gotten over that little problem, once they realized that this only took 15 seconds and it was (sic) painful. And frankly, most people going through kind of enjoyed the novelty of it and realized it was for their protection. And so we always have that possibility, but I think it would be individual countries and we'd have to deal with it as it occurred.

REP. SCOTT: Will U.S. citizens have trouble getting back into the United States if they leave?

SEC. POWELL: U.S. citizens? I would not --

SEC. RIDGE: No, they would not.

Congressman, I wanted just to add, the false match rate-because obviously, we worry about positive and negatives-for the fingerprint one-to-one match, so far our experience is less than one- tenth of 1 percent. It's a pretty reliable way of confirming identity.

REP. SCOTT: But one-tenth of 1 percent, when you talk about millions, would still be quite a few.

SEC. RIDGE: That's exactly right. And we obviously try to work to a foolproof, fail-safe system, and we'll keep working on it.

REP. SCOTT: Without going into detail and without asking a question, let me just associate myself with the concerns about tourism. That's a very heavy part of the southeast Virginia economy, so we'd want to make sure that whatever we do doesn't adversely affect tourism.

Now, do I understand that the passports that are issued before whatever the deadline is-will they be good until they expire?

SEC. POWELL: Yes. All passports issued after the deadline date must be machine readable and biometrically enhanced.

REP. SCOTT: And therefore, those issued before the deadline will be good until they expire?

SEC. POWELL: Correct. Right.

SEC. RIDGE: But one very good reason for us to keep the US-VISIT system in play, because there will be some countries issue a five-year passport, some 10; if you extend the date, every passport issued after that would have to be machine readable, biometrically enabled; those passports issued before would have an expiration date, and they necessarily would not have to apply or a new passport, they could use the old passport, which is another reason, we think, we ought to just keep US-VISIT in play indefinitely.

SEC. POWELL: But I would hope most of these countries would be well on their way to issuing the new passports before the deadline.

SEC. RIDGE: Yeah.

REP. SCOTT: Now, exactly who is in the database that we'll be catching with the biometrics?

SEC. RIDGE: The facial databases are obviously fairly small, photographs; and the larger database, primarily supplied by the FBI but other agencies, the fingerprint database, is in the millions. I mean, when people are convicted of a crime, we get the full set of prints. When individuals are deported, there's a full set of prints.

And so the database we're looking at-non-citizens who have been convicted of a crime are deported.

REP. SCOTT: Were the 9/11 hijackers in the database?

SEC. POWELL: No.

SEC. RIDGE: No.

REP. SCOTT: None of them?

SEC. RIDGE: I don't believe so. No.

SEC. POWELL: The biographic data and the finger scan as they come through the point of entry is immediately referred to a database.

REP. SCOTT: Yeah.

END