Chaired By: Representative Stephen Horn (R-CA)
Witnesses Panel I: Honorable Newt Gingrich, Former Speaker of the House of Representatives [jump to Gingrich's remarks]; Honorable Alan Simpson, Former Majority Whip of the Senate; Honorable Bill Mccollum, Former Chairman, House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Subcommittee on Human Intelligence, Analysis and Counterintelligence and Former Chairman, House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime
Panel II: Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor Public Interest Law, George Washington University Law School; Honorable Roy M. Goodman, Chairman, Investigations Committee, New York State Senate; Katie Corrigan, Legislative Counsel on Privacy, American Civil Liberties Union; Rudi Veestraeten, Counselor and Consul, Embassy of Belgium; Tim Hoechst, Senior Vice President of Technology, Oracle Corporation; Ben Shneiderman, Professor, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, Fellow, Association for Computing Machinery
Location: 2154 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C.

REP. STEPHEN HORN (R-CA): The quorum being present, the hearing of the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations will come to order.

Only two months after the devastating terrorist attacks of September 11th, this nation is just beginning to understand the dimensions of a dramatically changing world. Preserving the American way of life requires adaptation and sacrifice. It means using this nation's unique strengths to address the vulnerabilities that terrorists exploited at an enormous human toll. Technology is one of America's greatest strengths. In recent weeks some have called for using that technology to combat terrorism by developing a national identification system. Proponents of such a system argue that a hi- tech national identifier system linking federal and state databases would allow authorities to spot terrorists before they attack.

Some of the September 11th terrorists were in the United States illegally. Supporters say that had such a system been in place, airline personnel would have been able to crosscheck passenger lists against various watch lists. The airlines would have known that the men should not have been in the country, let alone on an airplane. Those who oppose such a system are concerned about the impact a national identifier system would have been on the very precepts of America's freedoms. Given the vast amount of personal information that could be placed in a national identification system, there is legitimate cause for concern over its potential abuse or mismanagement. In the event that such a system were adopted, it must incorporate sufficient safeguards to prevent the abuse of power by those who would have access to the information and those with the authority to demand an individual's identification.

The technical issues involved in a database project of this magnitude must also be considered. Is it possible to develop a system that is both fraud resistant and secure? Freedom is the most precious gift to Americans. The terrorists knew it and took good advantage of it. Freedom itself was the target of the September 11th attacks. If that freedom is lost in the pursuit of justice, the terrorists will have won, even if they themselves are punished. Although holding firm to America's freedoms, we must also be open to new ideas. The survival of this great nation may depend on it.

I welcome our witnesses today and I look forward to their testimony. But before giving you the oath I will yield time for the ranking member, the gentlewoman from Illinois, Ms. Schakowsky, and--for an opening statement.

REP. JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY (D-IL): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank this panel of witnesses for coming here today.

In the wake up September 11th we're faced with an enormous challenge of balancing the need for enhanced national security with the need for protecting civil rights of the public. In the past, some efforts in the name of national security, in my view, have gone too far and have endangered those liberties. We've learned that once that kind of harm is done, it's difficult to repair.

During World War 2 we uprooted thousands of Japanese Americans and placed them in internment camps. It is generally recognized today, over 50 years later, that the internment was a mistake. In fact, it was clear at the time that there was no danger of sabotage from those individuals. As historian Margo Anderson points out, in November 1941, in response to a request by President Roosevelt, John Franklin Carter wrote to the president, "There is no Japanese problem on the coast. There will be no armed uprising of Japanese." Nonetheless thousands of Japanese Americans, many of whom were citizens, were rounded up and placed into camps.

Today we have a monument to those that were mistreated just north of the Senate office buildings, and our government has officially apologized. However, getting to that apology and the monument was extremely difficult and did not repair the harm done. Liberty and sense of security lost by those interns cannot be given back. We must be careful not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

Last week on Thursday, before Veteran's Day, I went to the floor of the House to pay tribute to those who have served our country in the defense of freedom. We have fought hard throughout our history to maintain a free and open society. We must not sacrifice those freedoms in the name of war. If we sacrifice our freedom, we lose the war no matter what the military outcome.

The security measures we proposed in response to terrorism must pass three tests. Are they effective? Can they be applied without discrimination? Can they be implemented without sacrificing our fundamental freedom of due process, privacy and equality? The proposal for a national identification system is not new. It has failed in the past because it cannot pass these fundamental tests. The Congress passed an Immigration Reform Act in 1996, which contained a number of provisions that would have led to a national identification system. Since that law was passed, those provisions have steadily been tiered back. One provision was repealed and another modified to the point where it could not be administered at the land border between the United States and its neighbors.

In the Patriot Act, the House has reaffirmed those provisions knowing that they had no teeth. The events of September 11th show us that systems like national identification cards will not deter crazed terrorists from their mission. Those terrorists all have driver's licenses, credit cards and Internet accounts. I urge all of us and each of you to pay close attention to the effects your proposal will have on the fundamental freedoms on which this country was founded: freedom of speech and religion, freedom to assembly, freedom of the press, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, and freedom from imprisonment without due process. Those freedoms cannot be ignored in the name of homeland security. As members of Congress we must evaluate any proposal offered in the name of enhanced security. Does it do what it claims to do? What is the burden on the public in terms of time consumed and freedom lost? Do the benefits outweigh the cost? Is there an incremental gain in security and does it justify the loss of freedom?

I look forward to hearing the testimony today and hope our witnesses will help us answer these important questions. And I thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. HORN: I thank you and before I call on Ms. Maloney, we have two members of the committee which will be before us, and without objection we'll have Mr. Castle and Mr. Miller.

Mr. Castle.

REP. MICHAEL N. CASTLE (R-DE): Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I know I'm an interloper here today and I appreciate you and the ranking member allowing me to appear. And I wanted to share some thoughts I have on this and some legislation I've been working on with Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona with respect to this issue. But I must comment first that this is a very distinguished but even more so very interesting panel. I look forward to what they have to say.

Many of the issues that are involved in the subject matter of today of national identification cards in my judgment should first be addressed in managing foreign visa holders in the United States of America. While I understand that the issue of national ID cards is extremely important in the times we are living in, and I would imagine somewhat controversial if I had to place a wager on it, I believe that we must first begin with the tracking of foreign guests in our country and I don't think this should be controversial.

I would like to just share a few statistics with you. In 1998 the Immigration and Naturalization Service, INS, reported that 30.1 million foreign people came to the United States on a temporary basis. Of this 30.1 million, there are an estimated five to eight million illegal immigrants living in the United States; 40 percent of which were listed as overstays by the INS. That means they stayed beyond the time of their visa. I believe very strongly, and Mr. Flake does as well, that we need to be able to monitor all foreign visitors and track in real time--that is, the actual knowledge on a computer screen in real time--who they are, what their background is and what they are doing in our country.

Congress has actually--probably in the time of the gentlemen who are on this panel--has actually taken steps on this, but none of this has really been implemented. Six years ago Congress instructed the INS to gather the arrival and departure date of most foreign visitors, to make sure they do not remain in the United States after the expiration of their authorized stay. However, to this day the INS Passenger Accelerated Service System, INSPASS is its acronym, remains only a pilot project used at only four airports, but not at any land or sea port points of entry.

Another example of an innovative idea which has been put in place but not fully used, is the border crossing card which is used by Mexican and Canadian nationals who seek admission as border crossers. But, again, this program has been plagued by difficulties and delays. I think such examples illustrate the lost opportunities inherent in the poor management of tracking systems.

To address immigration challenges, Representative Flake and Representative Deal of Georgia and I did introduce an act called the Visa Integrity and Security Act to strengthen the immigration system and to improve the ability of the INS to track all these temporary visa holders. A number of the key provisions in this legislation were actually included in the Patriot Act, which you might know as the Anti-Terrorism Act, which passed very recently in the Congress of the United States.

But there is still a lot of work to be done. We do need to be able to track and locate temporary foreign visitors to the U.S. to ensure they are here for their stated purpose, which could be anything from being a student, to working, to a visitor, and to know when they have come and when they have left.

A student tracking system that's been under development since 1997 needs to be improved and fully implemented. The Patriot Act does call for the implementation of the Student Tracking System and has authorized $36 million, which is a good start towards its deployment. However, we must advocate that the INS incorporate key provisions in any future student tracking system. We need to know if foreign students actually enroll in classes and whether they drop out. There are over 500,000 foreign students in the United States now. We also need to know their family history, course of study and date of enrolment.

Second, we need to know if a temporary worker holding an H1B visa, which has been the subject matter of many an hour here in the Congress, is still working at the company that hired that person. A crucial aspect of any effective system that tracks foreign visitors is the use of technology to foil would be counterfeiters, of which there are many, I might add.

A Smartcard visa for foreign visitors would be much more difficult to forge than traditional visas. It would hold a copy of the fingerprint biometric and typical visa information; or pupil of the eye or whatever biometric one would want to use. This is not a new idea either, by the way. It just has not been implemented particularly well. U.S. citizens across the border frequently are able to participate in a voluntary program that registers the fingerprint biometric. We just think in certain instances it should be automatic that it be done, as opposed to being a voluntary program.

Holders of frequent traveler passports pass more quickly through Customs by showing their fingers for identification at a Customs station. The use of biometric technology is encouraged in the Patriot Act. These tamper-resistant visas could eventually be linked to an integrated computerized entry access system and the INS, Customs, consulates, universities and other law enforcement agencies would all work off the same information to monitor and track students, tourists and other visa holders. And I'm sure I'm not telling anybody here the difficulty of some of the information exchange, even among governmental agencies today, much less on a computer in real time in terms of the various places, the embassies, the points of entry where that information would be usable.

All this technology is available, by the way, although at a cost. And programs could be more effectively utilized to track our foreign guests. The lessons learned from tracking foreign visitors can lend important insight to the pros and cons of enacting a national identification card for United States citizens, which we may or may not be ready for now. But I think we are ready for a visa system at this point, if we put our minds to it and go about it.

Let me just say in conclusion, in no way am I advocating limiting in this particular program what we are doing with respect to visas or visitors to our country. We just want to make sure we know who's coming into this country and, if they should not be coming into this country, are preventing them from being here and while they are here, they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. And I appreciate the time, Mr. Chairman. Again, I realize I'm an interloper and you've been very generous and I yield back the balance of my time.

REP. HORN: Thank you very much and now I yield to the ranking member over the years and the gentle lady of New York, Ms. Maloney.

REP. CAROLYN B. MALONEY (D-NY): Thank you and I would first like to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the ranking member for holding this hearing and commend you for tackling yet another complicated and controversial issue. Also, I'd like to extend my appreciation to the very interesting panelists we've assembled here today for taking the time to be here.

We have taken a hard look at the way our great nation operates since September 11th. The hard, cold truth is that we have been very lax in many areas of safety and security.

I believe the most difficult fact for us as a nation to face is that there is a group of individuals who hate us and want to do harm to the citizens of America. As an elected official, I must do everything that I can to protect my constituents and the constituents of our country. In this new world, I am not exactly how sure we can accomplish this. However, I'm eager to learn and understand more, as we will learn today.

In the month of October alone we had 17 million people travel across the borders of the United States. We welcome all travelers. Our nation's economy depends in part on these visitors. However, we have to face this cold, hard truth that not everyone entering our borders enters with good intentions. Access to the United States must be looked upon as a privilege, not a right. Our country's founders provided many safeguards to protect our freedom while ensuring our safety.

One of the duties of our democracy is that it is not static, but a robust living thing that can change, and times have dramatically changed. Daniel Webster, one of our nation's former great leaders, once stated, "God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and to defend." Today, we must guard and defend it. We must not be afraid of new ideas. We need to protect not only the rights of individuals, but their life.

We pride ourselves of the many freedoms we have in the United States. However, in order to protect these freedoms we need to protect our safety and our nation's security. I commend President Bush for taking the bold step yesterday to begin to acquire stricter regulation regarding the granting of visas. Fear has struck the core of the community I represent in New York--I lost well over 600 constituents--and it has struck the core of the American people.

The freedom to travel freely about our nation has taken a devastating blow. We now have armed guards on several flights, with the implementation of complete coverage for all flights ongoing. We look to our law enforcement to protect and to serve. However, we need to arm them with the tools to accomplish this mission. A more thorough and smarter Green Card for non-U.S. persons, I believe, is a beginning. I also believe that we need to tie one's state driver's license to their visa expiration date.

During a hearing held in New York on terrorism, Governor Jeb Bush provided testimony that in his state of Florida one's driver's license expires on the same date as their visa. Does this not provide yet another way of tracking non-U.S. persons? I believe we need to take other steps and one could be that an individual's bank account could be frozen at the time of the visa expiration date. All non-reclaimed funds could revert to the state's escrow account to fight terrorism. We have seen how our banking industry has been contaminated by the terrorist community again, and we need to reclaim it. As I stated earlier, I do not have all the answers so I'm very much looking forward to our panelists to help me and other members of this committee uncover all the pros and cons of this important issue.

Thank you very much and I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

REP. HORN: Thank you, and we now yield to Mr. Miller from Florida, the chairman of the Census Subcommittee of Government Reform.

Mr. Miller.

REP. DAN MILLER (R-FL): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling this hearing. I'm delighted with the two panels and I'll be very brief because I heard the speaker talk about this issue briefly at a breakfast about two weeks ago. And ever since September 11th it's raised a lot of issues of which direction to go--civil liberties issues and I know this will be addressed by the panel, the privacy issue which I know Mr. McCollum has worked on a lot. Technology, which is something the speaker talks about all the time. And just to make sure our country can function after--post September 11th, our economy can function.

So there's a lot of challenges and interesting comments, and I'm really here to listen and learn, so I yield back.

REP. HORN: Thank you very much, and any other statements that come in will be filed for the record.

We now start with our first panel, and I think you know the routine that this is an investigating committee, and so if you raise your right hand and if you have any assistants backing you up, get them and the clerk will get their names too.

Do you solemnly swear the testimony you will give before this subcommittee will be truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

WITNESSES: I do.

REP. HORN: The clerk will note that all the witnesses have affirmed, and we start with the Honorable Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

Mr. Speaker.

MR. NEWT GINGRICH: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank you and the ranking member for holding this hearing. I also wanted to take this opportunity to commend you for your consistent leadership on the issue of cyber security and fact that this subcommittee has been very far ahead of events in looking at the need for effective technology in the security area.

I also want to begin with Mrs. Schakowsky's I think absolutely correct point, which is that we have to design--the challenge to the Congress and the president is to design a system which both provides civil liberties protection for the innocent and protection of the innocent. In the past with things like fingerprinting, wire tapping and other technologies, we worked very hard to make sure that while we were strengthening law enforcement, we were never infringing on the innocent, and I think this has to be thought through in a very careful way.

The fact is we already have a primitive, inefficient, easily cheated system of identification. I flew out of Reagan National yesterday and three times I produced an ID card. Now, I just want to point out every audience I talk to around the country, I ask them how many of them know someone who in high school had access to an ID card that might not have been their own, for reasons we won't go into. And, while no one personally had ever used an ID card for an inappropriate purpose, it has always amazed me the number of people who seemed to find at 16 or 17 access to an ID card.

So I want to be very clear. I think we've already indicated at airports, we've indicated at government buildings, we've indicated in a variety of places that asking for identification is legitimate. The question now is can we design a system which has effective ID, while still protecting the innocent? I think that it has to be an American model of security which means a high technology, capital intensive system that provides security, speed, efficiency and convenience. That's the model we've always set for ourselves and I think, frankly, the current lines at airports are a sign we don't have a system that meets that test.

It's also necessary for the world economy to have a parallel system for freight, whether it's in trucks or container cargo, that is secure, fast and efficient or we will literally break down the world economy and add a substantial amount of cost to everybody's life.

I would suggest to this subcommittee that as you look at these, that you look very seriously at outsourcing as much production as possible, because most of the great breakthroughs that are high technology and capital intensive occur in the private sector, and occur in entrepreneurial businesses. And I particularly would recommend to you Clayton Christensen's "The Innovators Dilemma" as a study of new technologies at work and Nathan Mirbald's (ph) recent writing, particularly in USA Today, on the concept of exponential industries and the ability to develop really dramatically new technologies in the next five to ten years.

I personally think we're going to want to end up with a biometric solution that involves either a retinal or iris scan, which I think is harder to cheat than a thumbprint and, frankly, is as easy to measure in real time; it's simply a picture. And any of us who are being filmed for television or by still photographers are having exactly the same experience you'd have for a retinal scan.

I want to distinguish also civil liberties for American citizens from foreign visitors. I believe that all foreign visitors should be scanned as they enter the country.

We ought to have a databank either of their iris or retina; I think that's a technical decision which one you're using. But we ought to be able to know who you are. We ought to be able to match you up against a system that would indicate whether you were a known drug dealer, a known terrorist, et cetera. And it would basically indicate and attach to an identity that had a biometric on the identity card, so we knew that the person we're talking to didn't just buy this for $11 in Los Angeles on a street corner, as can currently be done.

For Americans, I think it's fairly simple to have the 50 states go to a biometric measure on the driver's license and simply ensure that all of the states--50 states plus D.C. that the databases are linked. That means an investment in wireless, high speed connectivity with very high speed computing. But, literally, it's no harder for a policeman standing and talking to you by the side of your car within seconds to have verified who you really are, if we design a system that does it. And I think you can do that with civil liberties protected.

I would not insist on a national ID card, because I think you do get into civil libertarian issues. But I would suggest to you that the simple act of having two lines at airports, one biometric where anybody who's a frequent flyer who wanted to be able to literally walk through the line, verify who they are and pick up their ticket at security as they're going through. While we'd have a long line that may take an hour and a half for people who prefer to avoid that kind of convenience. I think you'd find a natural migration of over 90 percent of the American travelers, within a year or less, to the higher speed line.

Let me also suggest that the committee look at the emerging technology at MIT and elsewhere, that for somewhere between one and 30 cents per suitcase you could literally have an embedded wireless system that would enable you to track literally every suitcase. And if you introduced it as a manufacturing process now, you would within five or six years have an overwhelming tagged and identified, highly secure system.

As I said earlier, this kind of thinking I think has to also apply to trucks and the container cargoes. And if you look at what UPS and FedEx already do, you can see the beginnings of a model that, given the high--the new breakthroughs and the technologies, could be even more sophisticated and even more accurate.

Let me just close by going back to the exactly correct warning that Mrs. Schakowsky made. There is no question in my mind that we can design, just as with medical records, an ability to have personal privacy and access to information that may save our lives. But that requires a federal law that makes it a felony to use that medical record inappropriately.

Similarly, I think you can design a system which allows you to track a person who is genuinely out to do something bad, without in that process either dramatically inconveniencing or harming those who are innocent. And, in fact, I would argue that if the American people knew that every employee who walked on an airport had some means of checking to make they were really the person they claimed to be, if we knew that our FBI, CIA, FAA computers worked, the notion--I just want to close on this notion, because what you're doing on this subcommittee is so vital.

Six weeks before September 11, the Central Intelligence Agency told the Federal Bureau of Investigation two terrorists had entered the United States. Six weeks later they had still not been able to get that information into the airline computers, and two of the terrorists on September 11 in Boston boarded the airplane under their own names, 42 days after the United States government officially knew they were in the U.S. and they were very dangerous.

Now, I simply suggest going to a mandatory, regular ID card won't help much, because with desktop printing they will learn how to buy cards that are false. But if we had a high speed computing system and we had an ability to have very high speed access, I think we could design a system where we would have found those two people, they would have been stopped at Logan and we would have had a very significant understanding of what was going on.

I think this committee is moving in the right direction. If it does it right, the system will be very secure, it will be very safe, and it will protect our civil liberties while also protecting us.

REP. HORN: We thank you very much for those pertinent views, which I'm used to, and it's very useful. We now turn to the very distinguished ex-senator and one of the great public servants of this country, namely Alan Simpson, who has spent more time on immigration I think than probably all the rest of us put together. So I'm going to turn it over to you.

REP. SCHAKOWSKY: Mr. Chairman, if I could just inquire. Apparently you're going to proceed through the vote?

REP. HORN: No, we're going to go now and when Mr. Miller returns, he will be presiding, and then I'll come back. We're in this less than seamless operation --

MR. : We know that.

REP. HORN:--known as the vote. And we'll be back, so --

MR. ALAN SIMPSON: I'll just proceed then. Thank you.

REP. HORN: Proceed and I will try to be back in six or seven minutes.

MR. SIMPSON: Thank you, Chairman Horn.

REP. HORN: Thank you.

MR. SIMPSON: I come in here with a very eerie feeling as Jack Brooks is staring at me there. He would look at me with that smoldering cigar and say, "Simpson, I got a deal for you."

(Laughter.)

I'd lose my shirt and my underwear and everything else in here. Well, that was Jack Brooks. What an amazing man.

It is a pleasure to be here to discuss this serious issue of how we might strengthen domestic security. I was particularly moved by Congresswoman Schakowsky's remarks, for I met Norm Mineta at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center when we were 12-year-old-boys. He was behind wire and I were living in Cody, and our scout master took us to the Jap camp--that's what it was called. Eleven thousand people there, and Norm and I struck up a friendship of curiosity and juvenile devilment that has lasted now 70 years. He's a very dear and special friend.

But we want to remember at that time that Attorney General Warren, Earl Warren of California, signed the order to evacuate them and the unanimous decision of the United States Supreme Court by William O. Douglas said that it was proper. So I think let's try to keep that in perspective and not think of how it is 50 years from then as to the fact that the Japanese submarine lobbed a couple of shells into an oilfield off of California in the spring of '42, and it kind of startled people. Just thought I'd pitch that in. Just thought I'd throw it in there.

Anyway, you're on track. I was impressed by what Newt is saying because you're all being led astray by a single term, and the term is national ID. I never used it. I put it in the bill that we were not talking about a national ID and you'd do a disservice to the country when you use the phrase national ID. We're talking about a more secure identifier system. It could be many things. And if anyone believes that there is intrusiveness in what we're suggesting, all of us--Newt, myself, what Bill will say, what Democrats and Republic--what Rodino and I said, what Mazzoli and I said. And in the bill it said we're not talking about a national ID. That's a diversion for people who like to talk about tattoos and Nazi Germany, and don't let them get away with it.

We're not talking about that. Every time we try to do something in this area it was filled with emotion, fear, guilt, and racism. The Select Commission on Immigration Refugee Policy said we ought to do something in this area. We tried to do that, got shot out of the saddle by arguments about tattoos and Nazi Germany. Then we tried it again and we had a biometric activity in one of them, and in a conference committee in the middle of the night when on the floor of the House, passed the Senate, there was a highly emotional argument about, again, Nazi Germany and tattoos. It was pulled out and dear old Joe Moakley took it out and we passed it in the middle of the night without anything in it.

The House always had an aversion to that kind of thing.

The Senate would pass it and I can only share with you that everything we did in this area was bipartisan. Mazzoli, our Democrat from Kentucky; Rodino, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee from New Jersey--still living and a magnificent man--we did these things. Hamm Fisch (ph)--and Newt knows him well and so does Bill. You have to do something and the something is not intrusive any more than what you get when you go to the airport now, or what you get when you go into a store and have to give your slide card, or when you file for credit or whatever it may be.

REP. SCHAKOWSKY: Senator Simpson.

MR. SIMPSON: Yes, indeed?

REP. SCHAKOWSKY: I'm afraid I have to go vote, which would leave no members here and so I'm going to grab this gavel while I can --

MR. SIMPSON: (Inaudible.)

REP. SCHAKOWSKY:--and recess this committee at least until someone returns. All right.

MR. SIMPSON: Well, that's very kind, thank you. I'll just keep going though. No.

(Laughter.)

(Recess)

REP. MILLER: The subcommittee will come back to order. Mr. Horn will be back shortly and he asked me to proceed with the presentation.

Senator Simpson, would you continue?

MR. SIMPSON: Thank you very much, Congressman Miller, and I see you have new devices here which are very clever. It's not on yet, so I'll--it is?

Well, I was just kind of reviewing things and speaking to Congresswoman Schakowsky's comments. Let me just give you a very brief summary of past efforts. The select commission came into being '79 to '81. I was a member of that bipartisan commission, Father Ted Hesburgh was chairman, and we did a lot of things. We recognized that no system attempting to control anything would be effective without a more secure method of confirming a person's identity and immigration status.

So we recommended--the commission recommended it. It was a narrow vote, a substantial improvement. Then we had Immigration Reform and Control Act of '86. When that first passed, it had a provision in it that the executive branch would implement a system that would reliably determine identity, again, and authorization of all persons. That was weakened by the Senate, stripped by the House. I think it was a conference committee, and that's often the history of conference committees as I recall them here in this chamber, especially with Brooks with the gavel. But anyway, that's an aside.

The enacted version of IRCA had a pilot program in it and then we had telephone verification. We couldn't get much done because, again, the background noise was always national ID. The initial conference committee version of the Immigration Act of '90, where we broadened legal immigration a great deal, contained a pilot program using biometric data to make state drivers' licenses more secure. And it was then, to the amazement of Democrats and Republicans alike, that that issue was demagogued in the most grotesque way one evening in this body, and the House rule was defeated. And Joe Moakley brought it back from the dead and we got it out, but it was stripped again.

Then Barbara Jordan came to the floor, a most amazing woman, and she did the Jordan Immigration Commission on Immigration Reform. She recognized it was too susceptible--the present system was too susceptible to discrimination against foreign-looking and foreign-born or foreign-sounding workers. So she commended a computerized registry using data provided by Social Security and the INS, and suggested pilot programs for employers to use these databases to be conducted in states with the highest immigration rates.

Then along came the '96 bill. I had little to do with that because we did nothing to do anything to curb illegal immigration--or legal immigration, rather, as Barbara Jordan recommended. But we did get a pilot program in there to--where you could access via computer modem. In '97 it was used by approximately 2,000 employers, who were voluntarily using it. While it's a helpful deterrent to certain instances of fraud, it is not a good one. An unauthorized alien submits a card with an invalid number or submits a card where the name does not match the number. It does not prevent aliens who falsely assume the identity of another person from using the other person's valid Social Security number, and this is often referred to as identity theft or true identity fraud, and it is endemic in America. Talk to your credit card people.

So I doubt that there is any full support for a national ID card. I never suggested it and I just have to pack that in one more time. And if that's going to be the word, you're going to all fail. You will do nothing. Get away from it. It's a phoney baloney. What we're talking about is--and when we were talking about it then, was some type of new document to establish work authorization or identity. We were talking about perhaps a card that would not be carried on your person, not be used for law enforcement, have the maiden name of your mother on the back of it and the birth date. And then, you know, always would come the George Orwellian aspects of that.

Here's what I suggest, respectfully. A few positive benefits, I think. I therefore would respectfully suggest that you improve the state drivers' licenses. That's the principal identity document in our country. We must eliminate the ability of people to falsely assume the identity of another. Some of the September 11 terrorists facilitated their actions through easy access to Virginia drivers' licenses. Now, the only way to prevent identity fraud is to include biometric data on the card, I agree with Newt completely, such as a fingerprint. It is also--in California it is done with a retina scan in California for commercial drivers' licenses, and you ought to take a look at that. Minimum nationwide issuance standards could be imposed by Congress or agreed upon by the states. I think it would be minimally intrusive.

Expanded access, would be another one, to INS and Social Security databases. Extend the basic pilot program not just California, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois. Include other states, have access to that base. But, of course, that would require more funding for the Social Security Administration and directing to improve the accuracy of the database, and here's the one that everybody misses. There are about 2,000 agencies in the United States that issue a birth certificate. They love it. They're little old ladies, they do things--little old men too, and they issue them and they love it and they don't want anybody to mess with it. Don't mess with me giving--because I know the mother and the father and when little twinkletoes was born, I signed that.

The vulnerability of the birth certificate system allows aliens to bypass all immigration systems altogether and impersonate U.S. citizens. The Jordan Commission said if we reduce the fraudulent access to the breeder documents, start looking at the breeder documents, ladies and gentlemen of the Congress; particularly birth certificates that can be used to establish an identity in this country.

And the specific steps recommended by her commission were, and I conclude, regulation of requests for birth certificates through standardized application forms. A system of interstate and intrastate matching of birth and death. We don't do that in America; we don't match birth and death. How can you ever get a handle on it? Requiring a federal agency only accept certified copies of birth certificates and a standard design and paper stock for all certified copies, and encourage states to computerize birth records repositories. I think these recommendations are sensible, practical and should be enacted and it is time. Thank you very much.

REP. HORN: Thank you, Senator. As usual, you have the common people's touch and you also know how to get through the bureaucracy and everything else. I am glad to say to you the commissioner yesterday told a number of us that he will split up the agency, so that you've got an enforcement operation and you've got a service operation. And a lot of us have wanted that over the years, so a little progress is being made there.

We now go to Mr. McCollum, who, during my years in the House, no one was a better legislator than he was. And we're glad to have you back here, Mr. McCollum.

MR. BILL MCCOLLUM: Well, that's a high compliment, Mr. Chairman, and I'm very glad to be back here too today with you and especially pleased to be with this distinguished panel of my friends, Speaker Gingrich and Senator Simpson, with whom I've served a good number of years, and on a topic that really is very timely and very important.

I know, like everybody here, that we all were affected terribly by this tragedy on September 11th, the attacks on us that I think most envisioned was unimaginable. Even though many of us who served in the arenas that I did in Congress knew that sooner or later we were going to have a terrorist attack of some magnitude, we could not have expected nor anticipated the horror that came with this particular one. And now we're having a reaction to that.

Having been chairman of the Crime Subcommittee, having chaired the Subcommittee on Human Intelligence, founded the Terrorism Task Force, spent 18 of the 20 years served on Immigration Subcommittee, many of those years with Senator Simpson's work and mine together, with the fellow up there you mentioned, Brooks, and others, I come to this with a perspective of absolute conviction about a couple of things.

One of those is that there is no need for a national identification card, and I am very much opposed to one. But I think it's important to identify what a national identification card is. What do we mean by that? Mr. Chairman, I mean by that a uniform system--a uniform card that every American would be required to carry to produce to law enforcement, employers, various government agencies for identification purposes. Such a card would contemplate a national database, access by computer for verification purposes. It might contain a strip on the back like your Visa Card does. It has data and information already built in it, or accessible through computer, a photograph of fingerprint, possibly even a national database that every American had a fingerprint in. I don't favor that, I don't think that's right, I think that's an insult to our system of government, the privacies and those great freedoms that our founding fathers envisioned. The Big Brother type system.

But we do need to make some of the identifiers we already have work, and that's what all of us are testifying about today. I have not heard a word that either of my colleagues said that I took umbrage with, but I do have a perspective on a couple of these, a little bit differently.

First of all, I believe that the Social Security card desperately needs to be made more secure. There's been great resistance to doing much with that card over the years, but back in 1996--excuse me, 1986 when the Simpson-Mazzoli bill passed, and then more in the amendments of 1996 in the immigration world for employer sanctions and when you go to get a job, the two principal identifiers became narrowed down to your driver's license and your Social Security card. So if you produce them, fraudulent or otherwise, today, they essentially get you a job.

And the Social Security card as well as the driver's license is commonly used for a whole host of other identification purposes today. Yet, it is probably the most fraudulently produced document in America. It is a document that has been flimsy and paper for years. In recent years the Social Security Administration has put a few fibers in it, but by no means made it tamper-resistant or counterfeit- proof. And I encourage this committee and other members of Congress to really take a look at a proposal that I have in as a legislative matter for a good number of Congresses, one that is attached and submitted to this testimony today, H.R. 191, and a bill in the last Congress, Mr. Chairman, that you were an original co-sponsor of.

That is a bill--that is a proposal that would require the Social Security Administration to make the Social Security card as secure against counterfeiting as the $100 reserve note, with a rate of counterfeit detection comparable to the $100 reserve note, and as secure against fraudulent use as the United States passport. Now, we're not talking about putting pictures on the card, we're not talking about any of that, but it's all those interweaving, interwoven things that you can use to--use ultraviolet lights and so forth to determine.

I also would encourage the same type of activity that has been discussed here today with regard to the driver's license. I think that drivers' licenses, at least the general standards for what they are, should be uniform throughout the country, and I don't think we have to mandate that. I don't think Congress should pre-empt the states, but I think that there should be an effort to encourage that from Congress, and I think that it should be done in a way that does have either a uniform standard proposed, or you get the states together to do that, or whatever.

All drivers' licenses should certainly have photographs on them, they should have the signature on them, they should have a fingerprint or another biometric identifier on them. And they should have holograms and other types of devices built into those drivers' licenses, just like I suggested for the Social Security cards so they cannot be easily reproduced, and so that when you take it somewhere, to an employer or to a person who's in law enforcement, they can quickly be checked.

You know we have a little machine that's been around for a number of years on fingerprints. You put it on this desk--I've had it when I was chairman come before my committee; you probably have too, Mr. Chairman. And it's doing nothing more than saying if you put your finger on that machine and you put the card that you have with your pre-existing fingerprint on it, it matches it or it denies it. And it doesn't have to go to some central database to do that. At least that'll tell me biometrically whether the person I'm looking at is the same as is on that card.

I also concur with the view that we need to do something about birth certificates. One of the great, great problems in this country are the (breeder ?) documents Senator Simpson's talked about, and that's important.

Last, I want to comment on one aspect of the Immigration Service, because I do believe that the focus rightfully should be there, as Congressman Castle stated in his opening. There is a great, great opening right now in this country for people to come here and not be identified. We need a tracking system. We need to be--we need to find people so we don't have visa overstays, and we need to shore up so many things.

A number of things have been mentioned, but one has not been. Today when somebody goes before a formal proceeding of an immigration tribunal, or to the Immigration Service or whatever, they're usually released on their own recognizance or maybe on a cash bond. The Immigration Service has the authority to have a security bond, much like a bail bond, but they don't do that.

And I believe that it would be extremely helpful to get people to show up when they're supposed to before immigration proceedings. If there was a general policy that a security bond be used and then have the private sector, bail bondsman if you will, like they do on criminal law, be responsible for bringing them in; making sure they do show up, because people can come not only into this country and get here too easily because the visa system and visa fraud and we don't track them, but then when they do show up to a proceeding and they're supposed to come back in 90 days or six months or whatever, we have no system to bring them back in, we have no way of knowing where they are, and we don't have nearly enough police or immigration officers that will ever be able to do that. So why aren't we using the private sector, in the same way that we do in criminal law? And it's not being done today.

So I would encourage that this committee and your members look at--very strenuously at not only making these identifiers more secure and finding ways to track visa overstays and people who come in here, but making sure that when they're here, that is those who are aliens, show up when they're supposed to at the end of whatever period of time that there is.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. HORN: Thank you for your testimony, and we'll now go to questioning. It's going to be five minutes per person because of the travel schedules, and we will alternate between the majority and the minority. And I'll start it off and it will be--Mr. Chief Counsel, we'll get the technology here, we're in business.

In my opening statement I cited a few research center studies that showed overwhelming support, 70 percent of those polled, for a national identity system and are all of these people just misguided? How do you feel? Do you think, from what you've seen, does the average citizen when you get into a debate like this--and I would take it with this particular three of you, would you have, say, a hardened, if you will, Social Security? Or would you take the license, which in my case with California they have a photo and they have a thumbprint. And not all of them do it, but that's pretty good identification.

So any type of--other type you're talking about than simply hardening up the Social Security card, and then putting a picture on a it or a thumbprint? I remember when the supervisors at Los Angeles County, which is a county of 10 million people, and they started with the photo on the welfare situation and a few thousand people got off the rolls because they were going two, three, four places to get money, and that was one way to do it.

MR. WILLIAM MCCOLLUM: Well, Mr. Chairman, if I might respond?

REP. HORN: Yeah.

MR. MCCOLLUM: I don't believe that, for example, the Social Security card, you want to go to put a picture on it. I don't think you need to--I think it can stay paper. Its purpose is to make sure that the number that's on that card and the name on that card are the bearers, and that when you take that card and produce it for whatever purpose that, that very simple fact can be verified.

I also think, by the way, that it would present problems in reissue, and so that the Social Security card--one of the great reasons why that's been a problem in getting it corrected is the Social Security Administration won't go to the cost of reissuing a lot of these cards. They don't have to reissue all of them, but I do think they do need to reissue those with--those with younger age group and they--that would be an added expense that I don't think you would want to encounter.

And, again, I don't think we need a national ID card as such, a separate card, if you have the driver's license and you have the Social Security card, one with a picture, one without it, that are more secure, more tamper-resistant and counterfeit-proof.

MR. SIMPSON: It's interesting, Mr. Chairman, that polls throughout the select commission back in the '80s, '85, '90, if you'd asked the American people, Roper, Gallup, whatever, if they favor restrictions on immigration, 70 percent do. It just stays that way. Not illegal or--I mean, I'm talking about legal and illegal immigration. Interesting.

But when it comes to the Congress it doesn't get done that way because the Statue of Liberty suddenly enters the phrase, and all of us are children of immigrants, mine from Holland; orphans. If my granddad hadn't killed a guy in the middle of the main street, we would have had a better reputation there in our state. But that's another story and I won't go into it.

(Laughter.)

Nevertheless, you can't continue to talk about the Statue of Liberty again. You must talk about reality, and all three of us I think are; all of you are. But I think the one that surprised me was when they put the examination into California for the written exam on truckers. Guys just stood outside the building because they didn't want any part of that, because they'd been using fake IDs and all the rest of it, and it was a very serious problem. And I think you ought to look into that California commercial driver's license issue, written exam.

MR. GINGRICH: I think that what you have to recognize is that the people most opposed to a national ID card are dramatically more passionate than the people who have some vague, general support for a national ID card. And that's why I think Senator Simpson was right early on in saying that if we go down that road, it's a dead end. It won't happen. On the other hand, most Americans I think can be led to agree that having an efficient transfer of information so you know that your driver's license is real, that it's valid, so you can check it across state boundaries and for specific purposes. Foreign visitors, I think most Americans would agree, you could have a nationwide system of identifiers, because that's not part of what we think of as our civil liberties.

People who have very important security jobs, whether it's on airports or elsewhere, people would agree you ought to have a pretty high standard of security, because they understand that that's a function of your job; it's not an infringement of civil liberty. But I would encourage you to be minimalist in this. You want to get to a highly secure system that is across the whole country, that is ideally mostly decentralized in terms of states implementing it but with information able to flow across state boundaries. And you want to do everything you can to minimize the threat to those whose primary concern is civil liberties.

REP. HORN: Thank you. My time is up.

Five minutes to Ms. Schakowsky, the ranking member.

REP. SCHAKOWSKY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Following up on that minimalist approach and using your examples, Speaker Gingrich, of what happened before September 11th, that the CIA actually transmitted information to the FBI and it never got through. What I'm wondering is are there not systems in place, were we to have the proper technology for sharing that information, that could provide the kind of security we need?

Let me just--that's the question, but let me just say that in many, many hearings that we've had since September 11th, we have found that information was all over the place and had it only been shared and gotten to the right place, that we could have done this or that to prevent what happened. And so I'm just wondering if it isn't a matter of looking at our systems, adding new technologies where we need to, but not new authorities to gather that information. If it's just a matter of making more efficient what we already have.

MR. GINGRICH: I think you're 90 percent right, but the 10 percent that's missing I think could kill us. Let me describe what I mean. First of all, whatever system we build, we ought to have a competitive team try to break, because--to find out how rapidly can you buy a counterfeit? How rapidly can you figure out a way to work around it, because we have active opponents who study what we do and who can spend two or three years trying to penetrate our systems. And if we're really serious about security, then we ought to be serious about learning what its weaknesses are.

Second, as Senator Simpson said a minute ago, we discover that whether it is illegal aliens or it is people who are for one reason or another using a false identity, that there are, even in the current system--even if you had 100 percent accuracy of sharing the information, some of the information going into the system is false. And we don't necessarily today have the kind of identifiers and the kind of structure that makes sure that the information you put in is accurate information. I think that would be the other zone where I think there has to be really serious work done. But I yield to my colleagues who know more about this than I do.

MR. SIMPSON: Well, Congresswoman Schakowsky, you are right on track. One of the most frustrating things for me, and I know for Peter Rodino (ph) and Ron Mazzoli (ph), Fish (ph), all the rest of us, was the absolute stubbornness of the agencies to share information. The one that appalled me was Customs and INS. Oh, there's a real internal--it was bizarre; it was childish. Customs wouldn't--you know, Customs can pick up a lot of stuff. They know what's going on and stuff coming in. And they'd share out and they'd say, we handle that.

The Border Patrol and the INS and the Justice Department and the CIA and the FBI and often times their arrogance, and the CIA's secret arrogance. I mean, this is where you have to smash the big bug, right here. And I think that's what I hear the president saying, that he's going to give Ridge all the authority to do that and he's going to make them do it. Well, we've all been here a long while. Merry Christmas, we'll see what happens.

(Laughter.)

MR. MCCOLLUM: I know that that's a big problem.

What Senator Simpson just said and we joked about it is so true. If Tom Ridge can do it--I see the other day where he's talking about merging maybe the Border Patrol and Customs and maybe the Coastguard. I think that is going to be an awfully big hill to climb and that we'd be better off--you'd be better off using the energies you've got to do things like forcing the Social Security Administration to really go out and make the card tamper resistant. Make it like the $100 bill. Take the driver's license, make it more secure. Take the ideas that Newt Gingrich just said about putting a database together nationally to talk to each other on these things, technically. Then cajole, continue to cajole the agencies to do this.

REP. SCHAKOWSKY: Thank you. Let me ask one quick other question. One of the problems created by driver's licenses becoming de facto national identification systems, is the privacy protection of those records is very poor. We know that states often sell that information along with the person's address and it becomes out there in the public. How can we make sure that any particular system we use doesn't mean that that information is sent out? And should Congress stop the validation of Social Security numbers until the states institute--a state institutes privacy protections for driver's license records, because they often check those drivers' licenses against the Social Security cards?

MR. MCCOLLUM: Well, Ms. Schakowsky, I don't think that we should stop the validation system as it exists because, you know, we've got a security problem right now. We need to let these things happen as best we can. But I do believe that Congress should be concerned and should encourage states to make the right decisions to protect the privacy of the data that's in the database. That's the real point I made about not wanting a national ID and trying to define it for you.

The thing the American public may say when they say, we're all for a national identification card, is one thing. But when they really get down to it, nobody that I know of favors a Big Brother database somewhere, whether it's in the state or in the nation, where other people can go and get access to your personal information. And there's a huge difference between providing a chance, for example, for somebody who's an employer or law enforcement to call up or do whatever we can on the computer, to a database and say if you walk in and this is my name and this is my Social Security card and verify that they both match electronically. There is a big difference between that and somebody walking in and saying, "Okay, I've got a name, now let me go find out--what is the Social Security number, tell me?" Or the other way around: "I've got a Social Security number. You tell me the name that goes with it."

We don't want that information shared publicly, and that's the kind of thing that you need to discriminate, in my judgement, against. But you're not going to mandate that in one big piece of legislation. It's going to take a lot of work to get understanding on the part of each person or group in the states that are making those decisions, to make them be aware of what they're doing and to be more secure at educating them.

REP. HORN: I think the gentleman --

MR. SIMPSON: May I add one thing, Chairman Horn?

REP. HORN: Yes, go ahead.

MR. SIMPSON: Newt Gingrich is a wizard of the keyboard and I am non-adept in technical prowess of the electronic age. But I do share with you, I believe totally, there really is no such thing as privacy any more because of the information technology. They've got you in every database in this country: Social Security, driver's license, organ donor, blood type, you name it, FBI reports; I used to read them. And with what's happened with information technology in this country, I think privacy is gone.

REP. HORN: I now yield five minutes to the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Miller, then Ms. Maloney.

REP. MILLER: Let me follow up on what Senator Simpson brought up, and that's the issue of privacy. I know Speaker Gingrich and Mr. McCollum worked this issue when they served here in financial privacy and medical privacy, and I know that Hugh Russell (ph) was trying to get legislation through. Would you comment on that experience and what the experience has been that you're aware of, controlling that kind of privacy? Because we are all public figures, and you all were certainly public figures when you served here in this institution. But that's really one of the core concerns: privacy. And when we passed legislation on financial medical in particular, is it working? And what can be done to make sure that we can ensure privacy if we move to some type of ID?

MR. GINGRICH: Well, let me say first of all I think this is an extraordinarily important issue. But in a way, big computers are a much greater danger than Big Brother. And it's partly true because it is so seductively convenient. You use a credit card. It doesn't occur to you how much information you're building on that credit card every week when you charge things, what it tells somebody who's clever about your habits, your interests, your tastes, et cetera.

Then you go and you use telephones, which have records. And then you go and you pump gasoline. And then you go and you get a driver's license. I mean, by the time you're done with all this, if you were to actually assimilate--or accumulate all the information that currently exists about you, you'd be stunned at how much you are a public person in ways you did not intend.

And I think there are two very different layers of this. We badly need to think through an integrated privacy policy in terms of law. As I said earlier, I'm a passionate believer in electronic medical records, but I'm also passionate believer in a federal law that will make the inappropriate misuse of that information a felony, and have very stiff penalties. Because I think we have to have the information, but we want to protect people from having it exploited to hurt them.

Similarly, I think that it's important to recognize--and I want to--as I started my testimony earlier, I want to commend this subcommittee again. You know from your report issued last week that the federal government agencies have security levels that in many cases are so laughable that any really competent sixth grader could break into them. And even the ones that are relatively secure, except for the top two or three, a relatively competent junior in high school could break into them.

And I think it's really important to understand that you've got--and I met recently with the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, and we talked about the fact that we need to set a whole new standard against hacking, against organized crime, against terrorists, against foreign governments that want to try to break in, and recognize that that's going to take a sharing of technical knowledge.

It's not just writing laws, but it's understanding how to write the security systems. And we have to recognize how much of our code is now written outside the United States. And I think we have to have a project that the defensive and research project agency, and the national science foundation, and the national security agency, to really figure out a way to literally scan all the code we now rely on, because we don't know how many various back doors have been built in. Because you're talking about millions of lines of codes that routinely, now, enter the U.S. system from overseas.

MR. SIMPSON: May I say, too, sir and to the panel, who knows more about the loss of privacy than all of us? You, me; all of us who are in public life have none. And maybe that's all right. It's all right with me. I laid it all out there, all the peccadilloes and the goofy things I ever did. But there is no privacy for a public figure. And so I think it's very important to realize that as we do these things, the media loses a lot of sleep about us, because when we get active they go into everything we've ever done: first grade, high school, college, the whole works. And we get the whole load.

When you come back to them and say, "And aren't you intruding in our privacy?" and they say, "Well, you're public figures, we're not." I say, "More guys know you on that tube than know us, all of us in Congress, so don't give me that. I think we ought to know a little bit about your private life." It's a sick idea, I know. It's about the First Amendment. It belongs to me too.

But this is really--we're the ones that have suffered the slings and arrows. And I haven't the slightest--I'm ready to do that at any time. In fact, anything, anything--and the woman I've been living with for 47 years is sitting back here--in anything they couldn't dig up on Al Simpson, but let me tell you, they've sure as hell tried.

MR. MCCOLLUM: If I might, I'd like to make a distinction. Mr. Miller, you've asked about privacy. And I think it is what is a person's reasonable expectation, what are the constitutional protections for that, and there are some. And we live in a different age when it comes to the computer, but we need to divide up what people should reasonably expect in the way of privacy with respect to their government intrusion, and intruding into that, and what they can reasonably expect when they go out and take certain steps on their own in the private world, in the world of business and what data that they freely yield to someone for a purpose. Two different things.

The privacy that's protected in the Constitution clearly is there when it comes to the government coming into your house, not just from a criminal law standpoint, but a reasonable search or seizure, or eavesdropping, or whatever, and we have all kinds of checks on that and they should always exist.

When it comes to the computer, when you use the computer, you need to just simply be aware you are opening up whatever you put in there to other people to look at it. And we can talk about trying to restrict that all we want, and it's very difficult to do. On the other hand, when you give up data, say, to a bank, which was where we first met the privacy issue in the last congress and it created a hullabaloo, I don't think people were even thinking about the privacy question so much there.

But the reality is that prior to the enactment of the big bank bill last Congress, banks could share data that they had with anybody. There were no restrictions. And we put the first restrictions. Congress did, and the law. And those restrictions said that since we allowed the merger of the operations of banks and security companies and insurance companies, that if you were in the same holding company, you know, the same group owned all three of you, within that group financial information that you, as a citizen, gave to that bank could be shared. But if they want to go out and give that information out to somebody that wasn't a party to their company, to their big, you know, their holding company, they had to seek your permission.

And those are the kinds of things we need to think about at each stage. You give up your rights when you go and do a certain business transaction, but you should be informed what you're giving up. And before information that's given by you to a business or third party is given away to somebody else, you should have the right to say yes or no. But, absolutely, you should have a reasonable expectation the government won't intrude in your privacy. That's sort of the broad guidelines. It's a huge subject. But that's the guideline. Thank you.

REP. NEWT GINGRICH: I thank the gentleman.

And now five minutes for the gentle lady from New York, Ms Maloney.

REP. MALONEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Speaker Gingrich, you mentioned that you were not supportive of a national ID card, but you supported a more efficient transfer of information. Since all of the known terrorists were visitors with visas here, either legally or illegally, it appears that a good place to start would be with a sort of smarter, a more thorough tamper proof Green Card. Would you agree?

MR. GINGRICH: Yes, I did say earlier that I drew a very sharp distinction between the need for a national system for non-citizens, which I think should be administered by the federal government, run across the whole system, should have a clear identifier that's biometric and should have a database that can be accessed by a variety of agencies. And that just I think should be a condition of being here.

I also said, and I think you'll get real controversy about this, that I think we are much better to go to some kind of guest worker program, and accept the legality of people who are here for the purpose of working and get them identified. I think when you have a pool of--I think the numbers are three to five to seven million people, who are illegally here but are here actually to do legal things--they're not here to be drug dealers, they're not here to be terrorists, that pool of people who are outside the system causes I think a real challenge for security purposes.

So I think it would be much healthier to have an identifiable guest worker program, and simply have a requirement that everybody who's a non-citizen have, as you said, some kind of identifier and a sophisticated Green Card with a central database. That should be national. And my guess is overwhelmingly the American people would support something like that.

I'm also suggesting if you come here as a visitor, as part of the transit point that we ought to have some biometric, I think probably an iris or retina scan, so we could determine whether or not you, in fact, are a person that is a threat to the United States. That is at a point of entry, even for visitors who are here on business or here for tourist purposes. And my guess is most people who are on the planet--people who come for business or for vacations want to be safe, and they want a safe system. And as long as it's not too intrusive I think they'd be very accepting of that kind of safety.

REP. MALONEY: Building on that base of a non-citizen database that is national, who should maintain this database? Where would you put it in government? Would you put it in the INS? Would you put it in the FBI? Would you put it in the new Homeland Security? Where would you put it?

MR. GINGRICH: I'm going to yield to my two colleagues on this. I have actually not thought about where in the federal government you would house it. I would probably outsource a great deal of management of it, just because I think they--it's very, very hard for the federal government to get first class --

REP. MALONEY: But it has to be maintained federally?

MR. MCCOLLUM: Well, it's the Immigration Service you're talking about. I don't know what--(inaudible) --

REP. MALONEY: You would put it in INS.

Where would you put it, Mr. Simpson?

MR. SIMPSON: It was my experience, Congresswoman Maloney, that the--I met some of the finest people in both parties who were commissioner of the INS. It is an absolutely unwieldy agency. Doris Meisner did her best. There's nothing you can do with them. The regional people are tough, district people. They're all--it's got to be done there. I think that's--if you go ahead with the legislation that's being proposed, then it would be the INS which would be logical, not Social Security. Something about Social Security remains rather sacred with --

REP. MALONEY: This is only for non-citizens?

MR. SIMPSON: Yes, indeed. Well, many non-citizens hold Social Security cards.

REP. MALONEY: I would also like to ask the panelists, who do you believe should have access to that database, assuming it's in INS with a recite by --

MR. GINGRICH: I think for verification purposes it's reasonable to ask people to prove that they're who they are when they apply for a job if they're a non-citizen. And I think I would allow law enforcement people to have access to the proof that they are who they are. Beyond that basis, I would say it would have to be on a carefully screened federal law enforcement basis. But I think if a highway patrolman pulls you over and this is part of your proof of who you are, it ought to be reasonable for them to have at least the negative access that says, yes, this is a valid--this is a real person.

REP. MALONEY: Of the other panelists, who do you think should have access? Do you agree?

 

MR. MCCOLLUM: Well, I think that what Newt Gingrich is trying to say is very clear. I think he did say it, but I want to amplify it and that is that the key to all of this, in identification right now, and certainly in the area of these aliens that are here or coming here, is the proof that they are who they are, that verification.

That is that's the whole idea if you have a biometric where you can pick your fingerprint and put it here, maybe that goes back to some database where you corroborate, hey, that is Joe, you know.

But I don't think the general public should have access to it, and I don't think that anybody but law enforcement for very specific purposes, probably only Immigration Service and key law enforcement people, should have access to the full information; presumably the data on that alien about, you know, where they were born, how many times they've been married, that sort of thing.

REP. MALONEY: Okay, and my time is up.

REP. HORN: I thank the woman from New York, and now the only librarian in the history of Congress, Major Owens, and the gentleman from New York. Five minutes for questioning.

REP. MAJOR R. OWENS (D-NY): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With this distinguished panel seeming to agree that the national identification card would not be a silver bullet, maybe we can put the argument to--the debate to rest once and for all and focus instead on another problem that I think most of them would agree we have, and that's the problem of monumental mismanagement in our agencies. You know, the kind of mismanagement which allows us to have a worldwide electronic surveillance system that can pick up all kinds of information, but they didn't have enough Arab translators in the FBI and CIA to deal with the translation of vital information. I could not believe that when I heard it, you know.

Right now we have a recent airplane crash in New York and it appears that turbulence from a jet that took off just before is probably the cause of the accident that took place. After all these years of flying and jets we don't know about turbulence and what it might do to an airplane? Or, you know, the mismanagement is such that decision making within these vital agencies like CIA and the FBI is off to the point where Aldrich Ames could sit there for 10 years on the payroll of the Soviet Union, and Robert Hanssen to be on the payroll of the Soviet Union for 14 years.

Maybe your prestige and your influence can be put to work on a crusade to improve the management of all these. Our technology is excellent, you know, and way ahead of our capacity to use it. Including INS. The computers are always breaking down and there's always a problem, you know. If INS maybe had some of the budget of the CIA, a comparable budget--$30 billion plus goes to CIA. INS is always struggling to just maintain enough staff to --

MR. : If I might --

REP. OWENS: Maybe I'll just conclude and you can comment. Maybe such a crusade by people of your caliber would get to the heart of the matter and all these other things would fall in place, you know. The credit card companies--the companies that issue credit cards are very familiar with ways you can develop a foolproof card. They know there's no foolproof card, but a certain degree of fraud they put up with and--but they're pretty much on top of it. Various ways to do it and some identification card consolidation would be very convenient for most of us--you know, I think a lot of people.

But the real problem I think is a monumental mismanagement. I think the history of the fall of the American cyber civilization might be written one day and the cause will be human error. That's what we ought to --

MR. MCCOLLUM: Congressman Owens, one of the greatest frustrations I had in the last couple of years in Congress was the fact that over the years I had been one of those people who was beating up on the CIA and others to get more language speakers of Farsi and Pushti and all those languages that we're now seeing, we don't have. And we kept pouring money at it and they kept reporting to us and they kept not getting the numbers, and telling us they just weren't available. The reality of it is --

REP. OWENS:--they had a lot of people spoke Russian and languages--a lot of good librarians have worked for the CIA.

MR. MCCOLLUM: Well, it is a --

REP. OWENS: (Off mic)--Soviet Union, but --

MR. MCCOLLUM: The problem is --

REP. OWENS: (Off mic.)

MR. MCCOLLUM: But my point to you, and you know this because you served with me in a number of these capacities, is that you sit there and you have--you're only as good as the product or the effort of the person who's right in charge at the moment and the vision they have. And the vision in the case of some of these things, including the language issue you're talking about, had to be to go out and be creative and find that and get that language more quickly in place. It didn't happen.

The same thing is true about the immigration stuff we're talking about here today. That's why we all hope, and you do too, that some of the ideas being batted here today will really be enacted; that SIGMA (ph) and others will go out and do it, and we won't just be talking about it as we have for all those years since 1996.

REP. OWENS: We've had a problem with Arab terrorism since the Beirut bombing when President Reagan was president. Arabs, the World Trade--you know, why after all those years don't they have translators who can translate documents from Arab?

MR. GINGRICH: Let me just say I--in your five minutes you put your finger on the heart of the American challenge. In a sense, it's what Senator Simpson said earlier when he wished Tom Ridge luck as part of his Christmas present. And it goes to the core of whether we are a comfortable system or we're a serious system. The difference is a comfortable system accepts any innovation that doesn't require it to change. So it gets to go on doing whatever it wants to do. A serious system says this is what has to happen.

If you watch Jack Welch at General Electric, for example. He's probably the best modern CEO. I mean, he said GE to be successful has to go and become X and that means we're going to change in the following ways, and he drove the changes. Now, there are three problems: rivalry, bureaucratism, and acquiring new capabilities. Rivalry, as I think Senator Simpson was saying earlier, the CIA doesn't want to share with the FBI and the FBI doesn't want to share with anybody.

I mean, it's an absurdity and it should be a national scandal that the watch list didn't get through at Logan Airport after 42 days, as an example. The one that Senator Simpson mentioned. The Border Patrol and the Customs agents, standing next to each other, have different computers. Now, that's just a level of deliberate bureaucratic turf guarding that shouldn't be tolerable and that should be shameful.

Second, bureaucratism. I had staff at the American Enterprise Institute pull this up the other day. There are 51,000 Pashtuns in the United States. Now, if the Central Intelligence Agency can't find Pashtun speakers, they should assign someone to go to National Airport and wait for the taxis to come out.

(Laughter.)

MR. : Right. That's exactly right.

MR. GINGRICH: I mean, the idea you couldn't hire a translator who--you don't have to go through the process of vetting somebody to be a FBI agent, or vetting them to be a CIA agent with secrets in order to have them as a translator. The notion you couldn't find an Arab translator in the FBI is--it tells you how bureaucratic they were, how lacking in drive and seriousness, and how unwilling to confront reality.

Third, I mentioned earlier before you got here, as a librarian you'll appreciate that I'm pushing books. I mentioned Clayton Christensen's book on the innovator's dilemma, because he really makes the key point. Really big breakthroughs tend to come in really small companies. Just the nature of how breakthroughs occur. Government is peculiarly slow at finding those. Government procurement makes it almost guaranteed not to acquire the newest technologies.

And so I think you put your finger on a profound challenge for the American government. I wish President Bush well and Director Ridge well in trying to--to try to get this thing solved. But I think you've absolutely described the core problem of us becoming an effective country in the next decade.

MR. SIMPSON: May I just say a word to my friend Major Owen, who I've enjoyed very much through the years. We've had some nice sessions together and traveled together. You're absolutely correct when you're talking about mismanagement. And then you're talking about the thing that all of us never do well, when we're here and it's called oversight hearings. We have an oversight hearing, we bring in an agency, they prepare for it. Oh, man, do they get ready for it, and then you beat 'em up. Everybody just beats their brains out from up on the panel. And they all say, "Don't worry, we recognize that. We're going to correct it. We're so thrilled that you see too that this is a problem for us."

After pounding their brains in all day and after them slip, sliding along, like that old play, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" where the guy just slid all over the place, we don't do anything. I couldn't do anything. I had oversight hearings with the INS and they told me the most magnificent things for 18 years and nothing was ever done. It was with violin music in the background and timpani and bells, you know. But it's oversight and that's the tough one.

REP. HORN: I'd better give you one more question. And in his testimony for the panel two, Professor Turley will propose that a commission be established to study the feasibility of a national identification system. What do you think of that proposal? You've been on these commissions. Should they do, whoever they are? Presidential and leadership in both chambers or have legislators go up to the trough and see what they can do?

MR. SIMPSON: I think a national commission--I speak from experience--this select commission did two reports on legal and illegal immigration by the Chairman Ted Hesburgh and both of the commission reports were enacted in the law. The essence of the legislation. So I think it's good. I do think that it has to be not called a national identifier. It should be called "how to make more secure the systems of identification and work recognition in America," or something like that. If you use national ID, it's over.

MR. MCCOLLUM: I believe, as Senator Simpson does, that commissions do form the nucleus and sometimes the initial impetus to get legislation enacted, when you need to get a consensus together, and I share his concern. The whole idea of a national ID, as I described it in my opening statement to you, Mr. Chairman, is a non- starter and we don't want to talk about it. Not that we don't want to recognize people could call something that, but I don't want a national ID with a national database with Big Brother. What I do want is the improvement that that commission could recommend and make things more secure in identification that really works in this country.

MR. GINGRICH: Let me be a doubter just for a second. I'm not opposed to a commission, but I think we know an awful lot of what needs to happen and Congress, I think, could move expeditiously early next year on an awful lot of stuff. Particularly, as it relates to non-citizens we really know how much we have to improve that system. And I'm not sure that we need to have more people tell us--I suspect, if you had your staff from the Library of Congress pull up all the commissions on this topic in the last 20 years and simply put out a summary of recommendations, you'll be astonished how much already exists and how many smart people have already worked the issue. I think it's important to move while the public is paying attention and cares about this topic and that would be in the next session of Congress, not three years from now.

MR. MCCOLLUM: And by the way, I'd echo that. I think he's absolutely right about that point.

REP. HORN: Well, I thank you all for coming. I know when the three of you are together, it's going to be a lively session. We wish you well.

MR. GINGRICH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

REP. HORN: We'll go to the second panel now.

(Pause in proceedings.)

REP. HORN: Let's get them to take the oath also. So raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you will give before the subcommittee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

WITNESSES: I do.

REP. HORN: The clerk will note all the individuals, the witnesses--and I didn't see too many other assistants.

So let us start then with Mr. Turley, Shapiro professor of Public Interest Law at the George Washington University Law School. Mr. Turley.

MR. JONATHAN TURLEY: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First of all, let me express my thanks for appearing again before this subcommittee and also to appear before you, perhaps for my last time, as chairman of this subcommittee. We all owe you a great debt and your retirement is a real loss to this institution and I want to be one that thanks you for it.

REP. HORN: Remember, you're under oath now.

MR. TURLEY: (Laughs.) Obviously, this is a subject where generally more heat than light is generated and in a rare display of academic modesty, I will say that I will not resolve the questions surrounding this debate. I would, however, like to offer a constitutional historical foundation perhaps to move the debate from what is often kinetic rhetoric to a more stable basis for discussion.

It's certainly not enough to dismiss national identification systems, as opposed to a card, as unprecedented. The framers gave us a system that was certainly at the time unique, because it is the most nimble and versatile system in the world. As in nature, nations that fail to evolve are least likely to survive. The world is not static and so our responses have to be as dynamic as the world around us. So this is a hearing that is looking at a question that's very much a question for our times. Whether you consider the national identification system to be a necessary security measure or Big Brother's little helper, we need to reach some type of consensus. And so tonight, I'd offer my views on those lines.

Today's debate is part of the long, unbroken debate that has raged between the government and the governed. We, as Americans, have a virtual hereditary suspicion of government. As Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "The life of the law has not been logic, it's been experience." And our experience with the government, in systems of this kind, has not been good. It's been long and painful. We have learned that government authority operates along the same principles as a gas in a closed space. As you expand that space, government authority will expand as well to the full extent of the expansion. And from Biblical times, and I've laid this out in my written testimony, through the Ottoman Empire and Henry VIII to the present time, nations have tried to create national registries. Not for oppressive reasons but for necessary reasons. But those systems have, as we know, been used for great harm.

Now, we also need to get away from a habit of talking a good game about national identification systems. We are very proud, as Americans, that we don't have human license plates. But the fact is we have a national identification system; it just doesn't happen to be a very good one. We have allowed the Social Security number to mutate into a national identifier. That is ironic since, as I mention in my testimony, the Congress was quite clear that the Social Security number was not to be used as a source of identification. This Congress has repeatedly said that it should not be used as opposed to a national identification card. And so the question is: why in my wallet do I have a drivers license, a smart university card, an athletic card and credit cards that are all based on my SSN?

Why do I have two kids, one who's three and one who's one and a half, who have their own cards? They are already being tracked. Human serialization that we fear is here in some respects. But the reason it's here and the reason we failed in our efforts to control the SSN is because the market had a need; it created a vacuum that in the absence on Congressional involvement, it filled that vacuum. The SSN was inevitable because the market needed it.

I happen to have a great deal of problems with national identification systems. I tend to fear government, quite frankly.

I tend to like at least of it as I possibly can have. But we also have to be concerned that if we do not act, that the market will act for us. We have to be concerned that if we remain passive, there will be efforts to fill that vacuum, and they're happening right now. At this moment, the heads of Department of Motor Vehicles have already moved towards a--what's called a de facto national identification card. The airlines are working on a fast track card of their own, that will effectively have a national footprint.

Now, I don't know the heads of Departments of Motor Vehicles, quite frankly; maybe I should. But I don't they're the ones that should make this decision. I think that you're the ones that should make this decision and it's important for you, I believe, not to be repelled by the idea to the extent of being absent.

I happen to believe, and this may disagree with our earlier panel, that we may want to discourage the development of those cards. We may want to try to exercise some degree of control as to what is happening in the country in terms of identifications. If nothing else, to avoid the creation of redundant systems where we suddenly have a whole bunch of cards that become barriers to travel.

Now, in the review of identification cards around the world, you have over 100 nations with different cards. But to use the term national identification system, let alone national identification card, is virtually meaningless. These systems are unbelievably diverse. Some of them are really little better than our SSN system. Others are incredibly detailed and are attached to databank that probably would make most Americans feel uneasy.

But using the reference to Nazi Germany and to the abuses I think is a little bit overblown, but it is relevant. It is overblown in the sense that we have a nation that has its own safeguards, constitutional safeguards, cultural safeguards, that make those types of abuses of historical but not contemporary relevance. Many of our friends around the world, like Belgium and France and Germany, are great democracies and yet they have these cards. So I think we need to look at this with the appropriate amount of passion, but also with an open mind.

Now, the cards differ of course dramatically. Britain of course had a national identification system that was discontinued in the 1950s, when they had a negative ruling by the Lord Chief Justice. They're now considering a new card. And they range--we can look at, for example, the Belgium identification card, which is one of the most developed of systems. And in Belgium you are required to have a card at age 12 and then you're required to carry it by age 15. You are required to have it on you. It is not an internal passport system in the most negative sense, but it is a potential barrier in the sense that when you go to an airport, apparently, in Belgium, you do have to show the card. Obviously, Belgium has not used that card for oppressive means; far from it. They have a large database that the police have access to.

Germany also requires the carrying of a card and it has a great deal of information, it's incorporated into a database which is accessed from multiple sources. Like Belgium, it's a stand alone system. Other countries like--for example, for the Dutch they have the SOFI number, which is a more developed system than our Social Security system. It's sort of a hybrid between these various options. And you can go through, as my testimony indicates, from country to country to look at all of these options.

Now, as we move towards to a national identification system, if we are going to move towards that, then we need to look at the constitutional and legal parameters for that system, because we're all talking about so far a system more of authentication. And it seems that we're mainly talking here, and the members have already indicated, they're interested in authenticating people, to make sure they are the people that they say they are.

So we have to distinguish between what we're trying to achieve. Are we trying to get a ready identification that's reliable for the cop on the beat, so that he can take a look, and a card is biometrics and other elements that make it hard to tamper with? If that's the case, the card could be largely contentless. It simply requires those biometric elements to be reliable as authentication. If we're talking about, as has been discussed in the past, a smart card attached to a database, we're talking about a far more significant issues in terms of constitutional and legal questions.

One of the most important constitution questions that have to dealt with is the right of travel. The Supreme Court has said that the right of travel is virtually unconditional in the United States. And when we develop national identification systems, we have to be concerned not just in drift, but that those systems can create barriers to travel that will impinge upon that right. And I go into that in my testimony.

We also have to be concerned about creating a national identification system that will fall into the trap of the Brady Law. To some extent, any national identification system will require the integration of state and federal systems. To the extent that we commandeer the state agencies, we're moving into a separate area in which constitutional concerns would be heightened. Then, finally, there are privacy protections that I talk about in my testimony.

What I would like to propose is that Congress consider one thing that I think is clear, and clarity in this matter is truly valuable. It should not necessarily be clear how we should proceed, but it should be clear how we should not proceed. We need to look at the SSN experience and not repeat it. That's not how we do national policy. We allowed the SSN to be propelled into a national identifier, without any vote of this body. There were a couple of laws in which this--in which Congress embraced the SSN. Franklin Delano Roosevelt wanted to use the SSN, but for the most part this has been done with little foresight and control. And as we see these, quote "de facto identification cards" in the making, it seems that history is repeating itself.

So that's the reason I've recommended the creation of a federal commission and, God knows, this town does not require another commission. I've been on a federal advisory group. I was on it for three years and at the end I wanted to take a ballpoint hammer to my head. They are frustrating, there's too many of them, but unfortunately I think this is an area that deserves a commission; unlike the ones that we have seen in the past.

Newt Gingrich is right, we have had commissions in this area, but none have been given the specific task of looking at whether we are going to have a national identification system. Whether or not we act or not, that's important. We need to have a commission that looks at the question of whether there is inevitability, whether in this information age we're going to have this Cosian (ph) problem where the market is going to dictate those conditions unless you do something. So we have to deal with reality and if that reality is that businesses and agencies need national identifiers, I would rather have you involved in it than the hidden hand of a market which may take us away from privacy.

That commission can look at some questions I've laid out in my testimony. The first one is what the function utility of a national identifier card is. I've already mentioned that, but ther