..machines were naked machines. either could have the backscatter is designed to reveal naked images of the body or you could scramble the images into a nondescript blog. both were equally effective and identifying contraband and it's remarkable that european authorities that he dalia we did this question all the shows of the machine rather than the naked machine. a handful of european airports that have adopted these technologies such as the airport in amsterdam recognize that given the fact both machines are equally effective every attempt to balance privacy and security would favor the machines over the me get machines. mr. most european airports have declined to adopt the body scanners at all because of concerns about their effectiveness. why did the u.s. government to get different choice based with what seems like to an easy choice but made the wrong one? part of the problem is the u.s. government has never been treated at protecting privacy.

we've lacked effective privacy regulatory agencies such as those in europe which were central in raising concerns about the fact the to backscatter machine and the privacy office fell down on the job in approving these machines without demanding the blog alternative is ignoring the warnings of people like marc rosen rotenberg and epic and this was a needless controversy. all right, what is the relevance of the fact you could have blocked machines rather than make it machines for the constitutional analysis? the supreme court has not evaluate the airport screening technology but here's the broad framework. the supreme court has held that routine searches at the border and at airports such as magnetic machines, regular x-ray machines and also not intrusive pat-down don't require any degree of individualized suspicion. but mom routine searches like body cavity searches and strip

searches do require a degree of individualized suspicion so the basic question which you don't have to be a lawyer to figure out is parties naked machines strip searches or not? if they are and they require a degree of heightened suspicion and if they don't then they don't require it. now there is a little bit more document by the lower court opinions evaluating these machines. there is a ninth circuit ruling from 2007 which emphasizes a particular airport security screening search is constitutionally feasible provided that it's no more extensive and more intensive than necessary in light of current technology to detect the presence of weapons or explosives. that is a case called an earlier california case in the 70's called davis cup and the idea is if you can design a technology in a less intrusive way than it is presumptively unreasonable. and that opinion was reinforced by the 2006 opinion by the u.s.

court of appeals for the third circuit written by samuel alito the nature of this third circuit and now the supreme court. and in this case called hard well, judge alito stressed the procedures have to be both minimally intrusive and also effective. in other words, they have to be tailored to protect personal privacy and they have to deliver on their promise of discovering serious threats. alito upheld an airport check which involved walk through magnetometers, and then an alarm was set off there was a secondary search with hand-held wands and he said airport searches are reasonable is the escalating in fees of as only after a lower level screening discloses a reason to conduct a more probing search. so, you could apply the two tests, the technology has to be minimally intrusive and it has to be effective and see that these naked machines clearly failed both of these tests. they are not merely interested because they could easily be designed in ways that protect privacy rather than threatening to other words you could have

the machines rather than the naked machines and they are also not effective. the british member of parliament who evaluated the machines for the british government said that they would not have found chemical powders that were carried by the christmas trouser bomber, the christmas before last and in that sense they don't even detect the low contraband they are supposed to detect so that is the core of the constitutional case against body scanners. what is the case in favor of them? i think the case in favor of them would go something like the following: it was stress the court had never held that you have to adopt the least intrusive means possible in the heart will case judge alito had a footnote that sit in the airport screening context there could be more interests of methods than the magnetometer tests that are reasonable and judge satellite or in 2006 before she was a supreme court justice in the case regarding random warrantless searches in the commuters said what matters not whether the defendant could

have devised a less intrusive means of searching passengers but what it means they choose our constitutional on the privacy interest on a reasonable way. so those are two current supreme court justices who sit you don't actually have to choose the least intrusive means which could make the case more complicated. and then as the effectiveness, there are plenty supreme court and lower court cases that emphasize the court shouldn't second-guess law enforcement authorities when it comes to effectiveness. there is a second circuit subway case sitting at random checkpoints in the subway wasn't effective because he could choose another sidley station to go through and the court rejects that saying we should not and will not second-guess the minutia of the nypd decisions and basically they are going to defer on that score. so those are the strong arguments on the other side. you don't need the least intrusive means, and you don't have to prove that the technology is completely effective in order to work. i want to close by emphasizing the importance of the judicial

evaluation of these technologies in a way that translates the value of the framers of the constitution in light of new technologies. this is a time when courts are divided about how to think about broad searches. which just this week a case in california of holding the warrantless searches of salt salles phones on the grounds when you are arrested is often as like a cigarette packet the cops are allowed to open and other courts in this preposterous a cell phone that can contain our most private data like a computer that includes by year lease is much more like the paper the framers were determined to protect and should require a warrant and just a few minutes ago there was a fascinating decision here in d.c. striking down gps surveillance without a warrant. some other lower courts have said you can stick a gps device on the car and truck it door to because we have no expectation of privacy and public and the judge in the path pricking opinion objected that would in an unconvincing liberalism and said there is a difference between the fact your neighbor can see you for a moment and

take a snapshot of you and observing fee to tell the of your movements 24/7 which transform the nature of the conduct in public spaces. for me, this backscatter question is one of the center constitutional and civil liberty challenges of our age because it is all on necessary to have the etds of machines. he could have privacy protecting machines and it is important for charges rather than adopting the unconvincing argument that we surrender all the expectations of privacy at the airport we have to realize that these virtual strip searches are just as much of and in dignity and just as unnecessary as a real strip search and for that reason they are constitutionally unreasonable. thank you so much. [applause] >> thank you, jeff. our next speaker is ginger. council of the electronic privacy information center epic. she is associate director of our open government project that has become one of the lead attorneys

in the case epic verse is dhs to suspend the body scanner program i should mention also that she is the attorney who led the litigation in the open government litigation against the dhs regarding the technical specifications and the design of the devices. so maybe she will tell us a bit as well about the open government cases. >> s. res. marc mentioned we actually have several cases against dhs, and the current case to suspend the program is actually based on documents we got as part of another case, another lawsuit. that lawsuit was grounded in the freedom of information act request that we made to the department of homeland security and they repeatedly ignored. we even chile filed suit over that and you were going to start to see a pattern as i am talking to you that the agency repeatedly ignore requests and they try to do everything they can to obstruct our efforts to get any answers about these machines. as we ended up filing suit against the agency in this case

and as a result of that lawsuit we finally got some documents out of them. when we look at these documents we found several very, very interesting and important fact. first, we found that these documents showed that these devices were required by tsa and that its procurement specifications document to be able to store and transmit the images captured by the devices. so that graphic naked images actually capable of the in-store and transferred it is because the tsa required that the manufacturers make the machines capable of that. the documents also show the extent the traveler of these machines, one of the documents that we've requested was the traveler complaints coming and we got hundreds and hundreds of pages of traveler complaints. what you would expect people being very upset about their children being patted down concerns by pregnant women about radiation there were a number of people who cited the health risks the machines and then there was a sort of general pattern of complaints that we

saw travelers not being informed of the fact that they could opt out to beat the cultic of the pat-down not being informed of the machines were before the had walked through them, not being informed about the capabilities of the machines. basically tsa wasn't putting up proper signs in the airport. the documents also showed that these body scanners were not designed to detect powder and explosives. contrary to what they say they are not effective in fact as detecting explosives they are supposed to detect. and the documents also show that privacy filters could be turned off. so we would also previously final two petitions to the agency to ask for a formal rulemaking and noticing, the what about the public to protest in the agency's decisions to deploy these machines that were costing millions and millions of dollars to the public and that people were being subjected to before they could travel. again, the agency was obstructive. they ignored our petitions and they refused to either deny or request or accept.

the just simply failed to recognize our positions of petitions at all. with this in mind we decided we were going to file suit to suspend the program on the basis that the body scanners are in phases, unlawful and ineffective. the lawsuit was based on several federal statutes in the fourth amendment of the u.s. constitution. we based this on the administrative procedures act, the privacy act, the video prevention act, the religious freedom restoration act and the fourth amendment. so, for our kind of get minister of procedures act, they're planning based on the fact that the agency failed to properly process the petitions despite the fact that our petitions stated outright what we were asking for was a rule making. the agency simply never at which that. the didn't deny or accept. they simply sent back letters that were basically a copy and paste of the press release of the web sites about the machines are capable of. they failed to even acknowledge we have asked for a rule making and under the administrative

procedures act, this is in fact if rule and is subject to rulemakings and there should be an opportunity for public comment. again, this is part of the pattern of a destructive behavior on the part of the agency. the tsa apparently feels it doesn't have to answer to the american public for the decisions it makes and writes it violates. so the next play and was the privacy act claim. this technology allows for the linking of names and personally identifiable information with the graphic images. that is what our claim is based on and because of that this would trigger a system of record notice the would be required by the privacy act and tsa failed to undergo the system of records notice. our next plan is under the video prevention act to read this prohibits the capture of an image of a private area of an individual without their consent and we saw the claim was buttressed by the complaints that we saw. people were not been informed by

tsa with the machines were, what the machines were capable of. tsa has been misrepresenting to the public about the capability of the machine saying the machines cannot store and transfer images when in fact they can. the machines capture a very graphic image including the genitals of american travelers and project the image onto a screen for the tsa officer to look at. that image can then be stored and transferred by these machines through our tax claim some of the religious freedom restoration act and i am going to leave this up because she is the best person to speak to this. and our fourth or last claim is the fourth amendment claim which it think the professor did an excellent job of covering and i am just going to have a few small things from the brief. our argument on this, one of the arguments we made that we feel is very compelling is the fact under the case law the agency, weigel pure granted a wide amount of latitude in airport searches because the necessity of nussle security there is the

requirement that the agency not start with the most invasive of all methods. there has to be some sort of escalation of my kids. you start with a lesson based method and then when you were given a reason to escalate any can escalate to a more invasive method. you wouldn't start off with a basic strip search, strip search and full body cavity search. to the store with a magnetometer and this is the case law mandates, but in this instance, with these very, very invasive body imaging machines what they are starting off with is the highly invasive tactic instead of the less invasive tactic of the magnetometers. so this is based on the fact that they have decided to deploy this is primary screening and that primary screening sets of this tree in the face of tactic as the first thing that is used on american travelers. since it is the mission of the initial brief in november, the tsa has repeatedly tried to delay our lawsuit, which was really i think no surprise to

us. but we actually are filing our brief in this lawsuit today. that brief can be found on our web site as well as all of the other documents that i have mentioned, the pure command specification document, operational requirement that we got as part of our freedom of information act lawsuit, our initial become the agency's response and the brief that we are filing today. thank you. [applause] >> i injury pleased to welcome our next speaker. she is the legal counsel for the council of american islamic relations. we have worked with her in the pursuit of this case and she is one of the attorneys and also one of the petitioners involved in the case. nice to have you here. >> thank you very much, marc, and thanks to epic and to all of you all who are here today for

this very important conference. i appreciate you all coming to date. as marc mentioned my name is nadhira al-khalili come on in an attorney at the cair, council on american islamic relations. cair started in 1994, and we are a grassroots civil rights organization. we have approximately 30 chapters across the united states and about 20 states and our mission is to enhance the understanding of islam, and we don't claim to represent all of the approximately 7 million muslims in the united states of america but we hope to at least represent the majority of the moderate mainstream muslims in the united states. when i started working at cair, we but slowly get in constituent and complaints of this machine i went through. i went through this machine. i don't know what it is or was told what it is and i wasn't told that i had an alternative to go through it.

so we slowly started to research with the machine was and found out that it was very problematic and downright unconstitutional and unlawful, and we hooked up with epic, which really was a great opportunity for us and as ginger mengin we currently have a case in the d.c. court of appeals where we are asking the tsa to suspend the ait program. i am a petitioner all lawsuits under the federal statute called the religious freedom restoration act. and as the petitioner, it is my contention that is a muslim, as a member of the islamic faith, that i am being kept from practicing my face. i anderson and there is an earlier panelist that said all terrorists are muslim. clearly we do not agree with that and i feel like i should have the right to practice my face and i am going through the airport and so as you can notice i am dressed from head to toe and i am dressed head to toe

every day of my life and i feel like if i go through a body scanner that violates my modesty right in my religion to not be seen on -- unclothed. so is my argument that this particular program is not the least restrictive means for the government to advance a compelling interest than it infringes upon my right to practice my religion. now i would also like to state that obviously other people have objections to this. people of other faiths who have modesty concerns within their face, and of course people that have no faith who still have modesty concerns but, you know, this is one of the several ways that we try to get the program stopped and, you know, just one of the arrows so hopefully it will work. currently the government is arguing that i don't have standing and that it's what is the bird, don't have standing

and the claim is baseless. those are their arguments. so, on march 10th is the oral argument for the case, so hopefully you can all turn out for that. so that is a little bit about the invasive news and the unlawful unless about the ait's program. but other people have talked about the ineffectiveness and i don't necessarily -- i am not a security expert and i don't necessarily want to talk about the ineffectiveness, but i am happy to be here to represent the perspective of someone who is coming from a safe community. now i believe i am a civil rights advocate who just happens to be a member of the face community and a civil rights -- as a civil rights advocate i think we should look at the bigger picture which is what we are doing here in this conference. to look at the moral issues of this program and the ethical issues and the health and safety

and privacy issues and just, you know, really think about how shocking this is to be such an affront to our civil rights. it was he alluded to earlier, but my question is what's next for the government? what other things is upper government thinking about right now that we don't know about that they are going to roll out and surprise us with? so i am looking forward to the last panel which is talking about turning points and different suggestions and what to do next because i think this is a part of a bigger issue where the united states being turned into a police state and we are the people and we are the ones that should be objecting to it. so i hope we can have a very lively discussion later this afternoon about the next steps and goals and programs and different ways to combat this both legally, grassroots, everything so that once we deal

with this issue we are prepared to deal with the next issue that we know is coming down the pike. thank you very much. [applause] >> okay. i am going to introduce now our final panelist. i mentioned that one of the wonderful things about organizing this event as we began to try to identify people and topics is that we realize that there were so many people out there for different reasons who share our concerns about the use of body scanners, and i think you see that in particular with regard to the legal arguments, the challenges to our being brought to the body scanner program that we are also very interested to learn that there were to harvard law school students who apparently had a lot of three time. [laughter] and you know, having their own flight brought in a part of a case to challenge the airport body scanner from them so i am very happy to welcome jeffrey

redern and anant pradhan. >> thanks to epic for inviting us. we are excited to hear from all these people and share some great experience. so what makes a second year law student filed a lawsuit against the united states government? [laughter] well, i consider myself a little l libertarian, so on a daily basis. but what was remarkable about this case is that as i started looking at the case law, i found that the justifications for the searches were really quite shaky. now there has been a lot of case law in the so-called administrative searches. these are searches that everyone has to go through regardless of

whether there is probable cause or reasonable suspicion. and the courts have come up with a basic framework where on the one side we are going to look at how intrusive is the scene on the other side what is the government needed that is being served and how effective is? what is different about this case from almost all of the other administrative cases is that in the other cases the courts have always held that the intrusion is minimal so it's not that hard to do the balancing test. we have something like over here and we have got planes bombing of okay i think we are going to let this go to the end of the doj is trying to say this is just one incremental little step that because we are forced to walk through metal detectors it stands to reason we should be forced to walk through these strips search machines. but the supreme court has made it clear that this is a very different situation.

just two terms ago there was a school strip search case that some of you may be familiar with. i'm missing my quote here. justice souter writing for the court said that there is a quantum leap from the backpacks to exposure of intimate parts. the meeting of such a search and degradation is subject to any reasonable field placed a search that interested in the category of its own demanding its own specific suspicions. so this is really unprecedented. really the only at the ministry of searches that has gone this far are in prisons. outside of prisons this is as far as they have ever tried to push it. now, how do you weigh something heavy on one side and something heavy on the other side? the stockman tests the judges try to implement normally they try to say okay we actually have something light, it's easy. when you're looking at something on both sides, our position in

our case is going to be that you need to have more scrutiny on both sides. so i don't think it's really tough to say that this is very interested. but our argument is that because it is so intrusive that a normal difference to law enforcement, to you know, the exhibit interest in the national security has to be less. the only way we can do this balancing is if the courts are going to look at the evidence and assess whether or not this is effective because otherwise the courts have abdicated their judicial responsibility to enforce the constitutional limits of government. now, the language of the fourth amendment is not technical pettit protect us from unreasonable searches the language of the three-pronged tests and circuit splits, a reasonable standard is anchored in our everyday experience of common sense. the supreme court has said that

public opposition can be evidence of an reasonableness and i think this means we all have a duty to express our outrage because this is going to help all of the suits go forward if we just shut up and let it go and figure that, you know, this is just one more thing it is too much for me to worry about than it is a lot easier for a court or a judge to say you know what, i don't think this is that unreasonable because people aren't complaining that much. so that is something we can all do to help keep these cases moving forward. my co-counsel or plan to sign this is going to talk about another troubling issue in this case regarding jurisdiction. >> thanks. so basically we are in a different position than i guess

i picked in that we file our case and trial court and federal district court and they are now in the appellate court. this makes a substantial -- there is a big difference here in that in the trial court there is a whole procedure of getting witnesses, getting discovery, getting information from them without necessarily meeting the freedom of information act requests, and so for a number of reasons we are trying to stay in the trial court. there is a little statute we didn't know about before we file a case that is presenting quite a problem it is 46110. go ahead and look this up. it is a huge payment in the way that it's been applied. basically what the statute says is that final orders issued by the tsa must be reviewed by a court of appeals, but goes further in that the promise findings of fact by the the minister of supported by at the ministry of evidence is

conclusive. to the reason this is problematic is that in order that the administrator were to issue would then be reviewed by the court of appeals, and as long as an administration could marshal a record, which i hope any reasonable or any competent at penetration could do a substantial record those findings are conclusive. what we are trying to do is essentially avoid this for a number of reasons. the key being that we didn't -- no one here actually knew that there was an order issued. it kind of happened in a fact secret sort of way. basically what tsa does is issue secret service which i call super secret directives. basically behind closed doors the issue these orders that see you have to do xy and z and this is how the procedure is going to go. but it varies from airport to airport, mechanism to mechanism, with the do, who gets screen, who doesn't get screened, how the various things changed based

on the various different circumstances. now the question is how can these the final orders that can only be reviewed if we don't know when they are issued and be, we don't know what they said. so, our contention is that they can't actually be final orders and thus we don't need to go to the court of appeals to have this surgeon. the other very important thing is that in that statute final orders must be reviewed within 60 days. but if you don't have a time, if you don't know in the order is issued, how do you file a it is kind of a black box. so basically, the tsa statute allows them to set the rules, choose the form for reviewing the rule and then have the rules reviewed based on whenever they want to say and then it is deemed conclusive. for those reasons we believe the super secret directives cannot possibly be final orders and

that is the significant problem that we are facing right now in >> i'm afraid to admit i've spent quite a bit of time with that section 46610c and it is as you said a problem. i want to begin by coming back to professor jeffrey rosen who has now heard from the various petitioners about the claims and i'm wondering if you have any initial response and then i will have a follow-up for you. >> my first response is how proud i am to be sitting on a podium with people doing this civil liberties work, what a wonderful thing is that second year law students are defending the constitutional values in the most direct way possible and your vivid account moral issues that are instinctive the dignitary issues that gets to the heart of the matter and

ginger's explanation on the constitutional problems with these machines but also the statutory ones is very persuasive. i'm supposed to play what can i say. is the supreme court going to buy these arguments? predictions are hard. i think it was good to court justice souter in the strip search case that was 8-1, only justice thomas dissented, eight members understood the danger of strip searches. i think if i had but ten seconds at the beginning of an oral argument the solicitor general has to try to persuade the court, i would say this ladies and gentlemen, the court has held a quintessentially reasonable searches one that reveals dangerous and guilty contraband and no innocent but embarrassing information. bald sniff which reveals drugs but no diaries to be a backscatter machine is the antithesis of an unreasonable search. it reveals a great deal of innocent but then there is an information and is very unlikely to reveal contraband or guilty

information. that is the core of the case of reasonableness and welfare court fight? who knows. unlike our heroic students urging the court to actually look at empirical evidence like public opinion or polls, the court tends to decide the fourth amendment cases just with our share generalizations that are not supported by empirical evidence. there's a wonderful study by christopher at vanderbilt who said the court's predictions of what people perceive to be unreasonable there are no relation to the actual intuitions of people and students in focus groups. now there's another great danger which is the longer these machines remain up and running their greater possibility there is that the court will find that expectations of privacy have adjusted to them. justice scalia said in the thermal imaging case years ago that cutting edge technology that isn't in general use is presumptively unreasonable and contains intimate details in the home without a warrant.

but given the jurisdiction of challenges that face by the time a court of appeals ruled on this and the supreme court actually heard it, it might be two or three years down the line. but by that point people have gotten used to it and the court might have said is a result become constitutionally unreasonable some time is of the essence. it's important these students move forward. i wouldn't predict the court would buy it, but i see that all of our colleagues here have a very strong case these are in fact constitutionally unreasonable searches. >> so ginger, we now have jeff and anant who have filed their lawsuit and you have been at this for some time both in building a record through the freedom of information act litigation looking fairly closely at the legal fees. what would be your advice to them? which arguments do you think they should pursue? and by the way, since they are in district courts and have the opportunity to maybe do some discovery what would you like them to find that you haven't

been able to obtain? >> i would like them to find the source of testing that we have been asking the agency to undergo, the health testing, the testing for whether or not these are actually effective against covered explosives and we certainly have indications they are not the agency continues to insist their effect machines. i would like to see the result of the testing for that ansar as experts go probably to call and security experts who could actually speak to the effectiveness who could actually speak to the radiation experts who could actually speak to the radiation risks and i think all of the would be excellent to bring in. >> i see that you are taking notes, which is excellent. nadir come to have raised some troubling concerns from the face based community about the impact of these new screening procedures, and i was up late last night working on that brief that ginger mentioned and the

government said in its answer to the brief. well of course people don't have the right to fly. so this is in their assessment really not a big deal. but i was wondering if you could say a little bit more about the impact is of people who have faced exceptions, objections, and with the practical consequences are when the government undertakes this kind of the procedure. some thank you for working on the brief by the way. the practical consequences are i would say about 60% of muslims that live in america are from immigrant communities who still have contact with homes and family members and ancestors and ancestral homes and other countries which are virtually impossible to get to unless you are flying. so the fact that tsa says people

don't have to fly, some people do have to fly, and we do recommend that people, right now because there is no other alternative that people go ahead and off for the pat-down because that is at least done for some what of the same gender but the fact that this has infringed upon people's right and ability to fly is very disturbing in the muslim community and we hope that we can get this taken care of as soon as possible. >> i was thinking that even mike roberts, who objects to the current screening procedures if he were invited to speak at a conference and let's say london or brussels would probably not be driving his car to go to that event. let me come back to jeff because i want to push him a little bit on what the supreme court might to. he has been a great observer of the supreme court and helped us to understand first of all justice o'connor's role as a swing vote and may be justice

kennedy's vote but on these privacy issues, justice alito's emerging as a very interesting jervis, court. you mentioned his opinion in the early your airport case, the hartwell case, and we know justice o'connor herself was deeply suspicious of no suspicion searches and was wondering what your sense is if we probe a bit more deeply with the current court has said that similar issues where they may come out of the actually do get this case. >> it's hard to predict. after all, marc, with your encouragement, hope they predicted in an op-ed alito plight inherent a mantle as the fourth amendment values. several students and colleagues and friends wrote in and said this is wishful thinking. alito has voted in favor more frequently than any other

justice in criminal cases. he's a former prosecutor and has been most pro prosecution just as there is an argument that he is by no means has o'connor libertarian instruments. the difficulty is this is a court that is closely divided in the fourth amendment cases and tends to side against the fourth amendment claims. this is in part not only because of the emplacement of the alito and, but justice breyer for all of his many virtues is no fan of stricken down unreasonable searches he tends to favor the government and vince or backward to applaud searches and he is by no means a sure vote either. a piece that might be relevant is the bond case from a few years ago involving the inspection of luggage on a bus and a majority of the quarter think it was a closely divided decision written by rehnquist of all people who is more of a state's right for the amendment guy said people on buses expect to have their luggage touched or

brushed by accident but not letting the interests of the fondled, basically that is too much and when you travel he shouldn't have to have your bags fondled, and i think he rides the shovel a lot and says this is a we always have our backs fumbled, just get used to it and he didn't have a problem with the issue. he was in short justice sotomayor would do. she held broad surges and was head of pro-government experience in fourth amendment views haven't been reviewed either. the strip search case there was a gender element and i guess if i were to say when did fourth amendment values tend to win a wendi could imagine their own privacy being violated. so the one case where drug tests in schools were fine, they were okay for all sorts of context

but when the judicial candidates were drug tested the court was shocked and struck down. this is to say we can only hope the supreme court is doing a lot of traveling the next couple of weeks and months and that they're going to go to plenty the indignity of being search because that is their best hope for at least checking these things down to read >> maybe we should invite them to foreign conferences. wonderful. we have time for questions of people do have questions we will get the microphone circulating and also people who are following us on tour, you are welcome to tweets some questions and we can ask some of our panelists. yes, please. >> good morning to read my name is judy and i am very curious to know there are a lot of advocacy centers around privacy rights and of course a lot of issues that you are speaking about

include privacy issues. i'm very concerned with the public health effects. obviously these untested machines which have a lot of already generated a lot of region's scientific community supporting the dangerous effects of the radiation. my curiosity is what would the legal implications of these public health risks say in five years there is demonstrable evidence of a public health affect. would there be a potential suit to be brought against the u.s. government, and of course wouldn't the cost of that not only in public health in the public self-interest, but the cost to the taxpayers, you know, even cellini -- eventually mean? >> i can't really speak to it from the perspective, but i think that would certainly come against any argument of the government [inaudible]

it would certainly cut toward the interest and privacy cut against the public interest that they would be asserting so i think that is probably the most i can say on that. >> i'm just looking at some of the factors the courts have evaluated in deciding whether the government discretion as reasonable and it includes the public nature of the search, the length of the search, notice given to the passengers only visual inspections and whether the search is abusive or unusually interested and also with the doesn't directly cover the health sector could certainly argue a search that the standards of the fact is intrusive, abusive, not minimally invasive and example a cavity search the causes harm would surely be even more unconstitutional than a strip search the didn't cause physical harm and for that reason i think you would very much support the idea these are not intrusive. >> it could against any assertion of a legitimate public interest.

if you're public interest is to protect the public and protect the safety of the travelling public and then the machine you are using to do that is creating a safety problem for the traveling public it's going to be very hard argument to make. >> [inaudible] test machines which cannot potentially longer lasting generations longer affect. something from the first panel of easily for the question of why is the fda taking and accountability, why haven't these machines then pressed through rigorous inspections. they are exposing the public to these risks so to me it would seem to open at a very wide ramifications for any sort of collection on the part of people's willingness either in the psychological -- basically remain forced to compromise between the psychological lummis and the sexual wellness for assault survivors of people

going through these machines. >> i would be curious to know what the legal next step would be. >> i can say a little bit more about this. we did not raise again in passing in our opening brief the health objections largely because we didn't feel that we had the expertise but to the extent we did raise them, the government attempted to answer our brief by saying that they had contacted a variety of organizations and basically been given gold stars by those organizations in terms of the technologies so this created an opportunity for us to reply which we did. we pointed out first of all that the government had relied on studies not based on the operational use of the devices, and one of the points that scientists and engineers have made is that you can't evaluate, you know, say here this conference you can't evaluate the safety of a car without actually looking at its history and its record to understand whether or not it is well-designed to carry a family

for 50,000 miles or something that the second point that we made re the way that the administrative procedures act is supposed to work. in other words a federal agency may have a few it may have reached a judgment about what it believes is the best way to, you know, address this problem. but under the apa, it has an obligation to give the public the opportunity to offer its views, it's contradictory evidence and then to look at all this information to make a judgment that is reviewable by a court. now you see what happened here, the department of homeland security basically short circuit in that process. they didn't want contradictory evidence. they simply wanted a place before the public their assessment and leave it at that. one of the things i think you are hearing today is not only are there strong substantive objections such as the religious objections and so forth but also very significant procedural

concerns about how this decision was made. and this is significant because wherever you may come down on the substantive factor objections maybe you would agree with a religious argument, 80 were not so concerned about privacy, stultz and you have to believe that the government agency is making these decisions do so in a fair and local manor and so a big part of our case is actually the claim that that didn't happen here. so that is a long answer but i think that is how we get to your issue. >> i can also speak to a little bit in the sense that we do file a claim about the health and this is why being in the district court means so much more in that we can have -- if we get to steal the district court we get to march in the witnesses and have that debate about the health effects of the scanners. what we have seen in some of the briefs is they got studies from the american medical is a sedition and the fda as more clause stating to give you the check mark it's good to go but we don't get to see those

studies and none of the studies are public information so we have to take them at their word. not the benefit of being in the trial court is that we get to contest that a lot more so than just having affidavits and we have been contacted by some scientists who actually would like to state that one way or another as out in the media. >> the tests the government continues to cite are undertaken not necessarily to determine the safety of these machines but to determine the output of radiation from the machine in a test setting again as marc said not be operational setting, so there are also -- if the agency is going to be using machines that are dosing people with radiation he needs to ensure that they are properly maintained. we've seen in hospitals there are machines adjusting people with far higher radiation the bears' ' because they are not properly maintained. there is no evidence the government has taken the proper

precautions to ensure these machines are properly maintained >> i think we have another question in the back. >> this is to anyone on the panel talking about the safety of the machines. what about the fact the airport -- i don't know of any of you have ever tried when you're flying to watch the agent to take their gloves when they check you because they're actually physically contacting one person's body and then taking the same gloves that have who knows what on them and physically touching your own, but among the agents are waiting there always, picking their noses, rubbing their hair, wiping their face with them and i have never heard anyone of wants mengin this problem because if one person has a disease it can be transferred by the gloves and they are pressing people ask the tsa basically for to you and tell you know i'm going to use the same glove the just croaked someone with on your private parts. have there been any studies into

this or any one speak about this part, because some of them use the same gloves for hundreds of people of the same airport. they don't change them. the have no need to come and no one is going to make them because they aren't listening to us asking them politely to change them. >> that's an interesting point. has anyone -- >> i can speak from experience because i've been padded down a number of times now. part of a -- the actually in pretty sure my understanding is the do have to switch the gloves, and the reason being because after the cut you down the actually do a chemical scan of their beloved, and so part of the test is to make sure that you don't have chemicals on you after they've had you down. so if they were not to switch the gloves every time the you'd get chemical residue from somebody else. so i can't be sure -- it might be a one-off or they aren't following procedure, but their procedure -- again, it's supersecret so we can't be sure, it would seem to indicate that they have to switch clubs.

>> they have to switch dhaka gloves if you go to an airport and watch, your chance of seeing them do that from one person to the next is pretty darn slim. i mean, you can begin airport here and stand and watch all day and watch them never change gloves because we have seen that. >> the question of the gloves and the second of the pat-down might be relevant to a constitutional analysis we haven't discussed. should the court evaluate the body scanner and the interest of pat-down together or should they be two separate procedures? my instinct is it is the same procedure because if you choose not to go through the body scanner and you have to do the pat-down come if you're dimare would be that the pat-down is just as intrusive as a strip search. it's not quite a body cavity search but it is not a routine search, and therefore it should be considered constitutionally unreasonable to offer as an alternative to a virtual st search something that comes

close to a virtual body cavity search. the counter argument would be that you don't have to go through the -- you don't have to smadi and you should just be doherty the body scanners and isolation near the secondary pat-down shouldn't be part of the analysis. we haven't talked about that, but what do you think? >> that is a good question, gentlemen, you to think. i'm not sure at this point. but what i wanted to do at this point because we have just a couple of minutes and i thought i had made a very good point earlier what the best opening statement might be for the petitioners, the attorneys pursuing these challenges and giving each of our attorneys on the panel just a brief opportunity to say what they think the most compelling argument is, the most compelling legal argument to suspend their part body scanner program. how would you answer that? >> you're going to start with me? i need a minute to think about that.

>> nadhira, would you like to take that? >> they're all so very compelling. i can't pick one. but first, i would argue for the freedom restoration act i think it's very compelling and, you know, because there are so many americans that have sincerely held religious beliefs that if nothing else our government listens to that argument and really takes into account this country has such a strong faith and if they can do something less intrusive they should go with that so people have their religious freedoms. >> actually one of the things i have learned from that which is interesting is that even where the government establishes the compelling interest, it still has a burden to show that it is pursued the least restrictive alternative and it's not just the tide goes to the runner situation. i think they have some work to do on this.

>> absolutely. >> yes? >> i'm ready now. >> okay, good. >> the most compelling argument against them is by placing these machines and airports, but the tse is doing is requiring that people trade away their privacy for the illusion of security. you are not getting security with these machines. the ineffective. the machines are highly invasive quote so they are taking a high amount of your privacy site and that is the most compelling argument. .. keep this out at the pleading stage and we need more analysis and more evidence. >> what you think, jeff? >> if i had a closing statement i would invite quoting our mutual hero, justice brandeis who is the greatest asset of

constitutional values might of new technology. brandeis recognized in the age of wires the wiretaps were unreasonable because they didn't involve physical trespass, they were far more intrusive than the the desk drawers and diaries that they were determined to prohibit. we have to convince courts today and ultimately the supreme court that a virtual strip search is even more of an indignity than those general warrants and die research is committed framers geuld haveee been appalled at t idea that hundreds of millions of travelers in order to get tod the airport could be visuallytrd and virtually strip and theyhe must strike down these machines is a violation of the quintessential right be. >> oh boy that was great. thank you also much for a wonderful panel. we will break for lunch and be back in his room at 1:30. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] we take away guns and bombs and terrorist use box cutters. the gateway box cutters and they put them in their sneakers. we screened footwear, they tried liquids. we limit liquids, they had a bomb in their underwear. leave them in full body scanner, they try to hide economy printer cartridge. we now come up with are not pinprick prepared for just 16 ounces which is kind of amazing and they're going to do

something else.ws alright, this is actually a game in which it sought playing in. it's not security. it is security theater. now this conference is primarily about i.d. scanners. select talk about the through for through. that's what this is all about. etn is a plastic explosive. it's what the shoe bomber used. it's what the liquid bomber used. a web within the enemies printer cartridge mailboxes. it's iraq, it's in afghanistan. guns and bombs are passé. petn is the tool of the future. the problem is petn is hard to detect. no scanners and no puffers can detect. dogs can and swabs can. so with the tsa hopes in this full-body scanners is not that they can detect pet and, but

they can detect the bull junior clothing you have when you're trying to carry pet and through security. that's what they're trying to do. now, once you know that, the ways to get around this are pretty easy. you know, teach and is very stable. you can want any shape you like. you can will then. you can make a shirt out of it -- he certainly can. you can hide any number of ways. you can put any body cavity buskers of my thinking you can put in your mouth could go through security, and go in and out 10 times or 20, however much you need. none of this is new. none of this is surprising. none of this is a secret. iata talks about these machines not been effective, these are exactly the sorts of techniques they're thinking about.

but israel doesn't deploy these machines, this is exactly why. on the other hand, petn is really hard to explode. again, it's very stable. the underwear bomber can explode his come in the shoe bomber can exploit his. we were told that the mail bombs from yemen couldn't have worked. right, it's hard to get this right. so last november, president obama made beach where he talked about full-body scanners in some of the objections. one of the things he said was that these machines he was told for effective it is the kind of threats we saw on this christmas day bombing. now, that is precisely the wrong way to think about security. such a lousy threat modeling. in fact this is the kind of name the tsa and administration is again, we have some serious problems. that shows a very strong backwards bias. i mean, this would've been effective of what the terrorists

did last time. the focus is on the five that their attack -- it focuses on there a tactic and not where it was in time. but in fact the underwear bomber chose this type that precisely because the machines weren't in place. and you can't go back and haven't fixed that. the next attack, as we see again and again would be something different. terrorists are adaptive and they choose their attack takes base to the security that's in place. so for your putting the scanners in place because it was a detective what happened christmas 2009, we're getting this very, very wrong. ..

>> we have to recognize that airport security is the last line of defense, and it's not a very good one. all right, so, asking a bunch of questions this morning and there's a right to ask, what would work? what does work? the first thing that works is intelligence and investigation. any terrorist attack is a series of events. there's planning, recruiting,

funding, training, getting there, execution, and aftermath. our best senses are at the beginning and end of that process. all right? intelligence investigation here and emergency spurnes here. -- spurnes -- response here. focusing not on specific plots is much more effective. we're at our worst when we have to guess the plot correctly. all these individual risks are rare, and the way to defend against them is to look for the comalties and put your defenses there. a lot of these measures are largely invisible, intelligence gathering, and some of the soft things, like building bridges with potential terrorist communities, social organizations, a lot about this i won't go into, but arresting

plotters without fanfarement i think giving them this status is way too good for them m i think it would make a a less attractive career path. what does this mean for airport security? it happens not at the airport. this is what caughted liquid bombers. they were caught in their apartment before they boarded. that is what uncovered the yes , ma'am these -- yem these printer project. it was the stuff that happened not at the airport. again, if security doesn't require us to guess the plot correctly, if security doesn't depend us on guessing the target -- you know, if we just stand against specific targets, this only makes sense if they are few.

if there's three tactics and five targets, we are a lot safer. if there are hundreds of tactics and millions of targets, really the best you do when you have specifics is you force the bad guys to make a minor change in their plans. we have full body scanners in l.a. gourd ya, and they to drive to iceland, not a big deal. they could bomb shopping malls instead, and then we're not safer. the general solutions are much more effective. i'm not interested in security that just makes the bad guys just make a minor change in their plans. that being said, airports and airplanes still deserve special attention. four reasons. one, there are a favored terrorist target. two, they have kind of unique failure characteristics. when a bomb goes off in a buss

and people die and some injured. same bomb on an airplane, plane crashes, everyone dies. it's more severe because of what the airplane is doing and that's flying through the air. airplanes are national symbols, less than the u.s., but think of british air and air france. airplanes are national symbols, and airplanes also fly to foreign countries where the terrorists might actually be. again, less true in the u.s., but there are european airlines that fly to pretty touch y hot spotted around the world. what works? well, something we know that works is pre9/11 security like detecting obvious guns and bombs. that works. it works against the amateurs, and it also works against some of the more professional plots; right? it works against the shoe bomber

and underwear bomber. just think about it. because we screen for obvious bombs, and guns, the underwear bomber, the bomb maker had to build an inefficient bomb; right? instead of using a fuse or a timer, something any normal person would to explode ptn, he had to resort to liquids and sir syringes and it didn't work. the passenger subdued him. that is a security success. right after that happened, secretary got on the camera and said the system worked, and she was uniformly vilified for it, and i'm thinking, all right, terrorist's in custody, plane lands safely, nobody harmed. what more do you want from a success? that's what the system working looks like. that was pre9/11 security and

passenger vigilance. that's at work there. there's a lot of stories. we haven't heard any today, but google them. you'll find screeners missing guns and bombs. if this happens, it's a big media fanfare. someone this past month got through airport security, gets to the nation, finds he forgot he had a gun in his bag. he forgot it, but he did. this is a big deal. i don't think these stories should bother you. they certainly don't bother me. first off, you're never going to get 100% security. we can't even keep guns out of prisons, let alone airports. more importantly, the effects of getting caught are supply. if you go there with a gun, they call the fbi and at the very least, they're going to ruin your day.

that means that even if the tsa isn't perfect, they let 10% through let's say. you can't build a plot around getting a gun through because the odds are too great that you're going to get caught issue and the effects are too severe if you are going to get caught. compare that to a plot involving liquids. you try to go through airport security with liquid, they say liquid, toss it in the trash, you can go through; right? which means the cost of failure is 0. if you have a liquid-bottle based plot, just try again and again. you know, 1 in 100 times you'll get there. because there's no effects of getting caught. you must have 100% effectiveness in order to be effective. i think we need some rationality there, either lictds --

littleliquids are dangerous and if so the fbi ruins your day. this half and half doesn't work. this is how you know it's a is charade. they put these with other dangerous liquids that gets hauled away at the end of the day. canine screening works for baggage. there's logistical problems there certainly. i don't know if airports are set up to have kennels and whatever dogs require. those do work. we seed them -- we see them used for international arrivals to screen for food contraband. behavioral profiles works. it's hard to do correctly. it is easy to get wrong. this is not racial profiling or

gender or dressed based, but based on behavior. we know these work, but they are hard to train for. we also need to close the nonpassenger security holes. lots has been written about this, how easy it is for airline employees to bypass screening. you know, behind the counter where they take your ticket is a door to the other side, all right, and you can just go back and forth. vehicle, you know, other airport employees, cleaners, this is much less scrutiny there than we'd like. others mentioned civil aviation and the lack of screening there. really since 9/11, two things made us safer looking at passengers. the first one is reup forcing the cockpit door, and the second is convincing passengers thigh need to fight back. we saw that work with the christmas day underwear bomber. i just read a news article today, there was a turkish

flight attempted hijacking flight. the terrorist said he had a bomb. the passengers didn't believe him and quickly learned the truth, and plane landed safely, again passenger vigilance. everything else is security theater. most importantly, we need not to be terrorized. that's what we can do. security based on fear doesn't work because it tends to focus us on the specifics of what happened rather than the broad threat. you know, we have a need to rewrite history. same with what president obama said. this would have rewritten history last christmas day. it doesn't need to do that. we need to lack backwards instead of forwards. we need to do something. the phrase i like to think about is something must be done.

this is something, therefore we must do it. that's kind of a logic you see because we're scared. we also tepid to focus on the severity of the event while ignoring the probability of the event, because it happened because it occurred, it's fixed in our mind as a threat. we don't think about how anomalous a threat is and whether the risk, the actual rational risk is comparable to our fear. i went and pulled some data on airplane terrorism, just to get some numbers, so in the 2000's, in the past decade, we had 469 passengers, crew and terrorists, were killed as a result of violent passenger incidents on planes. 265 of them, that's more than half was 9/11. there have been no fatal incidents on the planet since

the russian aircraft in 2004. this is the longest streak without fatal incidence since world war ii. the death toll is the same since 1960s and less than 1970s and 1980s. 2001 was the most violent year for incidents, that's after 1985, 1988 and 1989. the 80s were ugly. of course, a lot more people travel in the past decade than the 80s. again, i pulled the numbers. 22 passengers killed per 1 billion planes. that's in the 2000s and 1990s which is six times safer than previous decades. 1960 was 161 deaths.

that's about 20 times greater than being struck by lightening. that's the mathematics. i'd like to see more of us to accept the mathematics of terrorism. the risks are rare, very rare, but the risk isn't 0. i don't think, you know, sort of basic screen k aside -- screening aside, we can never stop a shooter. all airport security would do is make him start a shooting outside the security gate, and sometimes you can do everything right and still have it come out wrong. thing about rare eventings is when they occur, it's not always evidence of a failure.

sometimes it's evidence of rolling badly. there's a counterstory to adopt, and that's one of adomability. we should simply refused to be terrorized. we should not overreact or become defensive. there is inherent risk in living in a free society, and that is a risk our country's founders embraced and that's a risk i think we should. i think we should roll back the fear-based 9/11 security measures. simple things; right? stop telling people to report suspicious activity. they do that when it truly suspicious. they don't need to be told. when you are told to watch your neighbor, you report things like, you know, they dress funny and the food doesn't smell good and they talk in a funny language. you know, when you prime people to report suspicious, they end

up reporting different. different is not inherently suspicious. you know, living in a society where you are suspicious of each other doesn't make us safer. by increasing our feelings of fear, helplessness that the government will solve our problems if we keep quiet and do what they told us to, it doesn't work, it doesn't make us safer against terrorism, natural disasters, gern anything. -- against anything. we need to recognize that terrorism is rare. even after 9/11, terrorism is rare. the most dangerous part of your airplane flight is still the ride to the airport. all right? that hasn't changed and probably will never change. automobiles kill more people every month in the u.s. than 9/11 did. last january's earthquake in haiti killed more people than

terrorism did since the beginning of time. you watch enough movies and tv and you start thinking terrorism is easy. turns out, it's not. i get asked all the time, where are all the terrorist attacks? it's hard. this is hard to do. it seems easy, but it's hard. terrorism is hard, and it's easy to make mistakes. 9/11 just barely worked. there were problems with the system, but we also got really unlucky. you know, in making public policy based on that kind of rare event doesn't make sense. lastly, terrorism is not a tran transcendent threat. it cannot destroy our country. it cannot destroy our way of life. it's only our reaction to terrorism that can do that. if we reduce the freedoms

inherent in our society, we're doing the terrorism for them. if we deliver the fearing we're doing the work for them. the more scared we are, the more effective the attacks are. in fact, if we get scared, the terrorists succeed even if their plot fails. if we are indome thatble, the terrorists fail even when their attacks succeed. that's what i have to say. [applause] >> we have a few minutes left, so i wanted to open it up for a couple of questions. >> oh, let's start right here. >> [inaudible] >> is your -- >> hi, how are you? are you familiar with secure flights? >> yes.

>> what are your thoughts on that? is that an effective way to try to prevent terrorist activities, prescreening or -- >> in general i tend to be very suspicious of separating people into two categories, a screen less category and screen more. as soon as you do that, you invite the bad guys to get into the screen less. that's true for everything. i've generally been against secure flight. i'd rather see random screenings rather than screening based on data that shows up preifly. -- previously. there's some pretty good arguments in favor of that kind of system that, you know, in fact, a businessman flies once a week for the past five years isn't likely to change on the next flight, but in general, i worry about a system like that. you also a low the possibility of the system getting hacked.

there's a question of screening pilots. if they fly the airplane, they can crash it, why screen them? we're not screening pilot, but people in pilot uniforms. either we have a system who verifies who pilots are, or we screen everybody. many instances it's better to screen everybody uniformly or differences randomly than it is to put people in categories and verify that we're putting the right people in the right category. i tend to worry about those system for those reasons. there's a hand over there. >> i wonder if you can talk about the politics of terrorism, bureaucrats who have responsibility for running these security systems and politicians who have ultimate responsibility react as long as they have an answer last time and we did

something to stop it, that that seems to be a political defense. is there some way to change the political dynamics of this so that we get more rational decisions out of politicians and pure bureaucrats? >> i think when people are scared, they want to be less scared, and then you get to something must be done and therefore we must do it. i will do the thing to make you less scared as opposed to leading and saying, you know, make a churchill-like speech. look, this is life, we must be stronger than this. if you think about it, the political reaction is to overreact. the talk i just made couldn't be made by a politician. all right, message after 9/11, there's two politicians. one says, we're all going to die. do this. there's me saying, come on, get a life.

[laughter] fast forward five years, if nothing happens, this guy takes credit for it. we saw president bush do that. there's no attacks since 9/11, and that's proof policies are working. that's a quote from donald rumsfeld. i'm thinking there were no attacks before 9/11, and you didn't have any policies. what does that prove? fast forward 5 years, if something happens, he's still proven right, and i'm out of a job. there is a political tendency to overreact, to look like you're doing something, to solve the specifics of the previous threat because leading is hard and leading is dangerous and leading, you know, might get your head cut off. now, there's also the politics in institutionalty. p once the tsa is in place, a

lot of the security is protecting their careers. if the terrorists do it again, they're going to look stupid, and somebody is going to get fired. i mean, they have actually banned printer cartridges greater than 60 ounces. let's use boxes next time. if they do printer cartridges again, no one will stand for that. [laughter] this is politicians as followers, not as leaders. politicians who are leaders -- i mean, imagine the speech president bush could have made after 9/11. you know, and that would have been true leading. please. >> anybodiments more of -- anybody wants more about this, there's a book with a picture on it that flatters him. [laughter] >>y, thank you. >> this is a good book.

on the subject of overregulating people and underregulating corporations, during the hijacks to cuba which as you recall in 1968-70, there were many of them from the u.s. to cuba. some of us including a number of aviation security specialists demanded that the faa require the cockpit doors and the strengthening of latches in the 1970s, in the 80s, in the 1990s. the faa refused to require the airlines to do this. the cost was $3,000 an aircraft. the result, of course, was 9/11. the planes could have been hijacked, but they couldn't have been taken over to be used as weapons of destructionment the

interesting thing is that in the 9/11 report, the authors chose not to focus on this issue. this one singular engineering change that could have prevented 9/11 and maybe prevented the need for this conference, a simple regulatory change, and in many discussions on all of this terrorism and all the precautions and all the canvassing and the machines, it's almost never mentioned. why? >> a couple things. it's not just cockpit doors. before 9/11, the airlines have resisted every security measure. there's one exception. that's the id check. that check actually solved a business problem the airlines had which was the reselling of tickets and they were able to do it while blaming the government

without implementing rules themselves. aside from that, the airlines have fought everything. it's been a little different after 9/11. now, there's a couple of things going on. one, of course, the airlines don't want to spend the money. primarily because it seems that when there are terrorist incidents, it doesn't affect the airlines in specific, but air travel in general. if airline a gets an attack, people say i'll fly airline b instead, but they say i'm not flying. you don't have the standard of economics working in your favor. you know, there wasn't a benefit for an airline to say we have reenforced cockpit doors. fly us. that competition mechanism tends to fail in fear-based situations, but on airlines specificically, the public tends to look at the airline system as a whole rather than specifically. certainly, i think it was a series of problems. it was a cheep solution, obvious

solution for decades, but the airlines were able to successfully fight it until 9/11 when they changed that pretty quickly. >> thank you. that'll have to be our last question. we need to get on to the next panel. thank you very much. >> the next panel is on pulling the plug strategy and next steps. troy stock who is counsel with congressman jason and congressman david greenfield, new york city counselman member and jim hoffer with the cado institute. thank you. i want to start this panel -- i'm app associate director aft the privacy information center. epic as you heard is a policy research center. you heard a lot about our

litigation, our lawsuits that we filed. what i wanted to make sure people understood about this particular issue is that epic has been working on this issue since the summer of 2005 when we did the first web page on it looking at the technology and the consequence of using it, and the privacy implications that would accrue were actually put into place. it was at the pilot's phase of the technology being used by the tsa as our pilot projects. we begin by encouraging more dialogue between organizations and the tsa as well as the dhs and officers in 2007. many organizations voiced a lot of concern about thoughts regarding implications of deploying this technology because primarily we could see how the public would react.

the agency was not able to see as clearly the consequences of deemployeing this becauseically because they believed technology would be the magic deal for solving the ills that they could detect with the current screening process. what we needed to do and what we have been trying to encourage is a dialogue, more transparency on the part of the agency, the ability to allow the public to comment, the ability of policymakers and decision makers to better understand the options that are before them and what this panel will be doing the last panel of the today's conference will be doing is talking about strategies to move us forward, next steps, and what we should be thinking about doing on the policy front, on the decision making front regarding our elected officials. i wanted to begin with looking at it from the perspective of

what has happened in the past. beginning we troy stock who is with congressman's office and played a critical leadership role in genting one the largest -- one of the largest nonpartisan votes i guess in the previous congress, and would one, i've been in dc for awhile, one of the largest ones i've seen in quite awhile. it was really an outstanding vote. he offered an amendment to the transportation security administration authorization legislation that would have imposed more congressional oversight and accountability and restrict how the agency can use and deploy this technology and put in place firm privacy protections that would be ensured because they would be a part of the law and not under the agency's sole discretion. next, i want to move over to

what's currently happening with the discussion being offered by congressman david greenfield with the new york city counsel member who has taken the leadership role in introducing legislation that would ban the use of whole body scanning technology at new york airports which is a very important role that local airport authorities or the local jurisdictions can play because they, in fact, can take on the responsibility of making sure that traveler's rights are protected, that privacy, civil liberties are protected. they have the option of being able to do that, and i think the ability to get the new york city counsel to consider this and move this legislation forward speaks volumes about how up trucive this technology -- intrusive this technology is. when we, talking about the

sender -- when we were talking about the center of concern post 9/11, there is a line in the sand, and it's been crossed, and we're looking forward to hearing from congressman greenfield. last, we want to know where to go from here. what's the future going to look like? fortunately for us and for you here as well as those participating online, we have jim harper who is the directer of information policy studies for the cato institute. jim serves in the interest of the public as a member of the homeland security's data privacy and integrity advisory committee which is actually the committee, the advisory body within dhs to help guide the agency regarding privacy and security matters.

member rush holt's staff is also present with us at the table -- [laughter] which i didn't know was going to happen. i'll let you introduce yourself. >> this is what happens when you invite former officers to participate in the panel last minute. i'm senior advisor to rush holt. >> good to see you. i didn't see you come up. your training is very good. [laughter] i'd like to let troy speak and then of course let you speak, and then to the cangman and wrap up the panel's presentation with jim. without further adieu, i'll allow you to begin our discussion, troy, and then -- >> okay, thank you. thanks and thanks to epic for having this and for inviting us. when we first started the call, i'll go through the story, but as we introduced our bill and worked on this, epic was extremely helpful in helping us with the language and with kind

of advocacy and so we appreciate them. the way my boss, congressman from utah, sort of became interested in this was kind of just by chance. as a congressman who flies back and forth to his district, you know, every week basically, and the salt lake airport was one of the first airport with the machines. they were one the trial airports, and so he happened to see this and saw what was going on, and it was just -- i think we've sense become more informed and nowhere near, you know, mr. schneier about this, but at the time it was this intuitive gut feeling he had that these just didn't seem right that this was too much of an invasion of privacy, and as a newly elected congressman, i think he said, hey, i can actually do something

about this, and so the initial push that we had, we had a stand alone bill that would ban what was then called whole body imaging, tsa has renamed them the advanced imaging technology machines, but the original bill and what the amendment did was the same language was to ban the use of these as primary mandatory screening devices. we didn't want to go so far as to say these should never ever be used in any circumstance. we thought there might be a role if some other good reason showed that a certain individual, you know, needed additional screening, that there might be a use for this technology, but to have everyone have to go through these without any reasonable suspicion we thought was just far and above what needed to be and that was an invasion of

privacy. as lily said, we were able to, you know, get that attached as an amendment. it was a 310 yes votes, very bipartisan. i think as this conference shows, it's an issue that brings people, you know, from both ends of the political spectrum together. our bosses probably don't agree on a whole lot, you know, we can discuss that later, but they agree on this, # and they're not the only two of, you know, from different ends of the political spectrum, so we're happy that that passed. it stalled in the senate, and i can talk more later about what we want to do going forward, but we plan on reintroducing a similar bill that will have that same provision and will also address the new enhanced pat downs that weren't really a concern when we first introduced our bill. that's sort of background. i'm happy to take questions later.

>> thank you, and i'd like to hear from your colleague from rush holt's office and do a brief introdiewx of yourself. thank you. >> i want to thank epic for putting this on and mr. holt thanks you for inviting hem. as indicated, i've been with mr. holt for sever years -- several years now and handle a variety of security issues including this one. i'm not going to rehash everything he said this morning, but i want to echo everything my colleague, troy, had to say today. if there's anything to agree on democrats or republicans, it is the senate is the enemy when it comes to trying to accomplish anything on the behalf of the american people. i'm hoping we can make progress on this issue that mr. holt was very, v. supportive.

there's a number of things that i would be happy to get into details later, but i don't want to take the floor today since i'm a late addition. i'll hold that for the q&a session. >> thank you. congressman green field. >> thank you very much. i want to thank epic for putting this together and all of you here today. i know we're the last panel and things thin out, but you folks stuck around, and we appreciate that. you know, i actually came to learn about the concerns about the serious breech of privacy by the tsa much in the same way i learn about a lot of what's going on by chatting with my wife. my wife is here with us today, and we haven't been on vacation for awhile, and i asked her if she wanted to get away. she said not if we're flying. i don't want to go through scanners. until that point in time, i had heard about the scanners, but the way they were described by

the tsa was advanced imaging technology. i read stories in the paper that the airports would be among the first in the nation to begin using this technology, but like most americans, my reaction was great, safer airport. once my wife brought this concern to my attention, it quickly became clear if my wife was concerned about the scanners, i should look into them, and the more i did, the more appalled i became. i discovered the ts as in essence sense was engaging in thee theatrics. the more apt description is naked body scanners. what's more, these scanners did not work as advertised. readily available internet research confirm the scanners do not pick up liquids, powders, and plastics. these seem to be the perved materials of terrorists. after doing the research, i discovered some serious concerns as to whether it was the best available technology out there today.

someone who is active in politics my whole life, i dug more and it was clear. the lobbyists, some of the largest manufactures of these measures. well, there you go. if that is not bad enough, after the 2009 failed christmas bombing attack, this same former security of homeland security ran around the country proclaiming if only we had the naked body scanners, we could have prevented this bomber. now the former secretary mentioned several things. one, the bomber originated in a foreign country. having these machines here in the united states does not make a difference. it was not clear if the bomber had gone through the machines it would have picked up the ceo plusessive, en-- explosive and now the secretary was compensated by the same folks who manufacture these supposedly magical machines. in short, politics as usual. now, the truth is how they work in the political arena, i'm used to hundreds of millions of

dollar spent on proven technology because one company has the inside track. it's outrageous, but frequent. what i'm not used to the government voilting our 4th amendment privacy rights because the corporation was trying to make a few bucks. it became clear to me that my on stitch wents would be uncomfortable with these invasive scanners. as a new york city counselman to represent 200,000 people. i thought it was my responsibility to give them a voice, not to mention the millions of frustrated air travelers subject to these scans in new york city, home to the country's largest airport. the first thing i did was put in the legislative request to ban these scanners in all of new york city. after all, drawing on lessons learned in florida where these scanners were used in courthouses and tens of thousands of nude images saved, there was no question we in the city counsel have the authority from banning these machines.

additionally i incomed a ban for use of the scanners in new york city airports. the legal rational was simple. new york city owns the land that the airports operate on. yes, they lease and operate the land, but considering new york city owns the land, i believe that we can regulate what takes place on that land. our legislation has over a dozen members of the city counsel who support it, and quite frankly, i expect the port authority to serve the city if the legislation becomes law. that's beside the point. i have no problem with the legal challenge because that would afford the courts an opportunity to weigh in on the important issue because when i took oath of office, i'm upholding the constitution and state of new york and the constitution of the united states of america, and i take that quite seriously and i firmly believe that these ineffective and invasive scanners violate 4th amendment right of priefly. next steps, e encourage my

colleagues around the country to follow my lead and introduce regulation banning these scanners from buildings including their airports. as local elected officials who work, live, and legislate in the communities, we have the most interaction with the citizens, and we have the best understanding of their daily needs and concerns. there's no question that our citizens are concerned about naked body scanners, and there's no question that we have the ability to do something about it by banning those from our municipalities. thank you. [applause] >> jim? >> thank you everyone on the panel and lily for running us and this great conference here today. a lot of good stuff has been shared and gotten out there for more and more people to understand the issues better. i'm here as a member of the department of homeland securities advisory company and hasten to add nothing i say here

represent the view of the committee. they contradict the views of many of my friend on the committee leadership, and hello to you, i hope you're watching. [laughter] we've reviewed the scanning machines several times, but never asked to comment on them. i think given the review, the tsa privacy officer has done the best job to make this an effective system. we reviewed all the systems in place disieb designed to prevent people getting access to the images created by these machines. they've done the best they can, but it raises the question, how do you make privacy protective a fundamental invasive technology? to the extent that friends of

mine at tsa and dhs believe that they've got this right, i think they've mistaken one important thing which is what privacy is. privacy in its course is control, and control over information about yourself, and so when someone outside of you comes and says i'm going to do this to you now and the facts of what is exposed will be the same as before. it's the depp vaition of control without regard to the data. you're taking away the person's control. just as a mental exercise think about this. if somebody came to your fromentd door and said -- front door and said i'm going to put on a blindfold and i'm going to put plugs in my ears and stand in your bathroom while you shower, nothing happens to you at all. your privacy is protected.

do you believe it? of course not. we exclude people from the bathroom as an exercise of control. like wise, we put on clothes for that control. no amount of reassurance can restore that control. we've made decisions as individuals how to walk through the world, and the machine that undoes that undoes our control and in that sense our privacy. another error, and another area of the dhs is to have a risk tolerance that differs from the u.s. public's own risk tolerance. the dhs is a security organization, not a privacy organization. it's for all the efforts on privacy there, it's fundamentally a security organization. it's also not a risk managing organization. it's part of a risk management process pressing forward the

security element. other parties focus on privacy as we are doing here, others focus on cost effectiveness. so far again and again i've seen in the area of this technology and many other policies and programs the dhs saying that things are risk based. they sprinkle the word risk in their documents like parsely on a male, but it's just parsley, not the meal. one of the strongest point r for advocated here today representing this side is risk management. dhs should be releasing risk management so it can be the discussion of public debate and improvement and learn whether this program and technology is cost justified, privacy cost justified and so one. i think one the greatest weaknesses of this program that

is yet unsong is the time cost watching the videos that have gone up to dispel what happened to them at the airport, for example, you can see it takes 7 seconds, make it 5 or 10 seconds to go through the machines with 170 million em planements each year, you're talking more than $100 million in time costs to travelers in addition to the three people it takes to run these machines, but the time costs are what make people squeal if it gets to the point where it's mandatory procedure to go through. regrettably when i collaborated with aclu and others on the national id law that we've successfully fought back so far, regrettably a lot of state legislature got worried about

their constituents privacy when they saw how much it was going to cost to implement this national id, and i think that's what we'll see here as this go forwards, if it does, a lot of officials, some exceptions are here early, but a lot will realize this is a privacy problem when they realize how much gosh darn time it takes at the airport and how much it costs in dollars. pressing the risk issues are the big pictures going forward helping on a lot of other programs that are probably not validated. ultimately, we as a society, and this is very long term, not easy to do, but we have to press on it and a group like this can do a lot, we have to come out of this post 9/11 hunch where we treat, i think bruce's keynote was a good description of how to really think better about this stuff, where we treat terrorism as an existential threat. it's not where we cast aside our

own responsibilities for security believing it's going to be provided by somebody else. it is telling that the last line of security and a successful one in the attacks is the individual on the plane. it's a real part of our security. it's not one we want to rely on, but when we do, it has succeeded, so a lot of security is our job, government leaders are going to follow us, american citizens, in becoming more confident and expressing our indominantability rather than scaring us into submission. i look forward to the q&a obviously. thank you. >> [applause] >> thank you. i have to say this is a great last panel in a conference like this. the thing i think is very interesting about the department of homeland security is the newest, the largest, the wealthiest federal government -- at least nearly the largest

federal agency -- but it definitely has deep pockets in taxpayer dollars is the best way to put it, but it's also proven to be resistant to makes itself available, more transparent to the public which, i think, also helps and harden its shell. there's a turtle mentality there and they are waiting for the storm to pass and then they come out and continue in the direction of going to reach a particular point somewhere out there, and i'm not going to ask you talk about where that point might be, but the type of technology we see being deployed in airports, there are other forms of that technology out there. there's some forms that are portable and mobile that are being tested or even deployed, but what we learn and find out and we start working on these issues, i think there's a mind set that we're also combating,

and i wanted to get some ideas from the panel, what do you think is the most critical shift in mind set that has to happen either on the part of the department of homeland security or the part of elected local, state, or federal elected officials, or on the part of the citizens and the traveling public themselveses in order to turn the corner or make this change from the mind set that we've been following post-9/11 to the way we'll reestablish the role of government and the role of citizens and the role of agency employees? who would like to take that? >> i'd be happy to. that was a target rich environment. >> i tried to give you a lot of space. >> on the subject of other technologies, i think it's worth noting that the strip search

machines are not the only thing going. the dhs is working right now on basically taking it out of the airport and doing sort of, using a lot of the same technologies in mobile applications, so let's say going to a stadium or shopping mall or whatever it may be. i don't know if they'll produce nude images, but they examine what's under people's clothing as they walk to a form up using millimeter wave and other technology that's out there. there's other stuff where they want to measure a person's heart rate, movement of their eyes from a distance and then compare their reactions to different stimuli and things like this. we're talking about mobile lie detector machines. these are programs that are coming down the horizon. it's important to keep an eye on all different things that dhs is doing. as far as shift in mind set, aisle talk about how people need to understand terrorism, and

this is the shift of unt understanding it to dispel the mania we live under. terrorism is a strategy that seeks overreaction on the victim state. it's not that all terrorists are super good strategist, but they have an act of belonging and gang membership and that kind of thing, but it agents in ways that knocks the victim's state off our feet and often course. if people understand that and recognize that, they would criticize public policies more often. you hear it all the time people saying, well, if it makes us safer. well, that's precisely what they shouldn't say. does it make us safer. if it doesn't, this is terrorism working. the other thing, and i think a smaller group of people would be involved in this, but they should be, is get in the habit of asserting your rights. people in this room tend to do that and people watching online or tv have not gotten used to

it. when you assert your rights, you have a lot of power, and the strip search machines are a good example of that. when a small number of people decline the machine requiring pat downs, they are gumming up the works. they are raising the cost of having this technology in place, having this program if place, and that's good because this program probably shouldn't be in place. this program provides more -- too little security in terms of cost and privacy. asserting your right just once by one person makes a bigger difference than one thinks when averaging it across the population. >> i think the challenge that we face, you know, i think are all the issues that we really discussed at this conference; right? the reality is it's very difficult to change the mind set of individuals; right? most elected officials follow the lead of their constituents,

so i'm not convinced by telling people, hey, you know, you folks pay more attention that they're going to. for me, this situation over here of the naked body scanners is actually sort of the super bowl of privacy battles. why? because it's simple to understand; right? i tell people when they say, hey, what's the bad thing about the scanners? imagine what the tsa had a new rule. in order to get on airplanes, you have to walk through naked. they say that's ridiculous; right? that's what's happening. they require you to walk through naked. it doesn't matter that your neighbors don't see you, but the reality is someone behind a screen is looking at your naked body, and i think people find that offensive. one of the things i try to do is encourage people to speak out. that's how elected officials respond. when people write us or e-mail us, we as elected officials feel pressure, and we respond. one of the things i did was create a website similar to what

epic has which is www.reportts aabuse.com. if you have abuse that happens in a new york city airport, i take your information and forward it to a prosecutor's office. we know for a fact that these tsa agents are very poorly veined and in some cases have criminal backgrounds. they actually have an opportunity sadly enough to abuse individuals. for me, i think this is a unique situation where we have to encourage people to speak out about situations that they had and the best way to do that is reach out to your local elected official and tell them whether it's the legislature, member of congress, state legislature, i had a very bad experience, and this is simply unacceptable, and that's how elected officials respond. >> thank you. >> i i wanted to hear from the perspective of the new congress. we have some bipartisanship happening here, and it's a beautiful thing especially on

this particular issue. i think there are cost issues that are on the table, hundreds of millions of dollars, contracts have been inked. will are be investigations to find out what has been done, has followed the requirements set out by congress, the oversight of the agency spending of funds, and whether the technology actually does what it's being sold to be doing, and then what can be done to recruit some of those funds? what can be done to stop the deployment of not just whole body imaging in airports, but also looking at another setting where agencies are looking to deploy technology or advance these systems? any thoughts? >> sure. my boss is going to be the or i goes -- guess now is the chairman of the oversight reform committee that has jurisdiction over homeland

security, foreign affairs, and national defense, and so one of the things we want to do is just what you talked about, lillie, is have robust hearings on all the issues that have been talked about today. in terms of is this really effective? have you looked into the health concerns that mr. holt raised? on and on and on, the issues you talked about and raised in this conference, it's great to do this amongst us. it's even better to, you know, have someone from tsa having them testify under oath before congress and to really answer some of these tough questions. i know that's something my boss is looking to do. i suspect and hope that doing that will be, they will have bipartisan support in doing that, and i guess we'll go from there. we'll have the hearings and get some answers or won't get some answers, and i think to kind of

the earlier question, our open is that something like that can help sort of change the debate, can help people so understand that this is all security theater, that they are giving up all sorts of rights in exchange for basically no security. you always hear this, you know, you give up some security for liberty or some liberty for security, and you debate where to draw the line. i think in this case, that's a false debate. it's not always a false debate, but in this case, you're giving up liberty and because these don't work that well and because we're not really doing airport security the way we should be, you're not getting really anymore security in it. i think once the american people realize that, that the public opinion will sort of snowball in our favor. .. snowball in our favor. >> that we pick up on your cost.

how much money is poured into the upper one of security since 111? about $360 billion through fiscal year ten. that is before billion. what are we getting for our money? that is part of the question we have to ask what are we getting for our money? this is at least part of the way i answer it. shortly after the war and afghanistan kicked off, then secretary defense rumsfeld paid a visit to my home state of missouri and gave a speech at the air force base kind talking about the road ahead if you will. and this is one of the most memorable quotes. we have two choices. either we change the way we live for we must change the way that they live. we choose the latter.

the problem is the opposite has happened and that $360 billion in just talked about is one prime example of that. if it hadn't been for the 9/11 intelligence failure we never would have spent that money. that is money that would have gone for roads, bridges, education or to be bipartisan here in the taxpayers' pockets. and that is how al qaeda unfortunately is winning and goes back to what bruce was saying in the previous talk that he gave. that is what the cost we are dealing with, so we can't just measured purely of the dollar's almost a third of a trillion dollars. that is a lot of money even by washington standards. we can be getting a lot more for our money and better and to that end i will quickly back to one of the things talked up this morning and that is this complete disconnect and this gets me going as a former

intelligence officer. the complete disconnect between having the transportation security agency come to the hill on november 18th of 2010 and said in a room with several hundred staffers and dillinger the unclassified and reporting quite frankly recitation of the al qaeda threat and then segue into a very graphic demonstration of these pat-down techniques and to see the complete disconnect between the two. they are running everybody from these machines and they are putting down your grandmother and your children, and that no intel to back it up. as said this morning the cops don't roust each and every one of the self our beds every morning and say what are you going to come today? yet that is exactly how we are treating the flying public. and that is the single greatest thing that i can cast a change in the short term. that is the key thing. we've got to mandate that if these kinds of invasive pat

downs and the use of these machines are going to take place assuming that issues and related issues can be addressed it's got to be tied to intelligence on a bad guy. that in my judgment is the single biggest change we can make a what directly and immediately help the fleeing public and probably saved a whole lot of the 360 billion at the same time. >> i like what you said, and you are obviously doing some clear thinking and it's nice to see bipartisanship i hope will hold together on this. there is an interesting dynamic going on shift back in people's thinking of this in light of the fact there is so much distaste for the strip search machine solved by the strip search everyone is going back to that. we need it to be intelligence base or to profiling. and that's stuff we've seen before. if you have very precise intelligence obviously you use it but if your intelligence is

something loose like someone flying into the united states for many of 13 countries you really haven't got much to go on and so i'm worried we are going to move back to a debate we have six or seven years ago on should we know more about all of our passengers, deep background checks on them we have to have a strong buy the system so we need to start building a national i.d. and so on and so forth. we had that debate and went away and rightly so. the solution in this area and i will cite another statistic bruce snyder had a lot of good ones the last decade there have been 99 million domestic flights to the united states carrying 7 million passengers. that is carl and there have been zero bombs detonated on planes. the bombs snuck on were coming from overseas and they didn't successfully detonated. that is by almost anyone's reckoning into a small risk. very small risk of something really bad happening. risk acceptance, risk acceptance

is almost swear word inside the washington, d.c. bulkeley but something i get to see because my special job this is an area there might not be better security measure we should be taking in lieu of this there should just be not this. we are going to open up for questions, but it got to think that we are going to have a new term for the spirit of stinking pinball security theater but anyway i digress. i would open up for questions for the audience and if there are some from the boat audience if you could tweet them to the twitter feed that we have. >> i don't mean to complicate things, but i want to go off a comment that troy made about in some issues there is a trade-off between security and human rights for liberty and this one

does not. having worked on these issues with colleagues from the aclu the bill of rights defence committee which was a catalyst to work with the agency of the local level and resolutions against the patriot act, against the racial profiling, a whole cluster of issues we saw after 9/11, that effort was successful the local level test and 400 resolutions and i hope that you will work with us now on the ordnances the bill of rights defence working on it, www.dorc.org. but my question is isn't it the case it certainly seems to us that so often security and human rights will be good together and what we are seeing is a whole cluster of issues that involve illegal invasive overly broad harsh counterproductive ineffective action, and i'm thinking of the patriot act which is up for renewal again next month and my question to

you, council member greenfield, is can we get an ordinance, not just a resolution that will be against that in new york as we did previously in the resolution basis around the country again and that the federal level is there any hope are we just whistling past the graveyard here is it too late to hope that we can finally get backed the individual rights of suspicion again and reverse things like the patriot act and the massive warrantless surveillance? a whole cluster of issues. the fbi infiltration of peace groups it doesn't just stop with the standards they are emblematic of this over broad security approach, but i would like to ask all the panelists and in your policy perspective what do we have? >> i want to start fighting to make some good points and you know, just to reiterate what jim said a moment ago to think of the very important point is that

you know, in many cases i think that we have a small perspective that bidder is more, right? i'm sorry, more is better. more isn't always better. so, this is a typical question jim pointed out that i get all the time people ask me if we are not going to use these machines what are we going to do? the answer is we are doing okay without these machines, right? these are not magical machines and in fact what is the most effective is a simple trick to google will tell you these machines do not actually work and so i think that, you know, we have all of us have a responsibility and on the local level, you know, one of the - what is innovative about what we've done is we are trying to pass an actual wally in the resolution, resolutions are great and we pass a lot of them that we need to pass a law that bans something i think that actually has more teeth and then quite frankly, the federal government has to pay attention and then the authorities very quickly, on the phone and say we would love to get together and talk about your thoughts and when you are planning on doing

and we have over a dozen co-sponsors. so there is no question there's a lot of areas of concern. one of the areas of concern is the recent decision coming out of california is the police can actually searched for yourself phones. do you know what i have on my cell phone? my entire life. everything. so basically you can now do a warrantless search on my entire life by peeking into my cellphone. that's very disturbing and there is no question the local level we have to do what we can but we shouldn't short the responsibility of my friends to the left of me who in congress actually bear the primary responsibility for taking action on these gross violations of privacy. >> i have for now being someone who works for a member of congress, and i'm not a member of congress i don't want to speak for my boss and specifics on the patriot act for a sample, but i will say in general in

terms of this congress and some of these issues and i think a lot of what you mentioned sort of the gps wireless truckers and the cell phones, a lot of this technology based where there are new technologies that sort of have privacy implications and oftentimes fourth amendment implications we haven't faced before and as you mentioned courts across the country are sort of struggling with this and sometimes they are on the side of just law enforcement and looking at the phone is no deal i think the court cases just like looking at pack of cigarettes, and then on the other hand think about what we have on our phone needy that should be private, you should probably need a warrant to look at my phone. and so, in general those issues what i would say, and congress is just getting started on this i don't know if this is right but this is my hunch, with a lot of the new republican members who in the house are coming in a lot of tomorrow, you know, sort

of limited government individual liberties and individual freedom i think many of them would be receptive to some of those arguments and that these sorts of areas will be some where we can have sort of this issue and interesting kind of left right bipartisan agreement as we were on these issues and we try to find the right balance. >> if you heard my boss this morning in his quip about wondering whether or not we would have a fourth amendment read on the floor or the house today you kind of get a sense of where he is at. he of course as opposed to the patriot act is to defeat what became known as the protect america act, the flawed amendment act so his record on civil liberties, the promotion, the protection of civil liberties without compromising the security of the country is

very, very well-established. i agree i think there will be opportunities to try to do this but i will also tell you as someone who worked in the intelligence community for many, many years whose spouse still works in the intelligence committee and has a lot of friends in the intelligence community we are going to get an avalanche, and i mean an avalanche of pressure to simply pass the patriot act reauthorization straight up. i guarantee you, and i will predict to you we will see a statement of the administrative policy from this president asking for just that. that's sad, that is tragic in my opinion but i think that is what we are going to see. so if you to change the dynamic you've got to talk to your neighbors. you've got to line up every blog, every last tool you've got at your disposal to educate everyone that you know about the consequences of allowing the to go forward because adding that

is the great fever i personally have and i will use the old fraud and now the chief. you throw a frog into boiling water and he jumps right out. but you put one in there and just turning up slowly and it's one of those classic acronyms he's just going to cook right there. that is what is happening to our liberty in this country because it is being taken away from us. we are allowing it to be taken away from us bit by bit and it sounds reasonable and it sounds very rational. we've got to do what is necessary to keep the bad guys at bay. nobody disagrees with what is reasonable and necessary to keep the bad guys at bay but it's not reasonable and rational to see if i were a california citizen that my cell phone is up for grabs to take a look at so we have got a lot of work to do. that work is going to be done by you all and the councilman hit the nail on the head.

you've got to line up the phones and get e-mail going you just make it an issue. that's how you are going to have a chance to try to rule this fact. >> briefly your question to me goes to what i call the strategic player of security the individual stops the attack whether or not the strip search machines work. the strategically arista furthest outlier one of the furthest out layers don't give people a reason to want to come and attack the united states it's smart, makes good sense and strategy. regard that as a cost of our foreign policy at least. and second, don't need it fun to attack the united states. i see don't make it fun almost the size of the because if you read the people who are actively

studying terrorism, we think of them of course because of their affect, we think your geopolitical lectors because of what osama bin laden says. most are not geopolitical actors. they are people with nothing else to do. they want to be part of something that's a big community can put the american president in the eye that's huge. if they can knock the united states of its game that is what they want to be a part of, as a part of our job in responding to that, though strategically year to our security is not being knocked off hour game. it is being brave and not worrying about it. it's arresting as bruce said terrorist suspects without making a big deal about it. throw them in prison blues or worse yet, the orange jumpsuits and put them away having found them criminally liable. they are criminals, not dramatic antiheroes. that is what some of what you're going to, lots of u.s. policies have helped my terrorism

stronger. >> thank you so much. the gentleman in the very back standing. thank you. >> mr. harper mentioned vigilance as part of the protecting airlines or air plans. i was wondering what panel fault of the idea of allowing select passengers to carry guns as a way of defending then. >> there was an ad on tv other day for it was a football and and all the guys that have super bowl rings were allowed to go right through security and all the guys that don't have to go through the machines and what not and i think was jimmy johnson, he had a machete with him and the security guard was like well, go on. if i knew everybody on the plane if i knew him well enough i would be all right with whatever weapon on the plane.

myself, my risk assessment is probably not to be on the same plan with strangers who have guns that can do that much damage. >> everybody should be about to make their own risk assessment and frankly airlines should be able to advertise the risk assessment that they make and to plan and get it wrong. i would much rather be debating what single policy the government should have for all of us. i would much rather have airline security be disbursed to the people and businesses to have an interest in it. if an airline and its most important something we sealed after 9/11, its most important and airline paid the price if it failed to secure its infrastructure. >> i don't think it is a good idea for one reason you are basically -- if there would be would-be terrorists you're putting the gun on the plane. to have to remember that average citizens are not trained if a terrorist who is trained in

terms of activities as far as grabbing a gun or as far as attacking an individual especially in close quarters so you have a terrorist that goes on a plane and has a gun you are making it a little too easy perhaps for the terrorist simply to attack the other person and by the gun in close quarters told think it's a good idea. >> thank you. >> thanks for a much for your presentation especially jim. [laughter] one of my concerns people on the panel earlier today when asked what would you do other than the body scanners is intelligence and rely on intelligence and also kind of an illusion you should be looking at other people, not my daughter, not my grandmother with the implication being some sort of profiling is

perhaps justified, inconvenient for other people who are not like me, makes them go through the body scanner, not me because i'm obviously good. so my concern about the intelligence is the art of homeland security showing the dhs agents around the country as chip said and anybody whose politics are a little bit critical for their comfort zone so i have a concern about relying on the intelligence, the intelligence we are seeing going on is just really not very good. estimate i will take a quick stab at that. as mr. holt indicated this morning, we are not talking about profiling on the basis of any kind of ethnic religious or other characteristic. here we are talking about specific actionable data on specific individuals.

that is how the system ought to actually work and at least in theory if you listen to general petraeus and the folks over in the theater this is the approach that they tried to accuse with respect to the predator drawn attacks the the use regularly on a daily basis to go after al qaeda and taliban related leadership. and now i am not going to make a statement one way or the other about the wisdom of that particular approach. i simply offer it as an analogy about how we intelligence when it is used in a targeted and a calibrated way can actually have an effect. the issue that you and chip have raised with respect to kind of this whole domestic surveillance problem i think is somewhat of a separate issue and i say that because dhs at least with respect to how their screeners

and the folks that operate in their reports are supposed to go about their business is very, very discreet from the very irresponsible behavior the fbi for example is engaged in with respect to the thomas martin senator incident and others that the doj inspector general issued their report on have to refresh my memory chip was out early lead last year when they put that one out there is a discrete issue there is an issue that does need to be addressed and it gets to this larger mentality, this larger surveillance statement mentality that has kind taken hold in this post 9/11 world supply due to weakened >> those problems out even though to a certain degree they are somewhat related. >> i want to thank you. we are right at the close but i have a couple of things that i think our observations about the lessons learned by those on the outside of the national

intelligence, national defence will enforcement who work in policy regarding privacy and civil liberties. electronic privacy information center we think technology is wonderful, and we have lots of it and love to use it. but we also noticed that in a policy framework there was an advisory committee that congress had in place that would help us figure out what was real and what was and when they were looking at technology and funding technology or allowing the agents riding into the legislative proposals requirements regarding technology and it's kind of given way that technology is a lot like butter. there are few things that are not improved if you added. policy that isn't well crafted were understood and implemented in ways that are appropriate

along with the capacity to men beings to actually manage the technology that they are now relying on for critical things the real prospect that if people are put into an environment where they are told technology is there to the job but their ability to get to be vigilant, be responsive, be alert will be seriously impacted so the thing you're protecting against you actively solicits happening and in this context we're talking about people's lives. we are very interested in not having bad outcomes. we don't want to see bad outcomes. we don't want to see another attack. but we also understand that there are a host of things that are happening on a daily basis in the lives of individuals that cost lives, cost help that cause a great deal of harm that are not being focused on and i think

the thing that most of simplifies the post-9/11 mentality of the focusing on one kind of threat was in 2005 when we saw hurricane katrina hid new orleans. we had the department of homeland security that also had the federal emergency management agency. that agency had a bad reputation for president clinton took office, the rehabilitated the agency and turned it into something that when a disaster happened it wasn't called the second disaster. it actually brought health and was affected. watching what happened to orleans is a metaphor for what has happened to the nation been so focused on one type of disaster looking behind us constantly preparing to have that rematch. there is no rematch. there is only tomorrow and the next day which we cannot see clearly that we can anticipate certain things will be true. there will be another hurricane

out there somewhere. there will be another earthquake. there will be another flood. there will be another tsunami, there will be something. there will be man-made, non-man made things we will have to deal with. we've got to have a mind set regardless of the source of the disaster. you look at the before. how can we compare individuals to be their best resource to each other because the most immediate help we are going to have in any disaster is the person right next to you commit yourself and the person right next to you. the ability to be able to weather the storm until more significant help will our life is training and preparation a making those resources available to individuals. but it first begins with the mindset to read this nation wasn't founded by people who were cowards, people who were fearful. people can hear some voluntarily and some involuntarily. but when they can hear some people were here and how to deal

with the arrival of people they had never seen, technology the didn't understand. we figured out how to make it to this point. together, we made it. but now we're facing a challenge of our own desire and our own making. we will make it and survive it but we have got to be honest with ourselves and with each other. the demand we place on government that it must protect us from all harm and threat of a particular type meant that when we were faced with a different type of threat and nearly 2,000 people died of new orleans. that is unacceptable. and if you want to find the source we have to look in the mirror ourselves because we did not say to our government as the people to its government trying to prepare for a threat that already happened is unacceptable we will look to the future with the same passion and spirit that helped found this country. we have got to do better than

this and to begin the process we've got to demand more of ourselves as citizens then we can look them square in the audience and we can demand more of you as our representatives. i want to thank you for sticking out today. [applause] [inaudible] you have got great feedback from the panels that have been here getting good ideas about what we need to do as citizens, what we need to do as advocates and what we need to do as those who are elected officials, those serving public service we don't disrespect people who serve our country who serve in public service. we appreciate what they are doing but we also know we shouldn't be asking the impossible of them. thank you very much for your time today and i look forward to continuing this discussion and dialogue at epic.org. there's also the privacy coalition which is a list of organizations that have been working long and hard not only on this issue but a number of issues and we invite you to visit our web site and learn more about the work of the

advocacy community on privacy issues. thank you. [applause] [inaudible conversations]

and in the british house of commons this morning by minister david cameron offered support to australia for the record-breaking floods there. he also responded to questions about bonuses and tax cuts given to bankers. this is 30 minutes.

>> order. questions for the prime minister? mr. david hanson. >> thank you mr. speaker. i'm sure the whole house willsue wish to join me in paying tribute to corporal steven stephen dunne from 216 parachute signal squadron who died on the 21st of december to warrant officer class to charleswoodr from 23 pioneer regiment corps who died on the 28th of d december and two private just say that meta-poet from the sutherland highlanders oriole o scotland. these were courageous and selfless servicemen these were courageous and selfless servicemen who made the ultimate sacrifice in the fight to make our country a safer place. we send our deepest condolences to their families, friends and colleagues. >> here, here. >> this morning i spoke to the australiian prime minister for the appalling floods and damage

in queensland and we were thinking of her and the australiian people at this time. i shall have further such meetings later today. >> could i indulge of the to the troops and the australian people. he will also recall in the coalition document his solemn promise to take action on bankers bonuses and he's renegatives on his second promise why should we ever trust him again? >> the reason we had to put up value added tax is because of the complete and utter mess we were left by the government. i know they are now denial about this. but the fact is we had one of the biggest budget deficits in the g8, one of the worst records on debt anywhere that you could mention. we had to take action and the

reason we can now discuss taxes and bankers bonuses and we're not queuing behind greece and ireland of a bailout is because what this government took. >> thank you, mr. speaker. the prime ministerless know of the good progress in the regeneration of my constituency gloster. >> would the prime minister agree with me in line with the localism agenda the best thing now is to transfer those assets as soon as possible to the city council for the development for the benefit of the city and can i highlight how much support this has? >> we're going to pay tribute to my honorable friend to what he does to help drive the regeneration efforts. gloucester and we're having stronger local enterprise partnerships and i think there's much more room for good local developments including in

gloucester. >> dave miliband. >> thank you, mr. speaker. can i join it is prime minister in paying tribute to corporal steven dunn from the signal squadron, and charles wood and 23 pioneer wood and the private from the public highlanders fifth battalion the while regiment of scotland. we pay tribute to them for their heroism, their commitment and their dedication and our hearts go out to their families and friends. i also join the prime minister in sending condolences to the australian people who are affected with the floods. in opposition the prime minister said and i quote, whether the taxpayer owns a large stake in a bank we are saying that no employee shall be paid a bonus of over 2,000 pounds. can the prime minister update us on the progress in implementing this?

[laughter] >> what i would say is this, it was -- it was the last government that bailed out the banks and asked for nothing in return. that is what happened. the reason we have difficulties with royal bank of scotland this year is because of the completely inadequate account that was initiated by the government that he supported. what we all want to see is the banks paying more in tax and we will see that. we want to see the banks do more lending and we will see that and we want to see the banks cut and we will see that. perhaps make a constructive suggestion. >> the country is getting fed up with the prime minister's suggestions of the bank. he made a promise of no bank bonus over 2,000 pounds. it's still on the conservative website.

it's a promise broken. now, he can't offer the bank of bonuses, let's try on the bank of tax. committee explain to the british people why does he think it's fair and reasonable at a time when he's raising taxes on everyone else to be cutting taxes this year on the banks? >> we're not. >> i know the shadow chancellor can't do any math on that. let me give you the figures. last year the banks paid $18 billion in tax. this year they will pay $20 billion in taxes. their taxes will be going up. he just needs to look at page 91 of the office of budget responsibility published in november. labour's payroll tax on the banks raised 3.5 billion pounds.

his banking levee is raising just 1.2 billion pounds. in any one language that is a tax cut for the banks. why doesn't the prime minister just admit it? >> i've given him the numbers the taxes are going up. 18 billion to 20 billion. now, let me explain -- now let me explain the numbers in terms of his bank bonus tax and our bank levee because obviously he can't get the numbers from the man sitting next to him so let me give him the numbers. the bank bonus tax raised net 2.3 billion pounds. and the author of that tax is sitting over there, the former chancellor says you cannot go on introducing this tax here year after year. the bank levee will raise 2.5 billion pounds each year once it's clearly up and running. >> yes, yes. 2.5 billion, even the shadow chancellor can tell him 2.5 billion is more than 2.3 billion. and with the magic of addition,

if you have a bank levee every year, which we supported and he opposed, they said don't do that do it, remember that, we will raise $9 billion compared to his 2.3 billion. even the shadow chancellor can work out that it's bigger than 2.3. >> mr. speaker, i think that is as close as we get to an admission to the prime minister that he is cutting taxes on the banks. the obr is clear they raised 3.5 billion pounds and he will be raising 2.2 billion pounds in the bank's levee. he can't answer on banks and bonuses. we know the business secretary is not a man to mess with because he told them he had a

nuclear weapon in his pocket and he wasn't afraid to use it so we would listen to him and he said -- and he said if you keep people in the dark you grow a poisonous fungus he wasn't talking about the bank of ex-checker. he was talking about the banks. why doesn't he listen to his business secretary and listen to our proposal of his disclosure of all bonuses over a million pounds. it's on the statute books. it's ready to go. why doesn't he just get on with it? >> i think that was such a long question that i think the honorable gentleman -- i think the honorable gentleman should be thinking of a television career and he should get his brother to run the labour party. he would have a better way around. >> you don't have to be -- look, we want greater transparency but let me put this to him. he had 13 years to put these rules in place. why didn't he ever get around to it? >> dave miliband?

>> you know he doesn't have the answers when he starts asking the questions? now, let me tell the prime minister he is now in the position of being a more of a defender of the bank than even the banks themselves because steven he is banker. the walker report the labour department commissioned which made this recommendation and would be implemented for the whole industry. i'm not arguing about it. i have no great problem with the issue of transparency and would have no difficulty. mr. speaker, on the banks the pm has had eight months to hold them to account. he's had eight months to hold them to account. when is he going to start? >> i take a lecture from a lot of people on how to regulate banks. i won't take one from the people opposite who let them get away

with absolutely murder. who was it who set up the bank regulation that completely failed? who bailed out the banks and got nothing return. and who agreed on the contract and had nothing about the bank and the right honorable gentleman was at the treasury there. he was there when they knighted good win and they knighted him for services of england and they sent with him a 17 million pound payoff and that's why they will never trust them on labour or the economy again. and what he was he saying when all this was going on, deregulate the banks even more. he even put the vulcan on his policy of the banks. planet redwood and planet cameron and that is the truth, mr. speaker. there we have it. life in 2011 on planet cameron. one rule for the banks.

another for everybody else. and is there any wonder that now we know why his minister -- his health minister says, i don't want you to trust david cameron. he has values that i don't share. the health minister knows he's out of touch. the house knows he's out of touch and now because of his failure with the banks, the whole country knows he's out of touch. >> i think he knows this just isn't working. >> yeah. >> we've ended up -- we've ended up with a shadow chancellor who can't count and a labour leader who doesn't count. [laughter] >> he was in the treasury. what did he do? what did he do when they set up the regulatory system that failed? he did nothing. what did he do when they paid out $11 billion to bankers, he did nothing. what did he say when he abolished boom and bust. he did nothing. he is the nothing man when he's

at the treasury man and the nothing man now and he's trying to run the treasury. >> they have been involved in the last year's -- helping over 2,000 people. would the prime minister agree to meet with the delegation to hear about the importance of their local knowledge? and skills. and also to hear how we can avoid a fiasco similar to what we saw with the regionalization of fire services? >> i look very carefully at the time of this announcement of exactly what's being proposed in terms of the coast guard and there are proposals to try to and put more on the front line by sharing back-office services in the way we coordinate the coast guard. i know there are very strong local feelings. i will arrange for her to meet with the transparent secretary to discuss this because what is essential we have really good coast guard coverage for all of our country. >> the prime minister has just

confirmed to everybody listening that he's not taking any action on the bankers bonuses. at the same time his government is removing the mobility element for thousands of people living in residential areas. is that the influence of the liberal democrats or the unfinished business of them? >> obviously, i actually said no things. you obviously were not listening to the interesting exchanges we were having. let's be clear, we want a settlement where their examines go up, their lending goes up and their bonuses come down instead of posturing and posing about it. we're actually doing something about it. in terms of disability, in terms of disability, living allowance, this is an important issue. the intention here is very clear that there should be a similar approach for people who are in hospital and for people who are in residential care homes. that is what we intend to do and that is what i'll make sure happens.

>> may i ask the prime minister to look favorably and flexibility upon community groups to hold street parties to celebrate the forthcoming royal wedding? >> i will certainly do that. i'm sure some of the large trade unit, everyone else wants to have a well celebration for the alikes, and the diamond jubilee and the royal wedding. >> and i wish to give my condolences to the soldiers who died fighting for their country and charlie wood a supporter and our prayers are with the families. mr. speaker, the business secretary compromised himself over the takeover. his culture secretary has

declared that -- or the prime minister knows it's the right thing and the culture secretary to repair the takeover bed to the competition commission. >> first of all, i think the honorable gentleman is entirely right to pay tribute and he spoke about him very movingly. on the issue of the responsibility for media mergers there is a proper process that needs to be followed. ministers have a quasi-judicial role in doing that and i'm confident the arrangements that are put in place will do that. >> thank you, mr. speaker, as chairman of the all-party homeland security group, may i commend the prime minister and the government for having a very proper internal discussion about the future of control. given that president obama himself has been unable to deliver his pledge to close guantanamo bay, wouldn't it be ludicrous to suggest that some kind of simple answer to this problem and we look forward to seeing his proposals.

>> we do face an enormously dangerousus terrorist threat and it's a threat the british judicial system have struggled to meet and the reason we all talked about reviewing control orders is we want to make sure the answer we come up with is good for liberty and good for security. i can see the shadow home secretary nodding and i hope we can reach all-party agreement on this important issue. >> thank you, mr. speaker. does the prime minister think it's fair or reasonable of that training should have their ema support withdrawn for the secretaries year. isn't this a case of breaking our promises and letting them down. >> we will be replacing it and we want to look carefully on how best to replace it but there are two very important facts i think we have to bear in mind. the first is the researchers find that 90% of recipients of

ema will be staying on at school in any event. and secondly, again with all-party support we're raise got participating support to 18. for those two reasons i think it's right to look for a replacement that is more tailored and more targeted and will help to make sure that those children who really need it get that extra money to stay in school. >> thank you, mr. speaker. i made the prime minister understand that there is a huge amount of support for the uptick convoy veterans of world war to receive a medal. but does he also appreciate that in order for their remaining representatives of this incredibly brave group of men to receive this recognition in their lifetime and that the time to act is right now? >> i do. i have considerable sympathy with what the right honorable lady have said. it does seem to me -- of course you have to have -- you have to have -- yes, we given by

consent. we do have to have proper rules here but it seems to me, people on these convoys served on these incredibly hard conditions and were able to serve for a very long time and there is a case that they have missed out and many are coming to the end of their lives and it would be good to do more than what they've done. >> thank you, mr. speaker. which does the prime minister consider to be a worst political betrayal, a liberal democrats deputy prime minister not to introduce tuition fees but did but they promised to introduce a fuel duty stabilizer and didn't? >> i think you can topple those with an snp who said they would have an referendum on s & p and never did. >> thank you, mr. speaker. my local conservative council

has announced a council tax freeze while protecting essential public services. now, there were many in the country and indeed some in this chamber that it's possible. what message would the prime minister send to those to be deny that it's possible for government to deliver more for less? >> well, i actually commend what my honorable friend said. the fact is, of course, we are making reductions in local government grant, although when you look at the figures, what local government will get in 2013 is actually equivalent to what they get in 2007 so i think we should keep these reductions in perspective but i would urge every local counsel to look at what it will do by sharing services and chief executives bireducing back-office cost and take the money so they can reduce by less. >> with the government cutting 20,000 front line officers, will he give me that crime will come

down on his watch. >> and the fact is only 11% of police officers at any one time are out on the beat. i have the figures for the north wales police and yes, of course, there are some spending reductions are being made and i'm answering his question and when it comes to the funding in 2011, '12 it will be the same as the funding they had in 2007, '8 so it's perfectly possible to have effective crime fighting to get police out in the street in north wales. >> given the rural nature and the impact of the record of them, will the prime minister look as what the chancellor is undertaking in june and offer a fuel stabilizes -- stabilizer. >> and we have looked at the

rural areas and some progress was made on the budget issues. on the fuel stabilizer, yes, the treasury are looking at this because clearly there is a case for saying as the oil price rises, if it can be shown the treasury benefits from extra revenue, there should be a way of sharing that from the motors who are suffering from all prices and while we hear by all the chattering from the party opposite, the last fuel duty increases were all increased in their budget. >> the disclose of the new passport of it will have a devastating on 250 families involved. and an effect of the economy of newport. can i give an assurance that no final decision will be taken until the economic impact assessment is published and considered? >> well, i know how important the pos part office has been to newport and how many jobs it has provided obviously we want to see diverse economies right

across our country and that is what the regional growth fund is there to help achieve in terms of areas that are threatened with public sector job reductions. but i'll certainly look at the case the specific question and i'll make sure he has an answer. >> the prime minister will record his visit to my constituency hospital as part of supporting the campaign to prevent the forced closer of ame and consultant-led services. does he agree with me that there should be no forced closures particularly given -- particularly given -- particularly given the fact that our local gp's are opposed to it as are indeed the residents? >> my right honorable friend makes a very good point. any local changes to the nhs have got to meet four tests. they've got to have the support of local gp's and strong public and patient engagement and they

got to provide support for patient choice there were no tests like that under the last government that had these top-down reconstructions. there are no tests and they will be adhered to by this government. >>erny chapman? -- jenny chapman. >> the business secretary wants to moves jobs from darlington what is the prime minister going to do to stop it? >> we agree with the program that was started not by the last government but actually by several previous governments of trying to diversify and spread jobs out of whitehall and into the regions and we should continue with that. >> order, i want to hear brandon lewis. >> it has been approved as one of the schemes for the gp practitioners. the local health teams with the officers. what will the government newer that we will deliver on this sfroj >> i'm delighted that his

constituency is taking part in this pathfinder project. those people who say that somehow nhs reform is being introduced in one big start are completely wrong. there's 25% of gp's are going forward to make this work. there's huge enthusiasm amongst gp's to get this moving and i think it will show real benefit in terms of patient choice. and what i would say to everyone in this house, the idea that there is somehow a choice of a simple life where you just don't reform the nhs, when you have rising drug bills, rising treatment bills and frankly a record in this country where we are not ahead in europe on cancer outcomes and all stroke outcomes and heart outcomes is not a sensible option. it's right to make this coalition and it is digging an unacceptable status quo. >> the prime minister -- the prime minister will be aware of the changes to the rescue and coast guard and a protector of

the proposed closer of the coast guard station and the exchange of responsibilities to scotland. will the prime minister ensure the house today that the future of the coast guard station -- that it will be for air city rescue and that the people of northern ireland in northern ireland will be safe and secure? >> i have been lobbied sensitively about the rescue including by people from all walks of life, if i can put it that way and i totally understand the need for air, sea, rescue. i think what matters is not necessarily who is carrying it out but are they fully qualified? and is it a good service and is that valued for money. >> in reviewing antiterrorist laws, will my right honorable friend ensure that there's a balance between the police having the powers and detention and arrest and making sure that there is a return to the rule of

law as it is understood? >> i think my honorable friend is absolutely right. that we should not depart from normal procedures and practices in terms of british law and justice unless it's absolutely necessary. you have to defend every change in that way. and i think -- as i said earlier, we do face a terrorist threat that is materially different to what we face for the ira. we face a threat where people are quite prepared to murder themselves and as many as they can at any occasion. so we are -- it is difficult to meet this using all the existing methods. that's why control orders were put if place and that's why their replacement is put in place that is good for their liberty and their security. i'm absolutely convinced that we will do this and we will do it in a way that has the support of the police and the security services and those who i pay tribute today from this dispatch box for all their work for keeping us safe. >> mr. speaker, we rack the valuable work that the armed

forces do and from watching and protecting democracy. in some of the most dangerous parts of the world. and yet they see their own prime minister in their own country sacrificing democracy to a foreign media basis hear no evil, see no evil, can the prime minister explain why? >> i'm afraid i didn't quite get the gist of that question. [laughter] >> so i'll have to -- the point i would make is the media regulation is properly carried out in this country and by this government and it will be done in a way that is fair and transparent. that is what -- that is what needs to happen, that is what will happen. >> the right to strike is an important one. and the hallmark of a free society. but with it comes responsibilities. will he agree that any union ballot that these two industrial actions will have the majority

support of those entitled to vote? >> well, i know -- i know there is a strong case being made not in the least by my colleague the mayor of london for this sort of change. i'm very happy to look at the arguments for it because i want to make sure that we have a fair body of union law in this country. i think the laws put in place in the 1980s are working well. we don't currently have proposals to amend them but i'm very happy to look at this argument 'cause i don't want to see a wave of irresponsible strikes when they are not by people taking part. >> thank you, mr. speaker. my a vision and remarkable face once said this prime minister is an absolute genius in translating flam l.a. county languages. one such example because it's some day to be adopted.

>> i don't accept that for a moment that they will make sure we rationalize all of the nongovernmental bodies there are. and it will save billions of pounds in the process. it's a very sensible process of asking the question what should be part of government and properly accountable for this house and what doesn't need to be done and, therefore, can be team away. and as i say, it will save billions of pounds and a very good thing, too. >> henry smith. >> thank you, very much, mr. speaker. will the prime minister join me in congratulating the league of friends on helping secure a new mammogram machine for that hospitals? can the prime minister explain the way we can have better cancer services in this country. >> i'm grateful for my right honorable friend's question. and members right across this house support the league of friends and their constituencies to raise money for their hospitals to do extraordinary things in terms of equipment and services. and it's ad