in the haystack is every time we are able to reduce the size of the haystack. strengthening the procedures with risk-based initiatives is getting this done and we will continue expanding the program wherever we can. all the personship with the airlines and the airports and all those who have a vested interest in the process. we will also continue to explore ways to adjust our standard security screening procedures for certain segments of the suddenly traveling public as we did with younger travelers 12 and under. in addition expanding the use of intelligence, you are using the risk assessment that drives the airline industry's known effort in other ways. by the end of this month, we will expandy precheck to active duty, u.s. armed forces members with the common access card if

we were able to verify that they were in good standing with the department, they will likely receive prechecked screening benefits such as the issues like the jackets and allowing them to fit them in the brief case in the carry on bag. with the u.s. service members entrusted to defend our with th lives and such that tsa is recognizing that they pose little risk to aviation security. as we review and evaluate the effectsiveness, it is possible that additional changes to the process may be implemented in the future as we continue to work to provide all travelers with the most effective security provided in a most efficient way. we will always retain the ability to incorporate random security measures throughout the airport and no individual is

ever guaranteed expedited screening women appreciate the cooperation of the aviation industry and the traveling public as we strive to strengthen transportation security andmp possible the travel experience for all americans. there significant economic jen mitts and mostcurity and the ab facilitate the movement of goods. the interdependence requires each chain be as strong as possible. the freedom to travel from place to place is fundamental to our way of life. it's a goal to which every one of tsa is fully committed. thank you for inviting me here today and i look forward to taking whatever questions you may have. thank you.

>> you mentioned overed it's day how many knives were found and guns. what happens to the people go getting on to airports and how many have malicious intent? >> we believe very few if any if you are talking from a terrorist depends on the local jurisdiction whether they are arrested or excited by law enforcement authorities. they are always cited by us for trying to violate the >> what happened to the puffer machines from the check points? >> the puffer machines were just for awareness. they are constructed in a push to try to find explosives? explosive residue and the idea was to have somebody walk them

to the machine and have a puff of air come on them and the detection equipment would detect that. we found that we did not have sufficient testing done prior to deployment and basically fundamental design features and the air was brought in from the floor and there were a lot of contaminants that were not in the labs. a simple design change would make it more effective. the decision was made to not fully deploy those. they were taken out of there and put away. >> how do you continuously monitor people who are part of the precheck and trust the traveler program? >> the global entry still goes

through physical security. for example, somebody asked one time about that. he is going through physical screening all be it a different type. the weapons would be detected. they do the terrorist screening database to ensure that nobody is in this category and work with the airlines and in terms of the official vetting that we don't talk about in detail. >> is everyone who feels nervous while traveling a suspected terrorist? >> i have a daughter who traveled and she is always nervous because she goats motion sickness and we may have to put her on the watch list. obviously not.

the behavior detection and looking at those physical manifestations that may be of concern. given my fbi background, i'm a firm believer in the benefits, but in and of itself may be something like my daughter. >> shifting from the idea of using a hijacked plane to an idea of using terrorists might bring down an airliner. do they review the procedures to adapt to the newest threats? >> yes. we start every day. the senior leadership team up here start with an intelligence briefing for around the world. not just u.s. and law enforcement, but worldwide. the best goes back to october of 2010 when we learned about the

plot out of yemen. rorking closely with the industry and our counterparts over sea cities, we shored up security as it links to cargo and how to detect devices that are well-designed and concealed and shipped in a way that makes it difficult to detect. every day we look at what steps we need to inroerp rate and for passengers or the screening either here or overseas. >> given the increased growth of international trade and movement of people, what do you envision as a good cooperation with foreign countries? >> clearly we want to have security it frens rate. for those of you traveling overseas, at some you will

remember you went through a central check point and a gate before you boarded the plane. you will go through another set of security. those are tsa requirements for various reasons to make sure that every passenger get in on a flight to the u.s. has been screened with tsa standards. there is over 270. our challenge is to work with the partners and then with the industry to make sure that we have again, the best possible security in the most efficient way. >> currently how much u.s.-bound cargo is screened on the airplane? >> it's difficult to say, but we believe in over 80 or 90% of all cargo on passenger planes are

being skruned and our goal in working with the industry and counterparts over seas is 100% of that done by the end of the year through a risk-based model. . >> what constitutes high risk cargo? >> of course we don't define it because we don't want the terrorists to go to our website and say this is high risk so i will do something that is not high risk. for example, obviously if somebody such as the bombers a year and a half ago were shipping security printers and books to chicago and paying $500 in shipping costs from an advanced cargo information perspective, why would somebody be shipping security printers which they can buy in chicago for much less than the cost of

shipping. in any advanced information we have goes to define and work closely with the industry which has manifested that information of who the shipper is and the type of shipment. it comes down to defining and distinguishing with shippers and unknown shippers. >> you talk about mitigating risks. how do you balance against the reduction in heel risk? >> the bottom line is we have to make sure that everybody on each plane in the u.s. that they had been thoroughly screened so there is not a terrorist on there who is wanted to blow up that airline. that being said, what we are doing with the risk-based model is to recognize that the vast majority of people traveling are not terrorists. how can we afford them some

physical screening by doing more prescreening? part of that is shaped on my background as an fbi agent where any time i traveled i flew and we never go through security screening. i would go to the exit lane and sign a law enforcement officer's book and have credentials validated. clearly we differentiated between the persons because we trusted them for whatever reason. the idea is the same. just to extend that concept to say we already know something about people who shared information with us. we can make developments and decisions to expedite the screening because we have done more prescreening. >> how can travelers give consent when the tsa describes how searches are to be

conducted? >> it's a challenging situation because we don't want to publish our exact protocol. an innovative terrorist as we have seen both with the cargo plot and the assassination attempt and of course with the underwear bomber, we don't want to publish what we do and they can see we can conceal this device in this type of way. there is information about the same terrorists who who were looking at ways to beat the technology machines by doing surgically implanted device. they get passenger on the plan in hopes that they would not pick that up. that's the balance we run to provide the security while

respecting the privacy and the dignity of everyone involved. some don't get it right and that's our goal to provide the security in the most professional way. that's what we strive for every day. we work towards that and it's something that we welcome feedback from. i hear from travelers on a fair regular basis and we work to address the needs. in december, we initiated something called tsa cares. that's a phone number you can call if you are heelderly or ha different types of screening and what tsa cares is, if you call in advance it gives us the opportunity to work with that particular passenger in a way that we can help expedite their screening process while helping

the privacy and dignity and ensuring there is not a terrorist trying to use that person unwittingly for bad means. >> the tsa is sometimes in the headlines for reasons that don't rhett to catching tero hawaii w entry for carrying breast pumps and an officer has been accuse of inappropriate pat-downs of the elderly. how does bad pr affect the way they approach their mission and is there a need for the tsa to respond to public anger. >> with the million was passengers and 450 airports, it is a challenge to provide 100% customer satisfaction and that many days we don't do that. there tunes for us to engage in ways that most agencies or businesses, for example, i am

trying to think of any businesses that have 100% customer satisfaction with that many customers on a daily basis. there may be businesses out there. it comes down to the form of the tnj before they get to the airport. looking at the website and a lot of suggestions and tips for how to pack and travel. what we looked for and what are prohibited items. what things you can take on and what you can't. what can go in your checked bag. gun owners know that if they can't take their gun in their checked bag, there is a protocol to do that. you may need to -- you need to make sure to find it so the

local police have an awareness and you declare that weapon and it is packed appropriately. there is all kinds of nuances that the more informed, the better job we can do in providing that type of security. >> following the rules of what you can and cannot take, why can a passenger take on three, three-ounce bottles, but not one 12 ounce? >> most people are aware on the limitation of the liquids and gels and the 3.4 ounces goes back to august when a group of terrorists in the united kingdom actually took sports drinks and drilled the bottom out and drained out the sport aid drink and filled it with liquid explosives. the purpose of that is when two

types of liquids combined on the plane, it would cause an explosion. prior to that we didn't have those limitations. that's what we are dealing with. in certain amounts, that terrorists can combine them in a way that would potentially cause a catastrophic event on an aircraft. when we look at multiple small items, it becomes an issue of how effective is that? if they are the equivalency of the same larger amounts, there has to be a point where we look as much and part of the risk-based model is to look as much as a person as the items they are carrying. part means that that's where the detection and the prescreening comes in. we have a list of prohibited items that some of them make a lot of sense and some we are revisiting to see whether they

make sense as we further deploy the risk-based security. there is again, a lot of challenges and students in there. . >> how do you justify the tsa having more than,000 employees, more than the department of state, energy, and education combined. when they call for less government and less government infringement on our lives. >> it's a huge job to provide that for the airports and to work with the state and local partners in mass transit, rails, over buses and metro systems. there is multiple time when is people are traveling on subways and trains and buses every day than planes. that's not tsa's time publicity. we act for the mass transit and

other carriers, but that was part of the enabling legislation is to say you need to be responsible for all modes of transportation security and how do we do that? what we do in terms of the efficiencies, we have tens of thousands of employees. 24% are veterans. over 14,000 of our security screeners at airports are part-time. for those of you whoa travel regularly, in the early morning there is awe rush hour and in the afternoon there is a rush hour. rather than having people on full time status throughout the course of the day, from an efficiency model we have the part-time people in the morning at the largest airports and the same in the afternoon. we try to find the exact staff and allocation model that makes

sense to provide the mosteffect efficient way. >> if you were fully granted your wish list, how much bigger would the budget be and how would you allocate the extra money? >> i testified last week for a house committee where we are asking $200 million less than last year. i will stick with that. i think we are well-sized right now. i think there some obviously additional things we can do if the administration wished us to do that with surface transportation or internationally on the cargo side. i can also see the possibility of some efficiency and saving through the risk-based model. we will be interested in seeing whether we will be able to chase

efficiencies. >> is there still a place for air marshalls and are they a good use of taxpayer dollars? >> i'm a firm proponent of the air marshalls. they provide i believe that extra player of security, but in the case that the individual who has not come up on anybody's radar whether it's the extremism we have seen over the last couple of years and particularly in sting operations, if somebody has ill intent and able to go online and look at the quick look to construct advice and perhaps similar to what we saw on christmas day 2009 that could bring down an character and that person here in the states and does not goanybody, see something, say something. that person is able to get

through a walk through metal detector and gets on a plane, then the air marshals are there for the last line of defense for the government. i see them as a valuable s pekt of the multiple layers of security and even if they are not air marshals on a particular flight and we assign them on a risk-based model also, there is a turn up effect. we know terrorists are aware that we have air marshals here in the u.s. and they see that as a deterrent. we are fortunate to have a number of pilots and the program. so even if there is not an air marshal on board, it is possible there will be a pilot and if they tried to get in the pilot, they will have an opportunity to defeat the terrorist. >> do you think that the see something say something campaign

is working? >> i think it's a lot of common sense. i think it's something that we saw with the times square bomber and he saw something suspicious and reported it. that's just incumbent upon all the us to say if there is something that seems out of whack and i have concerns about this person or this event as much, it makes sense to let the authorities look into it and resolve the concerns. as far as identifying the terrorists, i know from my fbi experience a number of investigations were initiated. we didn't call it that, but somebody is doing something suspicious and i'm concerned they may be planning something that is not good, so there is clearly value in the public being aware of what's going on

and suspicious activity. >> does tsa have procedures in place for preventing and responding to the release of a low-acting biological weapon on an airplane? >> there a number of protocols that have been practiced and gained that i won't go into detail, but the short answer and yes. depending on what the type of toxins or poison may be with different levels of effectiveness. the short and answer is yes. >> most people think of tsa as an airline passenger skreern. can y can you tell us about the viper teams and successes? >> terrorists are deterred by two or three primary things. one is armed law enforcement.

two are canine teams and cct. we know from the london attacks on july seventh that if there suicide bombers, they are not effective because we saw the bombers in london before they went into it to look up as if to say in ten minutes i will be dead and along with me, and it's a testimonial to the suicide mission. for those who want to do something in terms of leaving a bomb on, we know the cctv can be effective, but they are good deterrents. they are to try to throw off the

terrorists who may be doing surveillance and at union station or an airport. if you don't see anybody there, they say okay, next tuesday we will try to again. the third tuesday at 10:00, they plan to do it and on that tuesday at 10:00, there is a viper team that is armed law enforcement with canines and includes security inspectors. tsa. always involving the local police authority. again, this is designed to be a visible deterrent. >> what is being done to be more open about how to manage the no-fly list and how can it manage cute and better catch threats without being in lay e

violation to civil liberties. >> it is based on intelligence that has been some other component to u.s. government or to our foreign counterparts to provide that to the u.s. government. if you are no a no-fly list, there is information about you that you are a potential threat to aviation. that's a reason for denying you the privilege of flying. that being said, there others who are not in that status, but who receive additional scrutiny because of the derogatory information about thechlt the only people that there is information about from a credible source are on the list. the lack of transparency gets to the point of revealing that information. in some instances, you heard the old adage that the government needs to protect sources and the

collection of the information and some that is the case. to provide what that intelligence is in any public forum or the individual who may be using that as an expedition to find out what the government is about would be seen as detrimental to national security. that's a background and a reason that we have these intelligence briefings every day. we look at the next several days and in terms of who are no-fly individuals who are wanting to fly and who are known as people who receive additional scrutiny who see if there is patterns or groupings of people we should be focused on from the risk base in terms of the process. over 500 screeners have been arrested for stealing for passenger bags. do you see this as a security flaw, can they not be bribed to put dangerous items in them?

>> i'm not sure where that number comes from. there were a number of employees and other folks, other agencies and airline employees arrested for theft and it has been a problem. it is also a security concern and that's why we use cctv extensively, particularly in the checked bag area to also ensure the protection and may be accused of stealing something. to deter theft in those instances. we have been able to rebut allegations not on a regular basis from the allegations by going to the cctv and showing w with the checked bag and those instances really do have credible information. we have taken steps with the inspector general and the.s