>> the notion of future proofing. you want your vote to be private, not only now but for a long time in the future, to the extent that the lincoln figured -- that someone can figure out how we voted in the past or near our record of whatever they wanted to do with that information. some cryptographers have developed ways of creating protocol that basically say no matter what could happen in the future, your vote is safe at least up until we have quantum computers that can crack this stuff. that's the kind of thing i like to hear people worrying about because i worry about my vote in 15 years. >> everlasting privacy. >> this idea about cryptographic our rhythms that cannot be broken now, but maybe in the future. we have quantum computers, the

worry is that somebody can decrypt the vote. this is something very and board -- important. it is not a matter of including votes. -- encrypting votes. one important requirement is that the encrypting processes preserving privacy. if someone is encrypting a vote, if they cannot correlate, using -- correlate the content of the vote. if using these processes that can prevent correlation, it doesn't matter if someone can decrypt it. in any case were working with algorithms. >> if someone does get your credit card, the most likely

worst-case scenario is someone gets hold of your credit card and they use it and make fraudulent purchases, and that is bad. but it is solvable, and especially, we don't have to worry about it. at most in the united states we would have to pay $50, and most of us don't even have to do that. there might be some trouble about getting a new card, but essentially it's not that bad a problem for you personally. i think we are used to that, saying it is risky but not such a risk that is going to scare us away from e-commerce right now. but this is not just someone getting your credit card and you might have to pay 50 bucks and do some things. you could get disenfranchised and it could change your vote. you could influence an election. >> tell your boss how you voted.

>> right, or in some countries you could be killed if people could figure out afterwards how you voted. so the downsides of getting it wrong seem to be -- >> and the other aspect is that he will not be able to correct the vote. once fraud occurred in a vote, you can't prosecutors the perpetrator. you can fix the problem, but you can't change the ballot because you don't know how those votes actually occurred. that by itself would be a corrupting factor in an election. >> not just the privacy but the verifiability of the audit transparency. >> this is what i was talking about earlier when i was talking about evidence. we talk in legal terms in court cases about evidence we talk about chain of custody of the evidence and how important that that is unbroken. and the reason it's important is because you have to be able to rely on it for the various applications all the way through the process.

having that property of evidence of the voters vote having been captured correctly, the way they intended it, and then that correct version, not some corrupted version eating what -- being what gets counted and then audited to demonstrate that the accounting part of it was correct, the process is really key in things like the case you mentioned of someone getting hold of your card, someone used my account to rent a limo in arizona at some point, and i called the bank and said i haven't been in arizona for 20 years, maybe. so that wasn't me. they said no problem, we will make that right for you. with voting, you cast your vote maybe from remotely, you don't get to call up the election official at the county and say i voted for so and so, can you see

i voted for candidate a? they should not be able to say yes i can see that you voted for candidate a. >> we know your track record and you voted democrat the last 10 times, this time you voted republican, something must have gone wrong. [laughter] we will cut to the representative and then we will come back to audience question and answer. >> am i on? >> yes sir. >> first of all, it's great to be with you today and thank you for the invitation to join you remotely. i especially want to thank david wilson and the atlantic council for making this possible. i would rather be with you there in person.

somehow fitting i guess in this discussion about the promise of digital happening over the process of skype. before i begin, let me just say i have great interest in increasing voter participation in our democracy and i always look for innovative ways to do that. i have a long history of being involved with the electoral process with the legislature. i served for three terms and have a great interest in election reform in making voting easier. we have a number of horror stories in rhode island where we

had people waiting in line for hours and hours to vote, and sometimes we actually had the oldest voting machines in the country. sometimes we had to get on our hands and knees to read the bottom of the ballots. not to mention the fact that being disabled myself, i was never really able to vote on my own independently going into the machine. i am the first quadriplegic elected to the united states congress. i had to have someone with me and assist me. it wasn't until i became secretary of state and i actually overhauled the states entire system that there was accessible voting for people with disabilities.

i actually chaired the special legislative commission looking at alternative voting technologies in the legislature and implemented the findings of that report when i was elected secretary of state. but i'm excited about the future and about technology. we have to proceed of course with caution as we work to ensure the integrity of the elections process. so again, i really am enjoying -- this is an issue that means a lot to me personally. it really is a marriage of two passions of mine, going back to 1994 when i became secretary of state in rhode island, i really had the impurity to confront toreally had the imperatives confront huge challenges of electing a transparent government. i've seen firsthand those areas where you can have trust and

faith in government. also many very passionate about -- it also made me very passionate about the accessibility of the voting process which is really so fundamental to our democracy. even voting has incredible -- e-voting has incredible promise, specially to the population of disabled voters who require diversity of interfaces to the voting process. it's what originally interested me in the field but my time in congress has given me a complementary perspective on the topic. so in 2008, i founded the congressional cyber security caucus with my friend mike mccall because i was concerned that congress was paying far too little attention to the potential of the cyber intrusions and could cause great harm to our country.

chief among my concerns is that critical infrastructure could be vulnerable in this new domain. of course our voting infrastructure is central to our country's existence as a democracy, and just like any other sector, there are vulnerabilities in expanding the use of this technology. our electoral system comprises two fundamental principles. that is each person should be , entitled to cast one and only one vote and then his or her ballot should be kept secret. unfortunately, because these principles can clash with our desire that elections be fair, and verifiable that a voter , should have confidence that

his or her vote is counted. the traditional system does the next one job of ensuring -- does an excellent job of ensuring anonymity and there are very few instances of actual voter fraud or intimidation. verification, of course, is a bit shakier. hundreds of thousands of ballots are spoiled each election cycle preventing voters from being heard. additionally, the ballots and cells are vulnerable to -- the ballots themselves are vulnerable to tampering. to reduce the risk we rely on distributing e-voting systems -- distributing oversight across many individuals to reduce the chance that one bad actor could have an impact in the outcome. e-voting systems have the same goals but must achieve them in very different ways. for instance, in traditional systems, double voting is prevented by retiring that a -- requiring that a citizen vote

only in his or her precinct, preventing double voting remotely while retaining anonymity as winter prom because problem because the scale can be orders of magnitude larger. challenges of scale manifest themselves in other ways, including the ability of a -- the complexity of the code running the system and a single bad actor to compromise multiple services. it turns out that cryptographic systems allow one to do all sorts of counterintuitive things. but here is the rub, channel communication between our brilliant photographers and -- cryptographers and policymakers, into in -- guarantees end to end verifiability, it allows archers

to confirm that ballots have been counted correctly without relying on the integrity of those accounts. -- those doing the counting. policymakers understand than a matter how corrupt elections are, if a camper with results, it will be noticed. but they definitely do not understand how it is implemented in different systems. in fact, it is often viewed as borderline magical. once the system uses a mathematical property for security and one relies on the integrity of election officials, it's not necessarily going to be evident how it will work without -- to policymakers. a concerted effort to educate politicians.

there's a real risk that they will come to view it as different versions of the same product. the security of the competitors may be wildly different. think coke versus anti-freeze, i guess you could say. [laughter] it's difficult to overemphasize at this point, so let me put it another way. politicians are used to shades of gray, and that is a good thing. policymakers need to compromise. but the ability to see ambiguity can be dangerous when confronted with the facts that can be lumped into theories, and it is imperative that the properties that we would like to see in a system such as the into in

-- and end to end verifiability, or policymakers are not the only fallible humans involved. even a cryptographically sound system relies on people to code it, deploy it, and people to maintain it. a coding error might cause denial of service attacks that halt an election. the state during deployment could allow an adversary to steal voting potential's and cast a ballot during routine maintenance. a database could be deleted -- revealed instead of deleted resulting in a huge loss of , voter privacy. these vulnerabilities are real

and the haldeman group analysis of estonia's voting system showed problems across all three of these phases. so it is important to realize that our present voting system has numerous points of failure. but the complexity of e-voting against sets it apart. being a checker or ballot clerk in a traditional system require specialized skills. -- requires few specialized skills. being an administrator requires significant training and experience. experienced cyber security professionals right now are in short supply. it's something i've been talking about for years, we don't enough people going into these fields.

we could change that in a number of ways, starting at the high school level, to encourage young people to go into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. especially in the field of cyber security. cyber is a relatively new domain that is still ramping up, cyber training capacity, but part of it is also tied to the inherent difference between cyberspace and me space, you might say. defending against an adversary has always been difficult. an attacker needs to find only a single point of getting in while -- of failure to be successful,

while the defendant must defend against all possible breaches. this paradigm is exponentially more challenging and cyberspace. -- in cyberspace for two reasons. it's just as easy to attack one, someone across the planet as it is to attack someone across the room. so the attack space is much larger. number two, it's almost as easy to attack everyone's vulnerability as it is to attack one entity with vulnerability. making the attack space still larger. as a result, attack is more lucrative, which draws off important talent even as more defendants are needed. government agencies have been particularly hard hit. part of this is due to the problem that i highlighted and part of it -- we can also blame the lack of coordination with the government in the corresponding duplication of effort.

the problem of homeland security -- it was patched almost immediately. however, because it had to ask other agencies to scan their networks for the flaw, it took days in which hackers were robbed gating in the wild. -- in which attackers were propagating in the wild. these are challenges were propagating in the wild. addressed --to be these are challenges that will have to be addressed if this is to be deployed in the united states. it would allow for top level budgetary review of a cyber budget. i have strongly advocated for increased funding for security research to help grow our academic infrastructure to meet demand.

i've offered alternative practices that allow programmers with nontraditional educational background the chance to protect their country. i think we can make use of their talents and we should. while congress continues to deliberate, i believe it will help raise the standards across critical infrastructure domains that a company like target that could be hacked through its hvac vendors shows exactly why we need to raise the bar. let me just say before i close, i hope you allow me a brief digression into hindsight security. the government talks about -- the focus is always on the service side.

we can maintain the integrity, the question should be can we maintain the integrity of the ballots cast, but if the ballots cast is compromised, relying on a voters smartphone to honestly represent his or her intention is simply naïve with malware as prevalent as it is. protecting the integrity of an election is not limited to the edge of the government network. so to say that e-voting is a challenging prospect is really an understatement, but just as there are many security concerns in the cryptosystems with the humans that run them and the devices, there are many

potential benefits as well. so i reject the notion that e-voting is a solution in search of a problem, just as i reject the notion that it is ready today. changing something as essential to our identity as the way we choose our leaders ought to be a deliberative process, and an inclusive one, and i hope i have impressed upon you the importance of engaging with policymakers about eve voting -- e-voting systems and as a corollary, i hope you will join me in advocating for better training of cyber security professionals to defend our country from harm and better advised our nation's policymakers at the same time. with that, i thank you for the

work you are all doing, thanks for the opportunity to weigh in on this issue. i thank you for allowing me to join you remotely. i would rather be there in person but this is an appropriate way to communicate with you today as well. given the nature of the topic. i look forward to working with you to address these challenges. i'm a big fan of technology myself, i use it every day as we all do. but not without risk and challenges. so thank you very much, and enjoy your conference. [applause] >> thank you, congressman. that was a wonderful description of the balances that we are talking about here, and the congressman is from my home district in rhode island.

he covered a lot of things we have not even talked about here, about waiting lines and the amount of convenience, about this able than others that might have difficulty getting to the polls. he covered a lot of interesting things. i did disagree with him on that there are not enough cyber professionals. we do have plenty of cyber professionals, they are not just all working on the correct side. before we start taking questions, any additional thoughts?

>> i thought it was great that he raised the issue of how policymakers are involved and need to be involved and at the same time, it's really difficult. expecting them to have a deep and broad understanding of something like cryptography, which the very word makes my eyes glaze over, i'm going to go ahead and say that. it's really very difficult. i think that finding the balance, lawmakers do make compromises. they weigh risks and potential benefits. it's hard to really even understand what the risks are, and that makes it a little more challenging. and then sometimes policy will get made that may not be taking everything into consideration, just because it is so complicated. we did weigh in on the framework for cyber security and urged that voting in elections be considered part of critical infrastructure. we think that is something that really matters. the other thing he mentioned about enough cyber security administrators, how do you compensate them enough to work at a small elections office and

-- in a county where it it's only part time of the work that they do? >> most of my job is translation of policy makers, but also explaining how and why technology impacts their life. one of the things he mentioned we did not talk about much at all is the promise for accessible, independent interaction with the system -- via these systems. a lot of people disabilities have to use very specialized equipment to allow them to interact in digital online forums. they often get used to the one thing they know how to use and how to navigate using a head stick for people who are more advanced quadriplegics or , certain kinds of screen readers. oregon has something called an online ballot marking system. you can interact via a normal computer.

with something that lets you mark a paper ballot and you printed out, but you can use all your own accessible technology. that has a lot of rom us and we -- a lot of promise and we want to see as many involved with that. >> we really do have to look at this as a problem itself, not trying to see it together. >> one important thing is, he -- not trying to piecemeal it together. >> one important thing is, he was talking about the importance of the security of the infrastructure. not only on internet voting, anything -- a lot of information related to the election is

managed by computers. and using i.t. on the electoral process should also be considered and other processes, not just internet voting. the hacker is going to use it for something, he will try this first in stead of trying to -- it is important that it moves to other parts as well. >> as for questions, i have 1, 2, and 3. the microphone will be coming to you.

>> thank you. i am from estonia. i've heard a lot about estonia here which is great. , being the first country that had national elections online. -- online, there have been several questions about the credibility of this and so on. the point i want to emphasize, the word that i also heard here is trust. we estonians are used to every interaction with the government through the internet. the government has really tried to make the systems as reliable as possible. people have expect haitians -- expectations towards the government provide different

services, and the online vote is natural for us. >> we've had several expert teams come to a study and assess that. for the tech geeks, the online voting, it is open. i have no idea what to do with that. i am sure that they can join everything. i basic question is about the trust. if we do have the trust towards governments, and we put that into the context of the united states, any kind of system is inherently not trusted. is there any possibility that also here this technical

solutions could have more trust? >> we will get to that point as we feel all -- as we eve all. the internet has some core, not trusted aspects to it. there is a distrust of our government in the united states. there has been a combination of both parts, trust in both areas. it sounds like you have that in estonia. you have much more -- you have some foundational pieces that are solving the problems. like your national id card. that provides an identity that we don't have here in the united states. we need to get some of these building blocks in place. trying to move security down below the operating systems so that we can solve the problem

with a trusted platform. that would take years for those platforms to be throughout the home and consumer markets. >> i was recently in particular. some of the smaller countries think that there at a this advantage. estonia has shown that it will allow you to be much more agile, much more responsive to the numerous passion of her technologies that come out. >> it is one election jurisdiction, not 7000. >> i like to say that trust, for

trustworthy. to the extent that these systems aim to, but it's hard to compare coca-cola to an increase, this is the correct thing, the valid, you know, the data structure, that is an extremely important part. it's crucial for verification aspect. next tesla had one of their cars there. that is a different relationship between manufacturers. >> let me congratulate you. excellent panel. the issue that strikes me is the insecure and for structure, hardware and software, we can over to rely upon it.

we have a convergence of activities. they are trying to look at international trade and what we do. it is virtually the same type of concerns expressed to. national security council staff is meeting up on transportation safety, administration. that is over a vehicle to vehicle proposals, because you know him to -- because security is not filled in. this could play a useful role in calling out for a heavy investment, internationally possibly, specifically in the united states is problem, to help us, to give a little plug to intel.

make the investment across the board that speeds the introduction of safe software systems. without fact, none of the systems are trustworthy. we will not be able to put a layer on top that will ever get away from the invented threat that reads the key to your encryption. it is an impossible task. mckenzie put out in june history recommendation. it is making its way around courtrooms. we are the thinking about endorsing it. thank you. >> first, i think that government and to help speed this along, the trustworthiness.

it has been a key question here. are there other things that governments can be doing to help get us to this place, to shorten this 30 years to 40 years? >> for example, the gentlemen raise the question of the national transportation security, there are proposals for vehicle to vehicle communication. for example, if you are hearing too far off the road, and there is a radio broadcast that says, hey, man, you are running off the road. people care about the privacy of their location. that is something that if it is done in the open, then people like we are seeing nonprofits with heats on staff.

people like can say, i don't think you need a vin number to do this. it is starting to happen in the hacker community. they have developed this effort called "i am the calvary." these are efforts -- the hacker community is saying that we often break stuff, but we have to step up. there is no calvary coming to save us. we have a responsibility to help save the world, so to speak. it is berry ambitious. i think you will see a lot of wonderful things. to build things, while we break

things. >> i think the government is doing some things, with respect to the national institute for standards and technology. they are working on voting technology. they have done research reports which do help on pack what the issues are. they described that in ways for anyone can reagan understand. they have written reports that are geared towards someone who works in an election office. as of yet, we have not developed standards for an internet voting system. we are a little ways from that. there are some nongovernmental efforts. what specifications might be

needed? that is a little ways off. i think what -- joe said something that is important, getting all the stakeholders the opportunity to provide input. that is why i appreciate something like cyber security. >> one thing that struck me in the conversations that i have had over the past week was to have a machine involved in voting, or technology involved in voting, there is a certification process. that hurts us even further, because when you want to update it for security reasons, you might have to recertify it. it is one of those things -- what we can do to help security a long might the ways to speed

that process up so that we can get the more secure technologies. >> you can tell at the backend if it worked right during the election to help you eliminate some of those certifications. it requires the ability to audit. >> it is not focusing on the trust of the government. it is to address the critics that things are happening in the proper way. we are talking about specific hardware. it should be a combination of things. we will make the security more difficult to happen. in case this protection fails, it is possible that this happens.

it should be a combination of both. since maybe there are people who trust the computer or they have been certified by an authority -- they want to jack any time during the voting process. we need to combine both things. the certification will in short that security practice has been taken into account when this computer has been developed. the first responsibility is to the voting process. >> we are going to do ron, and

it will come over to this site. >> thank you. network security analyst with the carnegie mellon university. with your impressive knowledge, it may make me change my mind about congress. [laughter] i am a new englander, originally. you stole my thunder a little bit, joe. the difference between trust and trustworthiness. we don't want the government to be what is trustworthy, but the systems to be trustworthy. just yesterday at a secured conference here in washington, d.c., general alexander, the head of nsa, said the current architecture of the internet is indefensible. what we need for trustworthiness is, number one, not mathematical proofs that ballots can be

verified. what we need is transparent systems that all voters can understand. the main way we know to do that is with durable paper records. they have the additional benefit of allowing the voters intent to be re-examined and provide meaningful recounts and audits. that is my question. isn't the trustworthiness in the systems what matters? the supervised voting, which is an insurmountable problem. >> i think you are right on the

transparency and what voters can understand. i would say you are the point technology, interacting with voters all the time. how is that trustworthiness in the system? do they come out of it and feel that it was a great experience? >> it is more or less what i said before. the majority of voter trust is with the system. we have people who do not trust the systems. people need to say that it does not matter. it is important that the system can be audited. if we are talking about unsupervised voting, it can work. when we are talking about remote voting, which would be the solution, for instance, maybe the voter can print the paper at home, but what will happen with this paper. is it enough or not? it is an important part of using this process to understand what is happening inside the voting

process, when we are using only a computer. >> some of the phrases we talked about earlier, for those involved in security, we see that people have a ton of confidence in the internet. if they only knew what we knew. >> i will throw another blog in your ear. this theory that was put forth, a good friend of ours, a standards guy. they have a the recalled software independence. an undetectable change in the outcome.

the way you do that is that you do have some sort of durable, physical media that the voter can verify and recount later. the point being that if you don't have something to audit, recount, independent from the software, you may be in a world of hurt. we worked on the notion of statistical recount, wrist limiting audits. the whole point being if you compare a subset of the ballots with the data structures, and you don't find enough errors that disagree speaking that would show you that the outcome would change if you actually recounted it, then you don't have to do a recount.

you know there is no error that would have been possible. californians change their law recently -- you can do the traditional way of certifying the machine on the front or you can skip all that. you can do one of these audits that show that no one else would have won. the trick is what happens if you find errors. then you have a recount. >> we know this guy. >> sri international. the point of internet voting is to make it easier for voters to cast their votes in a way that gets counted accurately. the next generation is the cryptographic voting systems. two recent studies that have

come out that cost some concern. one showed that voters could not figure out how to do the verification with three of the most commonly used systems. it was too complicated for them to understand how. in another study, which is about to be released, even if they can figure out how, they are not motivated. they do not understand why. my question is, how do we get to systems that are -- have the desired capability, but also offer the voter what they need. another piece of this is the notion of being able to cast ballots -- voters do not understand why they should want to use the technology. if the voters don't understand why to use it, how do we get to the cyber-human parts of the voting issue?

>> i will be really quick. if we can describe some of these cryptographic ideas in normal terms -- i can teach you the high level notion of what that is -- we need to be able to do things like that that don't cover only little components, but talk about the role of the technology in accomplishing the integrity we need. >> they want to go in and make their decision, push the button,

and they are done. the vote is counted. that is the extent. that is the challenge we have to get over. we have to make sure that we have means that allow for a system that helps them do that a very simple way. >> in this project, the voters verify that their selections have been made. one of the problems that we have in this project is how to balance the verifiability and the usability. most people don't care about this. this is for the people who do not trust the system. the weight is, how can we introduce this in a way so that the system can distinguish between somebody who is going to verify and somebody who makes

any kind of trick. so, the problem is how can we provide this as an option, but does not jeopardize the voting process for the voters. at the same time, to make verification efficient. we put this as on option in some cases. in a way that is not -- the codes are arty sent by the voters. what usually happens in norway -- 70% of the voters check their

return codes. it has not been based on a real study. it was based on a problem they had when they were trying to print some voting cards. the people that called made a stipulation that means that 70% of the people who received wrong voting cards detect the error. >> the more data we have for the studies, the better. >> the norwegian system has not been studied here in the united states.

it is a system since 2011, and also it has been shown in different conferences. our experience is that -- it is important to design a verification process that is easy for the voters. it is also important that the critics understand. if the voters understand, it is fine for them. the important part is that the system can make a distinguishing decision. >> the voters do not always care what kind of voting system they

will face. what is more compelling to them is who they want to vote for and whether this election is important. once they get there, i think it is the responsibility of the stakeholders to care about elections. we need to make sure that it is available, function, and that it will work. you said something that caught my attention -- you hear about all these breaches. you wonder sometimes where the idea of sending a something as votes over the internet -- how did that get to be a good idea? i think that we have this natural inclination and can do spirit. we have come to admire when people make light of challenges and obstacles or minimize them. that is because if they are less daunting, we can do this. we can overcome it. we can apply ourselves. i think that is one of the reasons there is voting in the

country today. the unfortunate part of it is if there are shades of bad, it is the worst of the worst. the ballot is being sent in an unencrypted e-mail attachment to election offices. i told somebody about this one time. somebody who was doing security consulting for large firms. his eyes got large and he wanted to cover his ears and not hear what i was saying. it is true. i think there is a lot of bridging that needs to happen for people to understand what the key challenges are, what we need, and work on those kinds of research problems. >> i think it is they can do front your spirit of rhode island that is carrying us

through. [laughter] >> final round of comments here. joe said it would take 30 years to 40 years. that is kind of a long time. the digital natives using this now will be in their 40's or 50's. that means i will be in my young 60's. [laughter] that is a long way. i am curious if the other panelist agreed with that timeframe. maybe, if there is one kind of \thing that we can do, that one thing, what would that be? >> i think that may be a little long because of the whole process on how fast technology is advancing, but there does need to be an effort, a focused effort, on trying to deal with the problems today. we have to do a better job.

someone mentioned earlier that identity is a big one. there are a reasonable amount of things that you can do to provide a more secure environment, no you're talking with. you still have those underlying issues that the devices to be secure. i don't think it would take quite that long. if we want to really push this, we need to look at the concerted effort to design a national environment that standards-based, that's going to be able to scale. if we are solving a local issue, fine. we can do that without a lot of work in 30 years or 40 years.

if we are solving a national issue, we have a real problems that need to be addressed, real design considerations. we need to discern whether or not we are going to do this on top of a trusted or on trusted environment. those decisions need to be made. until we can get to a national focus, we were not solve the problem. >> you agree with this estimate of 30 years or 40 years? >> if you talk to folks who evaluate these kinds of proposals, protocol stacks for the next generation internet -- what might replace what we have now -- their most optimistic projection to have a coherent internet is 40 years. this is something that no one knows anything about. right now, you have folks doing adversarial routing attacks. suddenly a route is rerouted

through kazakhstan for an hour. what the heck. there are things like that i don't think you can solve until we have a fully deployed piecemeal path to the internet. >> i am going to shout out to missouri. we are also a show me people. i think we need to ask what is the floor beneath which we are not willing to sink. i think we owe ourselves systems that do produce the evidence you can use to know that was the correct outcome.

i think joe is on the money with the timeframe. that is my take. >> i don't think we need to wait 30 years or 40 years. we manage this risk in a way that is acceptable. ultimately there are people thinking about how to use technology in the elections. risks are evolving. we have different parties like my company. to see if they are acceptable to use for an election only for

certain groups. we need to move. we cannot wait. if we wait we will find other risks in the future. i think we have the technology now for introducing internet voting. next we will hear from homeland security secretary jeh johnson. he is speaking before the centers of strategic and international study in washington, talking about immigration and border security. live coverage on c-span. >> welcome to the new building, we hope you like it and feel welcome. today, we are privileged and honored to have the secretary of homeland security, jeh johnson, with us to deliver remarks on border security in the 21st century. it is an honor and a privilege to have secretary johnson here speaking on a critical issue at

a critical time for the nation's security and the department. i have gotten to know the secretary over the last year, and i will tell you he was one of -- he is one of the most serious, substantive public servants that i have met. you know the secretary's background. i will not recite his bio. certainly you know he has a distinguished legal and public career. he has served the public sector numerous time before his stint as the secretary of homeland security, he served as general counsel counsel at the department of defense. he may have been running the largest law firm in the world, probably 10,000 lawyers or so, but dealing with the thorniest issues -- from guantanamo and terrorism to don't have hotel , don'ts -- don't ask

tell policies. he was asked to run the department at a time of enormous challenge. it is a department with authorities, capabilities, and responsibilities for everything from connor -- counterterrorism and cyber security, to border response, national disasters, and pandemics. today, we are pushing of the secretary of state to us about border security, one of the pillar responsibilities of the department and the secretary. you talk about protecting our borders, and what that means in a variety of threats and actors that may threaten the united states. this is a time, obviously, where these issues not only have national and homeland security important, but play into the political dynamics with respect to immigration reform. it is with great honor and we have the secretary here today.

we will conduct this, as we have other statesman and speaker series. we will hear from the secretary and then have a question and answer period, which will moderate with discretion and some discipline. with that, i want to introduce secretary johnson and thank him for the privilege of having him here with us to talk about border security in the 21st century. thank you very much. [applause] -- thank youuch, toy much, juan, and i want thank this organization for the opportunity to be here this afternoon. today i want to talk to you about the important subject of border security, particularly the security of our southern land order with mexico. i see many of our good friend here, including my good friend, the ambassador from guatemala,

who i had the opportunity and honor to spend time with this summer, several times. 15 years,ver the last across the clinton, bush, and obama administrations, our government has invested more in border security than at any point in the history of our nation, and over the last 15 years the number of apprehensions on our southwest border, a major indicator of total attempts to cross the border illegally has declined significantly. ofis now less than one/third what was in the year 2000, and it is at its lowest level since the 1970's. years,, over the last 15 the estimated number of undocumented immigrants in this country grew to a high of 12.2 million in 2006, dropped to around 11.3 million, and has

stopped growing for the first time since the 1980's. without a doubt, we had a setback this summer with the unprecedented number of unaccompanied children and others who crossed a narrow area of our southern border in the rio grande valley in search of a family member and a better life in this country. we responded aggressively to this spike, and in fact, not the numbers of unaccompanied children crossing into the rio grande valley are at the lowest they have been in almost two years. can i have my next slide? where did we go? there we go. ok, thank you. whoops. ok. but, this is not a mission accomplished speech. we can and should do more to best enforce the security of our borders. in this speech i will discuss

the past, present, and future of our border security efforts. not enough has been said publicly by our government in a orar, concise way, about our security efforts on behalf of the american people, and in the absence of facts, the american public is susceptible to claims that we have an open, or is border, through which -- porous border through which unaccompanied minors and member of terrorist organizations such pass.l will many saw the images of the processing centers filled with kids. far fewer americans know that by early june this spike in illegal migration by unaccompanied cans -- kids had turned a corner, and now it is at its lowest number since january, 2013. in september, the public heard a claim that four individuals with suspected ties to terrorism in

the middle east had attempted to cross our southern border. far fewer know that, in fact, these are true individuals were arrested, the supposedly to terrorism was thoroughly investigated and checked, and in mounted to a claim by the individuals themselves that they were members of the kurdish workers party, an organization actually fighting against isil and defended kurdish territory in iraq. nevertheless, these individuals have been arrested for unlawful entry, they are detained, and they will be deported. in the recent outbreak, there has been only one case so far of ebola diagnosed in this country. this department, my department, the department of homeland security, the department of defense, and cdc are heavily engaged. we are advancing our ebola screening of air passengers from

the three affected african countries and we are continually evaluating whether moore is appropriate. homelandary of security, i am committed to more transparency about our border security. this speech today is part of that effort. isen all we do today, it hard to believe that as recently no1904, we had virtually order patrol at all. were completely open to all forms of migration. created teddy roosevelt the united states immigration service. this force consisted of just 75 men on horseback based in el paso, texas, responsible for the patrol of the entire 2300-mile southwest border. it was not until 1921 that we began to restrict the numbers of immigrants who entered the

country legally with the passage of something called the emergency quota act of 1921. that law restricted yearly eachration to 3% of nationality currently in the country according to the 1910 census. prior to that, the only limits on immigration or rejections on so-called "undesirables." with the numeric limits created in 1921 came a dramatic increase which led immigration to an increase of border patrol enacting 24. originally, the border patrol the department of labor and was created to prevent illegal migration across our southern border with mexico and our northern border with canada. in those days, there were actually more days devoted to the northern border than the southern border to prevent the

smuggling of liquor into the u.s. from canada during prohibition. while other government agencies have faced cutbacks and limits in these times of fiscal constraint, our national leaders in congress and the executive branch have chosen to build a border patrol to an unprecedented level and resources. today's border patrol is itself one of the largest agencies of our government, with a budget of $3.5 billion, a total of 23,000 personnel, 20,833 border patrol agent, and the largest ever level of technology and equipment. let's look at that in more detail. had 8619 year 2000, we border patrol agent -- next -- dedicated to the southwest border. is 18,127he number

and growing. in fiscal year 2000, with just had 57.9 miles of primary fence along the southwest border. 352.7 miles of primary fence. in fiscal year 2000 we had 10 miles of secondary fence along the southwest border. ofay we have 36.3 miles secondary fence. in fiscal year 2000 we had 33 miles of physical -- vehicle fence. today we have 299 miles of vehicle fence. if you include primary, secondary, tertiary, and vehicle fence, today there's about 700 across thetal fence southwest border compared to just 77 miles of fence in the year 2000. in 14 years we have built almost 10 times more fence across the southwest border.

in fiscal year 2000, the border patrol had just 17 miles of all weather roads to get to and from the southwest border. miles of have 145.7 these roads, strategically placed where we have determined that they are needed. in fiscal year 2000, we had just 29 miles of lighting along the southwest border. today we have 70 miles of lighting strategically placed in places where we have determined it is needed. 14 years ago we had few, if any underground sensors to detect illegal migration at the southwest border. these we have 11,863 of devices. in fiscal year 2000, the border patrol had 56 aircraft. today, the number is 107. in the year 2000, that border control had no unmanned vehicles. today we have eight of these for surveillance of illegal activity

over the southwest border. in the year 2000, the border patrol had just two boats to patrol the border over waterways like the rio grande. today we have 84. in the year 2000, willis one mobile surveillance system. today we have 40. today we have 178 of these. in 2000 we had 140 remote video surveillance systems. today we have 273 of these. in fiscal year 2014, the border 9255 pairs of night vision goggles. in the year 2000, the border patrol had little or no formal imaging capability. today we have 600 and these devices. today, the border patrol has a lot of disappointment of people, boats along the border

than in its 90 year history. i have high regard with -- for today's border patrol. in nine and a half months in office i've been to the southwest border seven times. over the hot summer i observed the border patrol and leadership take on the unprecedented number of kids and families crossing the border into south texas. and did this in a calm professional manner without complaint, worked overtime, and took on duties far beyond the job description. i salute the border patrol chief fisher for making the border patrol's use of force policy public earlier this year and rewriting it to more specifically addressed instances of rock-throwing at the border and the threat presented by vehicles. i salute the commissioner for making public the report of the independent police executive

research forum on the use of force by the border patrol. i also salute the commissioner for limiting a unified formal review process that will more effectively respond to, investigate, review, and resolve any use of force incidents involving the border patrol in a timely manner. long investment -- long-term investment in border security has produced significant, positive results over the years. he illegal migration into this country pay in the year 2000, reflected by over 1.6 million apprehensions that year. as you can see from this slide, he illegal migration into this country has dropped considerably since then, reflected by the decline in total apprehensions from 1.6 million in 2000 to around 400,000 a year in recent years. no overall downward trend is

doubt due in large part to economic conditions in both the u.s. and mexico, but it is also due in very large measure to the deterrent factor of our border security efforts. apprehensions are at the lowest rate since they have been in the 1970's. slide 24 makes this point. it reflects the increased in border patrol agents and the simultaneous decrease in total apprehensions in the same period . the bottom line of all of this is in recent years the total number of those who attempt to cross our southwest border has declined dramatically, while the percentage of those who are apprehended has gone up. put simply, it is much harder to cross our border and evade capture than it used to be, and people know that. the final indicator is the estimated number of undocumented immigrants in this country.

according to pew research, the number grew to a high of 12.2 million in 2006, dropped, and has remained at about 11.3 million ever since. so, the population of undocumented immigrants in this country has stopped growing for the first time since the 1980's, and over half of these individuals have been in this country nearly 13 years. meanwhile, mexico has become our third largest trading partner with $507 billion in total two-way trade in 2013. it is the countries's second-largest -- the country's second-largest goods export market and more than one million u.s. jobs are supported by exports from mexico. our estimate for fiscal year 2014, and it is still an estimate as the fiscal year just ended, shows a modest increase

in apprehensions to about 480,000. increases almost entirely due to what happened this summer in the rio grande valley. in fact, in fiscal year 2014, about 53% of all apprehensions across the southwest border were in what we referred to as the rio grande valley sector of the southwest border, indicated by the red arrow there on the slide. this summer we saw an unprecedented spike in illegal migration into south texas. almost all of this migration can from guatemala, honduras, endocyte the door, and is everyone -- el salvador, and as everyone knows it consisted of high numbers of unaccompanied children, which added a dimension to the problem. he saw the photos of over-crowded processing centers in south texas. unlike other spikes in migration

in the past, many of these families and kids expected to be apprehended once they crossed the rio grande. they were not seeking to evade border patrol agent and all of our surveillance, and they probably knew that they could not. in response, we didn't number of things. -- oursage was simple border is not open to illegal immigration, and that if you come here illegally you will be sent back consistent with our laws and our values. so, we put additional border security and law enforcement resources into south texas. we open new processing centers across the southwest to handle the additional legal migration. in texas, arizona, and elsewhere. we reassign hundreds of border patrol agent to the rio grande valley sector to manage increased apprehensions and that sector. we dramatically reduced the time it takes to repatriate adults

from never just 33 days down to four days. we added additional flights to repatriate people back faster to their home countries. we built more detention space in new mexico and texas. we dedicated resources to the prosecution of the criminal smuggling organizations, the coyotes that were inducing people to take the long, dangerous journey to central america. publicched a renewed messaging campaign in central america highlighting the dangers of the journey, and correcting coyotesnformation that are putting out about free passage if you come to the united states. vice president biden visited central american military leaders to coordinate our response. president obama himself met with the president of guatemala, honduras, el salvador, in washington to collaborate our sponsor.

the government of mexico did a significant amount to interdict migration from central america. junegood news is since mid- the number of illegal migrants crossing into texas has gone down considerably. slide 30, please. 30?we go to slide saw slide 30, you would see a sharp ski slope. we will get there. -- there we go. all right. the high water mark was june 10, 2014. since, the number of unaccompanied children has declined steadily. the same thing is reflected on a monthly basis. next slide, please.

10,580 2014, unaccompanied children cross the southwest border. 10,622 crossed the sophomore had in july, 5501, september was 2424. the monthly numbers are now the lowest they have been almost two years. in terms of the year-and number, the original projection in january with 60,000 unaccompanied children would cross the southwest border illegally in fiscal year 2014. during the summary -- summer we revised that up to 98 -- 90,000. 68,000.nd number is not far off the original production -- projection. the decline in illegal migration by parents who brought their children followed a similar path. next slide, please.

though the worst is over for now, from the spike this summer, and the high union legal migration 15 years ago, the president and i are committed -- illegal migration 15 years ago the president and i are committed to building a secure border. much of illegal migration is seasonal. despite in migration we saw this summer could return. the poverty and violence that are the push factors in central america still exists. the economy in this country, a pull factor, is getting better. thus, there is still more we can and should do. first, as we are doing across the department of homeland security in a variety of contexts, we will continue to build a risk-based strategy for border security. our southern border is a mixture of winding river, desert, and mountains. simply building more fences is not the answer.

my predecessors used to say build a 50-foot fence, and i am sure someone else will build a 51-4 latter. ladder.- 51-foot today we have the ability to do more. much of that is already deployed on the border today. we need to go further in that direction so that we can focus our resources where our intelligence and surveillance tell us the threats exist. this is a smart, effective, and efficient use of taxpayer resources here at here is a vivid example of what i mean. we know where the risks are. we need to focus on these areas. the risk areas start to move someplace else, we get there first. second, to best accomplish our border security goals along the southern border, and consistent with the overall unity of effort and initiative that i announce

team -- initiative that i announced in april, i directed the department of homeland security embark on a southern border campaign plan that will put to use, in a strategic and coordinated way, the assets and personnel of customs and border protection, immigration and customs enforcement, citizenship and immigration services, the coast guard, and other resources of the department when and if they are necessary. we are discarding the stovepipes that you see on this slide. to pursue the southern border campaign plan, we are first developing a department-wide strategy for the security of the southern border and approaches. we will then direct their resources and activities of the componentss accordingly. our overarching goals will be effective enforcement and interdiction across land, sea, and air, degrade transnational

criminal organizations, and do these things without impeding the flow of lawful trade, travel, and commerce across our borders. we are now in the midst of developing the more specific and to pursue these goals associated metrics. a planning team from across the department led by the coast guard vice admiral charles michelle is developing lines of effort, actions, and milestones to accomplish these goals in an effective, cost-efficient manner. we will then take the next logical step which we see reflected on this slide in this plan and establish three new department taskforces, each headed by a senior official of this department to direct the ice, and thecbp, coast guard in discrete areas. box will belue responsible for maritime forces.

the second second task joint force west will be responsible for the land border and the west coast of california. the third will be a standing joint task force for investigation to join the work of the other two task forces. departmentwide campaign planning and joint task ensure more border security efforts across our southern border and approaches. finally, there is much more we can do to inform the public about our border security efforts on their behalf. within the department we are developing metrics for measuring and evaluating our border security efforts, and we intend to make those metrics public. office ofering our immigration statistics by adding new statisticians.

i am instructing that this office establish a linkage with all of the components of the department with a border security mission so that the data on the size by this office -- publicized by this office reflects what is happening department-wide. comesransparency responsibility. those of us in public office and in the media, whether in orcribing the border, isil, ebola owe the public informed, careful, and responsible dialogue, not overheated rhetoric that is certain to feed the flames of fear, anxiety, and suspicion. times,ve said many homeland security means striking a balance. in the name of homeland security, i can build you a perfectly safe city, but it will be a prison. i can build more fences, install

more invasive screening devices, ask more intrusive questions, demand more answers, and alarm the public enough to make everyone suspicious of each other, and simply stay at home. this will cost us who we are as a nation. law,ple who respect the cherish privacy, law, cherish pd enjoy the freedom to do travel and associate, celebrate our diversity and who are not afraid. analysis, these are the things that constitute our greatest strength as a nation. thank you for listening. [applause] >> thank you, mr. secretary. said.k you proved what i the new office of statisticians you have set up will be busy under your watch. you you just presented

presented much like a prosecutor. >> i do have a large degree. >> i know you do. talk to us a little bit about where you see the vulnerabilities. done, bothto be within the department and the border. you have laid out where things are improved. >> i would not describe it as vulnerabilities although i will get to where i think we need to the departmentu of homeland security is 11 years old. in 2002, congress rot together pre-existing components, coast guard, immigration components, border control that, as you saw in the presentation, were around long before dhs. they have their own way of doing

business, their own culture, their own headquarters, their own soft -- their own office of statisticians. the way we have done business up to now is each component would make its own budget request up through the stovepipe. it would go through headquarters and then omb and go to congress. so we want to do a couple of things. at an earlier stage in that process, we want to have a more strategic department-wide view to deliver we need more efficient services for the taxpayer. we may not have a strategic department-wide look -- what do we need on the southwest order? relying upon all the resources of the department, coast guard, cbp, ice, rather than just

receiving it all stovepipe. the this past summer, i saw richard of bringing to bear all these components toward one mission, which we need to do more of. when i go to mcallen station, texas, i would meet with border patrol personnel, cbp personnel , meet withforms immigration enforcement personnel, fema" card -- fema and coast guard. the only person they had in common was mean. we want to create a structure three task force model that puts in place somebody geographically who is focused on the southwest border, southeast order -- southeast order investigation so we can have a more strategic approach and somebody at a slightly lower level than me

focus on various parts of the country and what is needed there. and we will approve the allocation of resources and the mission each year. to me, that is a better and more strategic way for developing border security. showed of hotspots is my way of saying, hey, the proper approach, whether it is border security or aviation security, you have risk-based security where you focus on the hotspots. and we have the ability to do that, to focus on where we see the illegal migration trending and we focus the resources there. so that is what i believe should be the approach of the future. we have already begun to move in that direction and i want to continue to make strides away.

>> one could shake of the homeland security is closing too many departments and agencies together and different systems, etc. tothe department to big manage and more broadly, is the homeland security enterprise that involves not just the department of defense, but is it too much unreal at this point? >> people ask me that question. the first thing you have to ask is where were all these components before. all of these components under the broad umbrella of homeland security used to be in something like 20 different agencies of government, ranging from ,reasury, agriculture, justice a lot of component heads who did not have an homeland security law enforcement conformation. so we brought them together and

a lot of my european counterparts, a lot of my middle eastern counterparts have ministries of the interior with almost identical jurisdiction sets. view, just inof nine and a half months in office, i have seen the efficiencies that can be brought about by having all these components at one table for the purpose of a common mission. so i think it makes a tremendous amount of sense. is it big? yes. should we consider a more efficient command and control structure? a more efficient supervisory chain? yes. in the last slide is a step in that direction. 's >> one last question before opening up. you focus very much on the southwest border. talk to us about your thinking

in defense in depth with partners, not just along the border but around the world. in the context of the summer crisis, obviously working with mexican partners, central american partners have become key obviously. then you look at the ebola crisis and dealing with the the transportation channels and what our partners around the world are doing, in particular with what is happening. and depthhe defense of the homeland security enterprise fit into your model and how you think about dealing with these issues? with mynd a lot of time counterparts to the south and my counterparts to the north. i was in ottawa last week meeting with mr. stephen laney, my canadian counterpart, and other members of the cabinet. to conferences with my european counterparts.

i visited with my middle eastern counterparts. we are building what i believe to be a better system of immigration, of information together onworking border security issues, homeland security issues. given the current world situation, we all appreciate the .eed to do that i think we are creating a pretty good environment in doing that. when i was in office just a couple of weeks, i went down to mexico for the meeting of our president and president pena nieto and the leaders senate -- leader summit. their focus was on lawful trade and travel and had to come up that between the three countries. it were a number of initiatives

signed. in 2011, the leaders entered into are beyond the border initiative which were costly pushing with different lines of reference. so there is an increased effort in working with other governments as i see it. >> let's open this up. a little bit of the rules of the game. identify yourself and please keep it short. we want to have as many questions as possible and make it a question, not a commentary period. >> how has the threat of isis impacted the border control? course the most prominent terrorist organization on the world stage right now and we are taking the fight to them in iraq and syria with

airstrikes and there is an international coalition that is being assembled that will participate in this overall effort. is obviously a dangerous terrorist organization. they have demonstrated their willingness to kill americans in a brutal and public way sibley because we are americans. they called for attacks on the west. and they have very slick social media and very slick propaganda. so you put all those things view, theyd, in my represent a very significant potential threat to our homeland for which we have to be vigilant. we are vigilant around a couple of different things. one is the issue of foreign fighters, people who leave their home country go there, spend

some time there, link up with some extremist elements and then return to their home countries. either this country or a country that is in our visa waiver program. so we are focused on tracking those individuals. i think the fbi does a pretty good job of that. aboutso, we are concerned -- and this does not really go to the border but it is in my view a very significant issue to abouton, we are concerned domestic-based lone wolf acts of terror inspired by the social media group sure the literature of these groups. we have seen cases where somebody arrested, prosecuted was motivated by some literature put out by a terrorist organization. i am not in the business of singling them out because i do not want to give them promotion. respects, that is the terrorist threat i worry most about because it is the

hardest to detect and he can happen with very little notice. one of the things we are doing in the department of homeland security, in addition to partnering with law enforcement is countering violent extremism initiative, outreach to communities in this country that have large muslim populations. so two weeks ago, i was in columbus ohio. islamic cultural center just outside of --umbia's desk columbus ohio outside of columbus, ohio. i was in a chicago suburb where i did the same thing. there is a somali american organization. i will be going to other cities, minneapolis and a couple of weeks, boston, dearborn, los angeles. when i am done, i want to be

able to reach personally a large percentage of the community organizations that themselves have the ability to reach people in this country in communities where that potential might exist. monitor threats from overseas, potential overseas threats, our intelligence committee does a pretty good job of that. while we are very focused on aviation security, we continue to focus on aviation security. the new phenomenon that i worry about is the foreign fighters and the threat of violent extremism here at home. i think those two phenomena in particular are new post-9/11 phenomena that our government >>ds to prepare for hearing yes, sir, right here.

>> i am a reporter with fusion. the president is still committed to taking executive action on immigration and what sort of action is he considering at this time? >> yes, the president is committed to taking executive action to fix our broken immigration system. and so i my. we are developing a set of reforms that i would characterize as competence of the nature but within our existing legal authorities. there are a number of things we can do and we should do to fix our immigration system which i be between the midterm elections and the end of the year. i think that is what the president said. ok, yes, sir, right here.

>> thank you, sir. >> a little bit louder. >> on the question of foreign fighters, a recent bulletin from dhs went to local law enforcement warning that people who have gone to syria and have returned to the united states might be posing a threat. how worried are you precisely on the threat of foreign fighters that have already returned to the homeland? >> i think our law-enforcement does a pretty good job of may beg individuals who tempted toward violence or may be meeting criminal acts or are about to commit criminal acts. together, between tracking individuals of suspicion in their travel, in their activities here at home, and their activities abroad, i think we do a pretty good job of tracking these people. you can never know what you

don't know. but when i look at the level of detail that goes into this effort and the systems we have in place, i have a reasonable degree of comfort that we are doing a pretty good job in that regard. i would not say that i have a complete degree of comfort but i have a reasonable degree of comfort that we are doing a pretty good job in that regard during >> right here, sir, with the gray suit on and the type. >> thank you, mr. secretary. technology. we are a biometrics company. program fitn exit in your program for the southwest border. >> a what? biometric entry and exit is

the gold standard. but it costs money. so we are working toward a biometric exit system but it costs money. it is the gold standard. there are several important agenda items that i would like to see completed but i have to rely on my partners in congress to do that and we need the right technology in place to do it efficiently. the biometric exit and entry is the gold standard. ok, yes ma'am, right here. >> thanks. you just laid out numbers to show how families and unaccompanied children in central america, those numbers are dwindling. continuing to build the facilities and how long will we keep that policy of detaining families without bond?

>> as i said in my prepared remarks, a lot of migration is seasonal. so we look at the pattern this last summer of adults, adults without children. it followed almost identically the migration patterns in prior years in terms of the numbers and the trends. a lot of the migration you saw is definitely seasonal. but then there was a pretty sharp drop-off which may have in to a lot of the aggressive efforts we put in place, a lot of the public messaging. so we've got to, in my view, guard against the same thing happening again. we want to build additional capability that can be converted from one type of use to another

on pretty short notice. i think there are some lessons learned from that experience. we also don't want to totally dismantle all the things we put in place the summer to deal with that because it could come back again. we watched the numbers several times a week. i used to watch the numbers daily. i watch the numbers several times a week to detect the upward trend but it could come back again. the traditional migration , right for adults is after the new year, it starts to inch up again and again and then piece early summer and drops off when it gets hot in the southwest in the late summer. so we can see the same thing come back again and i want to know the against that. >> i've got time for one or two more questions. the gentleman way in the back. that you. yes, with the gray suit.

question --tary, my question what is your organization? >> the polish industry. eu statesstill some that are interested in the program. your predecessor assured the senate judiciary committee that that would happen over a year and a half ago. are you and it closer to those numbers being published? and do you wish to speak to the ongoing iso threat? the foreseeable future for allied nations in support of the united states in iraq and afghanistan and the continued threat from iso-? >> that is a three-part question. as you probably know, the criteria for getting into the visa waiver program in statutory.

nation hashether a met it and is qualified. so it is set up by congress. subpart ab was -- yes, overstay a report inhere is the works that i reviewed a while ago and i thought it needed some red teaming. i wanted it to have some good scrutiny applied to it before we made it public because it is an important number and i want to be sure we get it right. you know what red teaming means, right? so i wanted to have some scrutiny. to it to ensure that we got it right, that we got the methodology right. in terms of dealing with the foreign fighters issue, we are

evaluating whether there is more information we could get from participants in the visa waiver program with respect to people who travel from their country two hours. a when a country becomes member in the visa waiver program, they sign up to something called homeland security presidential directive 6, which is a series of security assurances. and we want to see if we are obtaining all the information we could and should pursuant to those agreements. so my folks and others are evaluating that right now. i think it is very important that we do that. ok. we will go over here. let's see. yes, sir, right there on the and.

>> thank you, mr. secretary. questionnded to the that the reporter from reuters asked before about unaccompanied children and the families that are coming here by responding about the seasonal changes in numbers that are coming here. but attorneys are going on a volunteer basis to a key location in mexico to detain families. these are women and children who have come from central america who are being held in these jail facilities. what they are perceiving is that these mothers and children are coming from her figure violence, domestic violence, gang-based violence, much of which would qualify them for refugee status here in the united states at very high numbers. a great majority of these women have strong claims for asylum. as the reuters reporter had asked before, why is the

department administration continuing to build more facilities, not just the one in artesia, but another one in cannes, texas and another one planned in texas that will bring the number of detention facilities for these families, mothers and children, to about 4000? why this mass extension detention? these are asylum seekers that deserve real protection and cannot be treated this way, especially mothers and children. >> a lot of the spike that we saw the summer were not just unaccompanied kids. unaccompanied kids got the most attention. but a lot of it, perhaps on the same numbers if not larger, were what we called family units, parents with kids, which is what you are asking me about. had detention space for about 34,000 individuals.

95 beds total for family units. ofy 95, unit capability out -we believe it is necessary to build more that capability in the case that we have another spike like we did last summer. 95 out of 34,000 is not acceptable. i want to build additional capabilities that can be converted from one use to the other. i personally have been to artesia. i was there when it first opened. every time i visit artesia or nogales or mcallen, i spend time talking to the migrants myself. , the moms and dads, to understand why they made this

journey. and i am certainly aware of the council have had with communication with their clients at artesia and i have directed my folks to put in place a number of things to make the attorney-client relationship easier there. i certainly appreciate the attorney-client relationship. ok, one more question. yes, sir. that i might have one more. >> i have a two-part question. one related to the last question. you indicated in your prepared remarks that you and the vice president have visited several -- feelingcome away satisfied that they had the resources and the will?

the second question, you talked about aviation security and particularly southern border security. can you talk about your comfort of maritime security given that 95% of the goods that come into this country come into this country, and these cargo containers? america.on 1, central i got to know the ambassador of guatemala who is here in the front row. a wonderful public servant. i had a good session with his president, both here and in guatemala, and the members of his cabinet and the first lady. americaway from such a -- from central america, from guatemala in particular, knowing that there is a personal, heartfelt commitment to encouraging their youth to stay at home.

the first lady of guatemala is very committed to that. she put her heart and soul into it with a public campaign this summer, which i believe contributed to the downturn. ofoubtably, there are issues poverty and violence in central america, particularly in honduras and el salvador and guatemala. our discussions, which included the president, president obama, the vice president, myself, secretary kerry, we talked about longer-term ways in which we can address those issues. help in central america with their border security efforts. we want to help the government of guatemala with their border security efforts. in place some resources

to do that now but we talked about more of that. and i believe that, in the course of our dialogue, we came away with a renewed commitment to do better, to do more in that regard among all of us. so we will continue that dialogue and continue those discussions. security,, maritime that was question three. question 2 -- >> border security, aviation -- >> yes. when i visit ports like the port of los angeles, i am pretty our screening capabilities. we are pretty sophisticated at identifying high-risk cargo by the profile of the manifest, the source, the country source, and then subjecting to secondary

screening a higher level of screening stuff that fits the profile, that are potentially problematic. it.m pretty impressed by there is a law on the books that everyes 100% scanning of aece of cargo that leaves foreign port by the united states government, which is a very large unfunded mandate that was put on the books in 2007. the statute creates the option every two years, and i waved it because we do not have the money to put in place at every single foreign port, which we do not control,