Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives' Select Committee on Homeland Security

There is a serious but reparable vulnerability in the biometric identification system of the US-VISIT Program, which is our last line of defense for keeping terrorists off U.S. soil. A minor software modification that allows the watchlist rule to vary with image quality can increase detection from 53% to 73%. I have provided details to officials who oversee the US-VISIT operations, and this should be implemented as soon as possible. The use of more than 2 fingers for low-quality images can achieve a detection probability of 95%. Although switching from a 2-fingerprint to a 10-fingerprint system may be costly and disruptive, there is no excuse for a 10-billion dollar program to settle for performance below this level. Indeed, our results are not inconsistent with the warning in the November, 2002 NIST report that a 2-finger search was not sufficient for identification from a large watchlist. If slower 2-finger matching algorithms cannot approach 95% detection for poor-quality images, then the US-VISIT Program should be reconfigured with 10-fingerprint scanners as soon as possible.

Our recommendations hinge on the assumption that terrorist organizations as sophisticated as Al Qaeda will eventually attempt to defeat the US-VISIT system by employing terrorists with poor quality fingerprints.

Should ethnonationalist wars be resolved by formally partitioning states? The answer can't be decided case by case, because two incentive problems imply that ad hoc partitions have effects that extend across cases.

First, if the implicit criterion for major power intervention in support of partition is some level of violence, this encourages violent movements seeking to mobilize cultural difference in order to claim statehood. The Wilsonian diagnosis is wrong. Perpetual civil peace cannot be had by properly sorting "true" nations into states, because nations are not born but made, partially in response to international incentives and major power policies.

Second, an international order in which major powers go around carving up lesser powers on an ad hoc basis would make all states significantly less secure. Ad hoc use of partition to solve civil wars would undermine a relatively stable implicit bargain among
the major powers in place since the 1950s - "If you don't seek to change interstate borders by force, neither will we." I argue that this norm has been valuable, functioning in some respects like an arms control agreement. It would be irresponsible to undermine it without a thought to what might replace it, as the advocates of ad hoc partition are effectively urging. If the major powers want to start redesigning "sovereign" states, they need a political and legal framework that mitigates these two incentive effects. The best feasible solutions may be:

(1) strengthening and making more precise international legal standards on human
(and perhaps group) rights;

(2) threatening to sanction states that do not observe these standards in regard to minorities, possibly including some forms of support for agents of the
oppressed group;

(3) holding to the norm of partition only by mutual consent, but providing carrots and sticks when the state in question refuses to abide by minimal standards of
nondiscrimination.

From the preface:

"Events in recent years have caused heightened concern about the security of weapons-usable nuclear material. The possibility of illicit trafficking in, or seizure of, such material, leading to nuclear terrorism, is a worry for all states and their citizens. And given the relatively small quantities required, material obtained in one part of the world could be made into a weapon in another and threaten lives in a third. It is truly a global problem.

Since the beginning of the nuclear era, the physical protection of fissile material has been a responsibility of the individual states possessing the material. These states have different organizational approaches for providing physical protection; and while cognizant of recommended general standards, they tend to follow their own practices, shaped by custom, costs, and threat perception. Moreover, the existence of military as well as civil programs in some states adds another dimension
to the physical protection issue.

Because physical protection is a sovereign matter and not part of an international regime (except for transit of civil material across borders), there has been less attention in much of the world community to the issues of physical protection than to the other elements of nuclear safeguards and controls. (An important exception to this situation is the effort being made to assist the states of the former Soviet Union in the disposition of their weapons-usable nuclear materials.) The lack of a general dialog about a problem of growing concern motivated us to hold a three-day workshop at Stanford University to develop a better understanding of some of the important underlying questions and issues, and to undertake a comparative examination of states' approaches to physical protection. We were pleased to have knowledgeable participants from a number of the countries and regions where physical protection of fissile materials is, or will become, a day-to-day matter.

The results of the workshop are reported in these Proceedings. It is our hope that this work will stimulate further analysis and discussion, and lead to greater interest in international standards, cooperation, and supporting programs.

James E. Goodby
1996-1997 Payne Distinguished Lecturer
Stanford University

Ronald F. Lehman II
Director of the Center for Global Security Research
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

William C. Potter
Director, Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Monterey Institute of International Studies"