The Subcommittee on
Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security | Anti-Terrorism
Initiatives | Seaport Security | Mass
Transportation Security | Identity Theft
As Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security,
I have long fought to improve our ability to prevent, defend against,
and respond to terrorism. The subcommittee oversees anti-terrorism
enforcement and policy, government information policy, electronic
privacy and security of computer information, and the Freedom
of Information Act.
I won an expansion of the subcommittee’s
jurisdiction so that it now oversees of the Department of Homeland
Security’s efforts relating to anti-terrorism enforcement
and policy, the State Department’s consular operations as
they relate to anti-terrorism enforcement and policy, as well
as espionage laws and their enforcement. I have held many hearings
on America’s vulnerability to terrorist attacks and ways
to improve the nation’s response if one occurred.
The Terrorism Subcommittee is the most active of
the Judiciary Committee’s subcommittees. During the past
few years, we held a series of hearings to investigate the roots
of terrorist ideology, terrorist support networks, and state sponsorship
of terrorism. Additionally, we investigated how Americans and
their government can: respond to terrorist attacks; combat bioterrorism;
keep terrorists out of the country; fight the plague of narcoterrorism;
ensure document security and cyber security; investigate “lone-wolf”
terrorists; detain suspected terrorists; provide law enforcement
with tools to fight terrorism; and vindicate the rights of crime
victims.
The subcommittee’s hearings resulted in the
introduction of a bill on seaport security requiring reports by
the Inspectors General of the Department of Justice and Department
of Defense. They also resulted in the enactment of the Identity
Theft Penalty Enhancement Act, the “Lone-Wolf Fix”
to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and other significant
antiterrorism legislation, including the following changes to
federal law:
• presumptive pre-trial detention of terrorists;
• sharing of grand jury information with state and local
governments;
• punishment and deportation of persons who receive military-type
training from a terrorist group;
• expansion and clarification of the statute prohibiting
material support to terrorism;
• punishment for concealment of terrorist financing;
• punishment for hoaxes relating to terrorism or military
deaths;
• increased penalties for obstruction of justice in a
terror case;
• expanded prohibitions on possessing materials for weapons
of mass destruction and punishment for aiding rogue states’
weapons of mass destruction efforts; and
• stiff, mandatory punishment for possession of shoulder-fired
anti-aircraft rockets, atomic, radiological bombs, and smallpox
virus.
Here is a more in-depth description of some of these
provisions, each of which became law as part of the Intelligence
Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act in December of 2004:
Responding to the New Threat of “Lone-Wolf”
Terrorists
According to testimony by the Attorney General,
“single, lone-wolf terrorists act and can act in ways that
are very, very damaging.” With that in mind, I introduced
legislation to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
to permit surveillance of individual foreign visitors to the United
States who appear to be involved in international terrorism, without
regard to whether such persons are affiliated with a foreign government
or terrorist group as required by prior law. Both the FBI Director
and the Attorney General testified in support of this bill.
Making the Law as Tough on Terrorists as
It Is on Drug Dealers
Astonishingly, some legal rules have been easier
on terrorists than on drug dealers. For example, while there is
a statutory presumption in favor of denying bail to defendants
accused of some crimes, such as those involving drugs, such a
presumption did not apply to those accused of acts of terrorism.
To correct this inconsistency, I introduced legislation to presumptively
deny pre-trial release to persons charged with acts of terrorism.
Giving Law Enforcement the Tools It Needs to Fight Terrorism
Before the enactment of the Intelligence Reform
and Terrorism Prevention Act in late 2005, no major anti-terror
legislation had been signed into law since the USA Patriot Act
in the weeks following September 11, 2001, despite many gaps discovered
since then in U.S. anti-terror laws.
Legislation I introduced, the Tools to Fight Terrorism
Act, combined 11 different bills of the past several years that
together begin to close legal loopholes and provide law enforcement
with constitutionally sound tools to prevent, disrupt, and prosecute
terrorism. In addition to the “lone-wolf” and pretrial
detention provisions, the intelligence-reform legislation enacted
in December 2004 incorporated many provisions of my bill, including
the following provisions: to allow sharing of grand jury information
with state and local governments; to punish and deport persons
who receive military-type training from a terrorist group; to
expand and clarify the material support statute; to punish concealment
of terrorist financing; to punish military and terrorist hoaxes;
to increase penalties for obstruction of justice in a terror case;
to expand prohibitions on possession of materials for weapons
of mass destruction prohibitions and punish aiding rogue states’
WMD efforts; and to severely punish possession of shoulder-fired
anti-aircraft rockets, atomic or radiological bombs, and the smallpox
virus.
Seaport security remains dangerously deficient.
The effects of a terrorist attack on a U.S. seaport could be catastrophic.
By one estimate, a nuclear weapon detonated in a major seaport
or in Washington, D.C. would kill 50,000 to a million people,
result in direct property damage of $50 billion to $500 billion,
cause trade disruption of $100 billion to $200 billion, and would
create indirect costs of $300 billion to $1.2 trillion. After
a subcommittee hearing on this topic, Senator Feinstein and I
introduced a measure to close loopholes in current law and toughen
sanctions, including criminal charges, for certain offenses related
to seaport security and international shipping. This legislation
was included in the USA Patriot Act conference report, which will
be enacted into law early this year.
Bombings of mass-transportation systems by
Muslim terrorists in Madrid in 2003 and London in 2004 have exposed
the vulnerability of our public transportation infrastructure
to these types of attacks. I am an original cosponsor of Senator
Sessions’s Railroad Carriers and Mass Transportation Protection
Act of 2005, which would expand and increase criminal penalties
for terrorist attacks on railroads and mass transportation systems.
Specifically, the section would: extend
to railroads all of the protections that currently apply to mass-transportation
systems, including making it a crime to aid an offense or to willfully
commit an attack on a train (current law requires intent to derail
or wreck a train); update current proscriptions on attacks on
railroads by borrowing more specific definitions from other statutes
(thus also proscribing, for example, attacks with a biological
agent or toxins or destructive substances, and expanding the types
of railroad equipment that are protected); extend to mass-transportation
systems a proscription on undermining railroad infrastructure
(this currently only applies to railroads); make it a crime to
release biological agents or other hazardous materials on the
property of mass transportation providers or railroads; and create
an aggravated offense for terrorist attacks against vehicles carrying
persons, high-level radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel, or
designated hazardous materials. The Sessions bill was included
in the USA Patriot Act conference report, which will enacted into
law early this year.
Criminals often use personal information to assume
the identity of law-abiding citizens and then take their money.
It's high-tech theft. It is a national problem – nearly
10 million Americans became victims of identity theft in 2003
– and it is even more acute in Arizona. The Federal Trade
Commission received over 9,300 fraud and identity theft complaints
from Arizona residents in 2005. Our state had the highest per-capita
rate of identity theft-related complaints in the nation.
As one witness testified before my subcommittee,
terrorists have “long utilized identity theft as well as
Social Security number fraud to enable them to obtain cover employment
and access to secure locations.” In response to the growing
threat of identity theft, Senator Feinstein and I introduced legislation
to enhance the tools available to law enforcement both to prevent
identity theft when possible and to vigorously prosecute it when
deterrence fails. Our bill became law in July 2004.
For further information about how you can avoid becoming a victim
of identity theft,
and the steps you should take if you have been victimized, click
on the link or visit the Consumer
Protection section of my web site.
