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House Hearing on Threats to U.S. Homeland; FBI Unveils Recognition System; NASA Hires "Space Taxi" Firms

Aired September 17, 2014 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


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CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Welcome back.

We want to take you right to Washington. The House Committee on Homeland Security where lawmakers are questioning our terrorism experts about worldwide threats to the homeland. Testifying now, Matthew Olsen; he's the National Counterterrorism Center director. Let's listen.

MATTHEW OLSEN, NATIONAL COUNTERTERRORISM CENTER DIRECTOR: Taking advantage of sectarian tensions in Iraq to entrench itself in both countries. It's established sanctuaries in Iraq and in Syria from where the group has the ability to plan and to train and also to amass both fighters and weapons with really little interference.

The group's proven to be an effective fighting force. Its battlefield strategy is complex and it's adaptive. It uses a mix of techniques from terrorist operations hit and run tactics to paramilitary assaults to enable their recent gains.

And then importantly the group also views itself as the now leader of a global jihadist movement. It operates the most sophisticated propaganda machine of any terrorist organization. It turns out timely, high-quality media and it uses social media to secure a widespread following.

Today we believe that ISIL has as many as 30,000 plus fighters and it controls much of the Tigris/Euphrates basin which is the cross roads of the Middle East. And from this position ISIL poses a multifaceted threat to the United States.

This past January, the leader of ISIL warned that the U.S. will soon be in direct conflict with the group and there's little doubt that ISIL views us, views the United States, as a strategic enemy.

This threat to us is most acute in Iraq. The group's safe haven and resources in Iraq pose an immediate and direct threat to our presence there, particularly our embassy in Baghdad and, of course, that threat includes the threat to our -- to Americans held hostage by ISIL.

But that threat extends outside of Iraq to the West. ISIL has the potential to use its safe haven and to plan and coordinate attacks both in Europe and potentially in the United States. This threat became real earlier this year with the shooting in a Brussels museum that killed four people by an ISIL fighter and then with the arrest we saw in France of an ISIL operative who had access to several explosive devices.

At this point we have no information that ISIL is plotting an attack inside the United States but we do know that as my colleagues, Director Comey and Secretary Johnson have referred to that thousands of foreign fighters have flocked to Syria over the past three years. This includes more than 2,000 Europeans and more than 100 Americans. Many of these fighters that have flocked to Syria have joined ISIL's ranks.

We are concerned, of course, that these fighters will gain experience, training, and eventually return to their home countries battle- hardened and radicalized, some possessing western passports and travel documents. We're also concerned about the possibility of a homegrown extremist becoming radicalized by the information that on the Internet and carrying out a limited self-directed attack here at home for which we would have -- we would face potentially little or no warning.

So secondly this phenomenon, the rise of ISIL, exemplifies the threat and transformation of the terrorism threat that we've seen over the past several years. We've seen this movement diversify and expand in the aftermath of the upheaval and chaos in the Arab World since 2010. So as my colleagues have mentioned, ISIL is just one of the groups that we're concerned about.

Al Qaeda core continues to support attacking the West and for now remains the recognized leader of a global jihadist movement. In Syria, we've seen veteran al Qaeda fighters travel from Pakistan to take advantage of the permissive environment there.

COSTELLO: All right. We're going to jump out of this hearing. That's Matthew Olsen -- he's the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He's talking about the threat ISIS poses not only to America but also to European countries. And eventually this hearing will get around into better ways we can protect our homeland from homegrown terrorists so we're going to ask the question this morning, what is the best way to keep the United States safe, to keep us safe at home.

The FBI now says it has an important tool in its arsenal. It's called the next generation identification. So what's that, you ask? Well, it's a fancy name for a new allegedly better facial recognition system. This system mixes mug shot photos with non-criminal faces pulled from employment records and background check databases. When all is said and done, according to the verge, the FBI will have 52 million faces in its data bank.

Critics are alarmed because there's no evidence such methods are effective and they could possibly target you. So let's talk about that.

Jennifer Lynch is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and John McGaw is a former undersecretary for the TSA and former director of the U.S. Secret Service. Welcome to both of you.

JOHN MCGAW, FORMER DIRECTOR, U.S. SECRET SERVICE: Good morning, Carol.

JENNIFER LYNCH, ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION: Thank you.

COSTELLO: Good morning.

Mr. McGaw, I'm going to start with you. Is this sort of thing effective?

MCGAW: Well, it's becoming more effective. It's not new -- as you said, it's a new generation. The Europeans and England have been using it for a lot of years. Our casinos use it everyday to identify people they don't want in the casino. It's really a facial fingerprint. That's kind of an easy way to understand it.

It takes the features of your face and draws the diagram between the features. It measures the distance between the left corner of your eye and earlobe or the depth of your eye socket. So it measures those and then it's put into the system and if your picture shows up -- I remember when I was a young agent 45 years ago, Secret Service at a checkpoint where we were expecting two or three individuals that were a threat to our protectee. I had those photographs. It was my responsibility to make sure none of them came through the checkpoint.

Now today you can put that camera up there and if you have that person's picture, quality of picture is important but if you have that person's picture, then they do the facial feature measurements. It will pick that person out and very few times will it pick somebody out that isn't the right person. But you can resolve that in seconds.

COSTELLO: Ok. So Jennifer, John says it can be effective. But is there any real evidence it's been very effective?

LYNCH: I don't think that there's any real evidence that it's been very effective and what we learned from some records that the FBI released about the next generation identification system is that they're only guaranteeing about 85 percent accuracy. That is pretty low especially when you're talking about a database that's going to include non-criminal photos.

Because if you get your picture in the database then your picture will be searched every time there's a criminal investigation. And at 85 percent accuracy there's always a chance that your picture could be returned as a suspect in that criminal investigation.

And these are innocent Americans that we're talking about. People who submit to a background check because they want to be a law enforcement officer or they want to be a teacher, they want to work with children. These are everyday Americans whose pictures end up in the next generation identification database.

COSTELLO: Well, here's an example of where facial recognition didn't quite work, the Boston bombings. Let's take that, for example. Remember those grainy pictures that the FBI released? There they are, the Tsarnaev brothers walking down the sidewalk in Boston. Well, the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev's picture was in the data bank. They had that information and I guess they used this algorithm to

identify suspects through the facial recognition system and it failed to do that in the Tsarnaev case. In fact, John, what helped more to identify these suspects was old-fashioned police work. They found a witness on the sidewalk who'd been injured who described Tsarnaev and that's what led authorities to them.

MCGAW: Well, you know, I disagree with Jennifer a little in that if you have that camera on a checkpoint, let's say at the airport or where some of our 100 persons who are over there now preparing to do damage to our country and learning different techniques, they won't get back in the country because we do have very high-quality -- it's like any other system, garbage in/garbage out.

But if you have a high-quality picture of that individual and 85 percent if you're looking at a checkpoint, people coming through and you stop 15 out of a hundred and none of the three are that person, the odds are one is going to be that person but if it isn't you've delayed them not very much at all. If you don't use that system then the perpetrator gets on the plane and we've lost another aircraft.

COSTELLO: So Jennifer in that instance isn't it worth the loss of privacy?

LYNCH: I think there's a little misunderstanding about how the next generation identification database is going to be used. It's not going to be used as checkpoints. It's not actually designed for that purpose. It's designed for criminal investigations for forensic purposes. I think a better example might be the Boston bombing situation where you have some surveillance camera footage and you're trying to identify somebody in that picture.

And I think what we learned from the Boston bombing situation, like you said, is that it was basic old-fashioned police work that solved those crimes. And the law enforcement agents were able to find the perpetrators of those crimes within three days and that was because of a lot of help from the public. It was not because of facial recognition.

So I think that we really do need to think seriously about the privacy and civil liberties implications of a massive facial recognition database that's not going to be used at checkpoints but will be used to identify ordinary Americans.

COSTELLO: All right, we'll leave it there. Jennifer Lynch, John McGaw, thanks to both of you, I appreciate it.

Still to come in the NEWSROOM, soon U.S. astronauts won't have to rely on Russia to get to and from the International Space Station. NASA has just awarded multibillion dollar contracts to a pair of U.S. companies. Hey, the space race is back on. We'll talk about that next.

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COSTELLO: As you well know, nearly three years ago NASA retired its space shuttle fleet and nearly three years from now NASA will once again send humans into space, but this time it has some private help. Boeing and SpaceX have been picked to provide the next generation spacecraft; taxis, if you will, ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

Russia has been handling the job for a while now at a huge cost. Boeing says it has been working on an Apollo-shaped launch capsule. The company is expected to have workable models in place by 2017.

CNN aviation analyst Miles O'Brien joins me now live from Boston. Good morning, Miles.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Hello, Carol.

COSTELLO: This is exciting.

O'BRIEN: It is exciting. You know, we've sort of been in the wilderness since the shuttle left us in 2011 waiting for what's next. And what NASA announced yesterday was an important step indicating exactly who will be the players, how the contracts will be organized and paid for and how Americans will get to space from American soil once again. It's going to be a long gap but at least we can see light at the end of the tunnel.

COSTELLO: It's interesting they chose the two companies that kind of made the throwback taxi, if you will, into space and rejected the company that made shuttle-like taxis.

O'BRIEN: Yes, I was kind of rooting for CR Nevada. You're referring to the smaller company that had a winged aircraft and it was -- you know, frankly, for space lovers it was kind of a sexy vehicle. It returned and landed on a runway like the shuttle and the bottom line is it was considered in NASA's view a little too risky and thus far a little too underfunded and thus it would have required a lot more money and in the end they weren't certain what they'd end up with. In going with Boeing and SpaceX, they went with safe bets. Of course, Boeing has been involved in every launch since the beginning of NASA one way or another. SpaceX is the upstart -- Elon Musk, the PayPal multi-founder of it but has demonstrated a lot of capability has gotten a lot of contracts to send cargo to the International Space Station. Everything he's built he sought about building to support human beings eventually.

So in a sense these are the two safe bets and it's good to always have two options, isn't it?

COSTELLO: It certainly is. So this is sort of just a first step. What's the next step for NASA?

O'BRIEN: Well, NASA will be watching as these capsules take shape, as the testing continues. And the hope is that each one will deliver human beings to the international space station by 2017. What's different about this though, of course, ever since the beginning NASA hasn't built its own spacecraft, it's always used contractors.

What's different is instead of being on the assembly line telling Ford where to put the nuts and bolts they're renting from Hertz now. So their oversight is a little bit different, it defers more to the commercial entity and the hope is, the real hope, is that this opens up a whole new commercial enterprise in low-earth orbit and other businesses can take root there including you and I going up to visit a hotel maybe one day.

COSTELLO: That would be so awesome. I'd be first in line -- if I could afford it that is. Miles O'Brien --

O'BRIEN: You'll be second behind me.

COSTELLO: I know. Thank you so much for being with me, Miles. I'll be right back.

O'BRIEN: You're welcome.

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COSTELLO: This just coming to us from the NFL. The NFL and the players' union have agreed to a new stricter drug policy. Andy Scholes is in Atlanta following the story for us. Tell us more, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS: Well, Carol now, they're going to start testing for HGH, that's one of the new big developments in that they previously had no testing for HGH but they're going to implement that here in the near future.

Another big development, fans that had players that were suspended for certain drug violations, they're now going to get back on the field. Denver Broncos fans, Wes Welker he was suspended for the first four games of the season for testing positive for an amphetamine in the off season. He's going to get back on the field right away this week.

Under the new agreement, testing positive for an amphetamine in the off season will no longer result in a suspension; if you test positive for an amphetamine during the season there will however be a suspension going forward. Wes Welker will be back on the field this week along with Orlando Scandrik of the Dallas Cowboys.

Also in this new agreement, they are raising the threshold for marijuana. It's going up so no longer will there be any complaints that if you had it via second-hand smoke that's why you tested positive. That should not happen anymore under this new drug policy agreement.

Josh Gordon -- that was one of his complaints when he filed an appeal for his suspension. His suspension is no longer going to be for the entire season, Carol. Reportedly it's going to go down to ten games so we will see Josh Gordon on the field this season as well.

COSTELLO: Really? You've got to be kidding.

SCHOLES: Yes, he was a repeat offender. But that's according to this new agreement, that's one of the things they negotiated in, that the players that were suspended under the old agreement would be able to get back on the field once this new one was put in place. COSTELLO: I'm only reacting because the NFL keeps changing up its

punishments left and right these days.

SCHOLES: It's a funny timing for this agreement with suspensions being overturned.

COSTELLO: Isn't it. Very interesting.

SCHOLES: You'd think they would not want -- but this had been negotiated between the players' association and the NFL for quite some time. They just finally got to agreement. It just happened to be this week when the whole Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice things were still up in the air.

COSTELLO: All right, Andy, thanks so much as usual.

She doesn't have a cape but she does have a bike and an eagle eye for people who toss garbage out of their car windows. As CNN's Jeanne Moos reports, she's dumping trash right back on them.

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JEANNE MOOS, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Did you ever see someone dump their trash out of their car and you wanted to throw it back at them? Might be safer to just come along for the ride with a vigilante anti- litter lady. Watch a woman throw an empty cigarette pack out her window. The biker chick pulls alongside and dumps a conveniently located ashtray on the litter bug. The response in Russian from inside the car rhymes with "witch".

The biker speeds away and the car blog (inaudible) swoons "This is the motorcycle riding superhero of our dreams." the video opens with the Russian words "I want to live in a clean city."

For her second exploit, a guy tosses a bottle which she picks up and then tapes to his mirror. Is there a medal we can give her asks one commenter? She'd just throw it back in your car, answers another. Her third and last act of revenge occurs as the driver of this ultra- lux Mercedes SUV drops a McDonald's bag pulling out of a handicapped space. She swoops to get it, demands he open his window. When he does she yells "Hey, take it, you haven't finished it" -- splat. Karma so satisfying, so complete, so -- so fake, hilarious, though, someone posted.

A lot of people theorize that the video was meant to go viral as part of an anti-littering campaign and that it's all staged -- not that we'd ever stage anything. But, hey, companies like McDonald's have been known to do digital anti-littering campaigns.

The biker chick like wise chucks her trash in a McDonald's garbage can. The video ends with the words "Everyone will be punished who doesn't care." Real or staged, if litter makes you bitter, this is sweet.

Jeanne Moos, CNN, New York.

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COSTELLO: Is it bad that I hope it's real? That would be awesome, wouldn't it? Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Carol Costello.

"@ THIS HOUR WITH BERMAN AND MICHAELA" after a break.

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