Bill Nelson

In just 5 minutes we will have our first series of votes on amendments on this bill. This is a good start to the FAA bill. It is improving the underlying bill that has a lot of attention to security already in it. But these are clearly…

Some real promise is being made by government scientists at NIST.

You lessen the number of entry points like Atlanta had, over 100, down to a handful, and you check the employees going through.

You have a sterling reputation.

Mr. Chairman, I want to take the opportunity, particularly, to tell our Democratic members of the Committee that, apparently, we just received word that there has been an agreement on the tax issue, and, therefore, if that is true, when we…

TSA can take immediate action by completing the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, which were enacted into law in 2007.

Well, then give us the report.

Right. That's the question. What's the answer?

Why couldn't that have been done in time to report to this committee, since that was such an obvious question that you were going to be asked?

But what about the other 297?

In the last 10 years, right after 9/11, 1,900 attacks were carried out against transit systems around the world, resulting in 4,000 deaths and 14,000 injuries.

But you don't have enough resources.

It's interesting that you mention drones, because tomorrow, in this committee, we're going to mark up the FAA bill.

So you think that there will be the capability of protecting against cyber threats, even without it being extremely expensive.

So what you're saying is that technology will allow you to protect people's privacy, even in an autonomous vehicle with all the gadgets in it?

If the drone gets sucked into the jet engine, that's a catastrophic failure.

No more cover-ups, no more head-in-the-sand approaches to safety. If we are going to avoid the tragedies, we've got to be johnny-on-the-spot.

There are technologies available, which have already been demonstrated to the Chairman and me, that take over that drone.

There are going to be many lives that could be saved by preventing preventable accidents.

Maybe you ought to confer with Apple, since Apple seems to be pretty good on privacy, in terms of being able to get into the iPhone of a terrorist.

We do a lot of neat things to protect the national security--cyber attacks, worms, GPS jamming, et cetera.

I'm here to tell you that I'm glad I grabbed the wheel.

The Federal Government has a critical role to make sure that the regulatory and legal environment... is able to allow the development and manufacturing of these vehicles.

We are concerned in building partner capacity. We are focused on addressing the institutional problems of corruption and flawed management.

The research I talked about showed less autocratic, more stable countries seem to be able to use security cooperation assistance better.