Speaker. early in this session the majority promised to implement all the 9/11 Commission recommendations. Yesterday. the Rules Committee. which is controlled by the majority. had the opportunity to deliver on that promise by making two of my amendments to this legislation in order. It failed to do so. and the security of our rail and bus passengers and. in fact. our border security in general will be all the worse as a result. The 9/11 Commission advised the President to direct the Department of Homeland Security to "design a comprehensive screening system" that would target "particular. identifiable suspects or indicators of risk" and give border officials "the resources to establish that people are who they say they are. intercept identifiable suspects. and disrupt terrorist operations." They concluded that targeting travel is at least as powerful a weapon against terrorists as targeting their money. That is the 9/11 Commission report. recommendation 14. page 385. And it recommended that a terrorist travel intelligence collection and analysis program. which had "produced disproportionately useful results." should be expanded. The first of these amendments involved the Advance Passenger Information System. or APIS as we commonly refer to it. Today. under this program. air and sea carriers collect passenger and crew biographical data and transmit this data to Customs and Border Protection while the vessel or aircraft is en route to the United States. This is an important tool in CBPs efforts to identify suspect or highrisk passengers before. that is before. they enter the country. As terrorists are just as capable of taking a Greyhound bus across border as they are landing at LAX.
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Border Protection border security