Terrorists travelling from Europe without a visa pose a bigger threat to US security than refugees from Syria, according to the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee.
Senator Richard Burr supported calls to consider a “pause” in admitting Syrian asylum seekers but insisted this is not the most probable route open to potential terrorists.
“I’m probably more concerned with the visa waiver programme today,” Burr told reporters after a two-hour briefing on Tuesday.
“Because were I in Europe already and I wanted to go the United States and I was not on a watch list or a no-fly list, the likelihood is I would use the visa waiver programme before I would try to pawn myself as a refugee and try to enter under false documents,” he said.
The visa waiver programme allows citizens of participating countries including Britain, France and Germany to travel to the US without a visa for stays of 90 days or less if they meet certain requirements. It is popular with millions of business travellers and tourists who can avoid a lengthy visit to an embassy.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, vice-chairman of the intelligence committee, said about 13 million people enter the US each year through the programme, but she also understands that more than 40m stolen travel documents are on the black market in Europe.
“We need to look at that and explore what the options are how to make prudent changes that don’t impact our economy dramatically but do offer a significant measure of protection,” she said.
Burr estimated that Isis is now active in 30 countries and said there is a strong likelihood the Paris attacks were “Isis directed”. He backed growing demands for a review of encryption technology used by Apple and other companies that make it difficult or impossible to retrieve data from communication devices. “We need to begin the debate on what we do with encrypted networks because it makes us blind to the communications and to the actions of potential adversaries,” he said.
“We can’t tell you today specifically that they were using a specific encrypted platform. We think that’s a likely communication tool because we didn’t pick up any direct communication [before the attacks].
“I think it’s safe to say there are probably 30 end-to-end encrypted software packages that you can download for free and, given the fact of iTunes and PlayStation, the number of apps that are added on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis, I think we anticipate that everything from this moment forward will have an encrypted communication to it. Now is the time for us to act,” he said
Burr denied the committee was anywhere near recommending new legislation but expressed concern over Silicon Valley technology companies’ failure to cooperate in the past. “The reality is that we don’t expect this to be received extremely well by companies that market their products based upon the fact that they have end-to-end encryption.
“We don’t have a responsibility to sell their products. We have a responsibility to keep America safe and this committee is going to stay focused with our intelligence community, our law enforcement, to do that exactly that and if it means that people are going to have to change their business models, then so be it. At the end of the day America’s safety is the absolute number one issue.”
