13 June 2008

SFI report throws cold water on box scan law

The following article is excerpted from the 13 June 2008 edition of “American Shipper”.

Taking X-ray type images and radiation reads of every container bound for the United States only makes sense for a limited number of foreign ports, fails to capture transshipped cargo and presents enormous implementation costs for governments and industry, Bush administration officials said Thursday.

Based on the six-month results of a Secure Freight Initiative pilot program of 100 percent scanning at three low-volume ports, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has decided to conduct automated inspections only on specific high-risk trade lanes where the most security benefit can be realized, Deputy Commissioner Jayson Ahern informed Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee on surface transportation and merchant marine infrastructure safety and security. …

DHS, which has objected to 100 percent scanning mandates from the start, made clear in the SFI report and testimony that it intended to take advantage of those out clauses, at least until better technology can be developed….

Lautenberg said he would soon introduce legislation to correct port security programs. The bill will focus on ways to help achieve the goal of 100 percent scanning, "not working our way around the law," and take alternative steps to plug vulnerabilities until a container scanning system is in place…

Ahern said a big limiting factor to scanning containers at more than 700 ports worldwide is the lack of software that can automatically analyze radiographic images of a container's contents for weapons, bombs and other contraband. Existing systems require humans to review the images, which would require enormous staffing levels to cover more than 11.5 million sea containers per year. It takes three to five minutes to read each image….

CBP scanned 170,564 containers between mid-October and late May at the three SFI port locations. Challenges identified during the pilot included:

• Equipment failure due to extreme weather conditions.

• High telecommunications costs for transmitting data to the National Targeting Center in the United States.