By Calvin Biesecker
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will not meet a congressionally-imposed deadline in 2012 that 100 percent of all sea containers bound for the United States be electronically scanned for potential threats and will seek an extension to the deadline, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said yesterday.
That DHS won’t meet the scanning mandate on time is no surprise as Napolitano testified to Congress earlier this year that achieving the goal on time would be doubtful (Defense Daily, Feb. 26). A month later, the acting chief at Customs and Border Protection, Jayson Ahern, said the mandate should be “reconsidered” (Defense Daily, April 2).
Napolitano told the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee yesterday that a number of factors stand in the way electronically scanning all U.S.-bound containers before they depart from foreign ports.
Among the challenges is the fact that no cargo screening technology can automatically detect anomalies in containers, Napolitano said. This lack of automation puts the onus on the operator to interpret the scanned images, which can take less or more time depending on the operator and the materials inside the container.
“This makes scanning difficult and time consuming,” Napolitano said.
She also pointed out that existing technology has difficulty penetrating very dense cargo, adding that “density often can be the measure of something being disguised.”
Cost is another hurdle. Napolitano pegged the cost of putting integrated scanning equipment at each of the 2,100 foreign shipping lanes–which are at more than 700 ports–at $8 million a piece. That amounts to $16.8 billion.
“The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is compelled to seek the time extensions authorized by law with respect to the scanning provision,” she said. A DHS official told Defense Daily the department hadn’t decided when it would seek the extension.
Extensions would come in two-year increments. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) the extension would be applied to all foreign ports.
Napolitano pointed out that DHS isn’t standing still on monitoring pathways that could be used to smuggle weapons of mass destruction into the United States. CBP is participating in pilot projects at five foreign ports to examine the feasibility of scanning all sea cargo before it leaves for the United States. These pilots have provided valuable lessons, she said.
The GAO yesterday in a report said that CBP has questioned the “feasibility” of scanning all U.S.-bound maritime containers but noted that the agency has not done such an analysis. GAO has recommended that CBP do a feasibility analysis on implementing 100 percent scanning and to provide it to Congress along with alternatives. CBP has concurred with the recommendation.
In the Secure Freight Initiative (SFI), which is the name given to the ongoing cargo screening pilot projects, CBP and the U.S. Department of Energy have had success in obtaining electronic scans of containers and sending the information along to be viewed remotely in the United States, the GAO said.
However, the program has been limited in duration and scope. GAO said that in three relatively low volume ports that represent less than 3 percent of container shipments to the United States, between 54 to 86 percent of the containers were scanned. And, at two higher volume ports, CBP hasn’t been able to maintain scanning rates above 5 percent, GAO said.
“Scanning operations at the initial SFI ports have encountered a number of challenges, such as logistical problems with containers transferred from rail or other vessels, and CBP officials are concerned that they and the participating ports cannot overcome them,” GAO said.
CBP is looking at scanning 100 percent of U.S.-bound containers at select foreign ports, GAO said. This “strategic trade corridor strategy” would lessen the risk of weapons of mass destruction entering the U.S. CBP believes, the GAO said.
Also yesterday, Napolitano said that the Transportation Security Administration will come very close to meeting the August 2010 deadline that all cargo loaded on passenger aircraft in the United States be screened for explosives.
“We’re going to be at about 98 percent so I think that we’ll be very close to it, yes,” she said.