A congressional mandate that all cargo containers bound for the United States be electronically scanned for threats raises a host of challenges for the U.S. and foreign governments, according to a Government Accountability Official (GAO).
Those challenges range from having enough staff within U.S. Customs and Border Protection to review the X-Ray images of containers scanned overseas to whether foreign governments begin to require the U.S. to scan containers bound for their ports, Stephen Caldwell, director of Homeland Security and Justice issues for the GAO, told a Senate panel last week.
Foreign governments are already beginning to discuss the possibility of “reciprocity,” meaning if the U.S. is requiring them to screen containers for threats then the U.S. should have to screen containers bound for their respective ports for security threats. This was made clear in a report prepared for the World Customs Organization (WCO) and released last week, which points to two main concerns from the potential impact of the 100 percent screening mandate by the U.S. Congress.
The first are the technical and operational difficulties in implementing the screening mandate by 2012. The other is reciprocity.
The WCO study, Global Logistic Chain Security: Economic Impacts of the US 100% Container Scanning Law, which was prepared by University of LeHavre, says challenges to the non- U.S. ports in implementing the scanning provisions include port congestion, the financial costs and who pays for it, and the sheer amount of imagery data that would be transmitted to the U.S. for analysis.
In his testimony before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Transportation and Merchant Marine Safety and Security, the GAO’s Caldwell listed nine challenge areas for the overseas scanning. These break out as: workforce planning; host nation examination practices; measuring performance; resource responsibilities; logistics; technology and infrastructure; use and ownership of data; consistency with risk management; reciprocity and trade concerns.
For example, on the issue of reciprocity, Caldwell said that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have already said that their agency doesn’t have the resources to scan U.S. exports destined for other countries.
Regarding the use of data, Caldwell said that legal restrictions may prevent data from a container scan to be shared with U.S. officials and that new international agreements may have to be worked out. Under the technology and infrastructure challenge, Caldwell cited the ongoing Secure Freight Initiative (SFI) in which the U.S. has provided scanning equipment to several international ports to pilot test the feasibility of meeting the 100 percent scanning. Here, he said, bandwidth issues and environmental conditions that damage equipment have impacted SFI.
According to the WCO, it comes down to balance.
“There is no question that we are all determined to find the best practical solution, one that will provide the U.S. with the added security it seeks to prevent any act of terrorism from being carried out using international shipping channels, but which will not burden global trade unnecessarily, Michael Danet, secretary general of the WCO, said in releasing the LeHavre study.