Scanning of Containers Abroad Daunting, U.S. Says

By Jon Fox
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Expanding a pilot radiation inspection program from three foreign ports to eventually cover all U.S.-bound cargo is a daunting task involving technological and diplomatic challenges, and, in one case, radioactive concrete, a U.S. Homeland Security Department official said yesterday (see GSN, Oct. 16).

The program, operating for the past several weeks at ports in Honduras, Pakistan and the United Kingdom, is part of the federal government’s Secure Freight Initiative to test the feasibility of scanning all cargo for radiation before it leaves for the United States.

“Our pilots are showing us how complex the challenges are even as they show us the successes,” Stewart Baker, assistant homeland security secretary for policy, said yesterday during a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.  “There’s a hundred problems that we’re going to have to solve port by port.”

Developing the pilot programs was mandated in the SAFE Ports Act signed into law a year ago in a bid to beef up port security.  Congress this summer passed a second piece of legislation that requires all U.S.-bound cargo to undergo radiation inspections by 2012 (see GSN, Aug. 6).

The bill issuing the 100 percent scanning requirement offers the homeland security secretary broad powers to waive that mandate at ports where such a demand would adversely affect commerce.  However, Homeland Security officials will push aggressively for complete coverage, Baker said during the hearing, held to assess the progress made since the passage of the port security bill.

Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine), a co-author of the SAFE Ports Act, expressed doubts about the benefits of requiring that all cargo be scanned for radiation, suggesting that it could negatively affect U.S. security.  Focus would be diluted by shifting attention across all cargo containers instead of those considered “high risk,” she said.

Republican lawmakers led opposition to the 100 percent scanning requirement that was included in the 2007 bill implementing a number of security recommendations made by the Sept. 11 commission (see GSN, July 20).

“I continue to believe that requiring the scanning of all cargo bound for the U.S. at every foreign port is misguided,” Collins said.  “It is contrary to the risk-based, layered system of security established by the SAFE Ports Act.”

Following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government initiated a massive effort to address the growing fear that terrorists would use the global shipping infrastructure to deliver a nuclear, chemical, biological or radiological weapon to a U.S. city.

“Each of the containers has the potential to be the Trojan horse of the 21st century,” Collins said (see GSN, May 25).

Progress has been made over the last six years, Baker said, suggesting that “no terrorist organization can have confidence that they can use our supply chain against us now.”

The Homeland Security Department has six more months before it is required to report back to Congress on the success of the foreign pilot scanning program, but Baker offered that the agency was already “learning a lot.”  Most of his comments, however, focused on the challenges likely associated with expanding the U.S. radiation detection network beyond domestic ports.

“I too am daunted by the prospect of 100-percent scanning at every port,” he said.  “There are many, many unknowns there.”

In expanding the program there are two limiting factors, areas that simply cannot be rushed, Baker said.  The first is technology — advances occur at their own pace, he said — and the second is diplomacy.

Not every nation puts the same priority on or has the same enthusiasm for scanning cargo containers as the United States, and Washington is put in the position of trying to convinced foreign governments that participating in such a program is in their interest.  “Sometimes it takes longer to make that case than we would like,” he said.

Since the pilot sites have been in operation, Baker said one of the most useful developments the department has seen is the flow of “integrated data.”  An analyst at the U.S. National Targeting Center in Virginia can pull up on one computer screen information about what is on a container’s manifest as well as data from radiation and density scanning.

So far, traffic through the pilot ports is moving “fairly well,” he said, but noted that more evaluation is still needed.  Heat reaching 110 degrees has posed a problem at Port Qasim in Pakistan, as have “cloudbursts” at Port Cortes in Honduras, Baker said.

The reactions by shippers have varied.  Baker said officials in Pakistan have seen firms looking to ship their cargo from the pilot port with the expectation that the containers will then face fewer delays when they land stateside.

In Honduras, however, the Homeland Security Department has seen shipping companies actively trying to avoid Port Cortes to dodge the additional fee associated with shipping from a port covered by the pilot scanning program.

Even if the program is eventually integrated smoothly into the three pilot locations, expanding it to other locations would be by no means cut and dry.  “I think we’re going to encounter a lot of complexity as we mover to larger ports,” Baker said.

Each port is unique and each presents an individual set of challenges.  At the port in Hong Kong, cement used in paving releases natural background radiation that is not insignificant and could pose problems for radiation scanning, he said. 

In testimony before the committee yesterday, Government Accountability Office expert Stephen Caldwell identified a number of challenges to implementing the full scanning requirement.

Customs and Border Protection officials might have difficulty balancing the total scanning mandate with the current risk-based approach to container security, Caldwell warned.

In addition, the logistical feasibility of implementing scanning at all foreign ports — each with a different layout — remains unknown.  It is also unclear who would pay for the program, if the technology is mature enough to provide for 100 percent foreign scanning, and who would manage and maintain the reams of data that would likely be collected, according to Caldwell.

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