DHS rolls back 100% scanning to 2014
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will push back by two years the deadline for scanning all U.S.-bound ocean-shipping containers at foreign ports, as permitted under the 2007 law that included the requirement, Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate panel Wednesday.
The DHS head cited lack of available technology and software that can automatically detect suspicious anomalies in containers, logistical challenges and a shortage of DHS manpower to view images as key reasons for seeking the time extensions.
Napolitano did not specify how the exemptions would be implemented for various ports, but the Government Accountability Office said in a report released the same day that DHS and Customs officials have decided to grant a blanket extension to all foreign ports through July 2014.
'In order to implement the 100 percent scanning requirement by the 2012 deadline, DHS would need significant resources for greater manpower and technology, technologies that do not currently exist, and the redesign of many ports,' Napolitano said at the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing.
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The 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act, which is viewed by industry and most foreign governments as a draconian measure that will impede commerce and drive up shipping costs, requires 100 percent imaging overseas of import containers within 30 months. However, Congress provided DHS wiggle room by giving the secretary authority to grant waivers to ports that could not meet the deadline for a variety of reasons, including availability of inspection equipment, incompatible port configurations, inability to integrate scanning equipment with existing systems, and potential for significant disruptions to trade.
The law also requires DHS to report to Congress 60 days before any extension takes effect, evidence supporting the extension and measures being taken to ensure that scanning can be implemented as soon as possible.
Customs and Border Protection has opposed the concept of scanning all containers since before the law's passage as too expensive and disruptive to trade. Agency officials have said that non-intrusive inspections only make sense for all containers on a limited number of high-threat trade lanes vulnerable to terrorist smuggling of nuclear weapons. Napolitano questioned the feasibility of meeting the scan-all deadline during her confirmation process and early in her tenure as secretary, prior to conducting a full review. Unclear at the time was whether DHS would seek to grant waivers for individual ports or as a group.
'DHS officials told us that the department had made a decision to grant a blanket extension to all foreign ports rather than on a port-by-port basis since some of the conditions listed in the 9/11 Act as a basis for granting extensions can be applied systematically to all ports.
'Specifically, DHS believes the last two conditions — that the use of the equipment would significantly impact trade capacity and the flow of cargo, and that scanning equipment does not adequately provide automatic notification of an anomaly in a container — could apply to all foreign ports and, thus, warrant use of a blanket extension,' the GAO report said.
DHS officials acknowledged that their position could change if there are significant advancements in scanning technology before the 2012 deadline.
Napolitano's statement about extending the 100 percent inspection target date did not elicit any opposition from senators at the hearing, some of whom strongly pushed for comprehensive scanning in 2007.
The DHS chief said recent lessons from the narrow Secure Freight Initiative (SFI) underscored the difficulty of trying to expand a scan-all approach to every port. CBP established the pilot program in five small-volume ports or terminals to test integrated, drive-through systems for imaging and radiation detection of all U.S.-bound containers. Difficulties encountered included limited space for equipment layout, the absence of chokepoints through which to funnel truck traffic and checking transshipment cargo transferred between ships without adding delays to the handling process.
Other challenges identified by the GAO, and CBP officials in the past, include safety concerns, scanning equipment breakdowns in the harsh maritime environment and poor quality scan images.
Costs for a global scanning program are estimated at $8 million per trade lane for more than 2,100 corridors at 700-plus ports around the world — or $16.8 billion, Napolitano said. The figures are only for DHS acquisition expenses and don't include operating costs or costs borne by foreign ports or industry to reconfigure their operations.
The 9/11 Act did not specify whether the U.S. government would pick up the tab for implementing a global inspection regime or whether foreign governments and industry would do so. DHS and the Department of Energy, which provides radiation portal monitors to foreign port operators, have spent about $100 million on the SFI program so far.
Most cargo shipped to the United States goes through 58 major ports that already participate in the Container Security Initiative, which involves risk-based inspections conducted by foreign customs partners at the request of U.S. officials.
'Installing equipment and placing personnel at all of these ports — even the tiny ones — would strain government resources without a guarantee of results,' Napolitano testified.
CBP was only able to achieve scanning rates of 54 percent to 86 percent at the SFI ports of Qasim, Pakistan; Southampton, United Kingdom; and Puerto Cortes, Honduras, even though their collective volume represents 2.4 percent of the 10 million containers that enter the United States each year, according to the GAO. And the border agency said it was only able to sustain scanning rates of 3 percent to 5 percent at high-volume terminals in the ports of Hong Kong and Busan, South Korea — where scanning equipment was limited to a single terminal and single truck entrance. Most of the containers scanned at these two ports were already determined to be high-risk by automated targeting and pre-selected for inspection by local customs authorities under the existing Container Security Initiative.
Current generation radiation detectors are beset by false positives — technically nuisance alarms because they can't differentiate between benign and harmful radiation sources — and X-ray/gamma-ray systems have limited ability to penetrate dense cargo, Napolitano noted.
'While DHS is pursuing technological solutions to these problems, expanding screening with available technology would slow the flow of commerce and drive up costs to consumers without bringing significant security benefits,' she said.
Meanwhile, CBP is negotiating with foreign governments to expand SFI to other ports in high-risk trade lanes as part of the targeted inspection strategy approved by Napolitano last spring, according to the GAO. DHS will pay for most of the costs, but has not yet finalized the number of strategic ports to be included or developed a time frame for implementation. The audit agency said it is unclear whether the strategic trade corridor strategy is designed as a first step towards meeting the 9/11 Act mandate or as a substitute.
Those efforts are taking place even as four governments in the SFI trials have had second thoughts about further participation in the program. CBP scrubbed plans to conduct scanning at the Port of Singapore after officials there became concerned about the potential for decreasing port efficiencies due to the large volume and complexity of operations at the port, which handles a large amount of transshipment cargo. A six-month demonstration program at Port Salalah in Oman is also on hold because of local concerns about the scope, timeline and criteria for achieving results, according to the GAO.
A scan demonstration at the Port of Hong Kong ended after 16 months because Hong Kong port officials did not believe containers moving through the program received any benefits in terms of faster clearance into the United States. 'They also stated that they saw no benefit to participation in the program in terms of their own port security and expressed concerns that equipment and infrastructure costs, as well as costs to port efficiency, would make full implementation of the SFI program at all of its terminals unfeasible,' the congressional auditors wrote.
CBP continues to run SFI equipment at the Port of Southampton, but U.K. Customs officials stopped providing assistance after the six-month arrangement ended because of the associated personnel costs and the fact that officers were diverted from fulfilling domestic responsibilities, such as drug detection. Scans of intermodal containers arriving by rail have also ceased because terminal operator DP World no longer wants to absorb the additional $60 cost of transferring boxes to trucks so they can pass through SFI scanning systems.
Despite the hurdles identified with the SFI program, CBP should perform a thorough feasibility study and cost-benefit analysis of 100 percent scanning compared to other alternatives to determine the most effective approach towards container security, the GAO recommended.
The full GAO report can be found here.
' Eric Kulisch