TSA: Advance data, trusted shippers needed to secure air cargo
Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole was back on Capitol Hill Wednesday, testifying before a Senate panel that his agency is closely involved in discussions with U.S. Customs and airlines on ways to get more advance shipment notification 'without unduly affecting the bottom line for cargo carriers.'
Department of Homeland Security and Customs officials have recently indicated they want to obtain cargo manifests for inbound flights to the United States prior to departure in order to rate shipments for risk and inspect suspicious ones before they are loaded on a plane. Under Customs and Border Protection regulations implemented to meet the 2002 Trade Act, airlines must submit cargo data four hours prior to arrival or at takeoff for flights arriving from the Americas, north of the equator. The problem with the current approach is that the plane is already in the air and en route before the package data is analyzed.
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| Pistole |
The deliberations are in response to the thwarted terrorist plot three weeks ago to smuggle plastic explosives in parcels through the air cargo supply chain and UPS and FedEx for transport to the United States.
The key challenge to pushing back the deadline for electronically transmitting the cargo manifest is developing protocols for how to respond to a red flag that pops up from the CBP data mining, Pistole said.
'So, if there's a high-risk package that's been identified, what action can we take eight hours, let's say 24 hours, and can we communicate with that freight forwarder' in time to stop them from putting the shipment on a plane, he told the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. He said air cargo carriers have been very receptive to enhanced information requirements.
At a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing on Tuesday he said the DHS plans to pilot several different advanced air cargo strategies before the end of the year.
Several senators in their statements and questions seemed to support the concept of collecting manifest data earlier.
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| Ahern |
CBP officials have said they have not focused yet on operational, legal and technical details for implementing new manifest requirements. But Jayson Ahern, who retired last year as acting commissioner of CBP, and is now a principal at the Chertoff Group, said the devil is in the details.
'The easy part is implementing the requirement. The challenge becomes the concept of operations of how you use the information,' he said in an interview Sunday on the sidelines of a freight transportation conference in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
That requires establishing bilateral partnerships with host country law enforcement and airline industry officials, similar to what is done in the maritime cargo environment, so that anomalies detected by trained analysts can be checked.
'That all has to be thought through. It's more than just running the information through a system. You need standard operating procedures to resolve anomalies, otherwise you slow down international trade,' Ahern said.
| Related Stories • IATA Initiative • U.S. seeks better manifest data for air cargo screening |
He also cautioned that the air cargo industry is built on speed and that carriers may not have all manifest data, or extra data under consideration, 24 hours prior to departure. In the slower maritime environment, ocean carriers are required to submit manifests 24 hours prior to loading in a foreign port.
And border security officials must also consider what types of carve-outs, or waivers, to grant certain types of shipments such as human remains so the goal of any new rule can be accomplished without harming shippers, he said.
DHS officials maintain that screening all international inbound air cargo is not practical today without massive disruptions because security technologies are limited in their ability to detect explosives in consolidated pallets or other bulk shipments. On Aug. 1, the TSA successfully implemented a congressional mandate to screen 100 percent of all cargo on passenger planes. To ease the process on airlines and prevent backlogs at the airport, TSA implemented the Certified Cargo Screening Program, which allows shippers and freight forwarders to get certified to pack shipments in a secure manner so they don't have to be deconsolidated and individually inspected at the airport. Airlines and shippers are complying with the law on domestic and outbound flights, but TSA has had difficulty applying the rule to all inbound flights because of jurisdictional barriers overseas and the lack of regulatory authority over freight forwarders. In the meantime, the agency has gradually ramped up requirements so that international airlines are screening about 60 percent of shipments.
Officials are wary of causing delays because the air cargo industry is critical to global and U.S. trade. In 2008, international merchandise trade by air was worth more than $800 billion.
Pistole said the best way to improve air cargo security is to push the trusted shipper model to the rest of the world so that all airlines and shippers are operating under the same standard. TSA so far has certified more than 1,140 facilities that are screening half of all cargo moving on passenger planes.
The TSA is working with the International Air Transport Association and the International Civil Aviation Organization to help countries that don't have adequate resources develop screening programs that adhere to international standards, including ones that involve the private sector, Pistole testified.
The lack of adequate cargo security standards was evident during a recent visit to Yemen, where the parcel bombs originated, Pistole said. Yemeni authorities are using older generation X-ray machines that don't have two-dimensional software enhancement, have no explosive trace detection machines or canine detectors, and only conduct very limited physical inspections.
The TSA has sent a team to Yemen to help train inspectors and also donated several explosive trace detection machines to the government, he said.
Express carriers and other cargo airlines are likely to avoid countries that have serious security gaps, Pistole said.
'I think what we'll probably see from a private sector risk model is that they may not pick up packages from countries' assessed as high risk, he said. The U.S. government earlier this month indefinitely banned all air cargo from Yemen and Somalia. ' Eric Kulisch
