Container seal regulations still on hold
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is sitting on regulations to require seals on sea containers entering the United States because it doesn’t want to get in front of new legislation spelling out how Congress expects the security measure to be implemented, the top lawyer for the Customs and Border Protection division said.
At DHS’s request, a federal advisory panel recommended in September 2004 that high-security seals that meet international standards be placed on all U.S.-bound containers and that ocean carriers verify the presence and integrity of the seal prior to loading on a vessel. A regulation and economic impact analysis were held up in March 2005 after a new leadership team took over DHS and conducted a top-to-bottom review of the department’s activities.
Two years after DHS made its initial request for a seal recommendation, the department is still in a holding pattern over issuing the regulation because two major pieces of cargo and port security legislation pending in Congress — the Senate’s GreenLane Maritime Security Act and the House’s SAFE Port Act — contain provisions with standards for container seals, said Sandra Bell, acting assistant commissioner for regulations and rulings.
“The questions is whether it is prudent for the department to take action on an administrative level if it could be superseded by legislation,” she told the Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC) this week.
During the time it has taken to develop a rule for mechanical seals, technology has improved for electronic container security devices that can indicate tampering events. A device maker has come close to the performance standard required by CBP for false alarms, but the agency has yet to be satisfied that a container security device is accurate enough to detect door openings.
Jayson Ahern, assistant commissioner for field operations, suggested that requiring a mechanical seal at this point might not be worth the cost of an incremental increase in security.
Ahern said the trade needs “meaningful security” measures that fit into the agency’s risk-based targeting system.
“What are the benefits of next generation of container security devices and smart boxes from a C-TPAT company versus putting a seal on boxes we know nothing about,” he said.
CBP wants container security devices to be used by companies in the voluntary Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism so they can get green lane treatment across the border. Under the system envisioned by CBP, companies that have been vetted under the program as having secure supply chains do not need extensive checks and would only need a tamper-proof device to make sure their boxes weren’t broken into by criminals or terrorists while in transit.
Shipments from companies about which CBP knows little about will still need to be scanned whether or not there is a seal, CBP officials contend.