NVO-GAC WANT FILED MANIFEST INFORMATION TO BE CONFIDENTIAL
A large group of U.S. non-vessel-operating common carriers want to file their manifests directly to Customs, but they don’t want this “commercially sensitive” information shared with the public through reporting services.
“It is ironic that Customs’ long-standing policy is to exclude entry information from FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) disclosure (pursuant to 5 U.S.C., 552(b)(4)), which exempts information from Customs entries as being ‘trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential,’ while by statutory mandate, they are providing essentially identical information through manifest disclosure procedures,” said Alan E. Baer, president of New York-based Ocean World Line, and chairman of the NVOCC-Government Affairs Conference.
In a letter to the U.S. government’s National Infrastructure Security Committee Tuesday, the NVO-GAC called for an end to public disclosure of shipper and consignee information from carrier manifests and bills of lading.
The NVO-GAC was formed in December after Customs in the port area of Houston-Galveston threatened to require NVOs to hand over their shipper and consignee information to ocean carriers for manifest purposes. More than 20 large, mid-sized and small NVOs have joined the Washington-based group.
Traditionally, NVOs are listed as both shipper and consignee on house-level manifests and bills of lading to prevent ocean carriers from access to their customer information. The NVO-GAC told the National Infrastructure Security Committee this lack of information threatens the enforcement integrity of Custom’s Automated Manifest System.
Customs has publicly referred to AMS as a key enforcement tool against terrorism and other criminal activities. However, it’s estimated that in some trade lanes NVOs move nearly 40 percent of the container traffic, and thus shipper and consignee information for this cargo is not fully reported, the NVO-GAC said.
In 1984, the Journal of Commerce and its subsidiary PIERS took legal action, which resulted in Customs amending its regulations under the 1930 Tariff Act to provide broader access to manifest information. This gave the newspaper and others the right to copy and publish all information on cargo declarations unless an importer has requested confidential treatment of its name. The NVO-GAC said this is proof to Customs that “the disclosure of such information could cause substantial harm to the competitive position of the importer or consignee.”
According to the NVO-GAC, however, only 15 percent of importers request confidentiality of information. “Some may not even know that their information is being released to the public,” the NVO-GAC said. “In any case, we believe, under the current security climate, that it is information which should not be in the public domain in any case.”
The group also emphasized to the National Infrastructure Security Committee that the same information produced by these reporting services is easily available to terrorist and criminal organizations.
The NVO-GAC’s position to protect the confidentiality and security of manifest information has started to gain support from other large shipper groups.
“The government shouldn’t go to the carriers for shipper information,” said Jonathan Gold, director of international policy for the Arlington, Va.-based International Mass Retail Association. “Shippers are more than willing to give this information to the government, but we don’t want it made public.”
At a recent meeting of the U.S. Treasury Advisory Committee on Commercial Operations (COAC) Subcommittee on Border Security, several senior Treasury officials said the issue of disclosure to the public of manifest information needs to be revisited.
“We are optimistic that Customs will be a driving force for the change to protect this information,” the NVO-GAC said.