Recently here at Port Canaveral in Brevard County Florida a corporation by the name of Gulftainer signed a 35 year deal to run containers through our port. Some citizens here are concerned with what might be in those containers that could affect our life here on the Space coast. Main concerns during times like these would be weapons of mass destruction such as nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, homemade or otherwise. I am using social media to at least raise the issue with the local citizens. I was wondering how the system will keep us as citizens, "safe."
Input from others here on Peggy regarding your ports in your countries would be helpful. What are your countries doing to keep you safe?
I have started gathering information at least for Port Canaveral. Not only freight goes through here but we have many cruise ships that operate out of this port with a lot of businesses and eating places here also. This just adds to security issues and hopefully the Port Staff can handle it. That being said here we go:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-13/u-s-backs-off-all-cargo-scanning-goal-with-inspections-at-4-.html
U.S. Backs Off All-Cargo Scanning Goal With Inspections at 4%
By Jeff Bliss Aug 13, 2012 12:00 AM ET
Five years after Congress set a deadline for requiring all U.S.-bound shipping containers to be X-rayed overseas for nuclear weapons, customs officials have all but given up on the goal.
Customs and Border Protection officials scanned with X-ray or gamma-ray machines 473,380, or 4.1 percent, of the 11.5 million containers shipped in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, according to the agency. That's essentially the same percentage of containers that were scanned in 2007, the year a Democratic- controlled Congress mandated that agents start vetting every container.
Screening 100 percent of incoming containers would be nearly impossible to implement now, cause huge delays and be less cost-effective than focusing only on suspicious cargo, customs officials say, even as the law's supporters insist the mandate is the only way to ensure the safety of the shipping system.
"It's not necessarily a good use of resources to spend time and effort on ships that pose no risk," said Jayson Ahern, the agency's acting commissioner until January 2010.
Earlier this year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who oversees the customs agency, granted a two-year waiver from the requirement. Defending the decision last month before the House Homeland Security Committee, Napolitano said the mandate isn't "practicable" or "affordable" now.
The secretary's comments signal a willingness to challenge the wisdom of the screening requirement, said Jessica Zuckerman, a research associate at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington- based policy group.
The agency does "not see 100 percent as a feasible or a common-sense strategy," she said.
Dirty Bomb
Lawmakers favoring the mandate say they're concerned about terrorists detonating a nuclear or dirty bomb at a port, killing workers and rendering the facility and surrounding area uninhabitable for years.
The selective approach "will not prevent all potential attacks inside the U.S., as it is not comprehensive and is subject to human error and weaknesses in our defense systems," said Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who co- sponsored the scanning mandate.
Customs officials and business lobbying groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have said X-raying all containers would be too expensive, require cooperation from foreign countries that isn't forthcoming and delay the flow of shipments.
Napolitano at the House hearing cited a lack of agreements with some foreign countries to X-ray cargoes overseas.
"There are a lot of foreign ports it's just physically not available to us to do that," she said.
As of June 30, customs had scanned 342,527, or 3.8 percent, of the 9 million containers shipped so far this year.
Better Information
Officials are now getting better information to help them zero in on containers that might have contraband, said Joanne Ferreira, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman.
"Targeting has become more refined," Ferreira said.
Information about the targeting's success isn't public for security reasons, said Ian Phillips, a customs spokesman.
Still, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general, its chief internal investigator, found problems with the system, including a lack of uniform procedures and data needed to decide if a shipment should be cleared or held.
So much commerce flows through ports that any interruption stemming from an attack would reverberate throughout the worldwide supply system, said Stephen Flynn, founding co- director of the George J. Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security at Northeastern University in Boston.
'Profoundly Disruptive'
"I could come up with few scenarios that could be as profoundly disruptive to the global economy as this one," he said.
A major port shutdown would be an additional drag on a U.S. economy struggling to expand and create jobs. The Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2006 that a yearlong shuttering of the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, the biggest ports in the Western Hemisphere by container volume, would cost $70 billion, or as much as .55 percent of gross domestic product.
More recently, University of Southern California researchers, as part of a study on the potential damage of a tsunami caused by an offshore earthquake, estimated port closures could cost the West Coast region as much as $40 billion.
At the Port of Virginia's newest facility in Portsmouth recently, workers finger joysticks that remotely stack containers hauled in by 18-wheelers. The containers are placed so closely together that it would be difficult for someone to break into them, said Ed Merkle, director of the port's security and emergency operations.
Radiation Scans
Port-security and customs officials say they're taking all the precautions they can. Every container coming into the country must be scanned for radiation before it leaves the U.S. port. Trucks line up at the Portsmouth port to pass through a toll-booth-like structure containing the radiation monitor.
The devices' sensors sometimes flag a container with items such as bananas that have naturally occurring radiation, Virginia port officials say. The monitors can't always detect a nuclear or dirty bomb sheathed in lead, they say.
An X-ray produces an image that gives customs authorities a better idea if a container conceals a bomb, Flynn said.
If the current system of taking suspicious containers to a separate X-ray facility were expanded to just 7 percent of all cargo, delays of 70 hours could occur, requiring a two-acre lot to stack the backlogged freight, according to a 2011 University of Pennsylvania study co-authored by Flynn.
Drive-Through Scans
A system in which less sensitive X-ray machines scan trucks as they drive through the entrance of an overseas port facility could be used for all cargo without delays, the report said.
Flynn said he's on the advisory board of Decision Sciences International Corp., a Chantilly, Virginia-based company that's testing such a device.
Napolitano warned in December 2009 of "steep challenges" posed by the 100 percent screening mandate. Available technology is limited, she told a Senate hearing, and meeting the requirement "would either severely slow trade or require a redesign of the port."
Customs in 2009 began requiring importers to submit a list 48 hours before a container is loaded that includes information on its contents, the manufacturer, the seller, the buyer and the final destination. The agency then uses mathematical formulas on a computer system to pinpoint questionable containers.
A 2010 Homeland Security Department inspector general report found that of 391 shipments identified as "high risk," 57 didn't have enough documentation to justify custom officers' decisions to inspect the containers or let them go through.
Targeting System
The Government Accountability Office will complete its own investigation of the tracking system in October, said Stephen Caldwell, director of homeland security and justice issues at the congressional auditor. Without 100 percent scanning, customs must rely "very heavily on the targeting system," he said.
Al-Qaeda is aware of the mayhem it could cause by breaking just one link in the global supply chain. In 2010, explosives made by the group's Yemeni affiliate were found concealed in printer-toner cartridges loaded on two cargo-plane flights.
Ports are less vulnerable because al-Qaeda is more focused on planes than ships, said Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary for policy at the Homeland Security Department.
"It's hard to kill a lot of people in mechanized modern ports," said Baker, a partner at the Steptoe & Johnson law firm in Washington. "Terrorists' enthusiasm for causing economic harm by blocking port infrastructure has been limited."
USA Department of Homeland Security Secure Freight Initiative:
http://www.dhs.gov/secure-freight-initiative
http://www.dhs.gov/container-security-initiative-ports
Oversea plan for inspection from the General accounting Office:
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-05-557
http://www.dhs.gov/ship-cargo-containers-%E2%80%93-finding-out-what%E2%80%99s-them-there%E2%80%99s-trouble
Ship Cargo Containers – Finding Out What's In Them Before There's Trouble
Every day, thousands of cargo containers from around the world pass through our nation's sea ports carrying items we need, and possibly some that are not so welcome: drugs, explosives, chemical, biological, or radiological weapons – even human cargo. The possible concealment of such items in containers led lawmakers to call for the screening of all ocean cargo containers—thousands per port per day
The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is charged with the critical task of securing the country from terrorists and their weapons while facilitating legitimate trade and travel, including the monitoring of what's in thousands of sea cargo containers as they pass through CBP screening. These containers must be inspected quickly and accurately, and without the business at each port grinding to a halt when they do so.
The DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and its Transportation Security Laboratory (TSL) in Atlantic City, NJ, have developed a way to test technical solutions to this need: the Container Security Test Bed (CSTB) – an outdoor "laboratory" allowing researchers and developers from government, academia, and industry to explore novel ways to detect threats in a cargo container.
The CSTB is run by TSL engineers and simulates exactly the cantilever cranes used to unload container ships. The CSTB allows a container to be picked up, moved, and put down in minutes, mimicking both the way and the timeframe in which each container is taken off a ship and put onto the dock.
"Give me the right tools – a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer, and an hour's time – and I can tell you what's in a 40-foot container," said Dave Masters, the S&T Program Manager who oversaw the creation of the Test Bed. "But a maritime container terminal can't spare an hour. It needs its cranes to move goods, not run experiments. The CSTB gives any new sensor system a real-world workout that replicates both screening the items in a shipping container, as well as the standard loading/unloading operations at a seaport. Sensors must survive the container being hoisted up, moved quickly, and slammed down – they cannot be so delicate that they cannot survive gritty port conditions."
S&T researchers are encouraging technology developers to test any kind of sensor at the CSTB. Detection technologies constantly undergo improvements in order to detect trace amounts of substances — and do so very quickly. Chemical-based sensors, currently in use for aviation security, may find trace amounts of explosives, drugs, or other illicit substances, while laser-based methods that can "read" the physical properties of target molecules detection methods are also in development.
What is the specific challenge? S&T researchers are collaborating on techniques to get a representative sample of the air inside the container to the sensor itself. Representative samples of air inside a cargo container must be captured through an air vent standard containers have, and then that sample will pass through several variations of detection sensors. This technology was demonstrated to S&T by a joint effort between MIT and Lincoln Labs in 2010.
(http://www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/photos/snapshots/st_crane_image_250_2-2012.jpg)
Alternatively, sensors may be built into the cargo container and programmed to send information on any illicit content to the receiving seaport while the container is still en route. In October 2011, ConSearch, LLC conducted a feasibility demonstration of their in-situ chemical and radiological detection capability. The demonstration consisted of simulating a trans-oceanic voyage of a 40-foot container that contained several threat types and employed a method of using multiple sensors to obtain a comprehensive view of the chemical/radiological content.
To evaluate explosive detection methods, TSL scientists are also are testing methods to present samples to sensors more quickly and accurately.
"We're exploring the art of the possible. The things we're doing, you can't do on paper. You need to get your hands dirty," says Masters.
The S&T Container Security Test Bed provides a unique opportunity for public and private sector partners to research and collaborate on novel ways to detect threats in a cargo containers—working together to make our shipping industry more safe, secure and resilient.