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Since Sept. 11th there
has been an obvious effort at all levels of government to
improve security. There
are new laws like the Patriot Act and the 2002 Trade Act. There
is a new Federal Department of Homeland Security. And there is a
new Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with programs
like C-TPAT (Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism); CSI
(Container Security Initiative); and most recently FAST (Free
and Secure Trade); and PAPS (Pre-Arrival Processing System) our
new southern land-border initiatives.
It is also quite clear that there is serious concern over
the tremendous volume of container and trailer ingress into the
United States
each year, an estimated 16
million. And of that
number only a fraction is inspected.
Therefore, the new CBP rules concentrate on encouraging
voluntary participation of industry in these programs.
However, along with selecting security-conscious firms
which by virtue of their participation in CBP programs are
likely to have fewer inspections, comes an added risk actually
brought about by fewer inspections.
The first is that if a terrorist is to target a container
or trailer in which to place a weapon of mass destruction, it
seems likely to select the container or trailer least likely to
be inspected. Second,
programs which require a pre-arrival manifest, like the CSI
24-hour rule, or PAP or FAST 30-minute to one-hour rule
(depending on what program with which a carrier complies), by
their construction expect a delay between a container’s
arrival at the foreign seaport and its actual lading into the
vessel or a delay between the trailer’s arrival on the Mexican
side at the land port-of-entry and its actual crossing into the
United States.
These
delays between port arrival and lading into the vessel or
arrival at the border and actually crossing, and the time of
carriage between origin and the seaport or border are fraught
with danger. Yet no CBP program has addressed it. To some
degree, FAST has addressed container or trailer access by
requiring...
...Continued
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