Curing security ?myopia?

Curing security æmyopiaÆ Experts encourage new homeland security priorities.

By Eric Kulisch
   A 'myopic' policy dialogue during the past five years has hindered Washington from making significant progress on supply chain security issues, according to a former Department of Homeland Security official.
The incoming Obama administration needs to prioritize the greatest threats to homeland security and define a realistic level of security instead of trying to achieve the impossible goal of protecting against every possible terrorist scenario, said Brian Goebel, president and founder of the Sentinel HS Group.
Goebel, who was senior policy advisor to former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner for two years following the 2001 attacks on the United States, said the loose consensus between government and industry that formed after 9/11 to deal with the specter of a bomb-in-the-box 'has basically broken down.'

Goebel

The policy debate has focused on maritime security at the expense of other border issues, and the lack of clear goals has prevented substantive advances in plugging gaps in existing programs, he said.
The Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, the Container Security Initiative, the Megaports Initiative for loaning radiation detectors to foreign governments, and the International Ship and Port Security code were created in a flurry of activity through 2003. At the time, companies swallowed any concerns about returns on security investments associated with complying with those programs out of patriotism or fear of being seen as unsupportive of anti-terror efforts. Goebel expressed frustration with what he characterized as little progress since then.
Industry and Capitol Hill have both been divided on the best approach towards cargo and supply chain security. Various business groups have resisted attempts to strengthen the requirements for participation in the voluntary C-TPAT trusted shipper program, the new '10+2' for more advance import related information and container security devices, while uniformly rejecting the requirement for 100 percent inspections of inbound containers at overseas ports.

Bonner

'The economic crisis means the trade community is even more likely to resist further regulatory and policy initiatives that add costs to their shipping,' Goebel said at an October forum hosted by George Mason University's School of Law in Arlington, Va. He predicted the trade industry in the next four years will reassert demands to quantify the benefits of their supply chain security investments before supporting further requirements.
CBP is trying to develop quantifiable metrics showing the potential returns on investment from industry partnership on trade security, such as proven versus estimated reductions in inspection rates. It also promotes indirect benefits such as first cargo release following any terrorist incident that shuts down ports, the ability to market the company as a secure provider, and to have other containers released when they are part of the same shipment in which one box is singled out for inspection.
Goebel called on the government to wrap up the design of maritime security programs and move onto threats posed by other modes of terror attack. He noted that the Robb-Silverman Commission in 2005 identified chemical-biological attacks as the biggest terrorist threat to the United States and that dealing with weapons of mass destruction was primarily an intelligence rather than border protection problem.
In the maritime arena, more work needs to be done on identifying the risk associated with transshipment cargo that is not easily traced to a source and building the capacity of developing countries to screen those containers before they are reloaded on a transoceanic vessel, he said. Similar focus needs to be paid to cargo routed through Canada and Mexico and then transported across the border by truck or rail, he added.

Carafano

DHS's effort to develop an Advanced Spectroscopic Portal (ASP) radiation detector underscores the government's overemphasis on the cargo security threat, said James Carafano, senior homeland security fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
Secretary Michael Chertoff delayed the program 16 months ago to allow for additional testing after Congress charged that the systems were being rushed out despite evidence they were not accurate enough to distinguish between benign and dangerous sources of radiation. The department also scaled back some deployment plans for non-standard versions of the stationary radiation detection panels, but still defended the importance of the ASP monitors combined with imaging systems to detect highly enriched uranium.
Carafano called development of the ASP 'irrelevant ' because I don't think anybody is going to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States' in a cargo container. 'If you've got radioactive material and you want to smuggle it into the United States you're going to pick the most secure means possible that gives you a 100 percent guarantee that you're going to get in, which means you're probably not going to go through a port of entry' and subject the container to the risk of inspection, delay, loss or damage.

Chertoff

Terrorists are more likely to practice penetrating the border four or five times with a small boat or aircraft before bringing in a weapon, he said.
Under Chertoff, DHS adhered to the concept that the federal government could not protect the entire nation's infrastructure itself, and has begun to turn attention to the threat from general aviation aircraft and small boats.
High-tech cargo imaging machines also need more thorough review because there is limited confidence that the equipment can detect a lead shielded device inside a container, according to a member of the minority staff for the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. Experts say that many existing X-ray and gamma ray scanning systems provide decent two-dimensional or 3D views of what's inside a container under limited conditions, but are not good at dealing with liquids and require sufficient manpower and time to analyze the images.
It is hard for the government to define the security benefit of scanning and other technology-based detection programs, he said, unless better standards are articulated and a better testing regime for homeland security technology is in place.
Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the committee, has proposed the creation of a special office and independent testing director within the DHS Science and Technology directorate to evaluate devices and make recommendations to an investment review board tasked with making funding determinations.
With several years of experience behind it managing security programs, the government needs to review its approach and 'do a better job of explaining in a transparent way what are the costs and benefits of all these rules,' the policy assistant said at the conference.
He acknowledged that it is difficult to measure whether security measures have actually stopped any terrorists and translate that into monetary savings, but said the government can compare direct and indirect program costs against new priorities to see if requirements need to be modified.
The congressional aide, under guidance not to be quoted by name, said DHS should look to the Environmental Protection Agency as a model. Environmental regulations are very clear about the public health benefits expected to be derived and the anticipated cost to industry.
'We have a very rigorous analysis in other agencies. I think that's something we should strive for in Homeland Security regulation as well' to increase public confidence in the regulatory process, he said.