Koch outlines problems with cargo screening legislation

Koch outlines problems with cargo screening legislation    World Shipping Council President Chris Koch on Tuesday submitted a letter to Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, outlining the ocean carrier group’s concerns with a proposed bill that would require all containers headed to the United States to first be scanned in foreign ports.
   The “Sail Only if Scanned Act,” or SOS bill, is expected to be offered as an amendment to a comprehensive piece of cargo and port security legislation, “The SAFE Port Act,” that the committee is scheduled to edit and vote on next week after it returns from Easter recess.
   The SOS bill, (H.R. 4899), which originally was blocked by a subcommittee from being attached to the SAFE Port Act, “would cripple American commerce and almost certainly cause significant conflict with foreign governments,” Koch said.
   The legislation, authored by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., insists on 100 percent scanning of all containers within a year of passage, but Koch said the short-time frame, vague instructions and mandatory sanction to terminate trade with foreign ports that fail to conduct out-bound scans made implementation of the requirement unrealistic.
   Koch said the bill does not make clear what “scanned” means, as well as who is to do the scanning and how the system would work.
   U.S. Customs and Border Protection is able to check about half of all containers entering the country for radiation using large-scale detection machines and plans to have complete coverage by the end of 2007. The agency also takes X-ray or gamma ray images of about 5.5 percent of cargo containers from suspicious or unknown origins. Most of those non-intrusive exams are conducted on U.S. soil, but some are done by cooperating customs authorities in 43 foreign ports under the Container Security Initiative.
   A new system developed and tested by the private sector in the Port of Hong Kong would combine radiation and imaging systems that could capture container data as trucks move through the terminal gate.
   Nadler’s bill does not indicate whether scanning should include radiation detection only, X-ray imaging, or both. The bill also does not spell out whether the data must be immediately analyzed or is simply captured for later use, and whether the security measures are to be conducted by the private sector or foreign governments.
   Congress needs to clarify its vision for such an inspection regime because allowing foreign terminal operators to control data used for U.S. security purposes is inconsistent with the position it took during the Dubai Ports World case, when it forced the state-owned company in Dubai to divest its recently acquired operating rights in U.S. ports because of concerns that the company could not be trusted to load and unload vessels, Koch said.
   “Is the ‘SOS’ bill now saying that its required container scanning is to be performed in foreign ports by a company that it would not allow to operate in U.S. ports?” he said.
   Another shortcoming of the bill is that it does not provide any funding to implement the scanning, leaving the impression that the cost of acquiring and operating the system will be borne by the private sector, Koch added.
   The World Shipping Council also questioned language requiring the Department of Homeland Security to set standards for inspection equipment to be used by foreign governments and terminal operators overseas.
   “The U.S. has not established such standards for itself yet, while this bill seeks to establish mandatory global standards that would be developed solely by the U.S. We question how acceptable this would be to other nations where the bill states the equipment would need to be installed and operated,” according to a footnote.
   “This bill is a universal, inflexible mandate to foreign countries to implement a system according to American standards and to apply it to all their containerized exports to the United States, without any voice or advice from their governments, and with an arbitrary embargo on their commerce if they don’t comply.
   “In what may be perceived abroad as even more arrogant, the United States does not perform any of these functions on any of its export commerce,” Koch said.
   Blocking trade with countries that fail to adhere to U.S.-imposed cargo security requirements could invite retaliatory actions against U.S. exports, the World Shipping Council warned.
   “The SOS bill’s proponents may wish to consider how they would feel if the Chinese or Japanese or European governments said there can be no U.S. exports to their countries unless the U.S. installs and operates container inspection equipment in U.S. ports, which meets Chinese or Japanese or European government technology standards, and sends the scanned images to their government for review before U.S. port operations could begin to load a vessel,” Koch said.
   He urged Congress to let DHS continue studying the feasibility of employing the integrated scanning system being tested in Hong Kong, and to support CSI and other efforts to engage the cooperation of foreign governments and the private sector to verify the integrity of cargo at the foreign load point.