Sens. Collins, Lieberman call for better container tracking

Sens. Collins, Lieberman call for better container tracking    Sen. Susan M. Collins, R-Maine, chairman, and Sen. Joseph Lieberman D-Conn., ranking member, of the U.S. Senate’s Governmental Affairs Committee, have jointly urged the Department of Homeland Security to improve the tracking of containers being shipped to the United States.
   In a letter to Asa Hutchinson, undersecretary for border and transportation security, the senators said, “the department inspects a small percentage of the shipments destined for the U.S., and rates of inspection vary from port to port due to the availability of technology and staffing resources.
   “We have known about vulnerabilities in the system for some time. Today, we seek an update on progress the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection has made to protect the cargo container system from attack, as well as responses to concerns we have heard regarding the current state of CBP initiatives,” the senators said.
   Specifically, “CBP does not have a credible process in place to validate ‘low risk’ containers … nor does CBP have a comprehensive program in place to track containers through multiple transshipment points,” they explained.
   “As a result, some experts believe that terrorists can hide the true contents of a container by moving that container through numerous ports and transportation modes, thereby disguising its point of origin and providing opportunities to alter the manifest to disguise the contents,” Collins and Lieberman said.
   As for the CBP’s Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT), “we are concerned that CBP does not have a workable plan in place to audit the standards and practices of participating companies once they receive an initial validation,” they said.
   “As a result, companies could take advantage of the program by not making the kinds of investments to sustain security practices once they have been accepted into the C-TPAT program, while still being confident that they will receive a lower score and expedited processing even though it is no longer merited,” Collins and Lieberman said.
   The senators asked how many of the 4,000 participants in C-TPAT have already been validated, and if participants realize any benefits before they are validated.
   In addition, the two senators asked Hutchinson why the CBP doesn’t require purchase order data to be submitted along with manifest data according to the 24-hour rule.
   They also wanted to know if the CBP has “any plans to require data tracking all ports-of-call for both containers and ships. If not, please explain why,” the senators said in their letter.
   Collins and Lieberman asked Hutchinson to respond to their questions by Nov. 28.