WSJ: Keeping Cargo Safe From Terror -- Hong Kong Port Project Scans All Containers;

Wall Street Journal ^ | July 29, 2005 | ALEX ORTOLANI and ROBERT BLOCK

[OESY]

How do you keep a terrorist from smuggling a radiation-filled "dirty bomb" or other weapon in one of the seven million-plus shipping containers that arrive at U.S. ports each year? That question has dogged policy makers, customs agents and counterterrorism experts ever since [9/11]....

Customs and Border Protection has sought to secure global shipping by relying on intelligence and scrutinizing suspicious cargo manifests -- such as an unrefrigerated container full of "frozen fish" -- to identify potentially dangerous shipments long before they reach American shores.

But critics say this method is flawed because the information on shipping documents if often vague and unreliable, and intelligence is spotty, particularly from remote corners of the world. Currently, fewer than 6% of the containers headed for American ports are deemed "high risk" by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and pulled aside for examination by Customs inspectors.

Now, port officials in Hong Kong, the world's second-busiest port after Singapore, are testing a strategy that electronically scrutinizes every container full of sneakers, toys, gadgets or other contents. Proponents contend it better secures the global shipping system -- without unacceptably slowing the flow of commerce.

Over the past year, the Hong Kong Terminal Operators Association, which includes several private companies, has deployed scanning machines supplied by Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego. Trucks haul each container passing through the port through two of the giant scanners. One checks for nuclear radiation, while the other uses gamma rays to seek out any dense, suspicious object made of steel or lead inside the containers that could shield a bomb from the nuclear detector....

Those images and codes could be passed along to customs services in other cities to help them identify suspicious cargo before it gets loaded onto a ship, at any point along its journey....

[OESY]

It's not that the "U.S. Doesn't See the Need," as the WSJ put it. It's that our unions have blocked security-related innovations. Witness the 2001 Longshoremen's strike in California.

[BurbankKarl]

Did you see the libbies Mayor Villaracista appointed to the Port of LA?

Expect an order to shut off all vessels engines in port very soon.