Washington, D.C. – Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Susan Collins has received letters from the World Shipping Council and the Retail Industry Leaders Association affirming their support for her port security legislation under floor consideration today and urging her to oppose 100 percent container inspections that they say could cripple U.S. trade.
World Shipping Council President Christopher Koch said, “One-hundred percent container proposals purport to be a cheap and effective way to ensure security. They are neither. It also fails to address fundamentally important security questions, it would disrupt American commerce, and it would cause foreign retaliations against American exports.”
The letter goes on to say, “American commerce would be grounded to halt because there is no practical way to analyze or inspect the scanning images before vessel loading, because it is too labor intensive and no technology currently exists do the analysis, the proposal faces a dilemma that it clearly fails to address.”
Echoing these sentiments, Retail Industry Leaders Association President Sandy Kennedy said, “While we strongly support improving the security of our nation’s seaports, 100% scanning proposals have the potential to do more harm than good. Such proposals may at first glance appear to improve security, but in reality, they would impose immense costs on our economy and foreign relations without improving the security of our international trading systems.”
“Even if the manpower and equipment necessary for 100 percent scanning were available, the process would impose delays and create massive backlogs at ports. Scanning a shipping container takes several minutes; analyzing the scan images can take up to 15 minutes and most of the effort would be pure waste,” said Chairman Collins. “U.S. Customs and Protection (CBP) already screens the cargo-manifest data of every container entering the U.S. This 100 percent screening and risk-based scanning or inspection approach allows inspectors to focus their attention on isolated threats rather than dilute their attention in an attempt to subject every container to the same scrutiny.”
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