Robert Kelly* started his speech mentioning that 21,000 containers a day come to US seaports and the US government checks only 2% of them.

Robert Kelly is former White House Counsel and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Drug Enforcement. He was invited on April the 20th, 2005, to the demonstration of the Sea-Cure Satellite System from Powers International, Inc. He shared his view about the “Vulnerability of the Global Supply Chain”.

He emphasized that the concept of “Homeland Security” was fairly new in the USA, different from the usual concept of “National Security”. September 11 changed totally the landscape. For him one of the threats for the Homeland Security was coming from the supply chain. Nowadays the supply chain is global and relies heavily on the Maritime Transportation System: it represents 80% of the US commerce. According to Kelly, 16 million containers move around the world thanks to the maritime transportation system. 21,000 of them come everyday to US seaports.

The main issue is that nobody knows what effectively are in those containers. It is economically impossible to open and check all of them. As Robert Kelly said, only 2% are checked by the US government. The Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA, to be dvped) and the International Maritime Organization are well aware of the issue and tend to cope with it.

In the US, the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) program is one of the attempts to answer the issue. C-TPAT, wrote Jim Giermanski and Dan Hasting in HSToday, is a voluntary program and one of its purported benefits is that it expedites the clearance of the cargo into the US - not that it provides thorough screening. DVLP C-TPAT

Powers International’s demonstration

The Container Security Initiative (CSI) is intended to improve U.S. security by tightening and expanding cargo-reporting requirements. CSI is a cargo screening program initiated by the U.S.. In this program exporters agree to screen containerized cargo at the point of shipment. As the CSI Institute points it out, the CSI regulations are implemented in different stage:

  The current stage focus on improving U.S. security by pre-screening containers before they reach U.S. ports.

  Later stages of the CSI will establish standards for the security and integrity of containers and cargo throughout the transportation supply chain.

The CSI has four objectives, each of which affects a company’s international supply chain:

1. Establish security criteria
2. Pre-screen containers before they reach U.S. ports
3. Inspect high-risk containers
4. Use smart and secure containers