Opinion: Speak Clearly on Security Isssues
b>By Erik Hoffer
i>President
GM Security Solutions
Yet, while the federal government has attempted to offer guidelines for the safe passage of freight, it has complicated matters in every instance by failing to provide appropriate compliance actions, leaving all of us in the supply chain wondering what to do.
Last year’s recommendation on high-security bolt seals for trailers and containers is a recent and ridiculous example. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) document approved by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection focuses on bolt seals rather than total overall security for trailers and containers, which have other vulnerable points that can be penetrated by a determined thief or saboteur.
Furthermore, the government has made certain assumptions regarding the inherent safety of our domestic supply chain, but failed to account for the relationship between cargo theft, which is rampant, and the effects of that theft on our economy and on the subsequent relationship it has with funding terrorism around the globe.
Theft losses erode profits from both carriers and shippers, but economic terrorism — including the smuggling of people, currency and drugs — is more easily understood as a greater threat requiring immediate legislative attention. By addressing one, you reduce the risks associated with the others.
In attempting to tackle these issues, without actually offering a tangible remedy, Customs and Border Protection, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, has started to create a nebulous framework for action.
The government has asked shippers and carriers to take a more active role in assuring the safety of our ports and borders, but failed to specify how. It has introduced FAST — Free and Secure Trade — to speed transit times and help secure border crossings, but it still allows 95% of cargo to enter the United States without physical inspection. If you are a shipper or carrier, why should you implement policy, purchase products or spend money on technology unless you know you are going to be compliant with the eventual remedy?
In order to accomplish that task with some semblance of order, security and consistency, specific directions need to be established for our domestic carriers by our government, covering the precise actions and products needed to complete the mission along with the benefits associated with compliance.
FAST and C-TPAT, the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, are voluntary programs for shippers that ask the industry to ensure the secure packing and sealing of cargo destined for the United States by land or sea to facilitate the secure movement domestically. For many years BASC — the Business Anti-Smuggling Coalition — has had a similar mission, with interdiction and asset confiscation as the stick, but really no viable carrot for those shippers and carriers that comply.
No one denies the value of such programs and no one better understands the benefits of the rapid and fluid movement of cargo than importers and carriers. However, the issue facing truckers is not one of understanding the tasks involved with compliance under the new mandates, but rather one of figuring out what is asked of them. I have met and worked with literally hundreds of clients moving both highly valuable and highly vulnerable cargo into and through the United States. All these shippers, carriers and importers seem to say the same things:
• What do you want me to do to be compliant with laws and regulations?
• Give me instructions and I will comply, but without directions I am at a loss to know what techniques will eventually meet with approval.
• Without such a plan, why should I create a security system or use a product or set a procedural protocol that may be judged improper in only a moment’s notice?
• Who is in charge, and whom do I ask for direction?
To those in government, drafting regulations and mandates for border integrity, the freight transportation industry asks you to be specific in your requirements and to think through technology issues with practical solutions we can afford and use immediately. Waiting for a perfect solution is going to be a costly error because the problem will not wait.
We ask that you not massage the problem by touting futuristic “electronics” when few have proven viable. Certainly, let us not accept cross-border trailer-sealing with a bolt when we all know that technology was never suited for security.
We accept the challenge to become your partner in creating counter-measures, but give us marching orders and the economic offsets to help fund them. Give us credible and functional solutions that enhance security and facilitate protecting our national borders.
Without a decisive basic plan to reduce these threats, nothing will ever happen, and we will continue, years after 9/11, without a specific cargo security mandate.
We are one blast away from a complete breakdown in the world supply chain. This devastation could begin at a port or on the highways of our country and would have worldwide implications.
And the need to act is now, before the event.
The author, whose company is based in Somerset, N.J., is chairman of the International Cargo Security Council’s Seals and Educational Seminars Committees.
This opinion piece appears in the Sept. 5 print edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.
