Enhance the Government’s Security Targeting and
Screening of Containerized Cargo Shipments

Recommendation

Ocean carriers are required to file their cargo manifest data into U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (Customs) targeting system 24 hours before vessel loading. Customs should expand this requirement to include importers. Importers should also be required to file relevant entry data into Customs’ targeting system 24 hours before vessel loading. This additional data, which provides a much more detailed and complete picture of the cargo shipment, could then be used in the agency’s Automated Targeting System to further enhance cargo security screenings.

Advanced Information on Containerized Cargo

Starting in 2003, Customs implemented the "24 Hour Rule" requiring ocean carriers to provide the U.S. government with their cargo manifest information about all containerized cargo shipments at least 24 hours before those containers are loaded onto the US-bound vessel in a foreign port. Customs then screens the shipment using its Automated Targeting System (ATS) to determine which containers require further review or inspection. The Coalition for Secure Ports agrees with the industry’s support of this rule and the underlying strategy: The correct time and place for cargo security screening is before the containers are loaded on the ship.

The ATS utilizes risk-based analysis to decide which containers should not be loaded aboard the vessel at the foreign port, which containers need to be inspected at either the foreign port or the U.S. discharge port, and which containers are considered low-risk and thus able to be transported expeditiously, without further review. The function, effectiveness and credibility of the ATS represent a cornerstone of the U.S. government’s approach to container security.

Container Screening and Inspection

The Department of Homeland Security’s strategy is based on its performance of a security screening of relevant cargo shipment data for 100% of all containerized cargo shipments before vessel loading, and subsequent inspections of 100% of those containers that raise security issues after initial screening. Today, the government reports that it inspects 5.6% of all inbound containers (roughly 540,000 containers/year), using either X-ray or gamma ray technology (or both) or by physical devanning (unloading the cargo from the shipping container) of the container.1

Enhancing Container Screenings

All Americans have a strong interest in the government performing as effective a security screening as possible before vessel loading. Experience also shows that substantial disruptions to commerce can be avoided if security questions relating to a cargo shipment have been addressed prior to a vessel being loaded and sailing. Today, the only data that the commercial sector is required to provide to Customs for each shipment for before-vessel-loading security screening is the ocean carrier’s manifest data filed under the 24 Hour Rule. This was a good start, but manifest data has limitations, as Customs itself has recognized.

Cargo manifest data should be supplemented in order to provide better security risk assessment capabilities.2 The maritime industry has recommended that Customs address this issue by requiring importers to advance the time for filing their cargo shipment entry data to 24 hours before vessel loading, just as carriers are required to do. This additional data, which provides a much more detailed and complete picture of the cargo shipment, could then be used in the agency’s Automated Targeting System to further enhance cargo security screenings.

The 9/11 Commission Report, in addressing transportation security, stated that until security enhancement technologies "such as scanning technologies designed to screen containers" can be deployed on a widespread basis, "the best protective measures may be to combine improved methods of identifying and tracking high-risk containers, operators, and facilities that require added scrutiny…."3

What Additional Information is Needed?

The key issues in enhancing the ATS are deciding what additional information importers should provide Customs, and when that information should be provided. Currently, there is no data required to be filed by the U.S. importer or the foreign exporter that can be used in the early security screening process, even though the shipment data they possess would have relevance beyond what is available in the carriers’ manifest filings, and notwithstanding the fact that the law requires the cargo security screening and evaluation system to be conducted "prior to loading in a foreign port".4 Today, this merchandise entry data is required to be filed with the government by the importer, but not until after the cargo shipment is in the United States, often at its inland destination — too late for security screening purposes.

The Coalition recommends that importers provide timely data that includes:

• More specific and precise cargo description5
• Party that is selling the goods to the importer
• Party that is purchasing the goods
• Point of origin of the goods
• Country from which goods are exported
• Ultimate consignee (final recipient)
• Exporter representative
• Name of broker
• Origin of container shipment — name and address of business where container was stuffed.

1 Since September 11, Customs has significantly increased the numbers of containers it physically inspects, but physically inspecting every one of the ten million containers imported into the U.S. is neither operationally nor technically feasible, nor commercially practical. Thus, the importance of ATS as the tool that determines which containers warrant further security inquiry is paramount.

2 See also, "Homeland Security: Summary of Challenges Faced in Targeting Oceangoing Cargo Containers for Inspection", General Accounting Office Report and Testimony.
March 31, 2004 (GAO–04–557T).

3 The 9/11 Commission Report, page 392.

4 46 U.S.C section 70116(b)(1).

5 Customs itself has stated: "Entry data is some of the most detailed and accurate information available for targeting…." Testimony of Assistant Commissioner Jay Ahern before the House of Representative’s Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, March 2004.