Rockefeller Wants Container Scanning Reconsidered

Congress must reconsider its mandate that the government scan all ocean containers coming into the United States, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee said Wednesday.

“I don't think we have any choice,” said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., in a sharp break with previous Democratic statements. “I don’t want to do it, but it’s something that can’t realistically, and in some ways responsibly, be done — and in some cases does not need to be done.”

Rockefeller made the call after a hearing in which Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said DHS will seek an extension for a scanning requirement due to take effect in 2012.

“DHS is compelled to seek the time extensions authorized by law on the 100 percent scanning provision,” she said. “While we need to continue the current efforts, we need to address the security of maritime cargo through a wider lens.”

Napolitano said the DHS had learned much from scan-all pilot programs at five foreign ports, “but it has also encountered some steep challenges.” Among them, technology “doesn't exist right now to effectively and automatically detect suspicious anomalies in cargo. This makes scanning difficult and time-consuming.

“The costs of 100 percent scanning are very steep, especially in a down economy,” Napolitano said. “DHS equipment costs alone will be about $8 million for every one of the more than 2,100 shipping lanes at the more than 700 ports that ship to the United States.”

Democrats made container security a major campaign issue during the 2006 elections. After they took control of Congress beginning in 2007, the 100 percent scanning requirement was added to a bill to force the Bush administration to implement all the security recommendations that a blue-ribbon commission made after the September 11 terrorist attacks. The requirement to scan all cargo was not one of the commission’s recommendations.

Rockefeller, however, said he did not intend to file legislation to change the requirement.

Contact R.G. Edmonson at bedmonson@joc.com.