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Container security: a false sense of security

It is easy to pass the container seal without leaving it damaged. This is a problem both in the aspect of the risk of robbery and as a transport opportunity for terrorists.
Photo: Pär-Henrik Sjöström

A power drill, a replacement bolt, a blob of glue and a pot of the right coloured paint are all that is necessary to break into the average container, rob it and then flee after first making it look as if nothing has happened.
As demonstrated in a restricted video, produced by US security company Sealock, the container’s seal is left completely undamaged. Jeff Liroff, the company president says:
“Locking bars and barrier devices provide only a false sense of security. Once removed, their absence is likely to go unnoticed because the container’s primary seal would still be intact and affixed. Sadly, however, a conventional seal, no matter how strong or intelligent, only ensures that the door handle has not moved away from the door. It does nothing to keep the doors from being opened and closed again”.
Sealock’s solution fixes on to the keeper bars and is also connected to the seal. A thief with high-powered tools might still break in. But, says Liroff, it would be impossible for him to cover his tracks.

High insurance cost and risk
In the campaign to detect a terrorist attack using a container to smuggle explosives, biological weapons or some type of nuclear device, the broken seal ought to be a giveaway. According to the TT Club, container crime costs insurers between USD 9 and USD 15 billion a year. Employees, who pilfer rather than plunder full loads, perpetrate around 80 per cent of all thefts. Since a container passes through so many different hands from the supplier to the customer, when the theft is finally discovered, it will probably be impossible to work out at what point on its journey a normally secured container was entered. If items can be taken out, they can also be put in. The manifest is unchanged. If the legitimate cargo and its provenance are not picked up as high risk by any of the computer systems along its route, which will analyse the manifest data, the only chance of stopping a terror device rests either in screening or the discovery of the forced entry.
If the box is being handled by C-TPAT accredited shipper or by the equivalent from the EU Customs Security Programme’s – Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) enjoying rapid clearance in return for compliance with high security standards, it is extremely unlikely that it will be screened. Therefore a dishonest container port employee could be bribed to load a terrorist bomb into a shipping container with an otherwise entirely innocent load, which he knew was going to be fast-tracked through customs and security clearance. The technology for high speed screening of boxes is still some way off.
To inspect every container, as suggested in an amendment during the congressional debate on the SAFE Port legislation, would bring international trade to a halt. When announcing its greatly expanded customs control list, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that even inspecting just one out of every 20 containers handled by the MPA would virtually stop the port operating.

The intelligent container
In the mean time work continues on the intelligent container, or smart box, which could radio in its status on a scheduled basis and immediately report that it had been entered.
The commercial applications for this when dealing with perishable or volatile loads and for keeping track real-time of individual shipments are attractive enough to have a significant number of heavyweight players such as IBM working on the technology.
This also includes the concept of individual packs in a load also communicating via the smart box’s transmitter. The security imperative is likely to drive commercial development even faster.

A dog’s nose
In many ports, not just in the US, the front line detector is a dog’s nose. This may be statistically a million times more sensitive than the human nose but even it can go wrong.
This August Terminal 18 on Harbor Island in the Port of Seattle was shut down and evacuated for several hours after a search dog indicated explosives were on board two containers from Pakistan. The dog had been sent to the box after x-rays had produced evidence (which the authorities would not reveal) that something was wrong. A controlled explosion showed that neither container had anything other than textiles on board.

//Nigel Ash

Latest update 26-10-2006 15:55