Category / Container Security

by Mike Poverello

USCBP seizes MSC Gayane with 18 tonnes of cocaine aboard

MSC Gayane

US customs officials seized a container ship financed by JPMorgan this week after authorities found nearly 18 tons of cocaine with an estimated street value of $1.3 billion in the vessel.

The drug bust on the Liberian-flagged MSC Gayane is surprising for several reasons. The sheer quantity of cocaine it was carrying, its links to JPMorgan, its presence in the US, and the recent string of West African drug busts are worth noting.

A container ship financed by JPMorgan was seized by US customs officials this week after authorities found nearly 18 tons of cocaine with an estimated street value of $1.3 billion on the vessel. The drug bust on the MSC Gayane is surprising for several reasons, outlined below.

The roughly 39,500 pounds, or 17.9 metric tons, of cocaine – about the same weight as three African bull elephants – found aboard the MSC Gayane outweighed the total amount of cocaine that passed through West Africa in 2013 and all of the cocaine seized across Africa from 2013 to 2016, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

The vast quantity may reflect a supply glut. Global cocaine manufacturing surged by a quarter in 2016 to 1,410 tons, according to the World Drug Report 2018. The production boom is centered in Colombia, where cultivation of the coca plant rose 17% to 171,000 hectares in 2017, according to the UN.

The link between the MSC Gayane and JPMorgan may be the most surprising aspect of the drug bust.

The MSC Gayane is operated by the Switzerland-based Mediterranean Shipping Co., but JPMorgan helped finance MSC’s purchase of the ship. The two reportedly structured the purchase so the ship was owned by client assets in a transportation strategy fund run for JPMorgan’s asset-management arm.

JPMorgan hasn’t yet publicly addressed its association with the vessel, and it has declined to comment to Markets Insider.

The MSC Gayane sailed under the flag of Liberia, a West African country. West Africa is a popular transit route for smugglers between South America and Europe because of its porous borders, weak rule of law, largely unmonitored coastline, and limited infrastructure and resources. The proportion of cocaine seizures in Africa accounted for by West Africa rose to 78% in 2016, “reflecting the rapidly growing importance of West Africa as a transit area,” the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said.

But there appears to be little drug smuggling between West Africa and the US, making the MSC Gayane drug bust highly unusual. Higher street prices and a lower risk of getting caught make Europe a more lucrative and attractive market than the US, the Nigerian drug smuggler Chigbo Umeh told The Guardian in 2015.

While notable, the ship’s flag doesn’t necessarily implicate Liberia.

“A Liberian registered ship is not in itself a link with the West Africa drug economy,” Mark Shaw, the director of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, said in an interview with Markets Insider. “Liberia serves as a flag state for much shipping.”

The drug bust on a Liberian-flagged vessel is the latest in a string of major seizures linked to West African countries this year.

In May 2018, Algerian officials seized more than 1,500 pounds of cocaine on a Liberian-registered container ship that was transporting frozen meat from Brazil, according to the BBC. In February of this year, Cape Verde officials found 21,000 pounds of cocaine, with a street value north of $700 million, on a Panamanian-flagged vessel. A month later, authorities in Guinea-Bissau notched their biggest-ever cocaine bust – and the country’s first in a decade – when they discovered more than 1,700 pounds of the drug hidden in a false bottom of a truck loaded with fish.

“There were doubts whether West Africa was still being used as a major transit route, but these seizures seem to suggest that there is a return,” Shaw said in an interview with Bloomberg in March. “It’s a surprise and it’s very significant.”

Source: The article was written by Theron Mohamed, Market Insider, 11 July 2019

Advertisement
by Mike Poverello

WCO News – June 2019

by Mike Poverello

India – Customs introduces ‘self-sealing’ export container procedure

Customs_&_Central_Excise_DKBThe Indian Customs department (CBEC) has allowed self-sealing procedure as of 1 October for containers to be exported, as it aims to move towards a ‘trust based compliance environment’ and trade facilitation for exporters.

In a circular to all Principal Chief Commissioners, the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) said exporters who were availing facility of sealing at the factory premises under the supervision of customs authorities will be automatically entitled for self-sealing facility.

It said that permission once granted for self-sealing at an approved premise will remain valid unless withdrawn. However, in case of change in the premise, a fresh approval from Customs department will be required.

“The new self-sealing procedure shall come into effect from October 1, 2017. Till then the existing procedure shall continue,” the CBEC said.

It asked field officers to notify a Superintendent-rank officer to act as the nodal officer for the self-sealing procedure.

The officer will be responsible for coordination of the arrangements for installation of reader-scanners.

Earlier in July, the CBEC had said it will introduce the system of self-sealing by 1 September , as against the practise of sealing of containers under the supervision of revenue officials.

However, the CBEC now said that exporters can self-seal containers using the tamper proof electronic seals from 1 October 2017.

Under the new procedure, the exporter will have to declare the physical serial number of the e-seal at the time of filing the online integrated shipping bill or in the case of manual shipping bill before the container is dispatched for the port.

The exporters will directly procure RFID seals from vendors.

“In case, the RFID seals of the containers are found to be tampered with, then mandatory examination would be carried out by the Customs authorities,” the CBEC said.

From October 1, the exporters will need to furnish e-seal number, date of sealing, time of sealing, destination customs station for export, container number and trailer track number to the customs authorities.

In a circular in July, the CBEC had said it endeavours to create a trust based environment where compliance with laws is ensured by strengthening risk management system and Intelligence setup of the department.

Accordingly, CBEC has decided to lay down a simplified procedure for stuffing and sealing of export goods in containers. Source: The India Times > Economic Times, 5 September 2017.

by Mike Poverello

SARS publishes external NII Standard for Customs X-Ray Scanning operations

sars-scanner-operations-at-ports-of-entry-1

SARS offers non-intrusive inspection capability at 3 ports of entry and exit to the Republic of South Africa namely, Port of Durban, Port of Cape Town and Beit Bridge border post. These facilities are intended to offer an expedited inspection service without having to physically break seals or de-van a vehicle or container. Given that the equipment offers high resolution  capability based on x-ray imaging technology, safety and and occupational health standards are a priority.

SARS has recently published a standard (SC-CC-35) for external parties relating to the scanner operation as well as health and safety standards. Source: SA Revenue Service

 

by Mike Poverello

3D-printed fake seals being used to mask cargo thefts

Cargo thieves have used 3D printers to make fake security seals to hide when a shipment has been compromised.

In some cases the cloned seals are so ingenious they even match the identification numbers on the original, according to third-party logistics organisation SpedLogSwiss, which reports an incident in which the scam was used in the theft of a pharmaceutical shipment.

In 3D printing, three-dimensional work pieces are built up in layers on relatively cheap devices. This construction is done by computer control of one or more liquid or solid materials. Typical materials are synthetic resins, plastics, ceramics and metals. This new technology opens up new possibilities in the manufacture of products. The advantages of this technology have now been discovered by organized crime.

A victim of seal counterfeiting has provided the following images to raise the awareness of other freight forwarders and shippers. In the below incident, a shipment of pharmaceutical goods loaded in a container was sealed with an intact shipper seal (Figure 1) and a seal from the shipping transport company was also applied to the container (Figure 2):

 

Security seals

Upon arrival of the container at the end customer dock, the seals were removed and the container opened. It was then found that most of the load had been stolen in transit. The original seals had been removed during transport, the goods were removed, and the container was resealed with new, but fake seals. (Figure 3)

Security seals1

“The advantages of this technology have already been discovered by the organized crime,” says SpedLogSwiss, which notes that some 3D printers can prepare the fake seals in as little as 10 minutes.

The organization has issued a circular describing the incident in order to raise awareness of the issue.

According to freight security specialist Freightwatch International, there were just over 500 thefts in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) in the second quarter of 2015.

Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, France, the UK, Austria, South Africa, Spain and Russia topped the list of countries affected, with electronics, clothing and accessories, food and drink the most stolen product categories. Source: www.securingindustry.com

by Mike Poverello

UNODC-WCO Container Control Programme – 2015 Annual Report online

Container Control ProgrammeThe year 2015 has been the most active one ever for this joint WCO – UNODC initiative, which tackles illicit trade in containerized transport.

A number of new countries joined the Container Control Programme (CCP), more than 130 training events, private sector meetings and study visits were implemented and significant seizures of drugs, counterfeit goods, cigarettes etc. were made by the Port Control Units established in the framework of this programme.

The 2015 CCP Annual Report also contains interviews with the Directors General of Georgia and Azerbaijan Customs as well as several statements by Customs’ and Private Sector stakeholders. Source: WCO

by Mike Poverello

US will not delay weighing rule

Verified Gross MassThe US Coast Guard has told American shippers that it will not delay implementation of the SOLAS Chapter VI amendment requiring containers to have a verified gross mass before they can be shipped.

The US Agriculture Transportation Coalition (AgTC), representing most of the country’s agricultural and forestry products exporters and thus accounting for a huge slice of US shipping exports, argued that confusion over the VGM could lead to business being lost and threatened supply chain turmoil.

It called for a one-year delay in implementation of the new rules, due to take effect on 1st July, to allow time for government and industry to work together to solve the problems. AgTC cited SOLAS Article VIII(b)(vii)(2), which allows for a Competent Authority [in this case the USCG] to give notice to the IMO of an intention to delay implementation of any SOLAS regulation for up to one year at any point before the entry into force.

However, at a special public meeting convened on 18th February at the offices of the Federal Maritime Commission in Washington, DC, Rear Admiral Paul Thomas, the USCG’s Assistant Commandant for Prevention Policy, said a delay to implementation would not be entertained.

Thomas pointed out that that the VGM is not a US regulation or law, but arises out of international agreement within IMO. As such it will be enforced by flag states, where ships are registered, and any signal that the US was unready or unwilling to comply with the new rule would be interpreted by flag state authorities to mean that loading US export containers on their ships is unsafe. He added that most US exports are carried on foreign flag ships.

This should be the end of the matter. However, the IMO mechanisms allow the US (or any other IMO member-state) to give notice any time up to 30th June. The US could also introduce an “AOB” paper at the next IMO MSC meeting scheduled for May.

At the meeting last week, shippers were reassured that if they used “Method 2” (VGM by calculation), they are legally entitled to rely on the container’s CSC plate as providing an accurate empty tare weight. Source: World Cargo News

by Mike Poverello

EU fighting Customs Fraud – JRC research leads to new legislation

ConTraffic HomepageA new regulation adopted by the European Parliament and the Council will allow customs to access information to track the origins and routes of cargo containers arriving in the EU to support the fight against customs fraud both at EU and national level. The Joint Research Centre (JRC) has been instrumental in the conception and adoption of this legislation as it provided the scientific evidence on the importance of analysing the electronic records on cargo container traffic.

The EU customs authorities have been long aware that information on the logistics and actual routes of cargo containers arriving in Europe is valuable for the fight against customs fraud. However, they had very limited ways to obtain such information and no means to systematically analyse cargo container traffic both for fraud investigations as well as for risk analysis. On the other hand, the ocean carriers that transport the cargo containers, as well as their partners and clients, have easy on-line access to the so-called Container Status Messages (CSM): electronic records which describe the logistics and the routes followed by cargo containers.

jrc-cargo-container-routes-world-mapIn collaboration with the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), the JRC has worked extensively on how to exploit CSM data for customs anti-fraud purposes. The JRC proposed techniques, developed the necessary technology, and ran long-term experiments involving hundreds of EU customs officers to validate the usefulness of using CSM data. The results of this research led the Commission to bring forward a legislative proposal that would enable Member States and OLAF to systematically use CSM data for these anti-fraud purposes. It also served to convince Member States of the value of the proposed provisions.

The financial gains from the avoidance of duties, taxes, rates and quantitative limits constitute an incentive to commit fraud and allow the capacity to properly investigate in cases, such as mis-declaration of the origin of imported goods. The information extracted from the CSM data can facilitate the investigation of some types of false origin-declarations. With the new legislation an importer will no longer be able to declare – without raising suspicions – country X as dispatch/origin of goods if these were transported in a cargo container that started in country Z (as indicated by the CSM data).

jrc-csm-dataset-world-map (1)The technologies, know-how and experience in handling CSM data, developed by the JRC through its experimental ConTraffic platform, will be used by OLAF to set up the system needed to implement this new legislation applicable as from 1 September 2016. The JRC will continue to analyse large datasets of CSM records (hundreds of millions per year) as these are expected to be made available through the new legislation and will continue to support not only this new regulation but to exploit the further uses of this data notably for security and safety and real-time operations. Its focus will be on data mining, new automated analysis techniques and domain-specific visual analytics methods. Source and Images: EU Commission

by Mike Poverello

Freight Forwarders and 3PL’s to bear the burden of IMO Box Weighing Rules

Container weighingThe responsibility for verifying the gross weight of loaded containers under next year’s new box-weighing rules will in many cases rest with freight forwarders, logistics operators or NVOCCs, according to freight transport insurance specialist TT Club.

Welcoming the initiative of the World Shipping Council (WSC) in its recent publication of guidelines to the industry in relation to implementing the SOLAS requirements that become mandatory on 1 July 2016, TT Club noted that unlike the CTU Code, which forensically seeks to identify the chain of responsibility for everyone involved in the movement of freight, the amendment to the Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS) mandating the verification of gross mass of container overtly only names the ‘shipper’, the ‘master’ and the ‘terminal representative’, and – by implication – the competent authorities.

TT Club said the complex nature of logistics means that the term ‘shipper’ may encompass a range of people involved in the contracting, packing and transporting of cargo. However, as stated in the WSC guidance, it said the key commercial relationship in question is with the person whose name is placed on the ocean carrier’s bill of lading.

“Thus, in many cases, the responsibility for actual ‘verified’ declaration will rest with a freight forwarder, logistics operator or NVOC. This means that often reliance will have to be placed on others to have adequate certified methods to provide verified gross mass – particularly for consolidation business,” TT Club said.

It noted that of course many suppliers of homogenous shipments will already have advanced systems, which merely require some form of national certification, adding: “Apart from having a sustainable method by which the gross mass is verified, the shipper also needs to communicate it (‘signed’ meaning that there is an accountable person) in advance of the vessel’s stow plan being prepared.

“The information will be sent by the shipper to the carrier, but with joint service arrangements there may be a number of carriers involved, with one taking responsibility to consolidate the manifest information, in addition to communication with the terminal.”
It said the ‘master’ comprises a number of functions within the carrier’s organisation.

“Implicit in the SOLAS amendment is that the carrier sets in place processes that ensure that verified gross mass is available and used in planning the ship stow,” TT Club said. “Arguably, each carrier will need to amend systems and processes to capture ‘verified’ information.

“However, the simplest might be to amend the booking process, so that the gross mass information is left blank in the system until ‘verified’ data are available. This will be effective if it is clearly understood by all partner lines and terminals with whom the line communicates.”

TT Club said the explicit obligation of the master was simply that he shall not load a container for which a verified gross mass is not available. “This does not mean that one with a verified gross mass is guaranteed to be loaded, since that would derogate from the traditional rights of a master,” the insurance specialist added.

Recognising the pivotal nature of the port interface, it noted that the ‘terminal representative’ has been drawn into the new regulation as a key recipient of information for ship stow planning “and, critically, in a joint and several responsibility not to load on board a ship if a verified gross mass is not available”.

It added: “There has been considerable debate as to whether terminals need to position themselves to be able to weigh containers, not least because of the cost of creating appropriate infrastructure, and amending systems and procedures, with uncertain return on investment. In addition there are commonly incidences of containers packed at the port, in which case the terminal activities could include assisting the shipper in producing the verified gross mass.

“The SOLAS amendment places responsibility on national administrations to implement appropriate standards for calibration and ways of certifying. The overtly named parties rely on this to work smoothly and, preferably, consistently on a global basis.”
TT Club said clarity of such processes needed to be matched by consistency in enforcement. “Talk of ‘tolerances’ is disingenuous,” it said. “SOLAS calls for accuracy. Everyone appreciates that some cargo and packing material may be hygroscopic, thereby potentially increasing mass during the journey, but that need not mask fraudulent activity, nor entice over-zealous enforcement.”

It said the UK Marine Guidance Note may be instructive here, stating that enforcement action will only be volunteered where the difference between documented and actual weight exceeds a threshold. TT Club concluded: “It is suggested that key measures of success of the revised SOLAS regulation will include not only safety of containerised movements, but also free movement of boxes through all modes of surface transport, and a shift in behaviour and culture throughout the unit load industry.”

by Mike Poverello

Customs Non-Intrusive Inspection affects trade costs

DBN Relocatable ScannerThe following article suggests the need for greater consultation and collaboration between all supply chain parties. While the associated costs relating to supply chain movements is not the purview of SARS, these should be considered as part of the overall impact assessment in the lead up to such an implementation. For all intents and purposes this is an unintended consequence. Stakeholders should also note that the SA government has not imposed any fee for the scanning of cargoes to re-coup costs. Non-intrusive inspection (NII) capability is a tenet of international customs control intended to mitigate security threats and incidents of cargo misdeclaration, even legitimate cargo that can be used to mask harmful products stowed in vehicles/containers. The issue of increased cost of compliance has unfortunately been a trait of many international customs developments ever since the advent of ‘heightened security’ – post 9/11 and seems destined to remain a ‘challenge’ as we supposedly move into an era of increased trade facilitation.Joint collaboration between all parties not only assists in better understanding of the broader supply chain landscape but can also contribute to positive measures on the ‘ease of doing business’.

Freight & Trade Weekly (issue no. 2158, 10 July 2015) reports that Industry has called on customs to look into processes around its cargo scanners which they say are currently driving up costs.

Two state-of-the art scanners are currently operational at the Port of Durban and Cape Town and are part of South African Revenue Service’s (Sars) countrywide approach to risk management that aims for less intrusive inspections at ports and border entries.

The scanners were introduced in order to improve efficiency, with stopped containers being released more speedily than has been the case to date.

“It has however in some cases increased costs because it has resulted in double handling of containers,” said Dave Watts, a maritime consultant for the SA Association of Freight Forwarders (Saaff).

Before the introduction of the scanners all stopped containers were moved by shipping lines to licensed depots for examination by Sars. Once the inspection was concluded and the container released the importer or his agent could collect it using their own transport.

The new process however sees the stopped container transported by the shipping line to the scanner where it is either released or has to be moved for a physical inspection to a depot.

If released at the scanner the container is however still on the shipping line’s appointed truck and not that of the importer or its agent’s nominated haulier.

There are no facilities to move it from one truck to the other at the scanners which means carrier haulage moves it to a depot anyway.

“The extra cost comes in simply because of the double handling,” explained Watts.

In Durban, where the new technology scanner was introduced just over a year ago, several importers maintain it is cheaper to just have their stopped containers taken to the depot for unpacks rather than going through the scanner and not unpacking.

According to Mike Walwyn, chairman of the Port Liaison Forum, the issue of carrier choice also comes into play as the importer now has to use carrier haulage for delivery as opposed to his or her own transport.

Whilst the Cape Town scanner has only been operational for a week, some very real challenges are foreseen and increased cost is one of them.

“The issue is not necessarily around the scanner,” says Watts, “but the rules and regulations around the customs act that stipulates all containers remain the liability of the shipping line until released by customs. In other words it has to be taken to the scanner by the carrier.”

It has been suggested that instead of doubling the handling of containers the carrier should just make the final delivery of the container, but it is generally accepted that carrier cartage rates are much higher than contracted cartage rates. In some cases the cost is said to be four times higher.” Source: FTW

by Mike Poverello

Non-Intrusive Inspection capability – now in the Port of Cape Town

South African Customs has introduced non- intrusive inspection (NII) capability at the Port of Cape Town. The recent completion of an impressive relocatable scanner facility within the port precinct will now afford state of the art inspection services for customs targeted consignments for inspection. This is the third X-Ray scanner installed and operated by the South African Revenue Service (SARS).

In March 2008, a mobile scanner was implemented at Durban Container Terminal. More recently, a relocatable X-Ray Scanner was implemented adjacent to the container terminal in Durban to allow for improved capacity and efficiency.

The new facility in Cape Town not only extends customs risk and enforcement capability in the use of such technology but acts as a deterrent against any possible threat posed by international cargoes entering or leaving the country’s ports of entry.

In addition to the new x-ray inspection hardware, SARS has developed bespoke support to allow scanned images to be reviewed remotely – away from the port area – affording customs increased flexibility, allowing image analysis experts elsewhere in the country to provide almost real-time analysis and support for the inspection team. The approach also meets SARS differentiated inspection case methodology which ensures that case finalization and cargo release does not rest with a single customs official.

Remote screening analysis is a practice that has already been pioneered in Europe with great effectiveness in recent years.

The benefit of non-intrusive inspection (NII) allows customs to ‘see whats inside’ the container, vehicle or tanker without having to break the seal. All of this can be done in a few minutes. It forms part of Customs overall approach to minimise the time taken to conduct a customs intervention and latent cost, damage and theft which plague conventional physical inspection of cargoes.

The new inspection site also enables SARS to increase its participation and effectiveness in the US Container Security Initiative (CSI) which was launched in Durban, December 2003. Under the CSI Agreement, SARS officials together with US Customs & Border Protection Agency (USCBP) officials – co-located at the Port of Durban – analyze and mitigate risks relating to any containerised cargo destined to ports in the United States.

Credit to Indresan Reddy (Customs Business Systems) for the photographs.

Related documents

by Mike Poverello

CMA CGM – to introduce ‘smart’ containers to its box fleet

TraxensFrench shipping giant CMA CGM will start phasing in ‘smart’ containers this year, allowing the line and its customers to keep track of each box equipped with new sensors at all times. In an industry first, technology being developed with a start-up company, Traxens, would enable data on the location and condition of the container to be monitored at all times throughout a delivery.

The world’s third-largest container line and Ocean Three member said it had contributed to the capital increase of French firm Traxens that will enable CMA CGM to have access to an unprecedented amount of information on each container and offer clients what it describes as unique tracking solutions and real-time data collecting from all over the world.

Elie Zeenny, CMA CGM senior vice-president, Group IT Systems, said the technology would bring the shipping industry into a new era. This year, Traxens plans to equip the first CMA CGM containers with the patented technology so it will be possible to know in real-time not only a container’s position, but also its temperature, the vibrations it will be subjected to, any attempted burglary, the presence of traces of specific substances in the air or even the regulatory status of the cargo.

With its “4Trax” solution, Traxens offers the tracking of containers from cargo loading to their final destination, and the forwarding of data in real time to all actors in the multimodal transport chain. Traxens has also worked closely with French Customs in the development of its solution. In this regard the solution aims to record the legal status of the container (customs clearance) with the view to eradicate false declarations and counterfeits and to facilitate controls. Sources: Lloyds loading, CMA CGM and Traxens

by Mike Poverello

Vietnam Tightens Container-Weighing Rules

High quality 3D render shipping container during transportIn a bid to tackle overweight containers at its ports, Vietnam is seeking to address this issue with domestic legislation on container weighing practices. This is in contrast to the International Maritime Organisation, which had agreed on an amended rule that would see shipping containers being weighed before they are loaded onto ships – a rule which will come into effect in 2016.

Weighbridges have since been installed at Vietnamese ports, container yards and even highways to monitor weights of containers for both importing and exporting. A new law was endorsed in 2014 by the Vietnamese government that limited the total weight of 20 and 40ft containers to a maximum of 20 tonnes, including the weight of the container itself.

Containers found to violate the weight limits are likely to incur a fine. Source: Port Technology International

by Mike Poverello

Smart Containers and a Unique Approach to Risk Management

risk management montagePort Technology discusses the latest advances in container security. Securing the supply chain and scanning cargo containers is a complex issue with significant policy impact. One of the most prominent items of regulation in this respect is the US SAFE Port Act of 2006, which introduced the requirement to scan 100 percent of cargo containers entering the US. But, even in the year 2012, six years after its introduction, the original intention of ‘Security and Accountability for Every Port’ was still not compatible with technical and organisational realities. Consequently, in 2012 the US Department of Homeland Security deferred the requirement of 100 percent scanning until July 2014, using a foreseen exception option in the SAFE Port Act. Therefore, the challenge of improving container security remains high on the agenda.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) has worked on the issue of container security for more than 10 years now, starting with mechanical and electronic seals. But recently a paradigm shift has been introduced to the research activities: instead of trying to protect the traditional container itself, new container concepts and new monitoring approaches were looked at, and first research results are promising. The requested range of risk management tools was pursued in four major research strands, which in the future might support a comprehensive, multitechnology, and agreed-upon approach to container security: (i) new container materials; (ii) smart electronic sensors; (iii) wireless multi-hop communications, and (iv) mathematical outlier detection and security analysis. While the first three of these research areas are connected to the physical container itself, the outlier detection is a mechanism applied to ‘metadata’ (itinerary, transhipments, etc.) that does not have to come close to a container to perform a security analysis. Read the full article – Future cargo containers: how smart can they get? here!.

In contrast to the physical container technologies (described in the article), this outlier detection approach does not target the containers themselves but addresses the metadata information available about the container (e.g.itinerary or transhipment data). JRC has built a container traffic analysis system (CONTRAFFIC) which mathematically analyses the itinerary data of cargo containers, identifies unusual stopovers or loops and enables the research analysts to detect suspicious containers from a distance. The mathematical algorithms of CONTRAFFIC are continuously being improved, connecting more and more data with each other and analysing more than five million containers per month and matching the data mathematically against 800,000 import declarations. The system is currently queried over 20,000 times by different EU customs per year.

A first test of the system in a practical exercise with customs authorities has produced hit-rates of over 30 percent on a very much narrowed-down set of suspicious containers which finally were inspected. It needs to be underlined that the JRC’s CONTRAFFIC cannot be seen as a tool to identify all risk containers, and it does not even claim to identify a significant share of them, but it provides an efficiency gain for the inspectors and enables them to add additional information to their cases or to identify new cases before they take operationalaction. Insofar CONTRAFFIC is not meant to find the needle in the haystack, but to identify some of the many needles in a haystack with a higher probability. Source: Port Technology

by Mike Poverello

Latest US container 100% scanning postponement predictable

Rapiscan_m60UK freight forwarders have welcomed but are not surprised by the latest US postponement by two years of the implementation of new rules requiring all cargo containers entering the US to be security scanned prior to departure from overseas ports, with national association BIFA reiterating calls for the initiative to be abandoned.

Peter Quantrill, Director General of the British International Freight Association (BIFA), said it was “hardly surprising” to hear the recent news that the US had delayed the introduction of the new rules “amid questions over whether this is the best way to protect US ports”, calling the move “a healthy dose of common sense”.

Mr Quantrill commented: “As BIFA has said repeatedly, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has consistently underestimated the enormity of the task in hand relative to the costs both to the US government and foreign governments – as well as, importantly, the limited ability of contemporary screening technology to penetrate dense cargo, or large quantities of cargo in shipping containers.”

The deadline for implementation of 100% scanning of all inbound containers has already been delayed from 2012 to 1 July, 2014, and US Secretary for Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, who took over the role just six months ago, has now reportedly decided on another 24-month postponement.

BIFA’s comments follow the recent news of a letter from Thomas Carper, chairman of the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which suggested that the use of systems available to scan containers would have a negative impact on trade capacity and the flow of cargo.

Quantrill adds: “Media reports suggest that the US Government now doubts whether it would be able to implement the mandate of 100% scanning, even in the long term, and it would appear that it now shares BIFA’s long-standing opinion that it is not the best use of taxpayer resources to meet the USA’s port security and homeland security needs.

“We have always said that expanding screening with available technology would slow the flow of commerce and drive up costs to consumers without bringing significant security benefits.”

He continued: “Whilst the latest news of a two-year delay appears to be a healthy dose of common sense at the US Department of Homeland Security, BIFA still believes that the US Government ought to take an even bolder step and repeal the original legislation.

“That would be the most appropriate way to address this flawed provision and allow the Department and the industry to continue to focus on real solutions, including strengthened risk-based management systems to address any security gaps that remain in global supply chains.”  Source: Lloyds Loading List