(The following article by John Mintz was posted on the Washington Post website on November 21.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Department of Homeland Security today unveiled complex new anti-terrorism rules requiring trucking firms, air cargo companies and railway shippers to submit vast amounts of data about their deliveries before they will be allowed to enter the United States.
Some industry executives said the new demands, which resemble rules imposed on maritime shipping companies in the last year, could gum up deliveries of goods for the automobile industry and other sectors that operate on an efficient “just-in-time” delivery schedule.
But Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, who made the “automated manifest” rules public before an industry group today, said the program is designed to balance the dual needs of protecting the nation from terrorists who might smuggle in weapons of mass destruction, and also industry’s requirement for rapid commerce.
“We could pass regulations that would so tightly constrict commerce that our economy would slow to a crawl,” Ridge said. “We can’t allow terrorists to blockade America.”
Officials of the American Trucking Associations (ATA), while acknowledging they have not scrutinized the final rules being promulgated for the first time today, said the new procedures likely will lead to confusion and delays for truckers hauling freight into this country from Canada and Mexico.
One reason for the anticipated snags, the ATA said, is that truck drivers commonly are in touch by radio with their companies’ dispatchers, but probably not with the cargo brokers that coordinate the transfer of information to the Homeland Security Department about shipments, shippers and receivers of the cargo.
Under the new rules, Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection (CBP) division must receive the required data under varying schedules depending on the transportation industry sector — for railroads, for example, it is two hours before the cargo arrives at the U.S. border. For truckers, it is one hour, except if the trucking firm is pre-certified under a Homeland Security licensing program, in which case the deadline is half an hour before arrival at the border.
The information about each cargo shipment will be transmitted to a CBP data center in Northern Virginia, which merges it with other historical data gathered over the decades about freight entering the country, along with information from law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Shipments prompting alarm of some kind are stopped and physically inspected.
“We’re looking for trends and red flags,” Ridge said. This kind of intelligence data-crunching recently allowed the department’s customs inspectors to uncover a load of 100 tank periscopes being shipped through the port of Rotterdam, and in July to uncover an allotment of weapons being dispatched without proper licenses through Portland, Ore., to El Salvador.
The new rules will apply to cargo shipments that arrive in the United States, as well as those outbound to other countries. The reason, officials say, is they want to help foreign governments, too, to keep track of potentially dangerous freight, and to ensure that U.S.-made weapons are not exported overseas without required licenses.
The new rules were mandated by a trade law approved by Congress last year. They have been under discussion for almost a year, with dozens of industry trade associations submitting recommendations to lessen the requirements affecting their sectors. In several areas, Homeland Security weakened the regulations to accommodate industry appeals. For instance, it decided that letters and “flat documents” of less than 16 ounces that are being couriered into and out of the country by air would be exempted from the full data-reporting requirements.
The new rules will go into effect in 15 days, but CBP director Robert Bonner, who is overseeing the program, said they will be phased in over a number of months to accommodate the complications involving each industry sector.