In a JOC.com
article from last week a US congresswoman is quoted as following: “I have
said it once and I will say it again, we need 100 percent scanning at our
ports. The risks are too high not to.”
I’d like to use an analogy
in the discussion about 100% container scanning.
Imagine you have your house
inspected by the police to make sure no thief is in the house who could harm
you or steal your valuable goods. After successful inspection, the police move
away and your house remains unguarded and unlocked.
There is a short moment the
house can be considered secure and trusted. But shortly after, the house is
wide open again for any gatecrasher.
Even worse. Because of the
inspection, you feel secure and you lose any usual caution, which could lead to
the situation of being negatively surprised easily.
The discussion about the
100% container scanning is comparable with the house inspection.
For a short moment the
container might be marked as secure, if the scanning data can be interpreted
correctly. Already shortly after, however, the container is again open to
hostile manipulation without any protection. And because the container is marked
as secure by a Governmental Agency, nobody will doubt any moment, that this
specific container is secure.
We all know, that the
intrusion into a container from any side is an easy job for a trained person.
And therefore – trusting a container, which is marked secure but remains
unmonitored, is naïve and dangerous.
In my opinion, it is more
reasonable to inspect a container at the point of loading (as most C-TPAT Tier
III companies are doing anyway). After inspection and loading, the container
should be monitored by a solution/service like the arviem real-time cargo
monitoring service. It allows to detect any intrusion in real-time. It also
allows detecting deviations from the route and/or shipment plan. And the events
or alerts can be sent immediately to the responsible authorities in order to
take immediate actions.
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