Port security

We’re beginning to hear the sound of back-slapping in the Senate over the Port Security Improvement Act of 2006. Not so fast. This bill should pass, but there are some glaring problems remaining.

First, at least when it comes to foreign-port cargo screening, the bill is agnostic on what might be called “the Dubai question”: whether private foreign companies should play a significant role in American port security. The answer is a resounding “no.” But Section 231 of this bill establishes a “Pilot Integrated Scanning System” of three yet-to-be-determined foreign seaports — without any stipulations as to whom the screening-equipment operators will be.

It would be a mistake to allow firms like Dubai Ports World or the Chinese firm Hutchison Whampoa to run the cargo-screening machines — and these firms clearly want to do so. Just yesterday, Sen. Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat, was touting Hutchison Whampoa’s virtues on the Senate floor. This is profoundly unwise. The CIA once worried that Hutchison “could provide a conduit for illegal shipments of technology or prohibited items from the West to the [People’s Republic of China], or facilitate the movement of arms and other prohibited items into the Americas.”

The solution is obvious: insert language barring private foreign companies from operating the machines. That, and keeping Mr. Schumer and his demagogic “100 percent screening” rants far, far away from port-security legislation, make sense.

Second, this bill still doesn’t ensure that the U.S. government will know with any greater certainty what’s inside the millions of unscreened cargo containers arriving at U.S. ports. Historically, carriers have systematically fudged “ocean carrier manifests,” the raw data of U.S. government screening efforts, and they are notoriously inaccurate. This has to change.

Title II, Section 203 of the bill almost corrects the problem by ordering that the secretary of homeland security “may require importers to submit certain elements of non-manifest or other data about a shipment.” Change “may” to “shall” and the problem is solved. Requiring the Homeland Security Department to collect more and better data than is contained in ocean carrier manifests will greatly irritate shippers, but it needs to be done. We need to know that the stated contents of a cargo ship from Malaysia or Oman are in fact the actual contents.

This is not the end of our port-security debate by any means. But for now, the remainder of this bill is useful.

Of course, what you won’t learn from self-congratulatory lawmakers is this: Most of the good in this bill simply codifies or nudges along programs the Bush administration has already created. For instance, the bill “establishes” and “implements” both the Container Security Initiative and the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism. They already exist, thanks to President Bush’s homeland-security appointees.

This is all to the good, of course: These programs need statutory bases. But make no mistake about this supposedly groundbreaking law. It piggybacks on the Bush administration’s efforts. This is a security-themed election year, which probably explains a lot.