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From The Wall Street Journal: Security Blind Spot: Air Cargo While Passengers Are Screened, By KEITH JOHNSON, ANDY PASZTOR and SCOTT NEUMAN Airline passengers have been the main focus of aviation security recently, but the cargo that gets loaded into the belly of a plane may actually present a bigger headache for screening. Air cargo is a huge business. Passenger airlines ship more than $4 trillion of microchips, pharmaceuticals, foods and other goods world-wide each year, and billions more moves by specialized cargo airlines. Big-name Asian and European carriers, including Singapore Airlines, Korean Air Lines and Germany's Lufthansa, depend on cargo for a big portion of revenue. In the U.S., most air cargo moves by pure-freight operations such as FedEx Corp., although passenger airlines also carry thousands of tons annually. While security officials inspect all passengers and their luggage before takeoff, only a fraction of air cargo is scrutinized. Passenger screening "got all the resources" after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, says Lou Sorrentino, head of aviation safety at global-aviation consultants SH&E Inc. in New York. Airport perimeters and cargo security face "a huge gap, and that's where the threat is," he says. U.S. authorities have worried about the vulnerability of air cargo since
the 2001 terrorism attacks, with fears of hijackings, explosions on passengers
jets or cargo jets going down, especially near populated areas. Intelligence
intercepts linked to air cargo at Christmastime helped spark fears of
more terrorist attacks. Partly as a result, U.S. and European officials
recently announced measures to close the gap between cargo and passenger
security. The variety, volume and size of cargo shipped by air complicates security efforts. Lots of cargo is too bulky to be run through existing scanners. Most of the cargo-screening infrastructure now in place was originally targeted against theft and smuggling, not terrorism. Compared with machines for screening luggage, "very little attention was paid to cargo security, so screening machines are going to develop much more slowly," says Frank Lanza, chairman of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc., a big New York maker of luggage-screening equipment. Surveillance cameras, background checks of staff and checkpoints are standard at big cargo hubs. New rules announced by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration require foreign shippers to provide detailed cargo manifests before U.S.-bound aircraft take off. Because many shippers send cargo repeatedly by the same airlines, cargo carriers can distinguish between low-risk "known shippers" and unknown customers. Known shippers have built a track record or passed a background check. New European Union rules require airlines receiving cargo from unknown shippers to scan all of it, while cargo from trusted sources receives random checks. But relying on known shippers still can't guarantee security. Some security experts say it's too easy to get known-shipper status in the U.S. and other countries. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking at explosive-detection equipment for cargo and aims to start pilot programs at some U.S. airports. But many industry officials say mandatory screening of all cargo would be expensive and ineffective. Bigger and more experienced cargo carriers also bridle at what they consider to be one-size-fits-all security dictates from Washington. "The problem is that the [Transportation Security Administration] is speaking to Lufthansa Cargo the same way it speaks to company XYZ," says Harald Zielenski, who runs the carrier's cargo-security department. Mr. Zielenski says Lufthansa Cargo experimented with X-raying all shipments and found the procedure ineffective at locating high-threat contents such as explosives or biological agents. Hopes remain high for next-generation equipment. Smiths Detection, a unit of Britain's Smiths Group PLC, is developing a device that sucks air from bulky cargo containers and runs it through the company's existing ion-scanning machines, which can find traces of explosives, biological agents and narcotics. Savi Technology, a private firm in Sunnyvale, Calif., has modified for
aircraft cargo a tamperproof radio transmitter that constantly sends information
about a container's contents, condition and location, and costs less than
$10 per container per trip. The company just won Federal Aviation Administration
approval for the product's use in some civil aircraft and expects approval
for all major aircraft during the first half, launching pilot programs
with some U.S. and Asian carriers.
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