Container security test in New Jersey ports

Officials at the Port Newark/Elizabeth are waiting for more than two dozen cargo containers due to arrive on ships from the Middle East and Europe. The reason: Representatives of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and DHS will focus on the multicolored steel containers because these containers have been outfitted with electronic monitors, each about the size of a cigar box, that will enable authorities to track the exact location of the shipment and, most important, determine whether the container has been tampered with along the route. This is part of a $20 million pilot program the Port Authority is participating in with DHS for the first in-transit government tests of container-monitoring technology to help safeguard the global shipping network. Port officials in Los Angeles/Long Beach and Seattle/Tacoma are conducting similar trials on the West Coast.

The timing of the pilot program has nothing to do with the recent storm over port management. The federal government has been working on an electronic monitoring initiative since November 2002, and by October, the Port Authority expects it will have tracked 1,000 containers through the program. Nationally, only 5 percent of the containers arriving in U.S. ports are physically inspected or electronically screened.

The initiative at Port Newark involves three ships. One vessel, carrying 13 of the specially outfitted containers, left Germany 22 February and is due to arrive in New Jersey 13 March. Another ship with 12 monitored containers is scheduled to arrive at Port Newark on 20 March. The third vessel, currently being loaded in Jordan, will carry at least one additional container with a monitoring device. A departure date for the vessel has not been set. The devices, attached high on the doors of cargo containers, have five components. One will let authorities know exactly where each container is via a global positioning system. Another will send a computer alert if a container’s door has been breached. If a container’s wall is pierced — by a terrorist with a blowtorch, for example — the change in lighting will be picked up by a sensor. Two other sensors have been designed to sniff out trace amounts of radiological material and carbon monoxide. The monitors currently can not detect chemical or biological weapons.