PRPassenger cargo remains a glaring security problem

Fire in the hole! Two months ago we reported on a $30 million pilot program at San Francisco International Airport to screen 95 percent of cargo shipments using a combination of explosive-detection equipment, human inspectors, and canines. Sadly, it remains an anomaly. Five years after 9/11, experts say air cargo remains a glaring area of vulnerability to terrorists and resistence from airlines is to blame.

Only 10 to 15 percent of the more than six billion pounds of cargo carried in passenger planes each year ends up actually inspected. Airlines believe that further inspections would raise costs and delay flights, and they prefer to rely on “trusted shipper safeguards.” As concerns mount, however, many in Congress are hoping to push full inspection on passenger cargo, an idea that has some in the homeland security industry licking their chops. L-3 Communications, a major supplier of baggage-screening equipment, believes that with some modifications, current-generation technology could handle more than two-thirds of the work.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has not yet certified any machines for cargo screening.

-read more in Andy Pasztor’s Wall Street Journal report