Chertoff Warns About Scan-All, Special Interests

(American Shipper – Erick Kulisch)

U.S. Homeland Secretary Michael Chertoff reiterated Tuesday that overseas scanning of ocean containers makes sense at high-risk ports, depending on space limitations and foreign government cooperation, but that 100% inspections would wreck maritime trade by clogging ports.

"It would be the equivalent of strip-searching every single person who gets on an airplane," he said at a breakfast meeting with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. "We could do that, but there wouldn't be an airline system, because no one would fly."

A congressional mandate for 100% scanning overseas by 2012 is unrealistic "because you can't make every other country do that," he said, according to a transcript of the meeting. Read more here.