SF airport first in the U.S. to have 100% screening of commercial cargo
In October San Francisco airport will become the first in the U.S. to
have 100% security screening of cargo carried on passenger planes
One of the major security holes in airport security is the lack of security
screening of the commercial cargo carried on passenger planes. This is going
to change, and leading the change is San Francisco airport where, in
October, the first-in-the-nation checking of all commercial cargo for
explosives on commercial flights will begin. DHS announced in June that it
would launch a $30 million pilot program at SFO in October and then expand
it to two unannounced airports. About half of the money will be spent at San
Francisco. The goal eventually is to have all 448 federally regulated
airports in the country screen all of the commercial cargo that goes out via
passenger flights.
Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and several other national labs are helping to
determine how to best use existing technology — some of which is already in
place to screen checked baggage — to screen all cargo on passenger flights.
Even without the pilot program, much of the 530,000 metric tons of cargo
that rides on passenger flights in and out of SFO is already screened. Some
cargo is prescreened by shippers, some is screened by the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA), and some is spot-checked at random. DHS is
hoping for a system to screen every piece without causing flight delays. The
solution likely will involve technologies such as CT scanners, analyzers
that test for traces of explosives’ residue, canine teams, and manual
inspections. Livermore and other labs — the Oak Ridge and Pacific Northwest
national labs and the Transportation Security Laboratory — will use
simulations and computer models to determine how to best use those
capabilities to handle 100 percent of the cargo.
read more in this report
