Sunday, April 09, 2006

No Safe Harbor

Counterfeit goods. Guns. Humans. If you're trying to slip any of those through local ports, officers have you in their well-trained sights.
Nice cheerleading piece, Josh Grossberg. I like the way it squares with reality:
More than 6 million shipping containers arrive here at...U.S. ports annually. Only 2% are inspected. The rest remain sealed as they are shipped throughout the country. It would be easy, some fear, to take a container, stuff it with explosives, a chemical weapon or a nuclear device and inject it into the nation's economic bloodstream.
Hey, if we can't go back to sleep, can we at least have some more Kool-Aid?

2 comments:

E. David Quammen said...

Why, thank you David....

That information will make it far easier for me to go to sleep at night!

Anonymous said...

And any one of those containers could be carrying some kind of contraband...even the occasional stowaway...Items that were improperly documented or forfeited are sold at public auctions, with the proceeds helping the department fund its operations.

Where do they auction off the stow-aways? My kids are grown, I could use a new slave to help me with the yard work and keeping the house clean.