Counterterrorism -- Port Security Vulnerabilities

Counterterrorism -- Port Security Vulnerabilities

Protecting U.S. seaports is a daunting challenge because the American coastline includes more than 1,000 harbor channels, spanning 25,000 miles of inland and coastal waterways that serve 361 ports comprising more than 3,700 passenger and cargo terminals (Maxwell & Blanda, 2005). Those ports handle more than 2 billion tons of freight, 3 billion tons of oil, over 134 million ferry passengers, and as many as 7 million civilians traveling on cruise ships (Maxwell & Blanda, 2005).

Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, U.S. officials have installed high-tech monitoring devices at major ports designed primarily to identify radiological signatures of nuclear materials capable of being used in fission weapons and radiological weapons or so-called "dirty bombs" (Larsen, 2007; Maxwell & Blanda, 2005). However, American ports remain tremendously vulnerable to terrorism by virtue of this excessive reliance on technology rather than human intelligence capable of identifying potential threats and interdicting terrorist weapons long before they ever arrive in U.S. territorial waters (Larsen, 2007). Even high-tech inspection of incoming cargo containers is an unrealistic methodology for preventing attacks on U.S. ports because of the sheer volume of cargo containers that make physical inspection of any substantial percentage of them impossible (Allison, 2004; Larsen, 2007).