You can't tell what's aboard a container ship. We carried every kind of cargo, all of it on view: a police car, penicillin, Johnnie Walker Red, toilets, handguns, lumber, Ping-Pong balls, and IBM data cards.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Seven million ship cargo containers come into the United States every year. Five to seven percent only are inspected - five to seven percent.
Although more than 500 million maritime containers move around the world each year, accounting for 90 per cent of international trade, only 2 per cent are inspected. Strengthening customs and immigration systems is essential.
There are more than one hundred thousand ships at sea carrying all the solids, liquids and gases that we need to live.
Last year, customs officials screened only five percent of the 11 million cargo containers entering the United States. That rate is both unacceptable and dangerous to our national and economic interests.
Ninety percent of what we wear, we eat, we consume is carried by ships... Container ships carry a vast amount of stuff.
Ships are a strange kind of commodity because they're very lumpy, very big individual units, but they're commodities.
To my knowledge, the Department of Homeland Security has focused on detection devices that are large, expensive, use a large amount of energy, and cannot easily be placed in or on a shipping container.
A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.
Today, barely 5 percent of all containers coming into the United States through our ports are scanned.
Ships are like children: they need individual attention.