CBP Commissioner Wants Big C-TPAT Increase, Improved Intelligence
On December 7, 2010 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce held the North American Competitiveness and the Global Supply Chain Summit to develop a strategy that ensures security, predictability, and speed in the global supply chain.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Summit participants from Capitol Hill, the Administration, and the business community focused on identifying solutions through the deployment of risk management principles and global cooperation. The following are highlights of comments made by U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Alan Bersin:
CBP Needs to Improve its Relationship with Intelligence Community
Security and facilitation are not mutually exclusive -- an increase in security does not necessarily mean that there will be a decrease in facilitation. In the contemporary security context, security and facilitation have to be seen as the same phenomenon.
CBP is looking for the small number of cargoes and persons that threaten the U.S. homeland and U.S. people. They are essentially looking for the “needle in the haystack.” He says that the best way for CBP to accomplish this is by improving its relationship with the intelligence community. This will allow CBP to reduce the size of the haystack by allowing the traffic that CBP has information on to be moved quicker, leaving behind questionable traffic. This will increase the probability that CBP will be able to locate a needle in a haystack.
C-TPAT Needs to be Taken to a New Level
Bersin also said that programs such as the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) program need to be “taken to a new level.” CBP currently has over 10,000 C-TPAT members, but hopes to increase this number dramatically.
(See ITT’s Online Archives or 12/09/10 news, 10120908, for BP summary of CBP posting a press release on Bersin addressing this summit.
See ITT’s Online Archives or 12/08/10 news, 10120811, for BP summary announcing that the Chamber of Commerce held the summit.
See ITT’s Online Archives or 05/14/10 news, 10051435, for BP summary of Bersin being urged by Senate Finance Committee to take C-TPAT and other trusted traveler and shipper programs to the next level.)