U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site a trade update regarding Hurricane Katrina, highlights of which are provided below:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site the automation requirements for its voluntary test of the submission of electronic Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) admission applications, including record layouts, mandatory fields, error messages, and other programming details.

According to The Journal of Commerce, the Intermodal Container Inspection System (ICIS), developed by a San Diego-based company and a Hong Kong container terminal association has been extended beyond its six-month trial run in order to give Department of Homeland Security officials and congressional staff more time to see the system in action. The article states that the ICIS project is designed to record data from a container and collect a gamma-ray image of its interior as the truck approaches the terminal gate. (See ITT's Online Archives or 08/10/05 news, 05081005 for earlier mention of this 100% scanning system.)(JoC Online, 08/26/05, www.joc.com )

The State Department has issued a final rule, effective August 29, 2005, which makes various amendments to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) which are highlighted as follows:

In a letter to the FCC Tues., the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) called for the FCC to investigate whether communications carriers are adequately protecting individuals’ data. In the letter, EPIC said it had found 40 companies that offer to sell telephone billing records or other confidential information to the public. “Accordingly, we are petitioning the FCC to initiate a new rulemaking to establish higher safeguards for telephone records information,” EPIC said.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has posted to its Web site a new "Trade Engagement Biweekly Reports" which summarize topics discussed during workshops held to develop the business requirements for Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) Release 5.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has recently posted to its Web site its quarterly report on the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) entitled Report to Congress: The Automated Commercial Environment. This report is dated March 31, 2005 and covers the January 1, 2005 - March 31, 2005 period.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP's) Office of Information and Technology has posted a notice to its Web site containing a list, as of August 17, 2005, of companies/persons offering data processing services to the trade community for the Automated Broker Interface (ABI).

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a general notice regarding its plan to conduct a voluntary test of the Electronic Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) Admission Application Program. The following are highlights of this general notice:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued as an administrative message a memorandum that it states was mailed to the ACS/AES vendor community last week, as well as posted to CBP's website, regarding CBP's upcoming replacement of the existing 800 Dial-Up Service that currently supports the trade's interface to the Automated Commercial System (ACS) and Automated Export System (AES) with the new Trade Virtual Private Network (VPN) Solution. (See ITT's Online Archives or 08/12/05 ITT news, 05081205 for BP summary of this VPN memo and other documents.)