Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Defending America By Sea

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2004 10:56:02 -0500

NEW ORLEANS, Feb. 9, 2004

(AP) As the U.S. Coast Guard tackles its
new, urgent mission of protecting America
from terrorist attack, one of the tools it
needs is a radio frequency to help monitor
the movements and cargo of thousands of
ships that enter the nation's ports each
year.

But the Coast Guard is out of luck.

The Federal Communications
Commission - over the Coast Guard's
objections - sold the frequency at auction
to a private company in 1998 for $6.8
million.

Now the Coast Guard wants a slice of the
frequency back, calling it essential to its
plans. The winning bidder, MariTEL Inc.,
says it can have it, maybe, for $20 million.

MariTEL bought the frequency fair and
square, realizing at the time, even if the
FCC didn't, just how valuable it was. Like
any good entrepreneur, the company
expects to profit from its investment, says
Dan Smith, who, as MariTEL's president, supervises its two other
employees.

The squabble over the radio frequency is just one of the obstacles the Coast
Guard faces between now and July 1, the day it promises to enforce new
anti-terrorism rules mandated by the federal Maritime Transportation
Security Act of 2002.

With 361 ports to protect, 95,000 miles of navigable waterways to defend
and 20,000 oceangoing vessels to keep an eye on, the Coast Guard is
focusing on what it considers the nation's 11,700 most likely maritime
targets of a terrorist attack.

About 3,200 of them are on shore: oil refineries, nuclear power plants, liquid
natural gas facilities and hundreds of other waterfront sites that use or store
hazardous materials.

The 8,500 others are on the water: ferries that carry tens of thousands of
commuters to work in cities from Seattle to New York, barges and cargo
ships that crisscross U.S. harbors and inland waterways, oceangoing
tankers and freighters that bring in everything from oil and fertilizer to
automobiles and bananas.

Oceangoing vessels are of special concern because they often pick up their
cargos in countries where terrorists are born and arrive in U.S. ports after
crossing lawless oceans where pirates still prowl. Container ships alone
bring 16 million boxcar-sized containers a year to U.S. ports, and 95 percent
of them are unloaded without ever being inspected.

It is to the water, not to the skies, that America needs to be looking if it
hopes
to thwart the most devastating terrorist attacks, many in the maritime
industry say.

"An airplane is fine if you want to take down the twin towers," says Dennis
Bryant, a former Coast Guard lawyer who is now senior counsel with
Holland and Knight, a major maritime law firm. "But if you want to bring a
nuclear device into this country, you're going to have a hard time doing it by
plane."

As every schoolchild in Halifax, Nova Scotia, learns, it doesn't take a nuclear
device to create a maritime disaster of World Trade Center proportions.

On December 6, 1917, two ships, one of them carrying 2,500 tons of volatile
chemicals bound for the Allied war effort in Europe, collided in Halifax
harbor. The blast leveled 1,630 homes and killed nearly 2,000 of the city's
50,000 residents.

Modern explosives in a major port city could do far worse.

To counter the terrorist threat, the Coast Guard says it is counting in part on
new technologies, including a sophisticated vessel tracking system that
uses the radio frequency the FCC sold.

It is also putting much of the onus for port security on private industry and on

local and regional port authorities.

"Being a small service, we can't do the job ourselves," says Capt. R.G.
Sullivan, the Coast Guard's director of Homeland Security for the Port of New
Orleans. "We can be the coordinator, but we need to be partnering with
owners and operators, with state and local law enforcement and other
federal agencies."

Just deciding where the maritime industry is most vulnerable has not been
easy. To help figure it out, the Coast Guard hired a private defense
contractor, Northrup Grumman Mission Systems to conduct assessments
of security threats at 55 major ports at a cost of up to $1 million each.

The assessments are classified, but the Congressional General
Accounting Office has reviewed some of them and declared that it has
"concerns about the scope and quality." The Coast Guard says it shared
some of the concerns but believes they have been addressed.

Meanwhile, each of the 8,500 U.S.-flagged ships and 3,200 port
installations that the Coast Guard considers most at risk were required to
submit security plans to the Coast Guard by Dec. 31 or face fines of up to
$25,000.

Nevertheless, the Coast Guard says, as many as 700 of those ships and
300 of those port installations missed the deadline completely. The Coast
Guard has not yet reviewed the plans that have been filed to determine
whether they are adequate.

The Coast Guard announced Wednesday that it has begun issuing $10,000
fines to those who filed no plan at all. Port installations and ships that filed

inadequate plans, the Coast Guard says, will be given a new deadline for
correcting them.

Coast Guard spokeswoman Jolie Shifflet declined to name vessels and
installations that missed the deadline, citing security concerns.

The next deadline is July 1, when the installations and ships must
implement their security plans.

"It's unheard of," says Bryant, the former Coast Guard lawyer. "The industry
has had other regulatory regimes come into place but these changes are
happening virtually overnight."

Meanwhile, some maritime experts question the gaps in the Coast Guard's
approach.

For one thing, boats under 65 feet, as well as most fishing and recreational
craft, are exempt from carrying transponders that would allow them to be
tracked electronically if the dispute over the radio frequency is resolved.

"You're basically exempting the same sized ships that blew up the Cole,"
says Channing F. Hayden Jr., president of the Steamship Association of
Louisiana, referring to the Oct. 12, 2000 suicide attack in Yemen that killed
17 sailors aboard the Navy destroyer.

The Coast Guard plan also exempts foreign-flagged oceangoing vessels
from meeting the requirement of the Maritime Transportation Security Act of
2002. Although such vessels make up more than half the oceangoing ships
entering U.S. ports, the Coast Guard says they are not covered by the law.

Instead, the Coast Guard says, foreign-flagged vessels are required to meet
international security standards, which are supposed to be enforced in part
by the countries whose flags they fly.

Many in Congress say the Coast Guard's interpretation of the law is wrong -
that it was intended to apply to all vessels entering U.S. waters. A resolution
to clarify Congress's intent is expected to come up for a vote this year.

Regardless of whether foreign vessels ultimately come under U.S.
standards, most are already required, by international standards, to carry
transponders. However, the Coast Guard is a still a long way from being
able to read their signals. The necessary equipment has been installed in
only five of the country's 361 ports, Bryant says.

Maritime experts regard the system as an excellent navigational and safety
tool, but some question its effectiveness as an anti-terrorism device.

"The way it's set up," Bryant said, "it's the master on each ship that inputs
the ship's data - its name, speed, heading, cargo and country of origin. And
if you're a terrorist you're just not likely to say you have a small nuclear
device on board."

The Coast Guard, says Bryant, believes there are ways to tell when
someone on board a ship "tries to dummy things up a bit" but that "it's still
disconcerting that the person on board, who could well be your terrorist,
inputs a good percent of the data."

Meanwhile, for the identification system to work at all, the Coast Guard still
has to obtain the right to use a channel on the radio frequency that was sold
to MariTEL in 1998.

The Coast Guard says it objected when the sale was proposed, saying two
channels on the frequency were important to navigation. The FCC says it
went ahead with the sale with the understanding that the Coast Guard and
MariTEL would work out an arrangement -- which they have failed to do. In a
pre-Sept. 11 world, the FCC says, the frequency's importance to homeland
security was not apparent.

Smith, the MariTEL president, says the company can't simply give the
frequency back.

"It has nothing to do with patriotism," he says. "We've got over a thousand
investors who put more than $85 million into this company," and he has a
responsibility to protect their interests.

The FCC says hearings on the matter are being scheduled. Possible
resolutions include anything from a negotiated settlement to the government
to a voiding of the original sale.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/02/09/terror/main598943.shtml

--
    "NEXTEL-1 IT'S NOT JUST NEXTEL"
  Note The New address
Subscribe to Nextel-1: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL-1

  "NEXTEL2 FOR iDEN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS"
Subscribe to Nextel2: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL2

  "WIRELESS FORUM HOMELAND SECURITY GROUP"
     The Complete Resource for Wireless Homeland Security.
Subscribe to WFHSG:  http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/WFHSG

-- 
    "NEXTEL-1 IT'S NOT JUST NEXTEL"
  Note The New address 
Subscribe to Nextel-1: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL-1

  "NEXTEL2 FOR iDEN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS"
Subscribe to Nextel2: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL2

  "WIRELESS FORUM HOMELAND SECURITY GROUP"
     The Complete Resource for Wireless Homeland Security.
Subscribe to WFHSG:  http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/WFHSG

Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEXTEL-1/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     [email-masked]

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/