U.S. and Hong Kong (2006)

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Remarks by the Secretary Michael Chertoff, Under Secretary of Energy for Nuclear Security, Ambassador Linton Brooks and Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Robert Joseph

Release Date: December 7, 2006

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact 202-282-8010
Washington, D.C.

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Secretary Chertoff: Thank you, Michael. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm delighted to welcome Ambassador Brooks and Under Secretary Joseph to this conference. I'm delighted to see the Ambassador of Pakistan. We have other representatives of the diplomatic community, as well as from the shipping community -- terminal operators, shipping lines -- all present as we announce the first step in our Secure Freight Initiative.

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In addition, we're going to continue to work with the terminal operator in the Port of Hong Kong to follow their pilot program with respect to a similar system, and to refine that program to see how we can continue to advance along this pathway of doing integrated screening and scanning overseas.

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Question: What is the approximate cost for a full installation of one of these integrated series of devices? Who picks up the check for it, and what is the additional amount of time per container for going through the entire sweep?

Secretary Chertoff: I think the Deputy may be able to answer the cost question a little bit more specifically. I've seen it operate. It doesn't take -- the whole point of this is it's got to move pretty quickly, and when I went to Hong Kong they were able to drive the trucks through -- reasonably, within a matter of a minute or so. It didn't add a lot of additional time to take it through the process.

The operational issue which has made this so challenging has been precisely that -- you don't want to make every container a five-minute exercise, or that's going to be the end of the whole port. So we're confident that we can move the throughput in a way that's quick enough that it's not going to impede the ordinary flow. But that's one of the challenges as we roll this out further, to make sure that the physical layout of the port is such that we can move the containers through without slowing them up.

Now, in terms of the cost per item, I don't know whether -- do you have a cost estimate?

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