On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 10:30:23 -0800, Captain Compassion
<daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net> wrote:

Still Dubious About Dubai?
Tech Central Station ^ | 3/9/06 | Robert M. Green

Since payment leads to articles in Tech Central Station, shouldn't the
placement sponsor be listed?


Which isn't to say that I disagree with this - I actually don't.

But anytime something from Tech Central is posted, I think it's only
fair to list the paid sponsor who got the article in.

Although I suppose there might be some articles without paid sponsors.
But I sort of doubt it.

Critics of the plan that would put a United Arab Emirates (UAE)
company in charge of operations at six major U.S. ports have cited
security as their central concern. Advocates of the deal have most
often argued that security will not be effected by Dubai Ports (DP)
World management, largely because port security is the province of
domestic U.S. agencies.

A third argument has not yet been made by the major factions, and may
never be. That argument says that the UAE company's role here might
result in better security implementation for the cargo container
terminals than would otherwise have been possible.

Two factors explain potentially improved security under DP World
management. The first is merely deductive. Given the intense furor
already stirred to life in the media, the pressure to assure security
could rise to a make-or-break agenda item for the ambitious company
which already operates more than 40 terminals around the world.

Even before the media firestorm, a member of the U.S. committee that
originally approved the DP World deal said that because the company is
Persian Gulf-based it has "a strong incentive to make sure [terrorist
threats to U.S. ports] never materialize." If anything, that incentive
doubled when critics made a billboard issue of the deal.

More studied reasons for supposing port security in the U.S. could
improve under DP World begin with the company's demonstrated ability
to significantly grow its business managing shipping hubs while
operating within environs associated with terrorism. In the same
period that terrorist Web sites have increasingly advised jihadists on
different ways of attacking or infiltrating ports and commercial
maritime activities, the port of Dubai in UAE has soared from a
mid-level operation to one of the busiest ports in the world.

Carved from the Dubai Ports Authority, the company's reputation for
technological implementation dates back to its project to automate
many of its processes in the 1990s. At that time, Dubai became one of
the first ports in the world to implement so-called e-shipping,
digitizing most of its planning, scheduling and operations while
"building out" a CRM (customer relations management)/Web portal system
that was one of the first of its kind used by a port.

According to American e-commerce experts who followed the UAE
technology implementation as it has evolved, it was Dubai's
willingness to invest in IT that allowed it to offer container
shipping and related services at lowered costs for its customers. Last
year, a Homeland Security official called the two-terminal Dubai
facility "modern and extremely efficient ports."

While the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the
implementation of the White House-backed Container Security Initiative
(CSI) tested the resilience of port operators both here and abroad,
the port of Dubai continued even in that period to grow both in volume
and influence in worldwide shipping. In 2004 Dubai made another
bold-stroke decision, becoming the first Middle Eastern port (and 35th
overall) to agree to the CSI, signing formally last March. CSI gives
U.S. Customs personnel a foothold in foreign ports and requires that
state-of-the-art security systems such as gamma ray, x-ray and
radiological detection systems be implemented for cargo inspection.

Dubai's interest in security has seemingly followed the same upward
curve that most critical infrastructure operators have followed. All
confront greater threats from terror groups, and particularly from al
Qaeda.

The attack on the USS Cole in 2000 made it clear that Osama bin
Laden's group was acutely interested in wreaking havoc on maritime
targets, if it could. The Cole attack was, in fact, masterminded by an
operative whose nickname inside the group was "Prince of the Seas,"
and who had gathered reconnaissance information on about 150
potential, mostly seaside targets around the world at the time of his
arrest.

The port of Dubai itself has not gone unscathed as transnational
terror has spread. The oft-cited use of the port by the notorious A.Q.
Kahn nuclear weapons black market involved the creation of a bogus
computer company in the Emirates that subsequently was able to ship
banned materials to Libya. A few other conventional weapons
proliferation incidents have been traced back through the port, though
such problems are not exclusive to Dubai.

In fact, if DP World's most recent project is any indication, the
Dubai company might already have absorbed its lessons and staked a
claim in what is fast becoming a "security market." At the recently
opened Pusan Newport in South Korea, DP World and tech partner Samsung
of Japan worked with the Korean port authority to build a
state-of-the-art security port.

Pusan opened for business late last year fashioned around a
Samsung-developed central security system in which threats are
anticipated and met via a network of monitors including advanced CCTV,
lasers, radiological and other sensors, and explosives- and
motion-detection fencing of the sort normally found in
high-sensitivity military settings.

Samsung often relies on security specialist companies, such as GVI
Security Systems of Texas, which increasingly build "intelligent"
systems that rely on a portfolio of technologies including "smart
cameras" that can send alerts and trigger other defenses,
vulnerability analysis and remediation systems, biometrics and
identity management devices, and other emerging applications.

Pusan aside, most ports around the world are analog facilities often
operated more in accordance with maritime traditions than modern
efficiencies. In fact, shipping in general is so under-automated that
even an investment in advanced security can exert downward pressure on
overall costs — such as that which occurred during a study of
container "e-sealing" done in 2003 in Singapore.

Sponsored by the U.S. Trade and Development Agency and the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, officials from BearingPoint added
radio frequency identification (RFID) chips to container seals for
better cargo tracking, and not only achieved a higher level of
security but a probable shipping cost reduction of about $220 per
container if the port in Thailand and the one in Seattle (used in the
study) were fully networked.

The value of automation in tracking cargo from points of origin
through the supply chain to the destination has already been accepted
conceptually elsewhere too, including the New York/New Jersey
"Megaports Project." But projected security enhancements and cost
savings related to RFID and other shipping innovations "will remain
elusive" unless ports are prepared to more fully automate and network
with one another so as to leverage Web services and other supply chain
management practices, the Asian study determined.

The driving force for such innovations in hundreds of ports worldwide
begins with the broadest international treaties and agreements and
works down through national governments to ports and their operators.
To all outward appearances, DP World's business model has seemingly
been crafted around a parallel acceptance of e-commerce and
technological standards, leading to better security such as that at
Pusan.

The company's willingness to embrace technology could be the most
significant edge it brings. While Bush administration officials and
other supporters for the deal continue to insist that DP World is not
going to be the security provider for ports in the U.S., security
experts often note that the quality of organizational security is
ultimately determined not by specialist providers or security officers
but by the support (or lack of it) that operations and management
interests bring.

To the extent that it can be measured, U.S. commercial port operators
have not been all that committed to security. One Coast Guard estimate
puts the security shortfall at American ports at about $7 billion
overall, and the New York Times has reported that the very terminals
DP World would operate here are among the lacking.

Moreover, as noted in the 2003 RFID test and by other technologists,
the enterprise security model best suited for large and multifarious
undertakings like port operations will likely be less than effective
if built into an otherwise under-automated (or porously automated)
operational infrastructure.

It requires no facts or metrics to say (with or without hysteria) that
an Arab company represents a higher risk than weak technology does,
merely because most terrorism is generated in Arab environs to begin
with. But to all appearances, DP World's embrace of security
innovation as encapsulated at the Pusan Newport in Korea and its own
rise to prominence via broad technology investment, might indicate it
uniquely understands the risks, in part because it faces them at
point-blank range. If so, DP World could become a focal point of
improved security at U.S. ports.

Personally, I support the plan because it would modernize the docks and
increase their capacity. But until there is a complete investigation of
what the Bush administration promised to Dubai, and what the terms will be,
I say we put it on hold.

That's a great article. If the deal would modernize the ports and make them
more safe and efficient, all the better. Technology is wonderful. But the
United States has the most sophisticated network of surveillance electronics
in the world that produced a PDF on August 6, 2001 titled "Bin Laden
Determined to Strike in US." And we all know what happened later. My point
is this : the responsibility to use the available means to protect this
country rests with the president, and if he's too incompetent to do that, or
turns a blind eye for his own treasonous reasons, then all the technology in
the world will not stop a bomb from coming into the ports. Personally, I
support the plan because it would modernize the docks and increase their
capacity. But until there is a complete investigation of what the Bush
administration promised to Dubai, and what the terms will be, I say we put
it on hold. There is evidence the Air Force was told to stand down on 9/11.
Who's to say Bush's minions wouldn't send port security on a goose chase to
one end of the docks while a container carrying a nuclear bomb was brought
in on the other end, for example. Until the country is safe from Bush and
his cabal, the country is not safe from anything.