Can high tech plug the gap?

Under the watchful gaze of security cameras at one of the Port of Boston's branch facilities here in Randolph, Mass., Mr. McGowan flips up a latch on his little box and snugly places it onto a container door hinge. Then he clicks the latch down, pops a button, and presses a keypad. The unit is activated.

At that moment, the unit beams an encrypted radio signal to a satellite and onto a website that tracks the movement of the container using a global positioning system. Now, if the container is opened, a light sensor connected by cable will notify the battery-powered computer on the door, which, in turn, notifies authorities with its coordinates by latitude and longitude.

The big selling point for McGowan's system is that it detects and calls for help right away, no matter where it is. The downside is its $395 price tag, which works out to about $40 per trip over several years, he notes. That sounds expensive to some - but not as expensive as a stolen container load of razor blades or stereo speakers. Shave-meister Gillette as well as stereo manufacturer Bose are both interested.

Another promising and potentially less costly tracking technology already in use by the US military is radio frequency identification, or RFID. A container's identity and status are broadcast from a tiny unit on the container door to a nearby reader at a port gate or destination. The downside: Such systems cannot report an intrusion instantly - only later, when they are passing an electronic reader.

"It's almost like the Internet," says Lani Fritts, vice president of business development for Savi Technology, a Sunnyvale, Calif., firm that developed an RFID system the military uses to tell whether a container has meals-ready-to-eat or guns and ammo inside. "The system is starting to show promise. The military paid to develop it, but with more use and function I see this evolving worldwide."

Both RFID and satellite systems can plug in an array of other advanced sensors that detect humidity, temperature, even radiation or explosives inside the container. So even if a terrorist or thief leaves the container door alone, cutting through the side of the box instead, an intrusion would still be detected.

Not everyone is convinced. The World Shipping Council, a trade group representing major shipping lines, issued a white paper casting doubt on whether so-called e-seal technologies are ready for prime time. "It would be a serious security error simply to assume that technology can be applied to shipping containers and 'solve' the problem of container security," the report concluded.

Indeed, even with high-tech alarm systems, there's no security if terrorists are the ones "stuffing the box," says Michael Wolfe, a principal with North River Consulting Group, a supply-chain security and productivity firm in Marshfield, Mass.

The federal government has made strides with its Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism program. Customs authorities now analyze electronic manifests and require 24-hour advance notice of shipments.

Yet such organizational progress does not solve the problem of containers getting hijacked or broken into in transit. Seals can be circumvented or faked. Container doors can even be removed entirely, leaving today's plastic or lead seals intact. Only a smart container could plug that gap for sure.

"The technology may not work, but given the stakes, for gosh sakes let's try it [and] find out," Mr. Flynn says in an interview. "There's no way this is moving nearly as fast as it should be and with the sense of urgency it should have - not for a nation that's at war."

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