Secure ports expensive, GAO official warns

Despite planned technology improvements to track incoming shipments and control access, ensuring secure ports will require expensive national standards that are difficult to enforce, said JayEtta Hecker, the General Accounting Office's director for physical infrastructure, in testimony before a House Government Reform subcommittee Monday in Tampa, Fla.

While Customs will deploy 20 "mobile gamma ray imaging devices" this summer to examine cargo and will update the computer system that identifies potentially illegal shipments, Hecker said that modernizing security infrastructure will require $10 million to $50 million per port, money that cannot come just from the federal government.

Federal grants will allow ports like Tampa's to install security cameras and to increase access control, but Hecker said that not all states have taken steps to improve security, partly because of a lack of national guidelines.

Hecker said that ports have no standard protocols for sharing security information between different levels of government.