Port worker background checks launched
Facing growing impatience in Congress and the port security community with waiting for TWIC, DHS is launching stop-gap measures which have the Coast Guard coordinating background checks for more than 400,000 port employees; when TWIC comes around, the number of people subject to background checks will double
The Bush administration yesterday announced that seaport workers will undergo background checks for links to terrorists and to ensure they are legal U.S. residents. The new policy is a stopgap security measure while the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) moves forward to implement its Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) program. The administration’s announcement could not come too soon for the many critics who charged the administration with dragging its feet on the issue of port security. The policy will be implemented immediately. Still many criticized the new measures as either too weak or too invasive of workers’ privacy rights.
Names of an estimated 400,000 employees who work in the most sensitive areas of U.S. ports — including longshoremen and maritime employees of facility owners and operators — will be collected by the Coast Guard and matched against government terror watch lists and immigration databases, DHS secretary Michael Chertoff said. They will be among roughly 850,000 workers, including truckers and rail employees, who have unrestricted access to ports (DHS calls this “unescorted access to sensitive maritime facilities”) and will be required to carry tamper-resistant identification cards by next year. “What this will do is it will elevate security at our ports themselves so that we can be sure that those who enter our ports to do business come for legitimate reasons and not in order to do us harm,” Chertoff said. He called the safeguards part of a “ring of security” around U.S. ports.
The background checks will not examine workers’ criminal history, although Chertoff left open that possibility for the future.
