In war on terror, US gives top priority to containers with intelligent door seals

The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are now giving priority to containers arriving in the United States that have intelligent door seals.

MobinTeleCom Oy of Helsinki, Finland, in cooperation with VISTA Enterprise Telematics Security Platform from WS2 Ltd of Ireland, is offering a Comprehensive Journey Report. This will indicate the complete status of an electronic door seal, which will then go to the DHS/CBP for priority clearance.

The DHS has directed the CBP to establish a new front-line officer position, the CBP Officer, to serve at the nation's ports of entry and provide “one face at the border.” The CBP Officer will unify and integrate the work of about 18,000 inspectors who came together from three different agencies when CBP was formed March 1, 2003.

The basic function for electronic seals is to assure a complete and accurate audit trail for seal status through a shipment's chain of custody: to both determine the integrity of seal and record the time and place of the transaction. This may be done in close proximity to the seal or at some distance from it.

One possible enhancement of electronic seals is to detect a breach or tamper attempt as it happens and record the time of occurrence for later reporting. Data set can be richer by adding the location of the tamper event with latitude and longitude from GPS or another source. The electronic seal may also be a platform to report other sensor data, such as light, barometric change, and radiation.

Another possible enhancement is to enable the immediate reporting of a breach or tamper event so that authorities may interrupt improper activity or act to foil criminal intent. Some technologies can accomplish this within a limited area, such as a terminal. WS2 Ltd VISTAtechnologies employ satellite or cellular communications for much wider reach.

Another approach which MobinTeleCom is considering enables remote control of the locking mechanism via satellite or radio frequency (RF) messages.

All these demands may be met by deploying a robust, all-weather GSM-GPRS-GPS Telematics Security Solutions installed on the container doors, which will communicate with the electronic RFID door seal.

The Telematics transceiver unit will communicate with a GSM-Satellite Compression Gateway Platform installed within the ship's communication facility. The Gateway Platform will then compress SMS or GPRS data for transmission down to 8 kbps from the ship via satellite down to ground station of a mobile network. The network operator will decompress the data transmitted from Satellite-GSM for transmission on to a recipient with a GSM cellular handset. This completes the GSM-Satellite-GSM Loop.