Maritime and Port Security Initiatives by Federal Agencies Research Paper

Maritime and Port Security Initiatives by Federal Agencies - Research Paper Example With the rise in terror threats, containers ships have become the area of security scrutiny as security agents view them as vulnerable to terrorist attacks and activities. Annually, seaports in the US host at least nine million marine containers hence provoking the need for them to undergo intense security checks so as avert terrorist infiltration. In order to raise security standards within ports, Congress passed into law the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002 that has come into scrutiny over its relevance and impact in serving this purpose. With this background information, this essay will delve on the Maritime and seaport security initiatives as applied by federal agencies, either in the US or by agencies across its international borders. Ideally, most of the cargo handling in the US is through major cargo hubs because of the quality of infrastructure available hence creating traffic for these hubs by cargo shipping firms. Further, the handling of energy related products is by certain ports while the US also has over one thousand harbors spread across its coastline. Other than US owned and crewed ships, foreign ships also call at this nation’s ports, which has been instrumental in influencing trading relations with other trading partners. The trading also spreads to cargo containers, which is one of the areas that attracted the concerns of both state and federal security agents to be keen on securing this area of commerce. In essence, a large container has a high load capacity and can safely ferry more than three thousand containers while offloading some of them at different ports. Mostly, these containers transport consumer goods that may include clothing, toys, shoes, electronic devices, automobile spare parts, among a list of other goods which characterizes the imports on containers. On the other hand, the containerized