WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Scanning all the cargo that flies over the United States is unrealistic because of its volume, some officials say.
Additionally the Transportation Security Administration says other countries have cargo security protocols designed to ferret out potential problems with flights over the United States, The Washington Post reported.
"We have tens of millions of packages flying almost every night," said Yossi Sheffi, director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We can't stop the huge flow of packages from all over the world. There has to be a balance between acceptable risk and the economy".
Officials call such flights "overflights" because they usually originate in Canada or elsewhere, and they do not intend to land in the United States. But not everyone believes they are screened as carefully as flights originating in the United States.
A terrorist could "explode a plane with a dirty bomb or a biological weapon or an actual nuclear weapon on board, and that material will spread wherever it crashes," said Richard Bloom, a longtime U.S. intelligence operative who teaches counterterrorism courses at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona.
Few "overflights" originate in countries that are considered to be terrorist threats, the newspaper said.
"You could probably count on one hand the number of planes that are coming (over the United States) in any given month from countries that are considered (terrorist) hot spots," said Steven Lott, communications director for the International Air Transport Association, a trade group for 230 airlines that account for more than 90 percent of international passenger flights.
"Overflights, to us, remain a pretty small risk. If you and I can go on the Internet and track a plane as it crosses the United States, you can be sure that the government can, too". UPI
