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. |
