When our elected representatives were drafting the mandate, their word choice was somewhat inaccurate. It called for 100 percent “screening,” though it seems clear from the legislative text that what the lawmakers meant was 100 percent “scanning.” Scanning is physically inspecting cargo, either by hand, with dogs, with technology or through other methods. Screening simply means sorting through all the cargo, looking for dangerous items sent with mal-intent. That might include the use of scanning methods but could also mean other approaches, such as intelligence-driven risk-based screening.

This is where TSA has found a way past the 100 percent mandate. If TSA deems other countries’ screening efforts to be commensurate with America’s cargo screening, it allows TSA to tell Congress all cargo arriving from abroad has been screened at the 100 percent level.

In the last month, TSA has signed agreements with Canada, Switzerland and the European Commission stating that their air cargo screening efforts were mutually acceptable. These are important developments, as it shows TSA is harmonizing its approach with those of other countries, and reducing redundancies while streamlining operations, all of which is important for security and a rapid supply chain. Under these agreements, when air cargo arrives from the European Union or Canada, TSA considers it to have been screened in full (i.e., 100 percent). But that doesn’t mean foreign countries are putting every piece of cargo through a rigorous physical scan.

Thousands of tons of cargo arrive in the United States on passenger planes every day. Scanning that much cargo would not only dramatically slow the supply chain, it would be virtually impossible to enforce. TSA’s jurisdiction ends at the U.S. border, and many countries abroad see 100 percent screening as the wrong approach to securing cargo. Who could force these countries to follow U.S. law? No one.  What resources were offered to TSA to achieve this? None. So is all this cargo scanned before departure? Of course not, but anyone who thought that was possible in the first place was kidding himself.

All this focus on 100 percent screening has not actually resulted in what the law intended. Assuming the deadline is met by December, it will have been nearly five years of government and industry investment and effort striving for an impossible metric rather than focusing all resources on potentially more effective air cargo security approaches.

To be sure, there have been important and effective advances in international cargo security, among them the harmonization of security approaches under the new international agreements. And intelligence-driven, risk-based security (thanks in large part to CBP) is steadily gaining ground as the more rational and effective approach to keeping dangerous cargo grounded and out of the United States. There are programs like the Air Cargo Advanced Screening Pilot, which TSA and CBP recently decided would go forward as the best approach to singling out high-risk cargo. Industry and security agencies are working together today like never before, collaborating on the best approaches, sharing information, and championing security and supply chain efficiency as equally important. Those and other advances do indeed elevate the level of security for air cargo, but they are not 100 percent screening – at least, not the way Congress imagined it back in 2007.

In the end (and December 2012 appears to be the end), the 100 percent screening mandate did little to improve American security or protect the flying public. It was and remains a nuisance, getting in the way of wiser and more effective air cargo security approaches. On an international level, it’s not even possible. In that sense, the mandate was crafted lacking intelligence and common sense, which is the very definition of stupidity.