This directly affects us here in San Antonio since some of this cargo is set to come through the Port of San Antonio (formerly Kelly AFB) via the Trans Texas Corridor. In the age of terrorism and known drug activity at the border, do we really want the risk of uninspected, merely tracked, cargo coming into San Antonio?
Link to article here.
Chinese have ownership in U.S. cargo monitors
Firm tied to communist regime involved in deal to set up high-tech sensors
By Jerome R. Corsi
December 7, 2006
WorldNetDaily.com
A Chinese company with close ties to the communist government owns 49 percent of the Lockheed Martin subsidiary that is negotiating a contract with the North American SuperCorridor Coalition, Inc. – the Dallas-based trade association – to place cargo monitoring sensors along as superhighway stretching from Mexico to Canada.
China’s Hutchinson Port Holdings entered into a $50 million joint venture in 2005 with Savi Technology, a Lockheed Martin wholly-owned subsidiary, to form a new company called Savi Networks LLC. Savi Technology owns 51 percent and Hutchinson Port Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chinese holding company Hutchinson Whampoa Limited, holds the rest.
Lockheed Martin spokeswoman Leslie Holoweiko confirmed to WND that Savi Networks LLC is the company named in the contract currently being negotiated with NASCO to provide cargo sensors all along the NASCO I-35 super-corridor. If successfully negotiated, the contract would appear to give Hutchinson Holdings operational involvement all along the emerging I-35 NAFTA superhighway. Hutchinson Holdings also operates the port at Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico.
Hutchinson, Whampoa, Ltd. is the holding company of billionaire Li Ka-shing, a well-known businessman, whose companies make up 15 percent of the market capitalization of the Hong Kong Stock Market. According to the Washington, D.C., government watchdog Judicial Watch, a declassified U.S. government intelligence report that Judicial Watch obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request indicates Li is “directly connected to Beijing and is willing to use his business influence to further the aims of the Chinese Government.”
A Judicial Watch complaint filed in 2002 at the time HWL was purchasing the then-bankrupt Global Crossing, notes Li Ka-Shing’s holdings includes ports, telecom and energy assets around the world. Hutchinson Ports was forced to drop a bid to purchase Global Crossing when the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States refused to approve the transaction on national security grounds.
Savi Networks LLC operates RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) equipment and software to track and manage containerized ocean-going cargo. According to the company, the goal of Savi Networks LLC is to install “active RFID equipment and software in participating ports around the world to provide users with information on the identity, location and status of their ocean cargo containers as they pass through such ports.”
Conceivably, the Savi-installed RFID software would permit NASCO to track containers from the time they leave ports in China and the Far East to when they enter North America at Mexican ports such as Lázaro Cárdenas.
Data on the cargo could be read then by any sensor-reading station the Savi-NASCO project placed anywhere along what NASCO calls the North American SuperCorridor, generally identified by NASCO as incorporating Interstates 35, 29 and 94.
NASCO and Savi Networks LLC plan to put Savi sensor reading stations all the way north, to destinations in Canada such as Winnipeg.
The Savi technology includes an architecture designed to accommodate Automatic Identification Data Collection (AIDC) technologies, such as is used in barcodes, RFID technologies and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) that can track container ships on the ocean or the containers as they travel on land by truck or train.
The NASCO plan to use cargo tracking technology is consistent with the plans announced by the working groups in the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, or SPP, to rely primarily on technology, instead of in-person inspection, to track and monitor containers entering the U.S.
As disclosed in the “2005 Report to Leaders” on the SPP website, FAST lanes and SENTRI software will be used extensively to “streamline the secure movement of low-risk traffic across our shared borders” with Mexico and Canada.
The Security and Prosperity Partnership was declared by President Bush, Mexico’s President Fox and then-Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada at their summit meeting in Waco, Texas, March 23, 2005.
Global Crossing was noted for turning Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe’s $100,000 investment into an $18 million personal fortune. The company’s bold move to control the U.S. international fiber-optics network, however, ending in a corrupt, corporate meltdown that preceded the Enron debacle.