Excerpts from Marine Link:

Recently, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a scathing report on the Transportation Worker Identification Credential (TWIC) electronic reader pilot test and on the TWIC program in general… The GAO also said that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the agency charged with developing the TWIC program, has never determined whether the program has actually enhanced maritime security. It recommends that the proposed TWIC reader rulemaking be halted until successful completion of a security assessment of the effectiveness of using TWIC.

This leads me to ask why individuals working at a grain elevator that loads wheat onto a barge or ship on the Mississippi River are potential threats to the security of the United States while individuals loading wheat onto a railcar twenty miles away are not.

Why?

We have created a program that singles out one commercial sector for vastly heightened scrutiny and developed an overly-complex process for its implementation. I recommend that Congress immediately call a halt to further implementation of the U.S. maritime security program and direct the establishment of an independent commission to examine the threat and recommend a reasonable means of addressing that theat. We have spent 11 years trying to resolve a problem that may not have ever existed outside of our own overheated imaginations. Let’s take a deep breath and examine where we are.

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