February 22, 2006

Port Security and the UAE

I haven’t decided if the deal with letting a company from the United Arab Emirates is a good idea or not. Instapundit has a great roundup.

UPDATE: The Wall Street Journal is in favor of the deal.

UPDATE II: Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has a podcast up in which he explores the ramifications of the deal. He talks with Austin Bay and Jim Dunnigan. Here's the link to the Instapundit post where he talks about the podcast and has a link to it. It requires no special software to listen to it.

Posted by The Vorlon at February 22, 2006 6:41 AM
Comments

Most Americans don't feel warm and fuzzy about any company with ties to the Middle East being involved in anything to do with our ports.

Posted by: Reb Orrell at February 22, 2006 10:55 AM

People need to realize that they can't always feel warm and fuzzy about every single thing that takes place in the world.

Not to mention: Who ever said the British were doing a good job at it, and why should we expect that the company from the UAE will do any worse?

In fact, who said that anything will change? The company is being acquired, after all. Do we expect that the UAE staff send down a memo that tells everyone that they need to start letting terrorist-like activities take place?

If the concern is companies with ties to the Middle East, I think that The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (this is the company being acquired) would have already been out - they operate five ports in Southwest Asia now. Wouldn't that qualify as "ties" to the Middle East?

Posted by: Chad Everett at February 22, 2006 12:54 PM

I think the fear is that an UAE company could be more easily infiltrated with terrorists. How good is their background checks on employees?

But I have yet to make up my mind.

Posted by: Ted at February 22, 2006 7:35 PM

Maybe, maybe not. Ask yourself this - those jobs of loading and unloading ships, that I'm sure pay huge salaries (admittedly, I'm sure many are union, and the pay isn't bad) - are they going to just drop all the people doing those jobs, and replace them with people from the UAE?

Posted by: Chad Everett at February 23, 2006 4:50 PM

My understanding is the guys doing the loading and unloading make in excess of $100K a year. But I know zip about running a port so I wouldn't have a clue as to where security vulnerablities might lie.

Posted by: Ted at February 23, 2006 9:39 PM