From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Jul 17 2001 - 08:31:41 MDT
John Clark wrote:
>
> Mike Lorrey <mlorrey@datamann.com> Wrote:
>
> > How much cocaine is smuggled by UPS, Eli? Can you tell me?
>
> He can't tell you, nobody can tell you, but I'll bet it's substantial.
and HOW is it smuggled in? Not in UPS packages. Successful drug
smuggling occurs via private shipments, by ship and truck. Given the
percentage that are caught, if I were a drug lord, I'd purposely make a
certain percentage of my shipments easier than usual to detect, so the
DEA could pounce on those to demonstrate that they 'are doing
something', and which would also cause them to slack off on trying to
detect real shipments.
A recent interdiction effort in south america resulted in the seizure of
a nearly completed submarine, being built high up in the hills. I would
not doubt that there are already a few operating.
>
> >an xray machine is going to see the materials of a nuclear device
>
> UPS does not X ray its packages. A few radiation detectors were installed at
> one of the major border crossings into the USA a few years ago, but a recent
> story showed that they were not maintained and no longer worked correctly.
> It didn't really matter because nobody was trained in their proper operation anyway.
At the current time, drug interdiction is the primary concern, and they
use dogs to go over every package and vehicle coming over the border. I
expect that the NSA, et al, expect to detect sigint or humint to provide
sufficient warning that such operations are imminent, on the grounds
that you will always find some people in any group who think that nukes
are beyond the pale.
Of course, I'd fully expect that our border defenses had crumbled under
the Clinton administration.
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