This is a follow up on our last newsletter's edition entitled "Terrorism fears could lead to total monitoring." According to Michael Sciulla, Senior Vice President for Public Affairs for BoatU.S., Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Coast Guard officials are busy preparing for a National Small Vessel Security Summit June 19-20. In recent months, proposals to license boat owners or require them to outfit their vessels with expensive electronic tracking gear have been floated. According to Sciulla, "Recreational boaters want to be part of a comprehensive solution to this threat but any new requirements must be measured in terms of both effectiveness and efficiency."
"Requiring millions of recreational boat owners to be licensed and tasking the already overburdened Coast Guard with implementing a duplicative system solely to identify everyone operating every type of boat will be costly to develop, take years to implement and will not result in a demonstrable improvement in national security. Currently, the Coast Guard does not believe it has the authority to require a recreational boat operator to produce identification absent specific probable cause. "We believe recreational boat owners will support the concept of their being required to produce identification and it should be the same ID required by the Transportation Security Administration to board a commercial flight.
One key to increasing the security of our waterways will be to enlist the 'eyes and ears' of the recreational boating public in a substantially expanded grassroots effort that motivates thousands of Americans to do their part as citizens as was done under the government's Coast Watch program during World War II (see www.americaswaterwaywatch.org/) for more on this). The other will be to clearly mark security zones - both public and private - to ensure that boaters know where they can and can not go." Contact: Michael Sciulla, 703-461-2832, MSciulla@BoatUS.com. One of the NC representatives at the upcoming Security Summit will be Dudley Dawson attending on behalf of Boating Writers International who will provide us with an update following the meeting.
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