Clock ticking on aviation cargo screening mandate.

• Position: SECURITY BEAT: HOMELAND DEFENSE BRIEFS

* The Transportation Security Administration has been stow to move towards the goat of screening 100 percent of cargo loaded aboard passenger aircraft despite substantial congressional funding said the Government Accountability Office.

"I'm concerned that we're dosing our eyes to technologies presented by smaller businesses and other nations," said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Miss, at a House Homeland Security subcommittee on transportation security and infrastructure protection.

GAO conducted a study of TSA's efforts to meet the February 2009 deadline of 50 percent screening and 100 screening by 2010, and found several troubling deficiencies. TSA is currently working towards domestic cargo scanning, but not foreign freight entering the United States, said John Sammort, TSA assistant administrator.

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"Our interpretation of (the 9/11 Commission Act) was that we're talking about shipments originating in the United States," Sammon said.

Cathleen Berrick, director of homeland security and justice issues for the GAO, said TSA has not laid out any specific plan to meet the 2009 and 2010 deadlines, nor has it appropriated enough additional staff or funding to cargo scanning other than a pilot program conducted at several airports. TSA has set up scanning for certain types of cargo, which poses an additional security...