Australian Customs : Mail Screening Capabilities

The Australian Government likes to encourage the myth of infallible border security. To work out the truth it is nice to turn to the Australian Governments Audit Office that very nicely conducted an Audit on the effectiveness of Agriculture and Customs screening of international mail.

Australian Audit Office Report - Screening of International Mail

It is a pretty big read but the take aways for any Aussies are as follows.

How Good Are They

In 2013-14 there were

Mail Items Entering Australia 180,000,000
Number of mail items screened by customs 46,364,216
Total Illegal Items Seized (Including Drugs and Other Items) 67,123

Over the last few years the breakdown is as follows.

Customs Deliverable 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12 2012-13
Number of non-letter class mail items screened (millions) 18.3 20.7 21.1 20.6 30.8
Number of letter class mail items screened (millions) 40.5 41.5 40.4 20.4 15.5
Total 58.8 62.2 61.5 41 46.3
Number of mail items examined 239,689 202,858 181,195 215,643 223,150
Percent Examined (Opened) 0.41 0.33 0.29 0.53 0.48

Since 2008 they don't scan 100% of mail - they now use a targeted approach based on risk factors such as country of origin; the mail type; and material of past seizures.

Mail Types.

Express Mail

Tracked Express Mail Service Packages are considered the highest risk because they • can be tracked on the internet by the sender and addressee while in transit (which allows criminals to monitor the progress of their package through border control checkpoints); • offer the potential for larger concealments because of their size; and • result in the largest percentage of 'significant' seizures, with 82percent of narcotics seized (by weight) are taken from EMS.

Non Express Parcels

This is followed by what are called Articles Ordinaire, these are mail articles that weigh more than 500 grams but less than two kilograms. In other words a parcel.

In financial year to March 2014, Articles Ordinaire (packets) made up approximately 90% of the non letter mail volume (32% of total mail volume) and account for 60% of all detections made in International mail

For these Parcels there were 2575 Hard Drug Seizures 2989 Cannabis Seizures

Letters

The letter class mail screening deliverable was first set at 40 million (down from 66 million letters the previous year) based on advice in 2008 to the then Minister for Home Affairs that such mail was low risk, with around one in 58,000 items screened being found to contain prohibited imports. Since then, the deliverable was reduced to 20 million for 2011-12, and further reduced to 15 million for 2012-13. When recommending the reduction to 15 million items, the International Mail Program advised that a 94 per cent increase in the number of seizures from letter class mail, at a time when the number of items screened had been reduced by 50 per cent, indicated that letter class mail risks were being well managed.

The analysis of Customs' seizure data found that: it seized one in every 1938 letters screened in 2012-13 (up from one in 58,000 in 2008); seizures in letter class mail have increased 625 per cent since 2010-11; and around 98 per cent of seizures in letter class mail are recorded as drugs. Customs considers that improved targeting of letter class mail and training of staff to recognise risk indicators has produced positive screening results. However, the lack of an effective sampling program means that the agency's targeting and screening effectiveness was not assessed.

(COMMENT This could be a government loss of touch with reality. The increase in letter detection over a smaller sample in recent years could just as well be the growth in Dark Web sales that political slimebags are selling as performance improvements)

How Many Misses

So what this all says is that about 1 in 8 letters are screened and of the letters screened about 1 in 2000 are seized so in other words you have about 1 in 16,000 chance of a letter being seized. Keep in minds they are improving their targetting and reducing the numbers. It is not just a random pick. What they don't really know is how many they have missed.

The the Audit Office estimates that around 467,893 prohibited imports (87 per cent) were not detected by Customs' screening of international mail in 2012-13. (All items not just drugs)

Detection Techniques

About 69% of Australian mail comes through Sydney where it is generally hand sorted because dogs are not permanently on site.

Hand sorting at the Sydney Gateway Facility involves the checking of letters for external markings and feeling for internal abnormalities to suggest that it may contain prohibited imports.

Everywhere else uses sniffer dogs

Management and staff at the Sydney Gateway Facility consider that hand sorting provides better screening results because analogue drugs (chemically altered derivatives of other drugs) and odour proofing methodologies inhibit effective detector dog screening. The analysis of Customs' seizure data indicates that detector dogs made 2021 seizures in letter class mail in 2012-13, with 'officer's suspicion' resulting in 3590 seizures.

Australia Post in Sydney has a performance target of 100 trays of mail to be checked a day.

What can be done to get around them?

As a buyer not much apart from relying on vendors having good stealth. The more it looks just like normal mail the better it is.

So avoid buying from places like the Netherlands and South America. The report does mention the US is low risk except for gun parts. With online shopping and business in general there is likely to be more mail from the US.

Avoid Express Mail and Parcels.

Overwhelm Them

In 2012-13 Customs has 152 staff at gateway facilities and agriculture 87 more. There was a planned increase of another 22 that has probably been added by now. The reason for the increase is probably driven by increases in online shopping.

Reading between the lines they seem to be resource limited with a need to do more with less. So if less staff can be made to do more then it creates an opportunity for "civil disobediance" as a dealer to overwhelm Customs with false positives.

Packages that "could" contain gun parts or things they have to check. Lots of mail addressed to non existent addresses containing lumps or obvious baggies containing talc with a very small percentage of substance that then has to be analyzed. Letters containing a couple of loose headache tablets.

Sydney WILL hand customs 100 mail trays a day. If those trays are filled with false positives....

While they perhaps aren't to be underestimated they also are not as big and scary as they would like you to believe. Like most Bogeymen when challenged they will shrink to more human proportions.


Comments


[4 Points] hulkedbenzoboss-dnm:

Australian customs is nowhere as big and scary as they make it out to be. I use similar stealth as I do for UK domestic and they've all landed.


[1 Points] None:

[deleted]


[1 Points] Pelican_Vendor:

Think 20g mdma not properly distributed across the whole envelope is going to be easy as hell to feel.


[1 Points] UncleRays:

THANKS OP


[1 Points] octomarvel:

Great post op!

=)


[1 Points] None:

looks like business letters are the best way to go with a 8% chance of sieuzure


[1 Points] heroinhighway:

i kinda skimmed through this, but is the take away that i might get caught but probably not if my vendor has decent stealth?

this nigga doesnt even live in australia


[1 Points] gsfduh:

Excellent post OP, some great info here for buyers and any international vendors that want to pay attention.

So for the personal amount buyer it is not as scary as it has been hyped up to be by the Aus government as well as greedy ass local vendors. Wholesale drug prices have also dropped dramatically recently, but buyers haven't seen any discounts. All the more reason for personal buyers to shop from europe/NA.

If your vendor weighs, packs, and seals in different rooms with alcohol washes between and ships in a regular business mail envelope then there is no reason for it to be stopped. Do your research on good vendors as some international shippers have horrible stealth.


[1 Points] ThisIsNotMarc:

Thank you, now I can direct the retarded masses here.


[1 Points] jamesbond123456:

there is a method to ordering to australia (mainly west coast), these days. time have definitely changed, u cant get it like you used to.

but u cant definitely still get it.


[1 Points] dodgymathsmate:

Nice post but this maths is not right:

So what this all says is that about 1 in 8 letters are screened and of the letters screened about 1 in 2000 are seized so in other words you have about 1 in 16,000 chance of a letter being seized.

All you can deduce from those stats is that out of every (1 in 8) letter screened 1 in 2,000 are seized for contraband, this means the other 1,999 were legitimate post or very well disguised contraband. Without knowing how many they missed you can't extrapolate the 1 in 16,000 figure.