Manifest Confidentiality is a CBP program that allows a shipper or consignee to request that its name and address be suppressed from the public version of the vessel manifest. The program is authorized under 19 CFR 103.31(d) and is the principal tool importers use to keep their suppliers and sourcing patterns out of commercial trade-data products.
Under U.S. law, CBP must release inbound vessel manifest data to anyone who requests it (a holdover from the 19th century, when shipping news was a published newspaper feature). Commercial providers — Panjiva, ImportGenius, Datamyne, BlueGenius, and others — purchase this data in bulk and resell it as trade intelligence.
Manifest confidentiality status, when granted:
- Suppresses the company's name and address from public versions of the manifest
- Lasts two years from approval, renewable indefinitely on request
- Applies to inbound vessel manifests only — not air, truck, rail, or exports
- Does not affect the data CBP itself sees or the data trading partners can extract through their own documentation
To request confidentiality, the importer (or its customs broker) submits a written request to CBP listing the names to be suppressed — including aliases and variations. CBP grants requests routinely.
There is no analogous protection for export manifests under U.S. law, since AES export data is not released publicly (Census Bureau confidentiality protections apply to export EEI). The asymmetry is a longstanding source of friction: a U.S. importer's suppliers can be reverse-engineered from import manifests, but a U.S. exporter's customers cannot.