10 thoughts on “Stifling On-Line Space Discussion”

  1. On several occasions, I’ve had to bite my tongue (or fingers) while perusing ARocket. The restrictions in industry are far more draconian than the amateur community realizes — and the results of an infraction even scarier.

    At the last COMSTAC meeting, Mike Gold (Bigelow’s chief legal counsel) put up a slide which was his own observation on ITAR: that it is unconstitutional, and would crumble before any challenge based on precedent. I don’t have the details of the slide, but it ought to be available on the FAA/AST website.

    It would be a great thing to challenge ITAR on constitutional grounds. As a nation, we are losing our ability to do things only we were once able to do, while other nations build theirs. ITAR is threatening, not enhancind, national security. I don’t think the Congress or administration will do anything about it. But someone could very well sue, and if Mike is correct, they would succeed.

  2. It is probably unconstitutional, on two grounds. As to the first, in my opinion, “freedom of the press” in the First Amendment refers not to the “press” as a class (as we think of it today), but as to the means of dissemination of information (i.e., the printing press, the only widespread means of effective information dissemination besides written word and voice).

    The Founders, with their knowledge and experience of British history, were all too familiar with the ways the authorities–inlcuding themselves–could use legal sophistry to get around “problematic” restrictions on government power (just a few years later, they themselves would violate the First Amendment with the Alien and Sedition Laws). Thus, I feel the First Amendment clause “freedom of the press” was not to give some journalistic guild extra-special privileges, but to prevent government authorities from cracking down on a pamphleteer by saying “Hey, you can say and write anything you want, but if you print it so a lot of people can read it we will throw you in jail.” ITAR clearly violates this clause, and in general anything on a blog should be given the same protections as printed words.

    The second Constitutional problem ITAR has is the “takings”. Basically, an argument can be made that it is a soft form of eminent domain, and while there is due process, there is no compensation. The only way that ITAR can be legal and not run afoul of the “eminent domain” clause is if technology owners have the right to forgo United States patenting and still market their wares overseas. If they do not–if the mere act of being a U.S. citizen means the government views your technology as something it has rights to in some way, shape, or form, even if that right merely involves preventing you from sharing it with personages who are not United States citizens, then it must compensate. Period. This is important, becuase the point will be eventually reached–if it has not been reached already–that the money that could be made in overseas markets will compensate for the lack of business in the U.S. market.

    And to those who say that the privilege of being under the protection of U.S. laws means that one should be happy to forgo foreign sales and should agree to live under ITAR–this same argument–that one should merely be grateful to live under such a benevolent government–was probably why the “no eminent domain without *proper* compensation” clause was adopted in the first place, because this trick has been tried before.

  3. AIAA is fighting ITAR. Last April we had an afternoon session on ITAR. Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger (Maryland) was the chief political speaker. His office contacted me (I lead AIAA Team Maryland for political work) for good ITAR stories. They used one I supplied. One of our members is from Italy. He is an astronomer currently working on Hubble. Before he became an American citizen, he wrote a paper on some sort of satellite astronomical apparatus. The ITAR people saw the paper, classified it and would not let him read his own paper. Ruppersberger’s comment? “How about a little common sense people?”

    I’m doing more than my fair share to get rid of this kind of nonsense. Some people in Congress are listening.

  4. Rand,

    I am not surprised. When I was working with Starbooster we had to tone back the material before putting it on the website because of possible ITAR issues.

    Also just because its on paper would not necessary save you IF you are mailing that paper to someone outside the U.S.

    Beyond space companies its also an issue for online educators since many online students are foreigners taking the class from their home country. Fortunately its not an issue for me since I teach business, but I am surprised that MIT was not hit for placing all of their courses online in open format a few years back. I suspect it was just a case of no one noticing what they posted.

    Tom

    Tom

  5. Silver lining: ITAR is something of a benefit for me in my situation. I means I get to clam-up and not “waste” my time talking with people or emailing them since, hey, it could be a “deemed export” of technical data, especially to firms like FUJI, ISRO, and the alphabet soup that is European space. IOW, I can spend less time talking and more time doing.

  7. Can’t tell if the above was directed at me, but if so, it’s a complete misreading on your part, John, given that you don’t know my situation. Regardless, the trolling is not constructive — there’s already too much of that on this forum.

  8. Titus, If that was trolling, I apologize and agree that there is too much of that here. I interpeted your previous comment as derogatory of those that do wish to discuss these things. I couldn’t see how a law that prevents you from discussing would be superior to your own decision to communicate or not.

  9. I interpeted your previous comment as derogatory of those that do wish to discuss these things.

    No such stuff in my thoughts. Just a tongue-and-cheek rant about numb-nuts customers is all.

  10. Local expression for that type of customer. “If the customer is always right, what do they need us for?”

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