From: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/03/1721230/Professor-Gets-4-Years-in-Pri... "Retired University of Tennessee Professor Dr. John Reece Roth has been sentenced to four years in prison after he allowed a Chinese graduate student to see sensitive information on Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. In 2004, the company Roth helped found, Atmospheric Glow Technologies, won a US Air Force contract to develop a plasma actuator that could help reduce drag on the wings of drones, such as the ones the military uses. Under the contract, for which Roth was reportedly paid $6,000, he was prohibited from sharing sensitive data with foreign nationals. Despite warnings from his university's Export Control Officer, in 2006, Roth took a laptop containing sensitive plans with him on a lecture tour in China and also allowed graduate students Xin Dai of China and Sirous Nourgostar of Iran to work on the project. 'The illegal export of restricted military data represents a serious threat to national security,' says David Kris of the US Department of Justice. 'We know that foreign governments are actively seeking this information for their own military development. Today's sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who knowingly discloses restricted military data in violation of our laws.' During his trial, Roth testified that he was unaware that hiring the graduate students was a violation of his contract. 'This whole thing has not helped me, it has not helped the university,' said Roth. 'And it has probably not helped this country, either.'" http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=tenness... http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/jun/24/atmospheric-glow-to-sell/ http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/07-01-2009/0005053691&EDATE= Some space related technology has similar restrictions. So, scarcity-oriented organizations are preventing information flow to other scarcity-oriented organizations using post-scarcity means (bureaucracy, computers coordinating data collection, government tax dollars raised through cooperation). But in the process they are producing artificial scarcity for everyone, because it is not clear what you can legally share is some fields. In general, stories like this have a chilling effect on cross-border cooperation. People had related stories at the SSI conferences about legal issues sharing information related to rocketry and satellites. Similar paranoia crippled and delayed strong encryption in the USA, one of the reason the internet is a less safe place today as far as phishing and other problems. --Paul Fernhout http://www.pdfernhout.net/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open Manufacturing" group. To post to this group, send email to openmanufacturing@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to openmanufacturing+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~--- ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE