ITAR satellite provision

[Greg Broiles]

On Thu, 3 Oct 1996, jim bell wrote:

> The wording was 
> clearly intended to be an exception to a rule.  What the wording doesn't 
> include is the "exception to the exception," most likely because they 
> weren't thinking in too great a detail when they wrote the regulations.

Yow. The "if we put it in a rocket it's exportable" interpretation made me
think twice before posting the text of that definition, because it's
seductive and wrong. I posted it because it's amusing to think about and
because we all had a good laugh about it at the Mac crypto conference; but
I'd feel like a jerk if someone got themselves in a lot of trouble with an
enthusiastic misreading of that sentence out of pages and pages of
regulations (plus quite a few more pages of opinions interpreting those
regulations). 

> It appears that the government left a loophole so large that  you could 
> drive a truck...er...shoot a rocket through it.

If you think you've found an enormous loophole in a regulation which has
been around for 15-20 years, you should double-check your research and get
a good nights' sleep. Law is like science this way - if you think you have
found room-temperature fusion you should stop and check your work. It's
much more likely that you're not reading carefully or you've missed something.

--
Greg Broiles                |  "We pretend to be their friends,
gbroiles at netbox.com         |   but they fuck with our heads."
http://www.io.com/~gbroiles |
                            |