[Open Manufacturing] Slashdot | Professor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Sharing Drone Plans With Students

[Paul D. Fernhout]

From:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/07/03/1721230/Professor-Gets-4-Years-in-Prison-for-Sharing-Drone-Plans-With-Students
"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=tennessee-physicist-sentenced-to-4-2009-07-03
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/

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