[Open Manufacturing] Slashdot | Professor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Sharing Drone Plans With Students
Paul D. Fernhout
pdfernhout at kurtz-fernhout.com
Fri Jul 3 15:59:09 PDT 2009
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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