Re: ITAR double standards?

[rkmoore@iol.ie (Richard K. Moore)]

3/26/96, Timothy C. May wrote:
>So, did Intel have to apply to the State Department's office on munitions
>exports in order to send engineers to Malaysia, Israel, Germany, Ireland,
>etc., to do development work? Not that I ever heard. Engineers simply
>hopped on planes and that was that.

        So true.  When I worked in Silicon Valley firms, I noticed how
International Air Courier services were used entirely like
Interdepartmental Mail, with no concern for export laws or import duties,
etc.  If we travelled overseas, _of course_ we took our laptop with all
it's software (including encryption), and _of course_ we'd leave software
copies on colleagues hard disks, after doing demos and such.  All with a
sense of total righteousness -- we were tax-paying wage-earners just doing
our job.

        There's a real irony here, if you think about the Barlow-expressed
sentiment that cyberspace is a new free domain, having achieved escape
velocity from terrestial anachronisms.  While Barlow's critics, it seems,
demolished _that_ thesis as wishful thinking, there's a parallel thesis
that may actually be true: that _corporate environments_ have achieved
escape velocity from civil jurisdiction, and now live in a world where
rules & ethics are relative only to corporate culture, and "parochial"
national laws are to be quietly ignored, knowing there's a highly-paid
legal staff to deal with occasional embarrasments.

        We dream and they implement.


Cheers,
Richard
rkmoore@iol.ie (not on cypherpunks)


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