[amsat-bb] Re: Satellites need to be open source

[Samudra Haque]

Actually, in the eyes of ITAR administrators, I am sure the act of a
"foreign national" asking publicly for ""sensitive"" technology matters such
as the details of construction for satellites could raise more than a few
eyebrows.

If an individual wishes to come to the US and obtain publicly available
journals/research papers that is sold by an institution such as AIAA, IEEE
which contains basic discoveries and CANNOT results that can be utilized
directly in building satellites, ITAR actually allows that. For information,
read the ITAR links I have posted earlier. However, for questions that
specifically target "How do you"... the individual may want to be careful as
not to get to become an interesting target of inquiry by a variety of
agencies looking for moles.

An example from another industry: If you go to visit UK as a US national,
all is fine, no visa required. However if you are a foreign national living
in the US, you have to go through a biometric investigation and a complete
biography review (dad/mom/children/job) before a visa is issued and the data
is kept for *10 years* and shared with other governments, regardless of the
type of visit or duration (1 day to many days). I shudder to think if an
international person were to be identified in a public way of being
inquisitive and interested to obtain ITAR classified documents, and boasting
about it publicly on an open website - what would happen if they were the
target of U.S. Gov't action ?

http://mae.pennnet.com/display_article/366108/32/ARTCL/none/EXCON/1/ITAR-compliance:-ignorance-of-defense-export-regulations-is-no-excuse/

Luc, specifically, your questions may be answered by Page 17 onwards of the
following presentation:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=8&ved=0CCAQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rensselaer.org%2Fdept%2Ffinance%2Fdocs%2Fresearch%2FExportControls.ppt&ei=As7-Sru0M4nVlQe7leXeDA&usg=AFQjCNFBnvL3w7kFLP9yEdVeYU72Qxh7Vg&sig2=xd-u2jP9cmuJy_1a4j-8WQ

However, if you insist that you want to know something now that is still in
the laboratory R&D process and not yet published that is not going to help
in the setup of an ITAR compliance system at AMSAT and I would like to ask
you not to pursue that track. You can always subscribe to academic journals
(AIAA, IEEE) to obtain the results of published, and ITAR cleared,
research). AMSAT journals are only collated, and are not referred rigorously
! Hopefully they will change to a more peer reviewed model in the future.


Samudra N3RDX

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 1:04 PM, John B. Stephensen <kd6ozh at comcast.net>wrote:

> Since you are in Canada you don't have to worry about U.S. laws.
>
> 73,
>
> John
> KD6OZH
> over
>