Arms Export Control Act - Application

Application

In the 1990s, after a report from RSA Data Security, Inc., who were in a licensing dispute with regard to use of the RSA algorithm in PGP, the Customs Service started a criminal investigation of Phil Zimmermann, for allegedly violating the Arms Export Control Act. The US Government had long regarded cryptographic software as a munition, and thus subject to arms trafficking export controls. At that time, the boundary between permitted ("low-strength") cryptography and impermissible ("high-strength") cryptography placed PGP well on the too-strong-to-export side (this boundary has since been relaxed). The investigation lasted three years, but was finally dropped without filing charges.

From FY 2004 to FY 2006 there had been 283 arrests, 198 indictments, and 166 convictions based on AECA violations.

In 2005 the Government Accounting Office (GAO) did a study on arms exports since 9/11. The study noted that the system itself had not been changed since 9/11 since the system was already designed to counter such threats. The study did report that the processing time for arms cases increased starting in 2003.

In 2006 Boeing was fined for $15 million for unlicensed foreign sales involving a gyroscopic microchip or gyrochip with military applications.

In March 2007, ITT Corporation was fined for criminal violation of the act. The fines resulted from ITT's outsourcing program, in which they transferred night vision goggles and classified information about countermeasures against laser weapons, including light interference filters to engineers in Singapore, the People's Republic of China, and the United Kingdom. They were fined $100 million US dollars, although they were also given the option of spending half of that sum on research and development of new night vision technology. The United States government will assume rights to the resulting created intellectual property.

In January 2009, Congressman Dennis Kucinich sent a notice to Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, that Israel’s actions in Gaza since December 27, 2008 may constitute a violation of the requirements of the AECA. The AECA requires that each nation that receives a shipment of arms from the United States must certify that the weapons are used for internal security and legitimate self-defense, and that their use does not lead to an escalation of conflict. However, the AECA does not define "internal security" or "legitimate self-defense." Kucinich said that Israel's actions in Gaza killed nearly 600 and injured over 2,500, including innocent civilians and children in residential areas and civilian institutions like schools. Kunich said that this may have violated the AECA because they didn't further Israel's internal security or legitimate self-defense, but increased the possibility of an outbreak or escalation of conflict. The charges were denied by the IDF and no action has been taken under the act.

In July 2009 John Reece Roth, a former University of Tennessee professor, was convicted of violating the AECA and sentenced to 48 months in prison. Roth had a United States Air Force (USAF) contract to develop plasma technology to reduce drag on airplane wings. One application was for unmanned air vehicles (drones). Roth was accused of violating the law by sharing technical (not classified) data with Chinese and Iranian graduate students, and of having technical data on his laptop during a trip to China. Roth and others said that the AECA, as applied in his case, would violate academic freedom and force professors to discriminate against students on the basis of nationality.