Slashdot Mirror
Can the US Stop the Illegal Export of Its Technology?
coondoggie writes "Maybe people are more desperate or maybe there's just too much opportunity to make a quick buck but whatever the excuse, attempts to illegally export technology from the US has gone through the roof.
The Department of Justice this week said it has placed criminal charges or convictions against more than 255 defendants in the past two fiscal years — 145 in 2008 and 110 in 2007. That 255 number represents more than a six-fold increase from fiscal year 2005, when the DOJ said about 40 individuals or companies were convicted of over 100 criminal violations of export control laws."
We just outsource the means of producing it en masse. Semantics count people!
Good thing there wasn't another attempt, otherwise the counter would've overflowed.
Why worry about losing it when through embrace and extend we don't?
At least until someone yells antitrust.
Isn't it more than a bit arrogant and unrealistic to think the US is the only country with these technologies?
I mean, I know many Americans like to believe the US invented absolutely everything and are ahead of everyone else technologically, but in fact they really didn't and aren't.
Just how much of the difference is the increase in attempts, and how much is the fact that with an election year, some departments have to arrest perpetrators to get funding? I mean it's not like we have an independant verified count of attempted illegal exports...
The true number is actually much higher, but with all the technology going overseas, the feds have to do with 8bit registers.
Badabumm - disssssh. Thanks! I'll be here all week. Try the lamb.
Yes.
Of course, by legalizing it.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
Keep adding additional rules, regulations and laws and people tend to start breaking more laws since more of them exist to break.
If I can not smoke in heaven, then I shall not go. -- Mark Twain
The illegal exports bound for Iran have involved such items as missile guidance systems, Improvised Explosive Device (IED) components, military aircraft parts, night vision systems and other materials.
...
The firehose of technology flowing overseas isn't the result necessarily of a coordinated effort by a group of terrorists or even governments but rather private-sector businessmen, scientists, students, and academics from overseas are among the most active collectors of sensitive US technology. Most did not initially come to the US with that intent. Instead, after finding that they had access to technology in demand overseas, they engaged in illegal collection to satisfy a desire for profits, acclaim, or patriotism to their home nations, the DOJ stated.
"Hello, airport officer. I'm an Iranian teacher and I'm going back to Iran with this missile guidance system. Ok, right? I'm not a terrorist or something."
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
were commodities readily available elsewhere but restricted, like standard cryptographic algorithms, from export from the USA -- even if they were originally imported?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Is this spike for real, or is it the result of increased enforcement efforts?
...laura
Yeah, and cows don't WANT to be eaten, but they taste good with barbecue sauce...
Similarly, information might "want" to be free, but giving other countries our technology is a stupid move, so it's not going to.
And what the fuck does "Information wants to be free" even mean or justify anyway?
Good thing there wasn't another attempt, otherwise the counter would've overflowed.
WORD.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
Just ignore him, he's a hippie.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Where, oh where is the DoC and DoJ when it comes to forbidding the export of this abomination called DRM?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
The cost of educating a person is very high.
What of the net import in technical expertise ?
Often some of the very best students go to US, and end up staying and doing high end re-search.
The US didn't have to pay to feed and bring up this person. If this person is 1 in 100,
the US didn't have to pay and feed and educate 100 people and selectively keep only the best one without having to bother
with the rest.
I would say that the US is getting the good end of the deal
G
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_wants_to_be_free
It's a really interesting observation that some people turn into ideology.
The Department of Justice this week said it has placed criminal charges or convictions against more than 255 defendants in the past two fiscal years â" 145 in 2008 and 110 in 2007. That 255 number represents more than a six-fold increase from fiscal year 2005, when the DOJ said about 40 individuals or companies were convicted of over 100 criminal violations of export control laws
So how many were charged and then aquitted in 2005?
...if we get over 256 the DoJ might crash.
Don't confuse information with technology. Most of the prosecutions were for exporting goods, not IP.
Legalize the export, so we can build it here and sell it overseas.
The alternative is to force capital out to a market where the technology can be produced, marketed globally and then imported back into this country.
Have gnu, will travel.
... and then, if you scroll down a little in the referenced article, this line is interesting: "Mexico seems to be the hotspot for illegal exports of firearms, including assault weapons and rifles, as well as large quantities of ammunition, the DOJ stated." So, apparently bullets are part of this "illegal export of [US] technology"
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
We import bright people from around the world to do it for us. At least we used to. Many of them have gone back home to compete on fair terms. Others work at research centers funded by US multinationals like GE, Microsoft and IBM. Why the US seeks to restrict what foreign people make in foreign countries is as much a mystery as the IP Empire that claims ownership to the fundamental ideas involved. Less and less of this stuff is home grown and made.
I used to work for Bae Systems in Farnborough and the management there would constantly bemoan the fact that the US couldn't/wouldn't share any technological advances with us for x number of years. We, of course, were expected to share with them, lest we sacrifice our special agreements and co-operations.
My web domain.
I am shocked that many more arrests and convictions did not take place. In the mid 1980 era we had numerous stops at air ports in which the government brought in specialists and checked both credentials and the circuit boards that we were carrying within the US. It seems that they were vigilant enough to be concerned that a hand off to another passenger would not take place on a domestic flight to a person who would later fly to another nation. Most of these circuit boards were for robotics.
What I got from TFA is, "We want to keep our monopoly on the arms trade." It's obviously true that China/India/who-have-you can build and export these things cheaper, what with the lack of the bulk of our labor law and virtually zero environmental restrictions. The same reason they can build and export anything else cheaper. Ultimately, we want to sell other countries fighter *jets*, not fighter jet technology. The appeal to fear may be effective. But several nations are nuclear with delivery capability to get warheads here already -- that point's really kind of moot.
I mean, I know many Americans like to believe the US invented absolutely everything and are ahead of everyone else technologically, but in fact they really didn't and aren't.
But this is surely a US invented technology... and IMHO nothing to be proud of, as it already caused famines in Africa and, worst of all, was actually designed to lead to just that consequence.
Maybe a few export bans of some US technology like this one wouldn't be so wrong, after all?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
That appeared to be talking about the physical costs to getting information out. As in it costs next to nothing to physically post. It does not appear to me to justify at all the sharing of state secrets that can be used against the US. It doesn't mean that there is no way or no reason to keep any information secret or private. ...Of course, the fact that I got modded flamebait tells me something about the mindset of people who subscribe to that ideology.
Does it work? Sure. Does it fail? Sure. The "bad guys" do get some, but often not everything. And the critical experience is actually pretty easy to control.
Whether the US should or not is a totally different matter. But it dates from 1790, depriving the evil English Navy of pine logs to make into masts & spars.
...and yet, information hates to be anthromorphized. It's funny that way.
I think we can generalize it as "people want to be free" (to propagate information, and to do business with whoever they want), then.
Evil has no border and they'll chase everyone down, because they don't need no stinkin' Constitution as long as a war is declared. War negates all social contracts and bonds to their oaths. War has nothing to do with duty, it is ordered dissociation from civil authority and seizure by minority. What may be known as justice in civil aspect could be looked upon as legalized barbary in military. This is typical in a change of regime for a country.
Go to Google and search for information on all the assassinations of civil-authorized Generals before and after September 11 2001. It is linked to the British Crown having groomed their New World representative Bush and company, to remove the former authorities to install theirs. All you can do is return to the Holy Bible and make pact to nearest kin for successors and accord to good neighbors for fellowship.
Have you noticed how the original "The DOJ is fascist! Information wants to be free!" hippie got modded "insightful" but everyone else in this thread got modded "troll"?
The "information wants to be free" crowd includes RMS, though he didn't originate the phrase (he has been said to). One of Stallman's philosophies included the philosophy that information is inherently a resource we all have a right to; that security systems to guard the knowledge of how to do anything is in essence offensive, and should not exist. He basically condemns every attempt to protect trade secrets and any sort of technology whatsoever; I don't think he's silly enough to believe personal information should be published, but who is?
This is, essentially, being a hippie. The Big Guverment and Big Corporations want to keep us oppressed with their Big Secrets, but we can do whatever the hell they want and subvert their secrets at every turn! Information wants to be free!
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Most of the stuff the US is still export-controlling either has commercial uses or non-US sources. If you look at the indictments, the big one was about someone exporting carbon fibre materials to the China Space Agency. Why is the US trying to stop that? There's some noise about how carbon fibre might be somehow used to enrich uranium. China already has its own enrichment plants, nuclear weapons, and nuclear reactors. They don't need a centrifuge enrichment plant, except maybe for cost reduction. The US tries, for some reason, to slow down China's space program by refusing to export certain space-related items. Not that it makes much difference; the Chinese space program seems to be doing just fine.
It's hard to think of anything in computing that you can't get outside the US. Nor is there any military computing application that really requires more compute power that you couldn't put together from stuff you could mail order from Taiwan or China.
Arms control and technology export control are different issues. Arms control is intended to make it harder for people we don't like to get firepower in bulk. It's not about the underlying technology; it's about production. Most of the cases mentioned are pure arms control issues.
They were found to be unconstitutional when they were run by the State Department, and they were quickly transferred to the Department of Commerce when Dan Bernstein won his lawsuit over it. These are not the only such export regulations, but these are the ones that prevent your telephone calls, banking transactions, and email from having far more robust protection end to end. This government, and previous ones do not want to permit robust protection from foreign or from their own country's uses. This would otherwise present a great deal of warrant-free and unlimited monitoring, such as that done by the US 'Carnivore' program, which is still in use with a new name, and the kind of backbone monitor over which the EFF is suing the NSA and AT&T.
Make no mistake, those regulations are unconstitutional. Nothing magically changed except liability when they got moved, and now the specter of 'terrorism' is being raised to prevent their end.
they would have no need to buy our overpriced crap.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Just as soon as they stop all the cocaine from coming in.
Stasis is death. Embrace change.
Some of the more bizarre items I have been prevented from buying or even viewing on the US eBay (I am in Australia), have been a pair of Leitz binoculars and a Hewlett Packard stethscope (neither of which were invented by Americans ..... note the word invented).
Cheers
"You've got a chart filling a whole wall with interlocking pathways and reactions to shock and the researcher says "If I can just control this one molecule/enzyme/compound I'll stop the whole negative physiologic cascade of post haemorrhagic shock." Yeah, right."
Which was the last US government that didn't illegally export arms?
If what you say is true, then these people wouldn't have stolen it from the US, and the receivers would just get it somewhere else. Why get caught if its so available elsewhere?
The fact is the US is the technological leader in the world, and we did invent or perfected most modern technologies today.
Checkmate. I win.
Moderators, please mod down parent, and mod this comment up.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...security systems to guard the knowledge of how to do anything is in essence offensive, and should not exist.
Did he say anything about what to do when less enlightened dictators use our now open-to-everyone missile technology against us?
When industry and the government do not show people any reason to be proud of their country, why should they be motivated to keep things within their country? Give no other motivation, people will simply sell to the highest bidder.
Sad, but what to do about it? Elect Obama? I don't think that's much of a solution.
export of US technology maybe we should instead license that technology to other nations in exchange of 10% of the profits from that licensed technology?
Intellectual Property Rights stand in the way of competition and free enterprise. I am sure that many Slashdot readers agree with me that Microsoft is using IP rights to create a Monopoly and sue anyone who dares try to invent the same technology, or else buy them out, or else make things like important API calls as undocumented. Microsoft tried to use SCO to use XENIX/SCO Unix IP to sue IBM and other Linux contributors. Microsoft did not like that Linux became the next big thing and started to become more popular, so Microsoft and SCO did what they could via IP rights to stop Linux.
If other nations love and need US technology so bad, they ought to be willing to pay to license it in exchange for at least 10% of the profits from that technology and that way they can legally export US technology and still keep 90% of the profits to grow their economy.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
such as aluminum cylinders for refining uranium hexafluoride, or computer chips hardened against cosmic rays for ICBMs, are thing you don't pick up at newegg and reship to iran. simple as that
if it is something the average american joe can buy, it is something the average iranian jamal can buy. nothing to be done about it except accept. nonissue, nonstory
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There is technology in the US not available elsewhere? News to me. In fact most interesting stuff is imported into the US today....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You got it backwards, it should be "we can do whatever the hell we want and subvert their secrets at every turn!"
Although, your version makes sense in a Brazil sort of way.
Quoted: "This is, essentially, being a hippie. The Big Guverment and Big Corporations want to keep us oppressed with their Big Secrets, but we can do whatever the hell they want and subvert their secrets at every turn! Information wants to be free!"
I'm an individual! Just like everyone else!
Why is the DoJ talking in fiscal years? Has law become a profit center lately? :-P
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
What does it matter. All our stuff in made in china anyways and then sold as a knock-off on Ebay.
is haliburton export US technologies? http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=77754
That appeared to be talking about the physical costs to getting information out.
I see the Information wants to be free as an observation that information spreads easily, and that once something is out, you can't lock it up again, just like you can't put a genie back into a bottle.
A good example of this is the Streisand Effect, in which some entity tries to force the removal of some piece of information from the internet, but since the attempt makes people perceive the information as valuable, large numbers make sure that they get a copy themselves. Poster cases for this effect is the attempt by certain movie companies to remove a HD-DVD encryption key from the internet. The attempt seriously backfired, making the encryption key one of the most well-known large numbers on the internet.
If they want to sell me heroin and I want to buy it, why not? As long as the "heroin business" consists of consensual agreements between two people, I don't see the problem.
Recently I was forced to sit through an online training with regards to US export controls. The regulations are insane. I came away wondering why any high tech company would want to incorporate in the US with these kind of laws on the book. For instance you could be in violation if you show foreign visitors around your company and they get a fleeting look at a white-board that discusses a strong encryption algorithm. Same thing if you discuss such a "sensitive" technology on the phone with a foreigner. Absolutely and totally nuts.
Maybe I'm missing something, but why are they comparing the total number of convictions in two years (2008 and 2007) to the total number of convictions in 1 year (2005)? Isn't this more like a 145/40 = 3.6-fold increase in the conviction rate between 2008 and 2005 not a (145 + 100)/40 = 6.1-fold increase?
Yes I am scatterbrained.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
Nothing much has changed. Smaller stuff like special electronics can be easily hidden inside perfectly legal consumer electronic devices and the $8/hr TSA guy working at the airport will never know the difference. Unless you completely seal borders (??how??) and cut off all tourism etc, you're just doing it for show.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You exported a computer?
"Firearms to Canada â" On June 19, 2008, Ugur Yildiz was arrested and charged in a criminal complaint in the Northern District of Illinois with illegally exporting some 220 firearms from Chicago to Canada in 2006. The investigation was conducted by ICE and the ATF."
Reminds me of this story: http://www.satirewire.com/news/feb02/warship.shtml
No, when he said "...and yet, information hates to be anthromorphized" he was correct.
Or, at least, he would have been if he'd typed anthropomorphized.
Do you think that China/India/Korea/wherever's government would prosecute someone that "stole" intellectual property from the US? Look at the drug industry, a drug patent lasts 20yrs, yet India and China freely copy patented drugs rather than buying them from the US based company. If the drug could help stop the spread of HIV, and would cost quite a bit to purchase, of course those countries are going to violate the patents.
If I was one of these countries I'd do the same. Why pay for something in time, money, effort, research when you can just get it for free.
I don't recall seeing morality having a dollar figure.
The Department of Justice this week said it has placed criminal charges or convictions against more than 255 defendants in the past two fiscal years -- 145 in 2008 and 110 in 2007. That 255 number represents more than a six-fold increase from fiscal year 2005, when the DOJ said about 40 individuals or companies were convicted of over 100 criminal violations of export control laws.
Apparently they went to the "baffle them with bullshit" school of math - if the above is an accurate depiction.
In 2005, 40 individuals were convicted.
In 2007 and 2008 combined, 255 were indicted.
In 2005, enforcement effort was ???
In 2005, indictment count was ???
In 2007 and 2008 combined, conviction count was ???
In 2007 and 2008, enforcement effort was ???
From the above, we can conclude: very little. The only thing we can say for sure about those numbers is that "six-fold increase" is bullshit. If every single one of those 255 individuals indicted is convicted on at least one count (extremely unlikely), the annual rate is only 127.5, which is only 3x. Even that would only speak of conviction rates, not attempt rates. Enforcement has almost certainly increased given the general increase in federal participation in intellectual property and trade secret law.
I'm not saying it has not grown, nor whether it should be a greater or lesser focus at the federal level. But the above statement, if accurately portrayed, is disingenuous at best, and deceitful at worst.
The first step in having a serious discourse about federal policy is to present the issue honestly.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Aah, well then. I expect you'll be manning up within minutes to post your name, address, SSN, and full banking details then.
Someone brings this up in just about every story about copyrights or patents, and even in this story, you're not the only one. But some people don't understand the difference between trying to restrict obviously private data and trying to restrict data whose author has published it on purpose. Identity details are the former; works of entertainment are more often the latter. Trade secret law and equivalent laws apply to the former but not to the latter.
Apart from things like missile guidance components and IED parts for Iran I really wonder why such exports should be stopped. There is a market for them after all and most of it can be second-sourced.
I'm sure that the export has been going on for a long time now. Right now what we are seeing that the government needs more revenue. There are hundreds of laws on the books that never get enforced because doing so has been perceived as being too costly. With the Fed facing huge short falls I predict that we are going to see more and more sitautions like this one. Where as the Fed used to turn and look the other way in "good times", they are now going to be taking extra steps to rein in these sorts of operations.
The problem is the heroin business doesn't have any senators in its pocket. Yet.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Sorry, that's completely unnecessary. Fascism works perfectly well with an armed populace.. They simply have to be stupid enough to be led around by emotive arguments. For example, the argument "OMG, the other guy wants to take away all your money and guns!!1!" would work perfectly well on you.
Unless you can ensure 100% enforcement, people have to believe that what they're doing is wrong for you to have any hope of stopping it.
Blocking anything and everything that might have some potential military application just isn't going to happen, the money is too good and people won't believe they're doing something wrong. Add to that the fact that any information freely available here will fundamentally be freely available everywhere because of the internet, and you've really got to be realistic about what you want to block and why.
Pretty much no one wants to give detailed specs for military hardware/software to our enemies(whoever they may be), but selling carbon fibre to the chinese is going to be hard to stop, and largely impractical since if we don't sell it someone else will.
Trying to block the export of certain kinds of software is also pretty much pointless particularly as a large number of people not only don't believe that it's dangerous to give it to other people, but also fundamentally disagree with keeeping it to ourselves.
Like everything else, you've got to be reasonable in what you want so that you can ensure the stuff that's really important gets covered.
So is incessant war mongering a trait you look for when you enter the voting booth? How is developing weapons and using them on others an indicator of enlightenment? If all information was free and open, then maybe some countries would spend more time brokering peace and improving the world instead of making sure that they are able to crush their enemies first. I don't understand blind nationalism. I love where I live, but if the politicians here get much worse, I'm either leaving the country or revolting. We're all the same after all, despite our great number of differences.
I see the Information wants to be free as an observation that information spreads easily, and that once something is out, you can't lock it up again, just like you can't put a genie back into a bottle.
The specific quote on the wiki page was talking about costs, that's what I was referring to.
As far as the genie in a bottle goes, that's generally true but doesn't explain why we should stop trying to keep our weapons technology from ending up in Iran.
Information wants to be free? Great. Iran wants to nuke us. We need to stop both.
If all information was free and open, then maybe some countries would spend more time brokering peace and improving the world instead of making sure that they are able to crush their enemies first.
Good lord, what species are you talking about? If Iran had a nuke, they'd destroy Israel or give it to Al Quaeda who would blow up New York. Mutually assured destruction only worked in the cold war because the stakes were so insanely high and both parties were semi-rational. You can't say the same about north korea or Iran, or suicide bombers. I'm a pretty extreme liberal, but there is absolutely no way giving everyone the know how to build weapons is going to end well.
I don't understand blind nationalism.
Well, obviously, as you're not seeing it right now. That was realism.
I love where I live, but if the politicians here get much worse, I'm either leaving the country or revolting.
Well, then it's a very VERY good thing you don't know how to build a missile.
What exactly is the point of giving the total cases for 2007 and 2008, then noting that it's six times the number of convictions in the SINGLE YEAR of 2005? Yeah, six times sounds awful. The ACTUAL number is 3 times. Well, it would be if we were comparing apples to apples, but since we're comparing indictments to convictions....
He didn't say, "I want information to be free." He said, "Information wants to be free."
It's exactly because information "wants" to be free that posting personal information here is a bad idea. It wouldn't stay here. It would spread.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The problem is the heroin business doesn't have any senators in its pocket. Yet.
You mean anymore, right? The United States used to export heroin once upon a time.
Likely stuff like timers or cell phones. I don't think they have any real shortage of explosives, but the electronics to make the bomb explode when you want it to may be in shorter supply.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I would have bet that the USA **loves** free trade. Restriction on the export ? Good Lord ! Don't tell that to Milton Friedman ! Oh what ? He's already dead ? No wonder.
Next time i will learn the USA have restriction laws on import two !
What does it mean, "appended to the end of comments you post"
About selling Technology: US company daughters sold in the 60s and 70s HiTech equipment to USSR and Soviet Block by "repairing" older items.
The US mothers liked it! Especially for their financial profit!
And the CIA put in their spy devices :-)
the arguments about nukes is not really correct. Nothing happened back in cold war era because we were lucky and there were only two systems that could go on destroying all there was and they were under tight control of semi civilized and organized forces. Now if you imagine every lunatic around having an access to a dirty bomb if not a real one then that is dangerous. Most likely it will happen eventually.
Whether restrictions help in preventing this scenarios I doubt. The question is rather: do countries using such policies have enough stamina to compete with the rest and stay on top or not. If they do then they survive anyway if not then no amount of control will prevent demise. Practically there is an issue of control and how much of it is enough. Openness is good. But complete transparency (provided it is at all possible) may not be so good for anybody.
You know I read somewhere recently that a majority (I will look for the story and post a link) people do not think that software use of the unlicensed variety is not stealing. This coupled with the fact that it is so ease to get information from one place to another seems to be part of the problem. How many forums have you been on that have license keys to software or other IP that seem to imply that it is OK to share this information? I believe that we need to start to instil in our children right and wrong and it needs to include that it is not OK to steal software or anything else for that matter. You cannot âoetaste testâ fruit in a grocery store, you cannot download copyrighted documents with impunity, and you cannot give these things away to the general public because it is stealing and it is wrong.
This probably happens more by chance then intentionally probably. You generally need an import export license to do international business with people in other countries but with the advent of tools like Ebay, people are finding themselves sending things overseas without the benefit of a license or the knowledge of any restrictions.
This in itself isn't bad, it just means that people are ignorant of the laws surrounding what they are dealing with. It doesn't make sense that you can sell or give you neighbor something buy not a guy in Mexico or Kenya or some south African country. I know a guy who might have been one of those stats within the last two years if he didn't follow my advice. He sells farm equipment and listed something that was ordered but declined on purchase (the original buyer had a problem coming up with the money). It was a sprayer but the pump connected to it was for come reason restricted on exports. I think it has something to do with the pressures and the chemical rating or something alone those lines- they don't really tell you why.
Anyways, I told him he should ask the US customs department before shipping it to south Africa. Sure enough, that item was restricted because of the pump. We called the manufacturer and they said a different pump was used in exports and he ordered one. We swapped it out and sent it and as far as I know, everyone was happy. I guess a lot of times, stuff gets lost at the border in African countries but we had a US government number on it for the approval for export and the guy received it without problem.
The point is that the internet makes it easy for people with no specific training to the laws and the restrictions to do busyness in other countries. Some of this can put people in violation of laws that they never knew existed.
Hmm.... I dunno.
If I was currently selling illegal drugs in the US and wanted to continue to rake in giant piles of money I'd be making political donations to whoever was pushing the "tough on drugs" laws with a little note along the lines of "keep up the good work mate".
Why? Well if it was legalised I'd be ruined!
Who was hurt most by the ending of prohibition? The mob of course, they wanted it to never end.
Legal distributors selling safer cheaper drugs would push them out of the market entirely.
The best thing that can happen for them is for a competitor to be busted, they can just expand into their former market overnight. Sure they might be busted themselves but the organisations which survive and grow will be the ones which are best at avoiding getting caught.
I've heard that during prohibition foreign alcohol producers quietly lobbied to keep prohibition since consumption didn't go down, the American producers were pushed out of business and import taxes went the way of the morning mist.
Few people seem to be able to graps this, drug laws just create a situation where there's a group of people distributing drugs with a large financial incentive to expand their market.
Want to get rid of the drug dealers? It only takes a few easy and cheap steps.
Step 1: Provide free high quality drugs to people already addicted with no criminal penalties or consequences to people who come forward and ask for them.
Step 2: You're basicly done, you've knocked the bottom out of the drug buisness, you are now the distributor and you have no reason to try to get more people addicted. Drug dealers can no longer make any profit out of getting kids addicted since they just go to you when it starts costing money.
Much much much much cheaper than the massive failure that the war on drugs is.
The Brotherhood of Steel needs a monopoly on it to restore order to the wastelands!
Wait, what's going on? I lost track of time. Do you guys know what day it is?
Thing is the know how isn't the big deal. Any decent group of physics PHDs and professors could build a bomb with the right materials. The only thing really stopping every tom dick and harry from building one is the uranium enrichment. That takes serious money and time to get working.
Look at it this way. Your country doesn't have to maintain expensive scientific research centres. You have outsourced your research to America, and made them pick up the tab.
Then you can steal the results back.
You are getting the good end of the deal.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Just do it like oracle... ask all your clients to assert they are not from Iran, Cuba, North Korea or in any way related to terrorism. If they say they don't, go ahead and sell.
it is silly that it has occurred to no one that perhaps this is simply a result of 'technology' playing an increasingly significant role in the workings of the world. But no, it's probably that theft is rising. Of course. It always is.
-- arstchnca
--
But drug use will not be diminished even if it is the government that sells the drugs. Look at Holland: drug use went up, from the moment the 'light' drugs were allowed in coffee shops.
Your plan simply changes the owner of the drug business. But, in essence, the goal is not achieved. People will continue to use drugs, no matter what.
Ahum that had much more todo with the historical context in which these numbers come from. You know the seventies with the hippies. It is a well established fact that drugs usage in the Netherlands is considerable lower than the European average or the USA for that matter. See http://www.drugwarfacts.org/thenethe.htm for some hard numbers.
2 situations:
1: You legalise it and let normal businesses supply drugs.
Result:
-higher quality drugs so no more drugs cut with ground glass etc.
-the criminal aspect drops away since there's so little profit in it unless you set really really high taxes on it.
-There's still a group with a reason to try to get new people hooked on drugs.
2: You don't legalise selling drugs but the government supplies free drugs like I said.
Result:
-nobody can sell drugs profitably.
-the criminal aspect drops away unless you're retarded and stigmatise people who come forward for the drugs.
-The government certainly isn't going to try to get more customers since the more addicts they supply the more it costs, they have no reason to get jimmy idiot addicted.
1 is better for personal freedom and all that.
2 is better if you want to have the minimum number of people addicted to drugs.
Drug dealers would shit themselves at the idea of either situation coming to pass.
Doesn't the DoJ know exactly how man?
Perhaps they were trying to save precious disk space by recording the number of cases in a byte-wide field and the database is now suffering from an overflow exception?
Andy Warhol got it right / Everybody gets the limelight
Andy Warhol got it wrong / Fifteen minutes is too long.
but giving other countries our technology is a stupid move,
Technology like the Playstation with a label underneath saying that it was illegal to export it from the US, which I bought in Hong Kong back in the 90's and brought to the terrorist nation Sweden?
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
Well now this is not a new occurence. For decades now technology that was originally invented by Americans winds up being implemented by foreign companies. Really, it is our OWN fault. If we had companies that were actually willing and interested in investing in "risky" technologies we would be OK. A good example is when the transistor was invented in the 50's. The dumb heads that ran RCA weren't interested so the technology was taken to Japan. For that matter look at Xerox. They could've owned the personal computer industry. But the conservative idiots in NY that run the company were not interested in what the PARC lab in CA was doing. Now, in that case Apple picked up the technology for a graphical user interface. If we want to stop this export of technology then we have to stop having companies that shun promising technologies because their corporate thinking prevents the development of radical new technologies. Instead, low risk is the name of the game and lining one's pockets with a quick buck. Without risk you don't get anywhere. There have been examples of risk taking in the US. Getting to the moon in the 60's comes to mind. However, other examples of corporate stodginess and group think have killed innovation in American business as well. Look at detroit. Only now did they start really building some good cars before they are almost completely bankrupt. No, instead the mismanagement and bean counting techniques in Detroit killed the American car business. :)
2: You don't legalise selling drugs but the government supplies free drugs like I said.
The government would need to be sure they are always updated with the latest new drugs. Otherwise the dealers will start selling the "new and improved" drugs and will have incentives to make people addicted to their drugs, instead of the government drugs. Yes, it would be difficult to compete with free products (even if the free products are "inferior), but I think there will be demand for non-free products anyway.
BTW, I would be really pissed if government starts using the money they stole from me to pay for other people's addictions.
Huh? Whoever said the goal was to get people to stop using drugs? The goal is to end the violence, save the huge taxpayer cost, and stop the other dangers (such as cutting coke with rat poison), not to get people to stop.
A big problem with this is that the definition of "dual-use technologies" covers almost anything more complex than an electric blanket. Some years ago as part of a due diligence exercise I had to perform a check against the export-control lists and used a Dell flyer that had arrived that day as a test case. Almost every single product on this generic Dell sales brochure violated at least one and sometimes several restrictions in the export control lists: chips with more than 208 pins, graphics performance above some early-90s level, software that performed network routing, the number of pitfalls is endless. So waving your hands and making a fuss about "illegal technology exports" sounds pretty scary until you realise they're talking about things like a 486 laptop with a Trio64 video card running Slackware 3.1.
Nice argument, but how do you know that the person coming to you for their free supply is already an addict? Remember the reason a lot of people become addicts in the first place is that they are living miserable lives and heroin (or whatever) gives them a temporary escape. If they see their mates blissed out on government smack, what's to stop them also going along and pretending to be an addict?
At least having a cost attached limits their ability to afford it.
It's better than that. We're phasing out the feeding and education of own own citizens as well. Cha-ching!
I should have put it more strongly: "When industry and government have both been engaged in selling out their country, why should individuals be motivated to do differently?"
you know, sometimes i wonder, just how close we would be to those sci-fi movies, if we would put all our technology together, regardless of patents and military secrets ... i think we would have colonized Mars by now ...
Now we see more warmongers spreading the message that Iran must be trying to attack us, so of course we must attack Iran.
You idiot, I never said we should attack Iran. That doesn't mean we should be giving them our weapons. It's precisely BECAUSE they don't have our weapons systems that we have no reason to attack them: they pose little threat.
Now if you "Information should all be shared" types had your way, that would be different.
And not for nothing, if "information wants to be free" applies to everything, why the hell are you all posting AC?
I see the Information wants to be free as an observation that information spreads easily, and that once something is out, you can't lock it up again, just like you can't put a genie back into a bottle.
Information is inanimate; its has no wants or desires. People want information to be free.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
The trouble is that the US government got into an irrational "boost exports", "multiculturalism" kick. The US government and business executives are still making concessions on top of concessions to thugs like the Red Chinese, in hopes that one day they will increase freedom and open up to enough legal exports from the USA to make some profits. Nixon and every US president since has bent over backwards for them. But, instead of opening up, the Red Chinese subborned those US executives into helping violate people's rights, and planted over 3,000 front businesses for their spying and lobbying in the USA. (Fortunately, there have also been a few deals like the Lenovo buy-out from Ill-Begotten Monstrosities, and source-code grabs from trash producer M$.)
Your plan simply changes the owner of the drug business. But, in essence, the goal is not achieved. People will continue to use drugs, no matter what.
Where do you get the idea that the goal is getting nobody doing drugs? The goal is to reduce the crime associated with drugs. Given the fact that the overwhelming majority of the problems generally associated with drugs are caused by drug laws rather than drugs themselves it does solve the problem.
If you really think it's the government's business to try and stop everyone from doing what they want to with no harm to you merely becasue you disapprove, then perhaps you should move somewhere like China where that sort of attitude is normal rather than remaining in a free country when you obviously don't like freedom.
Allowing Hitachi America to get away with exporting a multiaxis milling machine complete with the software to drive it. Up till then, the screws on russian subs were so noisy, and each sub had their own unique noise signature that our hydrophone listening devices scattered about the ocean could identify what sub was backing out of the docks on the russian north coast by the time it had moved 100 yards. This was in the height of the cold war. Our subs OTOH could move at classified speeds underwater so quietly that if their sonars didn't catch the ping, they never knew we were within miles, let alone the few yards away that we actually were. In one instance, we caught one of theirs off the Carolina coast, and he found he was 'made' so he went to the bottom to wait us out. But we had air recyclers they didn't. When he tried to blow the tanks and surface for air, he found our sub sitting on him. I don't think he heard it when the hulls made contact & we kept silent. Held him down for another bit of time just to make the point, then beat him to the surface. That sub captain probably went home to a firing squad because he allowed that to happen.
Within a year or two of that machines exportation by Hitachi America, the russian subs suddenly started getting as quiet as ours. So our hydrophones became worthless as we couldn't hear them anymore. But by then, the cold war was winding down. And that was just one of the reasons we won that war.
Hitachi? Got a slap on the wrist, where the actual act should have been treason charges & a trip to ACE Hardware for some new rope.
That seemed to take the heart out of any reason to keep Phil Zimmerman jailed, so he was released after a while, I suspect with instructions to add a back door to PGP, which is the reason I personally have never used a newer than 2.6.2 release. And haven't used that in years as I no longer care what my government thinks of me since its so plain they think I'm just another of the sheeple. All they have to do is wait for me to fall over (74 and diabetic now) and they won't be out a dime.
It all boils down to its not being who you know, its who you blow. Very abundantly proven by the facts. Sigh...
--
Cheers, Gene
I know that, please read my post again. I see the "Information wants to be free" expression as a way of saying that information is hard or even impossible to lock up once it is out in the open. It does not mean that information literally has any desires.
Is that really so? I always heard "the first one is always free" applied to addictive behaviour. If you WANT or don't mind to get addicted, you can do it easily enough in any case.
Don't outlaw the export of technology at all. If something is so dangerous that some subset of irresponsible people shouldn't have access to it, then outlaw manufacturing it in the first place!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The rules are interpreted in such as way that anything can be interpreted as violating ITAR and its cousin TAA. I have been told that a bolt size is subject to TAA....because the bolt holds down a battery charger......that charges a battery.....that fits onto a military radio. I have alos been involved in a design of a vehicle, where we approached an American engine manufacturer. They wanted us to sign in blood that the ingine would not be used in a vehicle that had any military application whatsoever. We found out later that this was because they had developed an engine for worldwide export, and some vehicle manufacturer had put it into a military truck. The engine was now deemed to be subjetct to ITAR and their export sales plummeted to zero. With rules like these it is no surprise that people break them. I thought the British held the crown on stupid regulations applied stupidly, but the Americans have us beat.
Thing is the know how isn't the big deal. Any decent group of physics PHDs and professors could build a bomb with the right materials. The only thing really stopping every tom dick and harry from building one is the uranium enrichment. That takes serious money and time to get working.
Fewer lunatics with nukes => fewer dead. You can work either on limiting nuke production or preventing lunatic playgrounds from emerging (or perhaps work on both?)
The CIA has been working hard for a few years to create these playgrounds. Before anyone explodes (and I'm looking at you), I like the U.S. My country would probably have been invaded by the Soviet Union during the cold war had it not for the U.S. ability to whop ass globally.
Now with that said, relax and read on.
The CIA has done some really crazy stuff during the years. Installing dictators responsible for killing and torturing people. They helped Contras in Nicaragua (which involved drugdeals). As long as Irak and Saddam was against Iran they didn't care that he used mustardgas against his own people. They trained "a highly religious faction" in Afghanistan and gave them weapons.
Does anybody see a pattern here? If you are ok to work alongside bastards because they are your enemies enemy, you should not be surprised if they turn out to be bastards once the old enemy is gone. After all, you knew this already.
Again, I like the U.S. and I like your constitution, I just don't like everything that the CIA does. Their type of action hurts your country in the long run and breeds this crazy hatred of the U.S.A. around the globe. (Bring on the flames)
She made the willows dance
Oh, don't worry! Our xenophobic government and populace has been going through pains to encourage students not to come to the US, e.g. making visas more difficult to obtain.
It's only fair, after all.
A, that is a flase statemtn about Holland and drugs.
B, If adults want to do drugs, who are you to say no?
Seriously, I don't do illegal drugs, but it's not like they are hard to get. There just dangerous to get becasue they are controlled by criminals.
"People will continue to use drugs, no matter what"
Exactly, so why not make it safe, regulated, taxed, and a known dosage?
The only people that don't want drugs legal are the people that it makes money for: Police departments and criminals.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Remember the reason a lot of people become addicts in the first place is that they are living miserable lives and heroin (or whatever) gives them a temporary escape"
um..no.
"At least having a cost attached limits their ability to afford it."
Yep, legalize it, regulated it and let the market determine a price.
Turn it froma cost center to a profit center. Tax it to fund clinics. There was a time in the US where Heroine addicts had normal jobs, functional well most of the time and shot up on their own time.
now they are driven out into the street, deprived of a way to make money, shunned and left as desperate people who have no recourse to survive other then stealing or street prostitution. The crime the is attached to drug use is becasue it is illegal and people have no real choice.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It's precisely BECAUSE they don't have our weapons systems that we have no reason to attack them: they pose little threat.
But since you have your weapon systems, you are a big threat. Or at least you will be if Sarah Palin ever becomes president of the United States. Then I suggest the EU unite and launch a preemptive all-out attack on the United States.
The US likes preemptive strikes against religious fundamentalists, so why can't we?
BTW, I would be really pissed if government starts using the money they stole from me to pay for other people's addictions.
It already is being used to deal with the problems. You pay for police who try to enforce the drug laws and your house gets broken into by someone looking for something to sell to fund his habit. My way is just cheaper.
Well the UK is a bigger market with lax drug laws, scale makes a difference to these things as well.
The cigarettes just mean that the taxes have got so high that it's worth it for criminal gangs to move them.
You pay for police who try to enforce the drug laws and your house gets broken into by someone looking for something to sell to fund his habit.
I wouldn't need to pay for law enforcement if the thing wasn't illegal in the first place. And the burglary problem would be diminished because the cost of drugs would drop greatly. Most of the cost of drugs today is the cost of working around law enforcement.
I don't disagree with your way completely (it is better than making drugs illegal, in my opinion). But I think it won't be needed anyore, once prohibition stops.
So, drugs are good? no problem with them?
Having to use drugs (or any other substance) to achieve satisfaction is a symptom of an ill society. A healthy society requires healthy citizens, in mind and in body. Using drugs is, in many cases, not really a choice of the person doing the drugs, but the result of peer pressure (i.e. "take drugs to look cool or fit in").
You mistakenly think of promiscuity as freedom.
Unless you're physically forced it's still your choice, I don't give a fuck about someone who's too weak willed to resist peer pressure. promiscuity isn't freedom but the freedom to be promiscuous if you wish certainly is freedom.
So what if they're not? you're not actively trying to get them to come to you, you're not pushing them on them in a crowded club while their too drunk to think straight. And as it stands they can get their first few doses completely free from their local dealer anyway.
You cannot "taste test" fruit in a grocery store, you cannot download copyrighted documents with impunity, and you cannot give these things away to the general public because it is stealing and it is wrong.
Don't be a jackass. If you aren't going to bother addressing the obvious differences between copyright infringement and petty theft, then you don't have any business expressing your ignorant opinion on the subject.
http://outcampaign.org/
Don't be a jackass. If you aren't going to bother addressing the obvious differences between copyright infringement and petty theft, then you don't have any business expressing your ignorant opinion on the subject.
The point is, since you are incapable of figuring it out yourself, that accountability has completely gone out the window. Whether I am a jackass or not has nothing to do with my comparison of petty theft to anything. I am a jackass because I am a jackass, it is unrelated to the topic. The obvious similarity is that both are wrong and the fact that you feel that there are different levels of wrong demonstrates how right I am. Rest assured that my opinion is anything but ignorant.
Having to use drugs (or any other substance) to achieve satisfaction is a symptom of an ill society.
Nobody said anything about having to do something. Wanting to do something for fun is perfectly healthy and normal. Excessive use can lead to problems, but let's not pretend that's anywhere near the majority of drug use.
A healthy society requires healthy citizens, in mind and in body. Using drugs is, in many cases, not really a choice of the person doing the drugs, but the result of peer pressure (i.e. "take drugs to look cool or fit in").
In most cases, however, it is the choice of the person. You just keep taking fringe cases and pretending that's the norm.
You mistakenly think of promiscuity as freedom.
Which is idiotic nonsense. I said nothing that could be interpreted that way.
If somebody wants to be promiscuous, then good for them. They have the freedom to do so and I have no right or reason to stand in their way. Given certain precautions, it's a perfectly healthy, happy choice.
But since you have your weapon systems, you are a big threat. Or at least you will be if Sarah Palin ever becomes president of the United States. Then I suggest the EU unite and launch a preemptive all-out attack on the United States.
The US likes preemptive strikes against religious fundamentalists, so why can't we?
Two reasons: one, we already have the weapons systems. Bush may be a warmongerer, but at least he's smart enough not to start trouble with someone who could fight back, threatening a really bloody war. Don't take that as condoning what he did, it was terrible, just saying at the absolute least, things worldwide would have been worse if he had tried to invade, say, China. Attacking a superpower is, as you no doubt realize, stupid in all ways.
Two: you're making the same mistake some of our dumber citizens often make: it's not the US that likes pre-emptive strikes, its a small group of people at the top, the neocons in that particular case, who are leading a lot of really dumb people to war. Most people in the country, and in fact even most religious fundamentalists, have no fault in the wars Bush started. So don't blame us for what our government does.
Drugs are a physical thing, with no will of their own. They're neither good or evil.
But, no, I don't have a problem with people taking them. Making them illegal hasn't stopped anyone that wants to from getting them, and the cost is larger than just letting people take them freely to begin with. If you truely think drug use is a problem, rehab programs are far more effective than outlawing the drug.
it's not the US that likes pre-emptive strikes, its a small group of people at the top, the neocons in that particular case, who are leading a lot of really dumb people to war. Most people in the country, and in fact even most religious fundamentalists, have no fault in the wars Bush started. So don't blame us for what our government does.
No? Someone elected Bush to become president, not only once, but twice. Of course, I'm aware of the fundamental flaws of the US electoral system (which e.g. in the right circumstances allows someone to become president with just 25.1% voter support), so all the blame cannot rest with the voters. But still, a significant number fo voters must vote for a candidate for him or her to become the president, and all of those who voted for Bush are to blame, especially those who voted for his second term. They saw what he did, and apparently they liked it.