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HP Accused of Illegal Exportation To Iran
AdamWeeden writes "According to research done by the Boston Globe, HP has been secretly using a third-party company to sell printers to Iran. This is illegal under a ban instituted in 1995 by then US President Bill Clinton. The third-party company, Redington Gulf, operates out of Dubai and previously stated on their web site that the company began in 1997 with 'a team of five people and the HP supplies as our first product, we started operations as the distributor for Iran,' though now the site has been changed to remove the mention of Iran. Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the US government's export restrictions?"
Nice to hear that another country has its entire WLAN infastructure polluted by "Hpsetup" SSIDs!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
>"Has HP unknowingly been supplying Iran with technology or have they been trying to secretly get by the U.S. governement's export restrictions?"
Yes.
Oh, and Timmy...please use a modern browser w/spell checking, thanks.
We gave Muslims top secret printer technology. They can now print G'Had pantalets at 28 ppm. The world will now end.
Only if you put big finger-quotes around "unknowingly".
On the other hand, maybe this is a secret government plot to bankrupt Iran by selling them cheap printers, then gouging them on cartridges.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
Selling product to people who want them is a slap in the face of our American free market system!! How dare they!
shhhhhh.... it is a CIA ploy to bankrupt Iran via HP printer ink refills... would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling /.
Let's for a moment gloss over whether those restrictions are good ideas. Are they even possible? I mean, we're talking about computing hardware here, the kind of stuff you can buy anywhere in the world without identification. It's not like a ban on nuclear materials where there's a limited supply and you can watch the sources pretty closely. So if HP quits selling to Iran, what's to stop them from buying from Turkey or England or India or Japan or China, and how could we ever pretend to know or that we could prevent it?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Weapons of Mass Instruction?
The military is run very much like any other enterprise; cell phones, fax machines, computers, and -printers-. lots of paperwork. a big part of the military is moving data/information, documenting it, getting it in front of people to make decisions. alot of paying bills, aquiring supplies, etc.
anything that helps a business run pretty much helps the military run. the better it is, the more efficient the war machine is.
(although im sure some vets would disagree the paperwork helps anything... haha.. but you get the idea)
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Why devalue the paper?
At a time where our economy is taking a beating we should be glad that someone is willing to buy our stuff, even if they are crappy and actually made in China.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
You know Canada had price controls on their goods in 1980, so...the US killed 2 million of us? Oh no wait you're just an uninformed troll.
Om, nomnomnom...
That explains why those guys are so pissed off at the West. It really didn't add up for a while. I mean our policies of colonialism and arrogance might be a bit irksome, but it's no reason to want to kill us. But those poor bastards have had to talk to use HP hardware and talk to HP tech support. Yeah... now I understand where they're coming from. Perhaps now that HP's been busted and will no doubt be forced to stop, our relations with Iran will improve...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
i think Iran should be allowed to buy printers. Ink is more expensive than oil and with HP's / Lexmark's, etc. business model, I'd say making them buy ink to print is nearly an act of economic war more effective than the trade embargo itself.
[/humor]
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
PC load letter! FSCK!
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
PC LOAD LETTER? What the fuck does that mean?
Around 1998 I got hired by a company that manufactured medical lab equipment. Just before I started, they got a HUGE order from Iraq, which at the time, was under UN embargo and the scandal-ridden oil-for-food program.
The type and quantity of equipment that was ordered was ASTOUNDING, and sent alarm bells off through-out my organization. This was an enormous order, which amounted to about 70% of our typical annual production (world-wide) for the specific products. On top of that, there was a second order for spare parts to fully rebuild 2/3 of the original order. The equipment was specifically designed to grow bacterial and viral cultures on a very large scale for research. 60 Minutes had just done an investigative report on Saddam's chief biological weapons expert, who to most western news was only known as "Dr. Germ".
Our organization was struggling, and we really needed the revenue. To the workers on the floor, it meant that the lay-offs had stopped, for the moment.
I was dismayed that the organization was not in the position just reject the order on principle. Instead, they submitted the order to Clinton Administration's Commerce Department and set up a contingency plan to sell the equipment through multiple intermediary companies if permission was denied. Our CEO then made a large donation to the Democratic National Committee, and magically the sale was approved and blessed by the Commerce Department as "Humanitarian Medical Equipment", which it clearly was not.
Many can claim that no WMD's were found in Iraq, but I have a very good insight to the scale of the program that they had put in place. Almost all politicians have a price, and none are as pure as the wind-driven snow. Where there is money to be made, the barriers can be overcome.
One would think that HP's consumer goods could not be easily adapted to nefarious purposes (beyond counterfeiting), but you never know. Most laser printers do contain processors that are far beyond the capability allowed to pass through the embargo. Desperate people become very resourceful.
-- Len
exactly, I'd doubt these printers ever touched US or allied soil. They probably went straight from China to Dubai. China will let HP get the money or simply run the factory overtime (counterfeits) and ship the printers from a different warehouse when the HP managers leave. HP USA has absolutely no control over HP China in matters like this. "be happy the Chinese pay HP to use the HP logo on the equipment, pray they don't alter the deal anymore".
Wow! I may become a Christian yet! One of my prayers have been answered! It seems Amstar Systems and EFT Datalink are no longer in business!!! Google for either one and visit www.eftdatalink.com to see! The operators of those two entities were of questionable character and everything they did was suspect in my opinion. Good riddance... But I am sure there is yet ANOTHER name for another operation by the same people... look out for Robert "Bob" Farris when doing business with ATMs or the like in Texas or surrounding states.
Given how technologically advanced HP printers have become, this presents a huge risk to national security. I'm mortally afraid that my comfy way of life has been jeopardized by HP's actions. President-Elect Obama needs to appoint a special prosecutor ASAP!
Actually, now that I think about it, my comfy life has already been jeopardized by HP products... anyone want a paperweight that just happens to look like a fancy scanner with ADF?