Professor Gets 4 Years in Prison for Sharing Drone Plans With Students

Hugh Pickens writes "Retired University of Tennessee Professor Dr. John Reece Roth has been sentenced to four years in prison after he allowed a Chinese graduate student to see sensitive information on Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones. In 2004, the company Roth helped found, Atmospheric Glow Technologies, won a US Air Force contract to develop a plasma actuator that could help reduce drag on the wings of drones, such as the ones the military uses. Under the contract, for which Roth was reportedly paid $6,000, he was prohibited from sharing sensitive data with foreign nationals. Despite warnings from his university's Export Control Officer, in 2006, Roth took a laptop containing sensitive plans with him on a lecture tour in China and also allowed graduate students Xin Dai of China and Sirous Nourgostar of Iran to work on the project. 'The illegal export of restricted military data represents a serious threat to national security,' says David Kris of the US Department of Justice. 'We know that foreign governments are actively seeking this information for their own military development. Today's sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who knowingly discloses restricted military data in violation of our laws.' During his trial, Roth testified that he was unaware that hiring the graduate students was a violation of his contract. 'This whole thing has not helped me, it has not helped the university,' said Roth. 'And it has probably not helped this country, either.'"

Comments

Re:Guilty.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

He doesn't work in "defense", he's a retired University professor who works for a company doing work with plasma. Comparing him to yourself is disingenuous at best.

Okay. I work for a university and the government working in a similar field as the professor in question. I'm familiar with the ITAR regulations, and I sign agreements to not disclose this kind of information. I'm strictly science, yet I still have to use aircraft and spacecraft that are dual purposed. I know exactly the rules he had to follow...

Universities (especially physics) works very differently than a company with regard to "classified" information.

Nope. I'm held to the same standards as my civil servant colleagues. I even have to take the same training sessions. We don't call it FIOS, or SECRET but the acronyms we use have same meanings associated with them.

Yah, there's some kind of nonsense restriction on what you can do with it, but remember it never really had defense implications in the first place.

The trouble with your argument is that the UAV in question is a UAV that is similar to the one used in defense, but assigned a civilian task. The information that he provided did compromise security.

So, if we're talking about environments here, that's quite a different environment than the one you're describing.

Different? Yes. Different enough? No. I have projects that allow non-US grad students and I have projects that don't...

The rules have changed.

[skoda]

The rules have changed. It is now illegal to "export" ITAR data, that is "sensitive" defense technology to foreign persons. However, this data is not classified. You can tell it to any and every US Person: your friends, family, neighbors, convenience store clerk. SO long as they are a US Person and also know not to tell it to Foreign National, they can know it.

However, telling it to a Canadian can get you sent to prison.

The rules have changed. And it's damaging to critical industries and research institutions.