[liberationtech] Blue Coat and Syria

[Jillian York]

Yes and no.

Yes that companies are overzealous, mainly because they face large fines and
the rules aren't clear. OFAC issued a general license last year re: Iran,
Cuba, and Sudan (NOT Syria) and a general license more recently in light of
the Obama Administration's Executive Order on Syria (see post below,
contains links/details) to allow the export of communications tools and
hosting for personal use by Syrians.

However, Syria's a separate case.   Besides OFAC, Syria is also affected by
a 2004 Commerce Dept. regulation on Lebanese Sovereignty.  EFF has done
extensive research on this and are currently offering to help any company
(or tool-producing NGO) that wants to get a license from Commerce to export
to Syria:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/09/stop-the-piecemeal-export-approach

Call 10 hosting companies in the US and pretend to be Syrian: a highly
recommended exercise in absurdity.

Collin, would be happy to talk off-list about documenting misapplications,
something I've been doing now for more than three years.

-Jillian



On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Collin Anderson
<collin at averysmallbird.com>wrote:

> I would note that many of Treasury's sanctions are overzealously
> interpreted by American companies to include things that they specifically
> do not. OFAC Regulations were revised last year (regarding Iran: §560.540;
> Cuba and Sudan in name elsewhere; presumable Syria too) to permit the export
> of information services and software to embargoed countries provided it is
> done so 1.) at no cost to the user 2.) without direct or indirect knowledge
> of government use.
>
> Documenting misapplications of the law is a campaign in its nascent stages,
> which I should reach out to the mail list about in another thread.
>
> GSoC, I assume, is other matter originating in the stipend.
>
> Cordially,
> Collin
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 2:16 PM, Jillian York <jyork at cyber.law.harvard.edu
> > wrote:
>
>> Regulation that forces transparency (e.g., a licensing scheme) seems to be
>> a popular theme these days and frankly, I'm personally behind the idea.
>> When we have export regulations preventing Syrians from getting access to
>> basic tools like Google Chrome and Java and unable to participate in Google
>> Summer of Code because "oops, someone might accidentally give them a
>> t-shirt", but those same Syrians are being hampered by American tools from
>> Bluecoat, something is terribly wrong.
>>
>> -JCY
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 3:11 PM, <liberationtech at lewman.us> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 12:19:36AM -0400, jacob at appelbaum.net wrote 2.1K
>>> bytes in 61 lines about:
>>> : The sale and support of surveillance equipment should be regulated like
>>> : firearms.
>>>
>>> Careful here. More bureaucracy is rarely the answer to a problem. More
>>> transparency is a fine first step. Who sold what to whom would be good
>>> to know now. Who supports whom would be good to know as well.
>>>
>>> Regulating firearms has done little to stop the global weapons trade, in
>>> fact it's just created a huge underground market that lacks
>>> transparency. At least this is what those who monitor this sort of thing
>>> tell me.
>>>
>>> This appears to be the same problem we have now with network
>>> surveillance and control equipment.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Andrew
>>> pgp key: 0x74ED336B
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> jilliancyork.com | @jilliancyork | tel: +1-857-891-4244
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> *Collin David Anderson*
> averysmallbird.com | @cda | Washington, D.C.
>
>


-- 
jilliancyork.com | @jilliancyork | tel: +1-857-891-4244
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