[liberationtech] Executive Order: "Targeting Human Rights Abuses Via Information Technology" (Syria, Iran)

[Collin Anderson]

FYI

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/23/letter-blocking-property-and-suspending-entry-united-states-certain-pers
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/23/executive-order-blocking-property-and-suspending-entry-united-states-cer
http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/OFAC-Enforcement/Documents/ghravity_eo_fact_sheet.pdf

----

Letter -- Blocking the Property and Suspending Entry into the United States
of Certain Persons with Respect to Grave Human Rights Abuses by the
Governments of Iran and Syria via Information Technology

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

Pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701
et seq.) (IEEPA), I hereby report that I have issued an Executive Order
(the "order") that takes additional steps with respect to the national
emergencies declared in Executive Order 12957 of March 15, 1995, and relied
on for additional steps in subsequent Executive Orders, and in Executive
Order 13338 of May 11, 2004, as modified in scope and relied on for
additional steps in subsequent Executive Orders.

I have determined that the commission of serious human rights abuses
against the people of Iran and Syria by their governments, facilitated by
computer and network disruption, monitoring, and tracking by those
governments, and abetted by entities in Iran and Syria that are complicit
in those governments' malign use of technology for those purposes, threaten
the national security and foreign policy of the United States. Consistent
with the vital importance of providing technology that enables the Iranian
and Syrian people to freely communicate with each other and the outside
world, as well as the preservation, to the extent possible, of global
telecommunications supply chains for essential products and services to
enable the free flow of information, the measures in the order are designed
primarily to address the need to prevent entities located in whole or in
part in Iran and Syria from facilitating or committing serious human rights
abuses. To address this situation, the order takes additional steps with
respect to the national emergencies described above.

The order blocks the property and interests in property, and suspends entry
into the United States, of persons listed in the Annex to the order, as
well as persons determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in
consultation with or at the recommendation of the Secretary of State:

 to have operated, or to have directed the operation of, information and
communications technology that facilitates computer or network disruption,
monitoring, or tracking that could assist in or enable grave rights abuses
by or on behalf of the Government of Iran or the Government of Syria;

 to have sold, leased, or otherwise provided, directly or indirectly,
goods, services, or technology to Iran or Syria likely to be used to
facilitate computer or network disruption, monitoring, or tracking that
could assist in or enable grave human rights abuses by or on behalf of the
Government of Iran or the Government of Syria;

 to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material,
or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, the
activities described above or any person whose property and interests in
property are blocked pursuant to the order; or

 to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or
on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and
interests in property are blocked pursuant to the order.

I have delegated to the Secretary of the Treasury the authority, in
consultation with the Secretary of State, to take such actions, including
the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted
to the President by IEEPA, as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of
the order.

All agencies of the United States Government are directed to take all
appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of
the order.

I am enclosing a copy of the Executive Order I have issued.

Sincerely,

BARACK OBAMA

-- 
*Collin David Anderson*
averysmallbird.com | @cda | Washington, D.C.
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