Notwithstanding an apparent slip-up by undercover agents in a sting which caught a Seattle-area software engineer in a plan to export ITAR-controlled radiation-hardened semiconductor chips to China, the target of the sting, Lian Yang, pleaded guilty today to charges that he violated the Arms Export Control Act. This blog reported on this case back in December when the criminal complaint filed by the government in the case was unsealed.

The criminal complaint suggested some convincing evidence that Yang knew he was breaking the law with these proposed exports. Apparently he had contemplated effacing the part numbers on the chips. He also proposed shipping them under false invoices that concealed the names of the parts.

However, at one point the undercover agents, who were posing as the suppliers of the parts, told him that there would be a delay in shipping the parts. The delay, they said, “is with the government,” further stating that the “compliance paperwork” was “waiting to be reviewed and signed.” That certainly seems like an implication by the undercover agents that the transaction was legal and was being approved by the government, which would certainly complicate the government’s proof that Yang had the requisite criminal intent to be convicted of the crime. In the end, however, with the defendant’s guilty plea, this slip-up had no impact on the case.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer also reported on Yang’s plea. Its online report deserves both an award for the most obnoxious online advertisement I’ve ever seen (click the link at your peril) and the worst description of the AECA I’ve ever seen. Here’s the description of the AECA:

In charging information filed Monday in U.S. District Court, federal prosecutors accuse Yang of conspiring to violate the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which bars the sale of potentially sensitive technologies.

You have to wonder where the reporter came up with that. There is quite the difference between a statute that requires government licenses for the sale of goods and technologies versus one which “bars” the sale of those goods or technologies, not to mention that the AECA involves the sale of military items and technologies, which is not really co-extensive with “potentially sensitive technologies.” The Post-Intelligencer reporter apparently didn’t even take the time to read the Wikipedia entry on the AECA which, at least, accurately describes the act as “control[ling] the import and export of defense articles and defense services.”

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