Nov
10
Oh Goody! Another Export Control Bureaucracy.
Posted by Clif Burns at 10:21 pm on November 10, 2010
Category: Export Reform
Because we apparently have too many agencies involved in export control, the answer to this problem is, somewhat surprisingly, yet another export agency. Today the White House issued an order establishing the Export Enforcement Coordination Center within the Department of Homeland Security. The order requires the EECC to “coordinate” among State, Commerce, Treasury, DOJ, Defense, Homeland Security, Energy and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The coordination mandate described by the Order requires the EECC
[to] serve as the primary forum within the Federal Government for executive departments and agencies to coordinate and enhance their export control enforcement efforts and identify and resolve conflicts that have not been otherwise resolved in criminal and administrative investigations and actions involving violations of U.S. export control laws.
Of course, to make sure that no agency gets its nose bent out of shape by the EECC, the order underlines that
[n]othing in this order shall be construed to provide exclusive or primary investigative authority to any agency. Agencies shall continue to investigate criminal and administrative export violations consistent with their existing authorities
In other words, the EECC will hold monthly meetings where, over coffee and bagels, each agency will tell war stories and boast of its enforcement prowess. I’m probably not alone in thinking that this time and money might be better spent in industry education and outreach efforts.
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Copyright © 2010 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
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8 Comments:
If they would take this opportunity to really combine everyhing so we had one site to go to, that would be worthwhile – this is just a waste of taxpayers money and one more site to check to see what law we’re about to violate this time!
Do you think we might finally get a single “bad guy” list out of EECC, or is that still a compliance pipe-dream?
Oh my, this is just about the most asinine thing I’ve heard today. This on top of the re-export rules, let’s just make it 100x harder for people to obey the law.
“… this time and money might be better spent in industry education and outreach efforts.” Or maybe it would be better if the money were not spent.
What do you think of the fact that there will be two Deputy Directors, one from Commerce and the other from Justice?
On the idealized side, I guess this could provide an actual avenue of communication between stovepipes, particularly between intelligence and the other agencies. On the realistic side, I am doubtful that the EECC will be much more than another complication in an already overly complex system. Again, I’d like to think that the EECC is the first step in the development of a “single licensing and enforcement agency” that Obama laid out for us a while ago, but it rather speaks much more to a battle lost than won on that front. Why go to pains to say that the EECC won’t tread on anyone’s toes if you think you actually still have a chance at substantial reform?
Maybe I’ve been living in a cave, but don’t we have a serious deficit/debt problem? And yet here they go adding more fat to the government’s belly. Let’s look at just a few of the “functions” spelled-out in Sec. 3 of this order:
“Sec. 3. Functions. The Center shall:
(a) serve as the primary forum within the Federal
Government [to] identify and resolve conflicts that have not been otherwise resolved in criminal and administrative investigations and actions involving violations of U.S. export control laws;” (So if a conflict has not been resolved by the current criminal and administrative avenues, exactly what actions will the EECC take?)
“(b) serve as a conduit between Federal law enforcement
agencies and the U.S. Intelligence Community for the exchange of information related to potential U.S. export control violations;” (So ICE and OEE and CBP, etc., can’t pick up the phone and talk directly with DHS or NSA or CIA? Now they have to go through a glorified call center (in Mumbai, probably)?)
“(c) serve as a primary point of contact between
enforcement authorities and agencies engaged in export
licensing” (Again, it seems that direct contact among the current bureaucracies is being stifled? How can this be good for the turn-around times on licenses?)
They are just killing business.
huh? another addition to the alphabet soup.
