Archive for the ‘DDTC’ Category

Dec

16

The Shoot Blanks, Don’t They?

Posted by at 8:39 pm on December 16, 2014
Category: DDTC

Mockingjay Part 1 Publicity Still via http://mockingjay.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/15204888-25699313-thumbnail.jpg [Fair Use]In case you were wondering, rifles that shoot blanks are still rifles and are covered by Category I of the United States Munitions List.  So, film producers shooting at foreign locations may need to get from the State Department’s Directorate of Defense Trade Controls licenses to export these movie props to the foreign location.  Apparently, the producers of the Hunger Games, which exported Herstal P90s and F2000s to France and Germany, got tangled up in U.S. export laws and made things unnecessarily difficult for themselves.

According to the Hollywood Reporter:

Due to the U.S. legal restrictions, the guns couldn’t be sent off to Europe and then hop from country to country, causing complications for the multi-national shoot. “We can’t take the firearms and ship them out to France, and then go from France to Germany with them,” says Weschta. “We could do it, but they would have to come back here [to the U.S.] first and then go back out anyway.”

Ultimately, two discrete batches were sent — one to France, and one to Germany. … “The guns from ISS had to go back to the United States because of the temporary export license that was for France only,” [a prop handler for the film] says.

Of course, there is no reason why a temporary export license (DSP-73) can’t cover multiple destinations. The instructions for the DSP-73 application state:

Requests for temporary export of hardware may be submitted for more than one foreign destination. However, when the country(s) of ultimate destination are geographically dispersed, the applicant should submit a separate application for each major geographical region (e.g. Africa, East Asia, Europe, etc.).

Interestingly, the instructions for a DSP-73 application also include a requirement that applications for temporary exports of firearms for use in motion pictures provide “the details of the security arrangements in the foreign country.” Obviously DDTC is apparently used to handling request to export guns to shoot blanks on foreign movie sets.

If the Hunger Games team just obtained a DSP-73 for France, that was their own fault. Perhaps that is what comes from having unpaid interns fill out the license applications.

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Nov

17

DDTC Now on Snail Mail Only After Systems Hacked

Posted by at 8:42 am on November 17, 2014
Category: DDTC

MailBoxes by Teresa Boardman [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/tboard/5629064272/According to various news reports, like this one, the latest federal agency to have been hacked is the State Department. The suspected attack was detected on Friday, causing the State Department to shut down its entire unclassified email system. The State Department diplomatically refused to speculate on the source of the attack, but those of us who are less diplomatic can speculate that the attack likely originated, as has many others have, from China. There is no official word as to when the email system would be back up and running, although there is some speculation it might be as early as later today or tomorrow.

In the meantime, if you have something to say, you can always call the Response Team or, for a faster response, dig a stamp out of a drawer somewhere, stick your question in an envelope, and go try to find a mailbox.

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Copyright © 2014 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
(No republication, syndication or use permitted without my consent.)
Sep

24

Get Smart: Chinese Spy Edition

Posted by at 4:51 pm on September 24, 2014
Category: Arms Export • Criminal Penalties • DDTC • Technical Data Export

By General Artists Corporation-GAC-management. [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADonAdams.jpgMeet Charlie and Alice, two self-professed PRC spies who branched out from smuggling crystal meth into the United States to attempting to export airplanes and military technology from the United States to the PRC. Things did not turn out so well for Charlie and Alice who probably should have stuck with drug trafficking. So, find a comfortable chair, grab a bag of popcorn, and prepare to be entertained by the story that unfolds in the Criminal Complaint filed against them and to which they just pleaded guilty.

It was a dark and stormy evening in Manila when a counterfeit cigarette smuggler introduced two undercover agents working for the United States to Hui Sheng Shen, a/k/a “Charlie,” and Huan Ling Chang, a/k/a “Alice.” According to Mr. Counterfeit Cigarette Guy, Alice and Charlie could help the UCs obtain methamphetamine.

Alice and Charlie, explaining to the UCs that email was insecure, set up a drop email account, gave the UCs the credentials for the account, and said that they should communicate via messages left in the draft folder. (This method is not particularly effective in hiding communications from the government when you’re dealing with undercover agents but, whatever, it’s the trendy spycraft du jour.) Using this method, a deal for a kilo of meth was consummated and shipped to the UCs in tea bags hidden in computer towers. (Of course, no customs inspector would ever be suspicious of tea bags in computer towers so this is yet another example of top notch spycraft by Charlie and Alice.)

Emboldened by their world-class narcotics deal, Charlie and Alice decided to move on to bigger things and just kinda casually dropped into a subsequent conversation with the UCs that they would, oh, by the way, like to buy a military aircraft. Because, naturally, guys who buy drugs normally have a warehouse of military aircraft that they can sell to the people they buy drugs from.  And Charlie and Alice wanted not just any airplane but a honking huge E-2 Hawkeye reconnaisance aircraft. “Sure, Charlie, I’ll leave one for you at the front desk of your hotel after you wire me $100 million dollars.”

Of course, knowing the sensitivity of such an operation, Charlie and Alice wanted to refer to the Hawkeye in code as the “Big Toy.” That way, they could always claim, if caught, that they were really talking about a 12-ton toy Tonka truck. At this point, one of the UCs hits comedy gold when he says to Charlie and Alice:

“Do you guys realize what this thing is?.. . This thing is like a um 757 plane — it’s on aircraft carriers. Those things don’t just disappear.”

Undeterred, Charlie and Alice still kept negotiating to buy the “big toy,” stating that their buyer, which they described as the “Chinese C.I.A.,” could afford it. The UCs, however, managed to steer them to something more manageable, something that could fit in a backpack, namely, a Raven RQ 11B UAV. Charlie and Alice explained that they could smuggle the UAV out of the United States by having scuba divers or remote-controlled submersible vehicles carry the items to an off-shore Chinese ship. They also planned to get the manuals out by taking pictures of the manuals, deleting the pictures from the memory cards and then having their friends in China recover the deleted images.

There were, of course, two problems with the deleted image trick. First, everyone (even Customs) knows about it and can easily detect and recover deleted images on digital camera memory cards. Second, Charlie and Alice were arrested while taking the pictures.

For those who want to try at home the recovering deleted images trick, here’s a quick guide on how to do that.

 

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Copyright © 2014 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
(No republication, syndication or use permitted without my consent.)
Sep

17

Turkish Citizen Indicted For Foreign Downloads of Submarine Drawings

Posted by at 7:11 pm on September 17, 2014
Category: Arms Export • Criminal Penalties • DDTC • ITAR • USML

By U.S. Navy via http://www.navy.mil/view_image.asp?id=16778 [Public Domain]Alper Calik — a Turkish citizen and co-owner of Clifton, New Jersey based Clifmax LLC — has been arrested based on a criminal complaint, dated September 12, charging him, among other things, with violating the Arms Export Control Act by exporting without a license certain drawings relating to the NSSN (Virginia) class submarine. (And, no, I am not reporting this case simply because the company is named Clifmax, although that is, leaving the alleged criminal conduct aside, an awesome name for a company.)

At the heart of the allegations are two drawings that Calik downloaded from a DoD database after signing the Military Critical Technical Data Agreement which must be signed in order to gain access to the DoD drawing database at issue. The criminal complaint alleges that Calik downloaded these images while in Turkey and attempts to assert that Calik knew doing this was illegal because he had signed the Military Critical Technical Data Agreement.

However, the Military Critical Technical Data Agreement is hardly specific about what is or is not permitted with respect to the drawings, saying only this:

[The undersigned] acknowledge[s] all responsibilities under applicable U.S. export control laws and regulations (including the obligation, under certain circumstances, to obtain an export license from the U.S. Government prior to the release of militarily critical technical data within the United States) or applicable Canadian export control laws and regulations, and (2) agree[s] not to disseminate militarily critical technical data in a manner that would violate applicable U.S. or Canadian export control laws and regulations.

Suffice it to say that this certification is poorly drafted and confusing, mentioning an export license only in the context of releasing the data “within the United States.” Nor does the certification that he would not “disseminate” the data clearly prohibit him from downloading the information for his own personal review in a foreign country. Obviously, such downloads do in fact violate U.S. exports if the downloads include ITAR-controlled technical data, but this certification neither makes that clear nor establishes that Calik had the necessary criminal intent when he downloaded the documents

The complaint alleges that there were legends restricting export on the drawings involved, but does not quote those legends. Whether these legends are enough of a predicate to support the criminal intent necessary for conviction on the export charges depends on what those legends said and that remains to be seen.

UPDATE:  Two commenters make an excellent point about using the legends on the drawings as indicia of criminal intent: Calik would have only seen the legends after he downloaded the drawings in Turkey.  The significance of this point is magnified even further when you consider this statement from the criminal complaint:

Beginning in or around 2009 to the present time, ALPER CALIK downloaded approximately one hundred thousand drawings. some of which were subject to U.S. export control regulations without obtaining export licenses from the U.S. Department of State. ALPER CALIK was not in the United States when the majority of the drawings were downloaded.

At issue are only two of these one hundred thousand downloaded drawings, which would have revealed the legends only after being downloaded.  The overwhelming portion of the remainder of the drawings not having any indication that the downloading of these or other drawings might be problematic.

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Copyright © 2014 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
(No republication, syndication or use permitted without my consent.)
Sep

9

Export Fugitive Ends Life on the Lam, Pleads to Lesser Charge

Posted by at 9:06 pm on September 9, 2014
Category: Arms Export • Criminal Penalties • DDTC • Extradition

John NakkashianA little over five years ago, we reported on a settlement agreement pursuant to which Air Shunt, Inc., agreed to pay DDTC a penalty of $100,000 in connection with three unlicensed exports of military aircraft parts. These same three violations were alleged in an indictment of an Air Shunt Vice-President, John Nakkashian, who was at the time of the settlement nowhere to be found and presumed to be a “fugitive from justice.”

For reasons not entirely clear, Nakkashian was arrested in June of this year by ICE agents at the Los Angeles International Airport. I suspect that this was not because Nakkashian was trying to sneak back into the country to vacation at Disneyland. More likely it was part of a carefully negotiated deal, because Nakkashian and the prosecutors just submitted a plea agreement to the court under which Nakkashian pleaded to one false statement count (18 U.S.C. § 1001) in connection with one of the three illegal exports set forth in the original indictment. The false statement at issue was Nakkashian’s  statement in the export documents that no license was required for the export. The government, in return, agrees to a base offense level of 8 under the Sentencing Guidelines which would mean, if Nakkashian has no prior criminal history, a sentence of zero to six months. Compare this to the original indictment where each of the three counts had a base offense level of 26, meaning a sentence of at least 63-78 months for a defendant with no prior criminal history.

That’s a sweet deal and you have to wonder how a former “fugitive from justice” got this deal until you realize that Armenia, which is where we suspected Mr. Nakkashian (by virtue of his surname) was hiding out, has no extradition treaty with the United States. Moreover, given that this was not a crime of violence, it is unlikely that Armenia would voluntarily cooperate in returning Mr. Nakkashian to the United States for trial. That gave Nakkashian a potent bargaining chip which it would seem he used to maximum benefit with the U.S. preferring to impose some penalty rather than none at all.

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Copyright © 2014 Clif Burns. All Rights Reserved.
(No republication, syndication or use permitted without my consent.)

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