Several readers have asked that I alert them about speaking engagements. I will be in LA next week on Tuesday and Wednesday for breakfast briefings sponsored by Bryan Cave (naturally) and the U.S. Commercial Service of the Department of Commerce. The invitation is below and you can click to register. Even if there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is a free breakfast if you attend!

This morning I received a curt email from my web-hosting provider that Export Law Blog was being crawled by a number of robots making so many file requests that they had to shut down my site temporarily and then add robot blocking code to my system files. Apparently the volume was sufficient that they were worried that the out-of-control robots would not just take down my site but all the other sites on the shared server.

So I asked my web host where the robots were coming from. Get this: one group of them was coming from the Department of State. Judging from some activity I saw on my logs, the State robots were trying to scrape the entire site with simultaneous requests. Bad robot! (Brownie points to anyone on whom that last reference is not lost.) The hosting administrators have now blocked all access from that IP address from the State Department.

As the people at the State Department are our friends, it seems harsh to impose this permanent time out on them just because one of their robots ran amok this morning. If someone from State knows how the robots got loose this morning and swarmed the blog, please let me know and I’ll try to get the IP address unbanned by the folks at my web host. (I could go in an change the commands they put in the .htaccess file, but if I do, and there’s another recurrence of an early morning unsanctioned State Department robot party at my site, I’m likely to rendered homeless and in search of a new web host.)

The other robot(s) came from JPMorgan. Any word from JPMorgan on what caused their robots to go into a feeding frenzy at my site this morning, would also be welcome.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

As the Space Shuttle is headed for the mothballs, NASA wants to pass out parts of the shuttle as souvenirs. Asbestos-laden tiles as souvenirs. To school kids. ITAR? Oh, don’t bother us with petty little details.

Needless to say, the tiles are in Category XV(e) of the United States Munitions List (“USML”), and giving access to those tiles to anyone who is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident is a rather big no-no. Not to thumb its nose completely at the ITAR, NASA lawyers have come up with a document for the teacher to sign acknowledging “that all artifacts are subject to Export Control requirements” and further acknowledging “my responsibility for these controls at time of transfer of the artifact.”

Well, I’m glad we’ve taken care of that! I’m sure that most school teachers are intimately acquainted with the ITAR and will make sure that all exchange students are banished from the classroom when the shuttle tile is brought out for show and tell. Oh, and let’s hope we don’t have any kids in the room from China or everybody is going to jail.

A Tennessee man, Jerome Pendzich, offered body armor for sale on eBay and said in his listings that he shipped “worldwide.” Thereafter some intrepid ICE agents working the eBay beat convinced Pendzich to ship some NIJ Type IV small arms protective inserts to other feds in Bogota. Once Pendzich shipped the packages, which he labeled as gifts and ceramic plates, his home was raided and he confessed that he knew he needed an export license because the manufacturer of the plates had so informed him. Not surprisingly, Pendzich quickly negotiated a plea agreement.

One annoying aspect to the plea agreement is that it refers to the plates as “Level IV.” The United States Munitions List (“USML”), however, uses the same terminology as the National Institute of Justice standard, which is “Type IV.” Using the correct USML terminology might signal that the prosecutor might have looked at the USML at some point during his or her career. (Of course, it’s hard to get too worked up about this because the USML incorrectly refers to NIJ Types 1, 2, 2a, and 3a, instead of I, II, IIa, and IIIa as specified in the NIJ Standard.)

One other thing to note: ICE agents working the eBay beat probably don’t need to wear body armor while doing it.

A spokesman for the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) told Export Law Blog this morning that discussions between OFAC and the North Pole over Santa Claus’s Christmas Eve itinerary had broken down and were not expected to be resumed before Santa’s scheduled departure on December 24 at 10 pm EST.

The dispute arose from a dilemma that the U.S. sanctions against Cuba posed for Santa’s planned delivery of toys to children in Cuba. If Santa delivers toys for U.S. children first, there will be toys destined for Cuba in the sleigh in violation of 31 C.F.R. § 515.207(b). That rule prohibits Santa’s sleigh from entering the United States with “goods in which Cuba or a Cuban national has an interest.” On the other hand, if Santa delivers the toys to Cuban children first, then 31 C.F.R. § 515.207(a) prohibits the sleigh from entering the United States and “unloading freight for a period of 180 days from the date the vessel departed from a port or place in Cuba.”

A press release from the North Pole announced that the OFAC rules left Santa no choice but to bypass the children of the United States this Christmas. A spokesman from OFAC warned that if Santa attempted to overfly the United States, his sleigh would be forced to land and his cargo seized. He continued:

We know that the outcome is harsh, but we cannot allow Fidel Castro’s regime to continue to be propped up by Santa’s annual delivery of valuable Christmas toys to Cuban children.

Congressional leaders did not return our calls.

This post is an annual tradition and appeared previously in 2007, 2008 and 2009 in slightly altered form. Export Law Blog would like to take the opportunity of this post to extend its best holiday wishes to all of its readers. Posting will be light between now and the end of the holidays.