Insanity

[Sooner Boomer]

If you go to https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp you get the following message:

[h=2]Until further notice,
the NTRS system will be unavailable for public access.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you and anticipate
that this site will return to service in the near future.[/h]
This is in response to Rep. Frank Wolf's (R - Va) press conference, where he said:
"Second: NASA should immediately take down all publicly available technical data sources until all documents that have not been subjected to export control review have received such a review and all controlled documents are removed from the system."
Article at: https://spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=40365

There was a Chinese national arrested and charged with making a false statement to law enforcement officials. He was on his way out of the country and is suspected of security violations at several NASA facilities. This is locking the barn considerably after whatever equines housed there have been long gone and made into Ikea meatballs.

I believe in having strong national security. Every document I've viewed or downloaded from there has been declassified (and I've seen/downloaded many, many documents). I hope their review is quick (and thorough) and that they are able to put the full contents of the report server back on line, assuming there is no information that is critical to national security.

 

[luke strawwalker]

Yep, your tax dollars at work! If you're looking for the government to EVER make sense, you'll be waiting a long, LONG time...

Someone on the NSF forums mentioned that they had an Saturn V "blueprint" type poster available for sale... he got a visit from the gubmint for "ITAR violations" and politely informed them that he'd seen the exact same poster available from the NASA gift shop at KSC, and that it was available on the web for public download and had been for years... (I have one myself) They were concerned and said they'd "get back to him" and left. They pulled the posters from the KSC gift shop for a time, and then finally put them back out. Some time later he was informed that it was okay...

Typical...

Later! OL JR

 

[AlexK]

There's a huge difference between 'strong national security' and 'not letting anyone know about what we're doing because TEH EVIL COMMIES.'

ITAR is quite possibly the worst 'national security' classification ever. It's inconsistently applied, things can be retroactively made ITAR-restricted, and a surprising amount of the time you don't know if your project is ITAR until you tell the wrong person what you're doing and the FBI comes knocking. ITAR subjects aren't 'classified.' It's purely 'don't tell anyone not from this country.' And it's hurting us. I used to work in a lab which worked on ITAR-restricted projects. We had a fullbright scholar come in from Brazil, and all of a sudden we had to password-lock our computers, keep certain areas of the lab locked, and she wasn't allowed into the locked-off places. This was a person who (in Brazil) had already worked in the field we were working. She already knew intimate technical details of our projects from having done much of it herself. But we couldn't tell her many of the things we were doing. It was even worse when we went to international conferences - the Europeans would happily present results that we couldn't, because we're too busy keeping our valuable technology to ourselves.

All this is pure paranoia - a Congresscritter making noise because of a breach of export-controlled information, and in the process taking huge amounts of otherwise-public-domain data out of the public domain so he can look like he's being "Tough on X," for various values of X.

And one final note: If the contents of NTRS were really valuable to the chinese, I have a pretty strong suspicion they already accessed and copied it all. Retroactively taking things down just makes the boogeyman look closer at why you would want them not to be able to get it.

 

[bobkrech]

I agree that ITAR is one of the dumbest set of regulation ever issued by Uncle Sam, but there is no question if a government contract is ITAR controled, because it is specifically written into the terms of the contract. The same goes for security classifications. If you don't know what aspect of you work is ITAR restricted, someone in your contracts department needs to be buttkicked.

ITAR is controlled by the State Department. In 99.44/100 of the time, all it really does is to make it impossible for the US to compete in the world market. What the State Department fails to admit is the world is full of smart people. There are thousand if not millions of smart non-US scientist and engineers who are just as smart at the US scientist and engineers, but we can not supply American technology to them. Since they are smart folks, they simply develop the same technology base and make equipment to produce goods and services based on state of the art technology. Once they develop it, they are not restricted from manufacturing it, and/or selling machines to make high tech products. Since by law the American companies can not supply the worldwide demand for technology, the US has continually lost out in the international high tech market and has actually fostered the development of it in there rest of the world. The negative impact is measured in trillions of dollars of lost opportunities since 1998 when the current laws were enacted. That's one of the reasons why we have a negative balance of trade.

Nothing gets on the NASA or DoD public databases that was not cleared for general publication at the time of posting. That information is usually in the first several pages of the .pdf. Once anything is posted as public, it's impossible to retract it as multiple copies are surely available.

NASA and DoD control access to all of their facilities, and in many cases, their contractors facilities as well. You can not get into the non-public side of NASA or DoD, and most contractors facilities, without explicit permission, passes and/or clearances and in the case of a foreign national, constant escort. It is almost impossible for a Chinese national to gain access to sensitive information without the cooperation of a third party who is not doing their job.

https://wolf.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=211&sectiontree=7,211 is the page on the congressman's website on cyber security. He also heads the House Appropriations subcommitee that funds NASA. Hence the reaction by NASA.

To be fair, Chinese cyberattacks on US companies to data mine technology are well documented and need to be dealt with promptly and effectively, however NTRS is a NASA database that has been vetted, and only contains publicly released information, mostly years after the fact. Our national resources could be better utilized going after the current cyber attacks, rather than old news.

Bob

 

[BEC]

I agree that ITAR is one of the dumbest set of regulation ever issued by Uncle Sam, but there is no question if a government contract is ITAR controled, because it is specifically written into the terms of the contract.

Maybe....but below the level of the main contract application of ITAR rules is inconsistent at best and capricious at worst. I spent several years on the P-8A Poseidon program. For those of you who don't know what that is, that's a project to make an airborne intelligence and submarine killing airplane out of a 737-800. The airframe is built on the same lines as all the rest of the current 737 Next Generation airplanes (except that we have a dedicated final assembly line for them in an adjacent building in Renton). We've built 17 of them for the Navy now (including test articles) and a small number of a variant for the Indian Navy.

As you can imagine in the P-8 there is a huge mishmash of commercial airplane parts that are identical to those used on other 737s along with parts that are similar but modified (lots of beefed up structure for the pounding an airplane takes flying at high speed and low altitude for example) and lots that are most certainly military in intent - stuff for mounting and launching torpedos and missiles, stuff for the sub tracking and other surveillance - that sort of thing.

During my time on the program the "is this part ITAR controlled or not?" pendulum swung from the extreme that if the part number changed (no matter why) a part was automatically ITAR no matter what it was to a much more reasonable and reasoned interpretation and back at least a couple of times. If something is considered ITAR then only "US persons" may have access to any data about it all the way up and down the supply chain. It can get downright crazy.

I often wondered, during the madness of the aerial refueling tanker competitions between us and Airbus, what would've happened if Airbus had actually won the thing after all. A French/German company trying to comply with ITAR rules all the way up and down their supply chain....it would've been interesting to watch.

 

[bobkrech]

That's exactly why the entire set of regulations are one of the dumbest ones ever developed.

My comment was specifically focused on the required notifications placed in the contract by Uncle Sam. If a lower level employee has to ask what is ITAR then the company needs to develop a top down policy to set the limits. His supervisor is the one who should make those decisions.

Didn't you know that Airbus is now in the USA? :wink: https://wolf.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=211&sectiontree=7,211

In my world, vacum systems and lasers are ITAR items. Vacuum chambers and vacuum pumps? Considering most of the world's semiconductors come from Asia, it's really ridiculous. Oh, and have you noticed that most of the inexpensive laser cutters come from China? :kill:

Bob

 

[AlexK]

That's exactly why the entire set of regulations are one of the dumbest ones ever developed.

My comment was specifically focused on the required notifications placed in the contract by Uncle Sam. If a lower level employee has to ask what is ITAR then the company needs to develop a top down policy to set the limits. His supervisor is the one who should make those decisions.

Didn't you know that Airbus is now in the USA? :wink: https://wolf.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=211§iontree=7,211

In my world, vacum systems and lasers are ITAR items. Vacuum chambers and vacuum pumps? Considering most of the world's semiconductors come from Asia, it's really ridiculous. Oh, and have you noticed that most of the inexpensive laser cutters come from China? :kill:

Bob

In my case it was an academic lab and electric propulsion - specifically Hall thrusters. Which is funny since the vast majority of Hall Thruster development prior to 1991 was done by the Soviets. I've seen the vacuum pump and laser issue too, though. The students and myself were constantly being updated with what was and wasn't ITAR (especially with said comments about foreign nationals). The best part, of course, is how strict we had to be was dependent on how 'bad' the country in question was. People from western Europe could be shown most things, while people from china could barely be shown in the door. I think we also had an RF amplifier - originally meant for ham radio, we used it for RF plasma generation, built in Bulgaria - that we couldn't let the foreign-nationals use. I wouldn't be surprised if someone also told us that since the government gave us the money to buy our Dutch nitrogen refrigerators, they were covered under ITAR, too. (those things were cool, btw - 10 kW nitrogen reliquification capacity and suprisingly not-awful to operate).

Really it's not the fact that ITAR exists - I can get that under some circumstances - it's just that it's SUCH a moving target and so hurts our competitiveness. I shouldn't be able to buy functionally identical items from US and foreign manufacturers, but have the US item subject to ITAR and the foreign item be freely purchasable.