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美国大学收紧对于敏感研究监控
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美国大学收紧对于敏感研究监控
作者：梅进 来源：科学网 www.sciencenet.cn 发布时间：2009-10-29
据《自然》网站报道，在上周于美国华盛顿举行的全美大学研究管理者委员会上，有官员表示，美国大学管理者正在收紧对于涉外研究违规的监控。
这一举动起因于去年的一桩敏感研究事件。田纳西大学前工程师John Reece Roth因违背武器出口控制法令而被判4年监禁。他被指与来自伊朗和中国的研究生分享了与无人航天器有关的敏感信息。这一案件在学术界引发焦虑，他们担心会因无意疏忽而受到处罚。
弗吉尼亚工学院的David Brady表示：“现在教员们了解了Roth案件的内情，他们可不想个人受到挑战，他们希望得到大学的支持。”
美国联邦调查局（FBI）反间谍部特工Christopher Golomb表示，根据Roth案件，FBI正在调整与学术机构交涉的方式。FBI还参加了由大学校长构成的两个学术联盟。Golomb说：“这是一次很好的学习，它帮助我们设立相关的政策和程序，从而教授们知道他们也可能成为目标。”
据悉，美国白宫已经下令对当前的出口控制条例进行重新审查。（科学网 梅进/编译）
University tightens oversight of sensitive research
Conviction prompts rethink of data rules.
Elie Dolgin
University administrators are looking to sharpen their monitoring of export violations, officials said last week at a meeting of the National Council of University Research Administrators in Washington DC.
The move comes in the wake of the first US conviction, last year, of a university professor for trafficking military-sensitive information. In July, John Reece Roth, formerly an engineer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was sentenced to four years in prison for breaching the Arms Export Control Act; he remains free pending an appeal. Roth had shared sensitive information relating to a plasma-guidance system for unmanned aircraft with a graduate student from Iran and another from China. The case has triggered anxiety among many academics, who fear that they could be punished for unintentional slips (see Nature 461, 156; 2009).
"Now that the faculty members know the facts of the Roth case, they don't want to be individually challenged; they want the support of the university," says David Brady, director of export and secure research compliance at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg.
Roth's project "slipped through the cracks" of the university's monitoring system, says Robin Witherspoon, export-control officer for the University of Tennessee's office of compliance. Witherspoon says that the university now has electronic flagging systems in place to alert her office to suspicious financial- or travel-related dealings with other countries, as well as any potentially problematic grant proposals or contracts. Witherspoon has also instigated training programmes to educate researchers about export control of sensitive data or technology.
“It helps us develop policies and procedures so that professors know they can be targeted.”
Christopher Golomb, a special agent with the FBI counterintelligence division in Washington DC, says that in light of the Roth conviction, the bureau is also adjusting the ways that it interacts with academic institutions. Last year, the agency conducted a survey with the Federation of American Scientists to assess negative views of law enforcement held by some in the scientific community. The FBI is also engaged in two academic alliances with university and college presidents. "It's a great lesson learned," says Golomb. "It helps us develop policies and procedures so that professors know that they can be targeted."
The White House has ordered a review of current US export control regulations.
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actually this goes to the heart of the very principles of university science (not custom commercial science), that data and methods are feely shared to allow replication,verification or falsification, and not just amongst a small, select or self-selected group. Unless this was merely "technology" of course and not "science".Unfortunately, and especially in the applied sciences, the distinction between "science" and "technology" is not always easily defined and the waters are further muddied by universities taking on a mix of research and development in the public and private (commercial/government sensitive) sectors, many if not all of which inevitably have or will eventually have cross connections. A veritable minefield and plenty more prospective casualties waiting...
27 Oct, 2009 Posted by: Paul van Poppelen The information in question was neither sensitive nor classified. It was unclassified research related to the development of prototypes of plasma actuators for which Dr. Roth already held the patent(s), funded by the Air Farce. The test bed was a civilian UAV, not a weapons system, yet the government claimed that it was "ITAR" controlled, and that the government's determination that the technology was ITAR controlled was not subject to review by the court. At trial, the only proof of this element of the offense was the statement of the conclusion by Licensing Officers that the technology was ITAR controlled. Few people in academia recognize that any technology related to a defense article is ITAR controlled and requires an export license in order to be released to a foreign person, even if that foreign person is physically located in the U.S., as were the foreign graduate students in this case. Fewer still realize that the agency that administers ITAR, the Dept. of State Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, claims that all of its actions are not subject to the Administrative Procedures Act and therefore are not subject to judicial review. (The 1946 legislative history of the APA clearly is contrary to this false and fraudulent claim).
Dr. Roth had no creditable warning prior to being arrested that his research was ITAR controlled, yet an ambitious and anti-academic Assistant US Attorney in Knoxville was free to pursue Dr. Roth without adult supervision. The lesson to academia should be that no amount of procedures and training will save you from an ambitious prosecutor who wants to trade your freedom in order to advance his career, and who has no effective judicial control. The lesson is clear: Don't do research for the Department of Defense or any nartional security agency if you value your freedom and career.
Note also that there is a similar set of rules for purely commercial technology known as the Export Administration Regulations which also require an export license for the "deemed export" of such commercial technology by the release to a foreign person, no matter where located (15 CFR 734.2). This is why so many companies are moving R&D offshore.
27 Oct, 2009 Posted by: Michael Deal i am not a US cirtizen but i have worked as a an experimental physicist in US institutions, Universities as well as labs. for a total period of about 5 years. if i venture to suggest something it will be to encourage academic freedom in the universities and any works/studies of defence/secret nature should be immediately transferred to Government labs., instead of being censored in the university system. Freedom is at the centre of innovation and novelty in scientific research. Any sensitive research from the Government point of view should be shifted to the Government lab. as soon as it is so found, instead of curtailing the freedom of teachers and students at the University. The onus for this lies with the Government's serveillance agencies and not with the management of the University concerned.
28 Oct, 2009 Posted by: Narendra Nath i am not a US cirtizen but i have worked as a an experimental physicist in US institutions, Universities as well as labs. for a total period of about 5 years. if i venture to suggest something it will be to encourage academic freedom in the universities and any works/studies of defence/secret nature should be immediately transferred to Government labs., instead of being censored in the university system. Freedom is at the centre of innovation and novelty in scientific research. Any sensitive research from the Government point of view should be shifted to the Government lab. as soon as it is so found, instead of curtailing the freedom of teachers and students at the University. The onus for this lies with the Government's serveillance agencies and not with the management of the University concerned.
28 Oct, 2009 Posted by: Narendra Nath System should be able to differentiate between intentional & unintentional disclosure of the organisational scientific secret.Professors/ Academitian usually help other specially students which some time may go against rule.So there is need of tution for acdemician in this regard.Certainly intentional activity should be heavely punished.
28 Oct, 2009 Posted by: Anurag Chaurasia System should be able to differentiate between intentional & unintentional disclosure of the organisational scientific secret.Professors/ Academitian usually help other specially students which some time may go against rule.So there is need of tution for acdemician in this regard.Certainly intentional activity should be heavely punished.
28 Oct, 2009 Posted by: Anurag Chaurasia Add your own comment
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