Comments on: There’s No Place Like Home

By: Clif Burns

Clif Burns — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:41:46 +0000

MO - You’re right. Additionally she is alleged to have been planning to sell the night vision to the Iranian military, which further aggravates the matter.

By: MO

MO — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 10:02:59 +0000

If you look closely at the post, you’ll see that these were military helmet-mounted night vision goggles. These are not the ones being used by most hunters in any state, but are instead those being used by our soldiers on the ground in Iraq. These military-grade night vision goggles are controlled for the safety and advantage of our warfighters.

By: JKB

JKB — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 21:22:59 +0000

Iran is controlled for terrorism. There are many “off the shelf” items that cannot be exported to AT countries. By plain language in the EAR, you are not allowed to export lifejackets to them. So technically, if you find a Cuban adrift outside US territorial waters and you throw them a lifejacket you need a license to export that lifejacket. Tip-throw them a life ring.

The tricky part is what constitutes “USE” for an Iranian in the U.S. Are airlines violating “deemed” export laws when they demonstrate how to use the lifejacket under your seat? I suspect this is public domain information but you never know.

AT controls extend to masks, fins, wetsuits, weight belts, then new car GPS systems, etc.

By: Mike Deal

Mike Deal — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:48:05 +0000

Most coon hunters in Tennessee have night vision goggles (a few purists like Al Gore won’t use ‘em). You can buy the best RUSSIAN night vision goggles at any gun show in the South, and many coon and coyote hunters do. Who is the Bush government fooling by these controls? Themselves, most likely.

By: H Webster

H Webster — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:34:58 +0000

I’m not sure that the case law cited actually refers to separate sovereigns in the same sense as this issue: it talks of federal/state, or federal/indian sovereignty, and even the Fifth Amendment appears to be talking about federal/state issues. Going further, the Philipines case cited in the example above was unique in that it seems to be a court martial empowered by US law, and so is not a straight issue of two separate sovereigns. This Austrian/Iran/US case might boil down to where the jurisdiction for the offence is properly deemed to have been, but even then this Iranian national may dispute that the jurisdiction of the US to make a jurisdiction decision is doubtful. In which case the US might just lock her up on the grounds of that old axiom ‘possession being 9 tenths of the law’!