My dog Maisie shamelessly plugging the historic Cubs victory in the 2016 World Series

This blog previously reported on the recent changes to the encryption rules.   One less-than-carefully drafted provision in those amendments has been causing some confusion relating to the annual self-classification reports

The issue is whether an item once listed on a self-classification report needs to be relisted on subsequent reports.  Before the recent amendments, products needed to be relisted on subsequent reports for each year in which they were exported during the time frame covered by the classification report.

The new rules say this:

Your encryption self-classification report must include the information described in paragraph (a) of Supplement No. 8 to part 742 for each applicable encryption commodity, software and component made eligible for export or reexport under § 740.17(b)(1) of the EAR. Each product must be included in a report only one time. However, if no new products are made eligible for export or reexport during a calendar year, you must send an email to the addresses listed in paragraph (e)(3)(ii)(A) of this section stating that nothing has changed since the previous report.

At least one law firm has, with some justification, read the language saying that a product must be “included in a report only one time” to mean that items need not be included in subsequent annual reports unless, presumably, the encryption functionality of the item has changed.

At the BIS Update 2016, BIS officials made clear that they do not think that the language means what it appears to say. Instead, they asserted, items needed to be included on subsequent annual self-classification report even if encryption funtionality of the item has not changed since the last report. Apparently the language is thought by the agency to mean that you only have to list an item once on the same report, although why anyone ever thought that they would have to list any product more than once on the same report is puzzling.

No one from the agency, however, at least that I heard, could explain what “becomes eligible for export” means. The reporting requirement in the previous version was for items “exported or reexported pursuant to an encryption registration.” Unfortunately this new language requiring the listing in the report of every encryption item “eligible for export” during the reporting period would appear to apply to every encryption item that the company filing the report might have been able to export during the reporting period.  This would be the case whether or not it was actually exported. The safest course, then, for upcoming self-classification reports is to include every item with encryption functionality that was available for sale during the reporting period.

Note: My apologies for the picture of my dog wearing a Cubs hat.  However, there’s this:  (a) the Cubs victory justifies all actions by longtime Cubs fans that are not otherwise illegal, immoral or rude and (b) a dog picture is the only possible way to make a post about BIS’s encryption rules even vaguely interesting.

Photo Credit: Go Cubs Go! by Clif Burns, via www.clifburns.net. Copyright 2016 Clif Burns

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