A report in Space News reveals that French export officials have prevented export of French-developed flight control software that was intended for the Vega rocket. The Vega rocket, a joint launch vehicle project of the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, is destined for Arianespace SA. As you probably know, Arianespace SA is a French company founded in 1980 as the first private launch company. France also is a 15 percent participant in the Vega rocket program, making France the largest participant in the program after Italy, which is a 65 percent participant.

France did grant an exemption for the software to be used on the first flight and possibly on the second flight depending upon the status of development of new software to replace the yanked French software. Apparently all involved in the Vega program were blindsided by the French action:

[ESA Launcher Director Antonio] Fabrizi said he is not certain exactly what transpired in the case of the Vega flight-control system. Other French technology, in particular the filament-wound P-80 first stage, was subject to export approval and received authorization without a hitch.

“I have been told that it could have been a problem with the way the export license application was made, or its timing,” Fabrizi said.

Although French bureaucratic stubbornness is second to none, I’m not buying Fabrizi’s story that the French blocked export of the flight control forever because the application was too late or violated some procedural rule. More likely, the French stopped the export because of the technology itself.

That France denied the export even though it is knee-deep in the Vega program itself is perplexing. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the United States isn’t the only country that has used export controls to shoot itself in its own foot.

According to this blog post at Narcosphere, a former employee of FedEx Canada has filed a suit in Canada alleging retaliation based on his disclosure to Canadian Customs of various export irregularities by FedEx Canada. Documents filed in the litigation appear to reveal that, between May 2005 to April 2006, almost 20,000 exports by FedEx that required a Canadian export declaration, namely a form B13A, were shipped without that declaration. The plaintiff’s lawyers allege that this is approximately 20 percent of all exports that required a B13A and that, as a result, it is likely that some of these shipments involved sensitive export-controlled technology.

FedEx Canada appears to have had two major responses to these claims. The first, and not very convincing, response is that the failure to file the B13A was the customer’s fault and no FedEx’s fault. I don’t know how far that argument goes in Canada, but regular readers know that in the U.S. such an excuse not only wouldn’t make it out of the starting gate but would be shot to death in the stables. Their second argument has somewhat more force. Even if the B13As had been filed, there is no guarantee that this would have stopped any illegal exports of controlled-technology since devious exporters would have lied on their B13A declarations about the true contents of the exported package.

One U.S. Customs official who spoke with Narco News explains that even if all the proper paperwork is filed with an export shipment, that still does not guarantee an illegal shipment will be caught by Customs officials, in either the U.S. or Canada, since criminals lie on forms and the government “bureaucracy takes time to have the AM coffee, get up, and get going.”

Say what? Did this guy just admit that pretty much anything goes at the border until the Customs agents have their morning coffee? No wonder he didn’t want his name used!

NOTE: Blog posting will be light this week. I’m travelling on Wednesday to Arizona to give a presentation on economic sanctions and the Internet at GoDaddy’s annual registrar summit. I’ll be back on Friday and will try to do some catch up posts over the weekend.

ABOVE: The ADE-651

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On Tuesday my colleague in our London Office, Anita Esslinger, forwarded to me a directive from British export authorities adding “electro-statically powered explosive detectors” to its list of export-controlled items, otherwise known as the 2008 Export Control Order. Anita wondered if the U.S. was planning on doing the same thing. I wrote back that I didn’t think it would need to since explosive detectors were already covered under ECCN 1A004.d.

In fact, I was wrong, because these “electro-statically powered” explosive detectors aren’t covered by ECCN 1A004.d, but not for the reason that you might imagine, but rather for what might be called a metaphysical reason. These detectors aren’t covered by the ECCN because they don’t work, and, thus, aren’t really bomb detectors.  At this point, before you accuse of me having read too much Aristotle, hear the rest of the story.

The British order is directed at the ADE-651, a device marketed by a British company named ATSC, which is run by Jim McCormack from a former dairy farm in Somerset. The device, according to ATSC, can detect explosives from a distance of 1 kilometer.  It can also, allegedly, detect other items such as elephants and dollar bills from the same distance, depending upon whether a card programmed to detect elephants or dollar bills is inserted into the device’s card reader. As a further miracle of modern technology, the device has no power supply but is powered by the static electricity generated by the user, hence, the reference to them as “electro-statically powered” in the amendment to the 2008 Export Control Order.

A BBC Newsnight investigative report (video embedded at the end of this post) examined the device and found that the inside of the device was empty (as in being filled with nothing but air  . . .  literally). The report also discovered that the cards “used” by the device were no more than RFID tags used to deter shoplifting and not specially programmed cards designed to whiff out the essence of elephant or anything else for that matter.

This would be humorous were it not for the fact that the use of these devices may have resulted in death and injury. A recent wave of successful car-bomb attacks in Baghdad has led even some Iraqis to question the efficacy of the device even though Iraq has bought $85 million dollars worth of the non-functional plastic shells at $40,000 to $60,000 per pop.

Jim McCormack has been arrested for fraud and is out on bail.