Thursday, March 26, 2009

Software agreements and PS3

I was trying to download a free viewer to read bonding diagrams which were generated by Autocad. Found it interesting I need to agree to this before I can download it -

Export Eligibility Requirements Please confirm:

I am not a citizen, national or resident of, and am not under the control of, the government of any country to which the United States has prohibited export of technical information, such as (as of 03/24/06): Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria.

I will not download or otherwise export or re-export the software, directly or indirectly, to the above-prohibited countries nor to citizens, national or residents of those countries.

I am not listed on the United States Department of Treasury list of Specially Designated Nationals, Specially Designated Terrorists, and Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers, nor am I listed on the United States Department of Commerce Table of Denial Orders.

I will not download or otherwise export or re-export the software, directly or indirectly, to persons on the above-mentioned lists.

I will not use the software for, and will not allow the software to be used for, any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, for the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons of mass destruction.


I understand the free viewer gives capability for, perhaps "risky" users to open up engineering diagrams - perhaps nuclear bomb-making schematics. So my point in this is, how can the above agreement, which I need to click yes before download, be limited from anyone from sending it to terrorists? Duh..ip tracking, monitor software sending, FTP uploads checks...but then again what's to stop a transfer using physical means like mailing an SD card/thumbdrive to those restricted countries above?
What's to stop me from encoding it to be rendered impossible file tracking and then send it off digitally?

Coincidentally, I used to work for an FPGA company which makes chips used for aerospace and military usage and we had to sign such export documents. Point to ponder then is who's to prevent these physical chips from arriving in the shores of such militants and terrorists? I remembered reading once that the restricted nations can easily buy like Sony PS3s and the processing speed of one quadrillion calculations per PS3 microprocesser chip can be combined and can be used to simulate the effects of nuclear explosions. Which I guess we know now how North Korea and Iran has been able to achieve nuclear power programs which is a deadly threat to the world. Buy PS3s!

Purpose of this thread is to show that the controls in place are laxed, why even have controls at all? The evil will always find ways to get what they want. So how can we actually deal with it?

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