Conference 7.286::digital

Re .-1
	I agree. I work in engineering and I am never likely to be exporting
anything outside of the company. We have a rep who handles all this. Yet,
I have to attend export licensing courses every two years so that Digital
can keep it's export licence. If all employees did not attend then Digital
is likely to lose it's 'blanket' export licence. This would cause us to 
require a seperate licence for each transaction and the extra paperwork
involved would probably put Digital-UK out of business. So I go along.
This is probably the same as in other EUR countries, and probably GIA too.

However, some months ago there was a article in Vogon news stating that 
the export licencing laws inposed by the Reagan administration had
recently been lifted. Export licences are now only required for top of 
the range machines, claimed the article. I forwarded the article to
my export licensing rep (as did several other members of my group), and
she forwarded it to the appropriate group (UK legal?). They then issued 
a reply (which I think went to all employees) that they were reviewing
the situation and until we heard different that we were to continue as 
before. Incidentally, the first this group had heard of it was apparantly
through the VNS article being forwarded to them.

Some months later, we're still continuing as before, even though the
law has been changed so that we don't need to do export licensing!!
(or at least not the same way). I got my notification this week that
I have been booked on the export licencing refresher course, attendence
of which is compulsory. This seems to be a complete waste of company
time and money, when in all likelyhood the regulations don't require
us to do it anymore. ho hum.

Does anyone have a copy of the news article which they can post here please?

If there is anyone out there who understands the recent changes in the
law and who can make a statement regarding what we should _really_ be doing
as a result of these changes, then could they post a reply here please.
We could end up saving Digital a LOT of money.

	Craig.

    re .0
    
    Fact: The Export Compliance video is a regular pain in the arse.
    
    Fact: The United States government insists that all companies exporting
    high tech and other restricted export items implement a comprehensive
    employee awareness program about export restrictions.
    
    Fact: If Digital does not comply with these regulations then it's
    overseas subsidiaries go out of business.  Since you, like me, are in
    SPR, I suggest you ask one of the 'old-timers' what happened to us not
    that many years ago when SPR did lose its blanket license.  It nearly
    killed us.
    
    Fact: There's no way SPR management is going to let it happen again, no
    matter how much we hate it.

    How I saved the company's ass (Chapter 35):
    
    Once upon a time, out of the blue (maybe), came a very large order,
    which just happened to exactly match some equipment that was being
    returned, uninstalled, back to a Digital Manufacturing warehouse, for a
    probable "de-booking".
    
    This fortunate order was at list price, standard terms and conditions,
    to a Dun and Bradstreet listed entity called "Import/Export of
    Fredonia* Inc." requesting immediate delivery to (I'm not kidding) a
    loading dock at the United Nations.
    
    I fought back the forces of greed, brought some sanity into this
    process, and made a hell of an enemy out of that sales rep.  He's at
    Sun now, by the way.
    
    I'm the only person who thought it was a scam from start to finish.
    
    (* not their real name)

    Who has to go to this presentation? All DEC employees? I've been with
    DEC almost 5 years now and I've never heard of it. Neither has anyone
    around me that I've asked.
    
    Tamzen

    People involved in the software development process are not immune from
    export concerns.  In fact, Digital manufactures some software products
    that are restricted from export by US International Traffic in Arms
    Regulations (ITAR).  Neither product kits nor documentation associated
    with them may be exported from the country without an appropriate
    license.  Incidentally, this includes sending files across the Easynet
    to a non-US destination.  Failure to comply could land somebody in
    jail.
    
    Clearly, employees--including internal customers--that have exposure to
    these materials must be familiar with the law, or they risk placing
    themselves and Digital in a position of liability.  For this reason, an
    export compliance presentation makes a lot of sense to me.
    
    --Pat

re .-2

Tamzen,

No one in the U.S. has to go to the course on U.S. Export law.  Only employees
of our overseas subsidiaries are required to attend.

re "Can anyone post the news article."

The news article will do little good.  The only thing worth looking for (though
the news article might help you find it) would be a new regulation published in
the Federal Register explicitly rescinding the requirement for these presenta-
tions.

/john

    re .6
    
> No one in the U.S. has to go to the course on U.S. Export law.  Only employees
> of our overseas subsidiaries are required to attend.
    
    I've always found this (true) statement to be incredibly ironic. The
    only people whose working lives are affected by US regulations are
    those whose employment is outside the US.
    
    Shame that European labor laws don't apply here - we'd get more
    vacation and fewer working hours.
    
    BTW, I agree - the video is a big yawn - When I worked in the UK, I had
    to sit through it too.
    
    Jon

    
    When I was in US Business Management, we had to view the video. When I
    left to join GIA HQ (Acton Ma.) I was treated to a second showing, so
    the statement that the video is not required viewing for US employees
    is not entirely correct. I believe it is required viewing for US sales 
    people.
    
    As stated in one of the previous responses, it is part of an export
    awareness program (whether this program is mandated by the US Dept. of
    Commerce, or voluntary, I don't know), that allows Dec to ship products
    to our foreign subsidiaries under a bulk distribution license. Without
    the DL, we would have to apply for an individual validated license
    (IVL) for each shipment, which would be very costly and time consuming.
    
    I believe we lost our DL's for 6 months back in 1983 when product sold
    to a US customer was found in Europe  enroute to the USSR.
    Anyone remember the picture of Caspar Weinberger(sp?) on the cover of
    Time or Newsweek standing infront of the confiscated Vax?
    
    I recall a newpaper article this summer where US Customs busted some
    folks in Texas who were trying to divert our products.
    
    Diversion is a very real problem.  
    
    

    I realise that the US feels the need to prevent diversions, but
    
    1) why not tell all employees if it a real problem?
    
    2) why tell employees every year especially those of us in who are
    not able to process orders? 
    
    Michael

    The Export regs go beyond just the *export* of equipment ... they
    cover the re-export of that equipment from its original destination,
    they also cover the provision of services (engineering, Edu, SWS)
    to the users of that equipment.
    
    They also identify persons who have violated the regs (via a Denied
    Parties List) with whom Digital (and others) are prohibited from
    doing any form of business.
    
    I'm surprised that the training doesn't apply to US Digits as many
    people identified on the DPL are US resident, therefore Digital
    US would have to be wary of providing any form of services etc to
    them.
    
    There have been instances in SPR where the EC regs have been tripped
    upon, there are also companies involved in various forms of trading
    of Digital kit that run very close to being outside of the EC regs.
    There have also been entities in the SPR who have appeared on the
    DPL .... so, be careful ... view the training as part of the Salary
    Continuance Scheme !!
    
    Cheers,
    
    Dave

    The question was; WHY?
    
    It has a lot to do with standard Digital ways of working.  Granted
    there may be a requirement that traing be done to comply with part
    of the regulation.  I am unaware of whether that is true or not.
    
    However, there is an explaination based upon past occurances of
    situations like this that can explain the problem.
    
    All through Digital there are group who have acquired funding from
    one source or another who have charters such as "employee export
    awareness,'  they take the money and develop a document or a course
    or a vidoetape etc.  
    
    They next take this tape to VP, or close therein, level people and show
    it at their staff meetings with presentation material that implies that
    everyone in that person's organization needs this information for (pick
    one) the good of Digital, legal reasons, employee awareness, because
    other organizations are doing it ... 

    The decision to then show everyone may get made (some do, some don't).
    Funding increases are then pressed for (more demand) and the group
    grows in size and budget.  More pressure to use the service, more
    funding.  More programs of a similar type.  
    
    These groups are measured and rewarded based upon the volume of their
    audience.   One of the side effects is that the course gets delivered
    in eash fiscal year to justify the continuing expense.  Its a side
    effect of the Matrix infrastructure still wrapped in the terms Digital
    Culture. 
    
    The high level effort expended is small (though in many increments).
    No one has to directly work out a plan to diseminate the information,
    identify those who really need it, track sub-levels of communication,
    assign someone to get the information out effectiently to the
    organization in question, or to condense the information into simpler,
    more applicable size pieces.
    
    Instead, the who high and low level, general audience program is
    bubbled down in a shot gun manner.  Its easier.
    
    The problem is that each level of management is empowered to do
    this in a downword manner.  Also the incrementatal cost of each
    isolate pocket is small.  Keeping track of the aggragate effect
    is not done.  
    
    The lions don't get you.  The rats do.

    -Kevin
    

    RE: .6
    
    	Mr. Covert's statement is untrue. All U.S. employees who take
    orders or handle shipments are required to be up to date on Export
    regs. Someone mentioned the denied parties list. Most of the systems
    here that handle shipments to customers contain denied parties info
    and those "with a need to know" recieve the list periodically. Since
    most U.S. facilities don't handle overseas shipments there's not
    too many people who need to know. Most of the folks who deal with
    this are in Northboro. Mass. (International Logistics Center).

    I haven't taken the training in a couple of years, but my  recollection
    is that the export laws also cover the export of information.  For
    example, if I'm in a meeting with customers at a Digital U.S. site
    I have to know whether any of the people I'm talking to are foreign
    nationals who might, by law, not be entitled to certain information.
    As I understand it, we are only able to discuss certain technical
    information with our own Digital employees in many non-U.S. countries
    by virtue of some form of export license or waiver or special
    permission.  
    
    
    -- Bob
    

>    So quit whining about having to go on this training - persuade your
>    government to remove this regulations, or go get trained.

Most of the people who are whining cannot convince "their" government to
remove the regulations, since it isn't their government which has imposed
the regulations, it's the U.S. government.

Very few people in the U.S. are whining because very few U.S. employees are
required to take the training.  (I stand corrected, but I still suspect more
overseas employees than U.S. employees must take the training.)

    re (back a few)
    
    I think the relaxation of the regulations mentioned earlier was that
    the US has agreed to abide by COCOM rules, instead of applying its own
    (and often more stringent) restrictions.  This eliminates such
    absurdities as for example, Australia (or any other COCOM nation) being
    allowed to rexport some equipment by COCOM, but being denied
    permission by the US DoD, even though the US is a member of COCOM.
    
    Certainly, the existence of export regulations per se has not been
    challenged or removed in any way.

Re:	Note 925.14		Export Compliance - WHY?
LESLIE::LESLIE "Andy ��� Leslie"                   16 lines  Sat 23-Sep-89 12:32
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    
>    So quit whining about having to go on this training - persuade your
>    government to remove this regulations, or go get trained.

Well, as I said in .1 I think the regulations have been lifted. However,
any prospect of a change/update/more information on the new regulations
has long since disappeared into the black hole of Digital beaucracy!
I'll ask those who know when I attend the refresher course next week.

	Craig

        Re: .17

> Well, as I said in .1 I think the regulations have been lifted.

        You said in .1 that you saw something about this in VNS.  Well,
        the article I remember from VNS (and which I saw other places)
        talked about easing some export controls, but basically only for
        PCs or systems about as powerful.  Powerful systems, including
        some high-end PCs, and other types of products are still subject
        to export controls.

        					B.J.

>                  <<< Note 925.18 by ULTRA::HERBISON "B.J." >>>
>

For the benefit of the readers of this topic and all who may be interested,
I had the VNS team dig out the relevant articles from the VNS archives. There
are three, and I've appended them to this note.

It seems from the 2nd and 3rd articles that only 'highly sophisticated 
products, such as supercomputers and advanced mainframe computers' require
an export licence now. Also, in the countries affected it seems we no longer 
require a licence to sell US goods within the market of the 18 countries
affected by the change (except for 'supercomputers and electronic bugging 
devices').

I would have thought a change as important as this would have been communicated
to everyone concerned quickly - If we follow the new regulations described
here it's certainly going to save Digital a lot of time and paperwork.

Craig.
 
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<><><><><><><><>  T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  <><><><><><><><>

 Edition : 1830             Thursday  1-Jun-1989            Circulation :  6973 

 Computer Makers - Hail easing of export limits
	{The Boston Globe, 31-May-89, p. 73}
   Computer makers Tuesday welcomed President Bush's plan to ease restrictions
 on technology sales to the East Bloc, but most said it will have little
 immediate effect on their business. Bush said Sunday that the administration
 would consider, on a case-by-case basis, exceptions to the Western alliance's
 list of sensitive technology products restrict from export to the East Bloc.
 But the administration has yet to detail the new proposal. Manufacturers of
 large computers are likely to see little change as a result of the Bush
 proposal. A Digital spokesman, Mark Frederickson, said: "We don't expect the
 floodgates to open. Almost all of our products continue to be restricted and
 we have virtually no sales in the Soviet Union." Frederickson added that the
 weak Soviet currency presents another big problem in dealing with them. "There
 are major currency issues there. People focus on export controls as the
 obstacle, but the lack of hard currency is a real issue." Timothy Sheehy, a
 spokesman for IBM, also said the changes were unlikely to have a significant
 effect on sales. "I don't see that this will greatly increase our business in
 the Soviet Union," Sheehy said. "Right now we do only a modest business there.
 It is mostly low-level technology, of course, and our Moscow operation
 consists of just one or two people." Sheehy said that under current
 regulations, which appear to have been unaffected by the Bush pronouncement,
 computers sold under US license to the Soviet Union may not be more powerful
 than the IBM PS/2 Model 60, a relatively low-powered machine.

<><><><><><><><>   VNS Edition : 1830    Thursday  1-Jun-1989   <><><><><><><><>


<><><><><><><><>  T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  <><><><><><><><>

 Edition : 1861               Friday 14-Jul-1989            Circulation :  7224 

 U.S. - Removes licensing rules on export of high-tech products
	{The Wall Street Journal, 13-Jul-89, p. B4}
   The Commerce Department removed licensing requirements for the export of a
 broad range of high-technology products to 18 countries that cooperate with
 U.S. export controls.
   Under revised export rules, U.S. companies won't need prior authorisation to
 ship many types of computers, integrated circuits, telephone switching
 equipment, and machine tools to Canada, 13 other North Atlantic Treaty
 Organisation members, Japan, Australia, Switzerland and Finland. The
 department estimated that the exports affected by this liberalisation total
 $20 billion to $30 billion a year.
   James LeMunyon, deputy assistant secretary of commerce for export
 administration, said the new rules will result in "more focused controls on
 truly critical items, while eliminating unnecessary paperwork for U.S.
 exporters.
   All of the nations affected by the relaxation of U.S. rules, except
 Switzerland and Finland, belong to the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral
 Export Controls, or Cocom, a U.S.-led trade security organisation. Switzerland
 and Finland are officially neutral, but they have adopted export-control
 systems at the advice of the U.S.
   Licenses still will be required for export of highly sophisticated products,
 such as supercomputers and advanced mainframe computers, to the 18 countries,
 and for a wider range of products to other nations.
   In another step to ease the burden on companies that comply with export
 controls, the Commerce Department dropped a requirement that anyone in the 18
 countries who buys U.S. products obtain a U.S. license to ship them to another
 destination in the same group of countries. The only products for which such
 "re-export" permissions still will be required are supercomputers and
 electronic bugging devices, the department said.
   Re-export licenses initially were required to deter technology pirates,
 whose methods of evading detection included moving contraband from one
 European country to another before shipping it to the Soviet bloc. U.S.
 officials believe that the Cocom system now has become effective enough to
 contain such illicit trade.
   U.S. officials said other non-Cocom countries can qualify for similarly
 relaxed treatment if they strengthen their export regulations.

<><><><><><><><>   VNS Edition : 1861      Friday 14-Jul-1989   <><><><><><><><>


<><><><><><><><>  T h e   V O G O N   N e w s   S e r v i c e  <><><><><><><><>

 Edition : 1864               Friday 21-Jul-1989            Circulation :  7234 

 Computer Exports - U.S. removes curbs on exporting desktop computers
	{The Wall Street Journal, 19-Jul-90, p. B4}
   The Bush administration removed export restrictions on a whole class of
 desktop computers after determining that equivalent products already are
 widely available to the Soviet bloc. The action scraps licensing requirements
 for IBM's AT model and compatible machines to 13 Western European allies,
 Canada, Japan and Australia. These exports could also be freely exported to
 the Soviet bloc at some point in the future, if the allies concur with a U.S.
 recommendation to lift multilateral controls on them, the Commerce Department
 said. Such concurrence is expected. Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher linked
 the decision to President Bush's recent initiatives to "improve prospects for
 prosperity in Eastern Europe without harming America's national security" But
 the action also appears to have been prompted by a Commerce Department
 investigation that found AT clones already are being produced in 11 countries
 outside the legal reach of the U.S. and its allies. U.S. officials said these
 noncontrolled sources include Taiwan, India, Brazil, China, Hungary and
 Czechoslovakia. Paul Freedenberg, a former Commerce Department regulator, said
 the relaxation could lead to a "quantum jump" in the quality of computers that
 can be freely sold to the Soviet bloc. Currently, the U.S. and its allies
 generally don't allow exports of computers with a data processing rate
 exceeding 6.5 million bits of information a second. The AT and its clones have
 a rate of 68 million bits a second.

<><><><><><><><>   VNS Edition : 1864      Friday 21-Jul-1989   <><><><><><><><>

  Ok, I went on the course everyone loves to fall asleep in this afternoon
  and asked them about .-1

  The answer was along the lines of:

  'Yes, the regulations have changed. However, we know about the articles
   that have appeared and the changes in the law that have occurred recently.
   The article was misleading and the changes were not as liberal as those
   reported. Digital is also continuing with the laws pretty much as before
   as we still deal with countries not convered by the relaxation in the
   exporting laws, (Grade B and C) and because of our internal structure and 
   the way we do business.'

   So there's hardly any change, but you'll find out the exact details when
   you go on the refresher course.

	Craig

    I work in Engineerinbg in the UK. I'd like to make two points:
    
    1) For us, it's not about taking orders. It's about transfer of
    technology to denied parties. That's why all external visitors have to
    be signed in as checked againbst the DPL.
    
    2) We get audited by the US DOD. If we can't show the process works,
    and all our staff know what it it's about and how they must comply,
    then Digital could lose it's blanket export license.
    
    If you don't think the result of 2) would be a bad thing, then you
    haven't been looking at where the revenue comes from.....
    
    Personally. I believe the US is doing it's companies a dis-favour by
    not allowing us to sell to the Eastern Block. I've heard that the
    Hungarian VAX chip, copied from an illegally obtained system, has
    inscribed on it "We care enough to copy the best"! I'd rather sell them
    systems. There is no doubt they've already got sophisticated systems
    installed for defence, and the market that suffers is the commercial
    one.

    For any questions concerning the training in Compliance, contact
    Bill McCarthy, Export Compliance Mgr, US Area Distribution, Northboro,
    DTN is: 234-4402

    For people for whom a DTN is of little use (12 hour time differences
    and the like) ELF lists Bill Mccarthy at PIGGY::BILL.
    
    			Alfred

    What is this "all employees are required to view this video" stuff?
    I'll bet that only 10% of employees have even *heard* about it.I
    know I never heard of it 'til I read it here and I've been here
    for 23 years.

    Legal CMA
    
    IMHO,
    mDH