Satellite research
grounded
Stanford,
other universities oppose regulatory change
BY DAWN LEVY
Just one sentence. That
was all it took to ban a Stanford graduate student, who
is Chinese, from continuing his work with basic
spacecraft control algorithms. It was enough to prevent
the world's expert in proton monitors, who is Irish, from
being in the same room as the equipment he designed when
American researchers bolted it onto a satellite. It
prevented the signing of a contract that would allow
Japanese, Stanford and Lockheed researchers to
collaborate in studying the sun. One sentence was all it
took to place satellite programs in holding patterns at
universities including Stanford, Caltech, Penn State, MIT
and the Universities of California, Arizona and Colorado.
The satellite-grounding
sentence is a tiny clause in the State Department's
International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) that
classifies spacecraft systems and scientific satellites
-- and all related data, components, software, parts and
material -- as "significant military equipment"
subject to tight control. ITAR bars the disclosure of
unclassified technical data by American universities to
their own foreign students (who account for 30 percent of
Stanford's graduate students), faculty and collaborators
if they are from countries listed as
"sensitive" or "terrorist exporting."
Among those currently declared by the State Department to
be "sensitive" -- a term that is largely
undefined and varies from agency to agency with regard to
data and technology -- are Algeria, China (Hong Kong and
mainland), Croatia, India, Iran, Israel, Pakistan,
Romania, Taiwan and Vietnam.
The effect of ITAR and
ways in which Stanford can try to protect its open
research environment were topics of discussion at the
annual public meeting of the university's Academic
Council Committee on Research on May 12.
The last time this issue
came up -- and it has come up repeatedly -- was 1985, and
it took nothing less than an Executive Order from
President Ronald Reagan to resolve. His National Security
Defense Directive 189 states that: 1) to the maximum
extent possible the products of fundamental research
remain unrestricted; and 2) where the national security
requires control, the mechanism for control of
information generated during federally funded research is
classification. The government -- not researchers -- uses
the classification process in cases where it perceives a
weapons application or other national security issue
deriving from fundamental research.
While classification
formerly was done by inclusion -- that is, by
specifically stating what is classified -- ITAR in
essence has created a situation where "everything
having to do with a spacecraft is restricted unless it is
specifically excluded," said Bradford Parkinson, a
professor in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department
and last year's chair of the NASA Advisory Council.
"With a sweep of the magic wand, the whole game is
changed."
Last year, partly in
response to security concerns sparked by an alleged
spying incident at Los Alamos National Laboratory,
Congress expanded the scope of the State Department.
Research activity that once was regulated by the Commerce
Department, which excluded fundamental research from its
export regulations, is now subject to the State
Department's ITAR. This change creates a direct conflict
for the openness-in-research policies at Stanford and
other major research universities. With ITAR, the
government ended up writing and enforcing a set of
restrictions "that are a lot more onerous than
anything that it had had before," Parkinson said.
Impacts at Stanford
Stanford has been heavily
affected, Parkinson said. "I strongly endorse the
idea of protecting stuff from bad guys who might harm us
with it," he said. "But I don't think
fundamental research endangers us and falls under that
category by and large. We simply can't allow this to
bring our space-related research to a halt."
ITAR is unclear,
researchers complained, about what exactly is a
"spacecraft system." Is it anything that flies?
Or is it something that is uniquely produced for the
spacecraft environment? And what about equipment produced
for a nonflight function that eventually makes its way
onto a satellite?
"The onus should not
be on us poor researchers to figure all that out,"
Parkinson said. "There should be some broad
guidelines that we can follow, and if we make an
inadvertent error in judgment, the penalty should not be
instantly going to jail or losing our family fortunes
[through legal fees]."
Rachel Claus, counsel for
the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), assured
researchers that "there is no obligation on you as a
researcher to determine whether or not the fundamental
research you are involved in might result in something
that may eventually be deemed classified, such that you
may not involve foreign students or faculty." In a
follow-up interview, Claus emphasized that it is the fact
that a research instrument is going to go up in a
satellite that confuses the issue. With regard to such
work, it is important for researchers to be able to
demonstrate that their work is in the public domain.
Another major problem is
that ITAR restricts disclosure of unclassified technical
data by U.S. institutions of higher learning to foreign
persons who are full-time employees. "This isn't
calling up your friend in Bulgaria or Communist
China," Parkinson said. "We're talking about
disclosure right here in River City."
If a spacecraft project
has employees of certain nationalities, the program must
obtain certification for those employees, a process that
can take six months.
To get an exemption
requires a certificate from the State Department.
Bureaucrats, who may feel they are putting themselves in
a vulnerable place by granting exemptions (what if an
exempted individual turns out to be a spy?), have little
incentive to interpret ITAR broadly, Parkinson said.
Consider the case of
Gravity Probe B, of which Parkinson is a scientific
leader. The program, which has been in existence for a
third of the history of the university, aims to test
Einstein's theory of relativity by launching a satellite
housing a giant thermos into space. The thermos contains
four perfect gyroscopes that are necessary to test
phenomena Einstein predicted as a consequence of
relativity: frame dragging and the geodetic effect.
"We're well on the
road to launching this beauty," Parkinson said.
"So [Gravity Probe B Deputy Program Manager] Tom
Langenstein writes a letter to NASA. Now there are four
very wonderful gyros. So a bureaucrat says, 'Wonderful
gyroscopes. That's military stuff.' Well, the little hook
is it requires a temperature of about 1.8 degrees Kelvin,
a vacuum harder than the vacuum of space, magnetic
shielding by 14 orders of magnitude and about $400
million dollars, and now you've got one. This is
not a practical military threat to the United States. I
mean, it just isn't."
The definition of
"fundamental research" rests on whether the
science or technology is "basic" and will be
placed in the public domain (that is, will be available
to the interested scientific community); it does not turn
on whether the scientific instrumentation developed or
employed is complex or sophisticated. Nonetheless, NASA
came back with a letter saying that the technologies were
too sophisticated for the research to be considered
"fundamental" and that if Stanford disagreed,
the university was free to object to the State
Department.
"If it isn't
[fundamental research], I don't know what the heck it
is," Parkinson countered. "It's not applied
engineering."
ITAR has thrown a
monkeywrench into other current or pending Stanford
projects as well. Leaders of both the Gamma Ray Large
Area Space Telescope (GLAST), for the study of celestial
high-energy sources, and the Laser Interferometer Space
Antenna (LISA), for the study of low-frequency
gravitational waves, have ITAR horror stories. ITAR also
concerns Bob Twiggs, consulting professor of aeronautics
and astronautics, whose students design, build and test
small satellites and operate them from a control station
at Stanford once they are launched.
Research scientist John
Mester voiced frustration about ITAR's influence on the
Satellite Test of the Equivalence Principle (STEP), a
space program with collaborators from universities and
research centers in the United States, United Kingdom,
France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands.
Its researchers hope to investigate one of the most
fundamental principles in physics, the equivalence of
inertia and passive gravitational mass. Stanford leads
the collaboration under Professor Francis Everitt. The
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) provides management
support for the project, which is funded by NASA and the
European Space Agency (ESA). JPL told researchers in
Mester's group that it couldn't give European colleagues
design drawings or even have foreign collaborators in the
same room as the instrumentation, which contains
components from different labs. His group is working with
NASA to obtain an ITAR Exemption for Fundamental Research
from the State Department.
The importance of
openness in research
If research is in the
public domain, the presumption is that it's not
restricted, said Dean of Research Charles Kruger. He read
the government's definition of fundamental research to
audience members: "basic and applied research in
science and engineering where the resulting information
is ordinarily published and shared broadly within the
scientific community."
But there's a catch:
University research is not considered fundamental if it
is funded by the U.S. government and the accepting
institution agrees to government-imposed restrictions on
when or whether information about the research or the
results of the research may be disseminated. Stanford
generally refuses to accept government-funded research
that carries such limitations.
What the change to the
ITAR has accomplished, Claus said in a follow-up
interview, is to change the rules on dissemination in a
way that affects aeronautics and astronautics research
already funded and under way. And it is forcing the
university to turn away new funding for space-based
research because it precludes the openness so important
in a research setting.
"Interpretations of
ITAR have been quite ambiguous, and they've been very,
very cautious," Parkinson said. "If you read
the last part of the ITAR, you quickly figure out why:
You go directly to jail, and the penalties are really
tough."
Added Debra Zumwalt,
Stanford's acting general counsel: "The problem with
the ITAR regulations is that they are vague and subject
to interpretation. I think properly interpreted we don't
even come close to violating them." While Reagan's
1985 directive should solve the problem, Zumwalt said,
"what you have to guard against is someone saying,
'ITAR does not really conflict with the order; it's just
that we're being even more cautious.' So you need to make
it really clear in the legislative history that the rules
and any changes are intended to protect the ability of
the university to do truly fundamental research without
restrictions."
Researchers said they are
no longer sure if it is safe to publish their research or
speak about it outside the university. "If you're
talking about things that are already available on the
Internet and in publications, you're probably not
increasing your risk," Zumwalt said.
Since 1969, Stanford has
conducted no classified or weapons research. The
university's current policy and its intent "are not
characterized best by the word secrecy but by the
word openness," Kruger said. "The
general thrust of the policy is openness in the
anticipation that the results will be published and
shared publicly to let all members of the community be
aware of what's going on, so all members of the community
can participate." To emphasize the university's
stance, the committee approved the recommendation to
change the policy name from "Secrecy in
Research" to "Openness in Research." The
Faculty Senate must approve the change in the fall before
it takes effect.
Strategies for
surviving ITAR
The meeting participants
tried to develop a strategy for life under ITAR.
"Above all, don't go to jail," advised
Parkinson. "If it looks like someone might go to
jail, it isn't going to be just you going to jail. It'll
be Stanford going to jail. It'll be a big mess for
everyone."
How seriously do
scientists take ITAR? Before a recent presentation in
Sacramento, where Former Dean of Research Bob Byer showed
a laser device used for flight, he checked to see that
everyone in the audience was a U.S. citizen. "I was
careful about that because I don't want to be the first
one out the door," he said.
In the short term,
researchers may have some success with
"carve-outs" -- that is, saying, "This
piece of my research is clearly not included."
In the middle term,
Parkinson said he hoped for "more sensible
interpretations of the ITAR regulations, particularly by
NASA." But even if NASA is willing to interpret ITAR
in a more reasonable way, Parkinson pointed out, the
State Department would have to concur.
Sam Armstrong, right-hand
to NASA's top administrator, Dan Goldin, recognizes the
threat ITAR poses to universities and is trying to do
something about it, Parkinson said. By working with
Armstrong and others, scientists hope to speed the
bureaucratic process. Professor Claude Canizares of MIT,
who serves on the NASA advisory council with Parkinson,
is heading a subcommittee that will push for NASA
recommendations.
But in the long term,
Parkinson said, researchers will need legislative relief.
At least three congressional amendments are in the works
-- through Defense, Housing and Urban Development, and
Veterans Affairs appropriations subcommittees -- to shift
certain jurisdictions from the State Department back to
Commerce, according to Claus.
Byer recently delivered a
presentation before the California Council on Science and
Technology, whose board has representatives from all
major research universities in California, CEOs from 20
major corporations and former members of government who
have dealt with the issue.
"The council was
quite sympathetic and will support any action that might
be taken by the Association of American
Universities," Byer said. "The sense around
that table was that pressure has to be put on the State
Department." Stanford is working aggressively with
the Association of American Universities to communicate
the position of academia to both the State Department and
to NASA, according to Assistant Dean of Research Ann
George.
Ultimately, Byer said, the
quickest way to deal with the situation may be obtaining
an Executive Order.
In the meantime, Umran
Inan, professor of electrical engineering and chair of
the Academic Council Committee on Research, asked:
"To what extent will universities defend us?"
"The university's
policy essentially says that as long as you're acting in
good faith in the course and scope of your employment,
that the university will defend and indemnify you,"
Zumwalt said. The policy on indemnification is in section
15.7 of the Administrative Guide.
Researchers who are not
sure if work on their projects might violate ITAR can ask
Kruger for advice. SR
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