Imposing an Information Embargo

I'd like to welcome as our guest Kenneth R. Foster, a bioengineer at the University of Pennsylvania, who has been quite critical of how one professional association, the IEEE, has treated its members in embargoed countries.

Perhaps it would be helpful to know a bit about my background. I am a professor of bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where my research involves medical applications and possible health risks of electromagnetic fields. In addition, I have done a lot of writing about issues related to social impacts of technology, including two books on science and the law.

I have been a longstanding member (now, fellow) of the IEEE, was formerly president of one of their societies (Society on Social Implications of Technology)

My homepage is http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~kfoster/kfoster.htm

The problem, basically, is that IEEE has requested a series of rulings from the Treasury Department about what they can and cannot do. The ball is in the government's court. Once OFAC issues rulings, all societies have to comply.

The results will certainly be restrictions on societies in how they can deal with members in embargoed countries. But it is not clear that these will be very burdensome, or in any event not as burdensome as the policies that IEEE has adopted while waiting for OFAC to clarify the situation.

The OFAC ruling allows scientific societies to carry out their normal peer review process but requires them to get a license from the Treasury Department to "edit" the manuscripts. But the editing that most technical journals do is very minor, usually limited to correcting minor English errors.

My guess is that it will be easy for major scientific societies to get such licenses. I would guess that the big societies will apply for the licenses and be done with it, and there will be very little effect in practice in how people from embargoed countries can publish their work. I am more worried about possible long-term impacts on small publications or politically controversial media, which presumably also need licenses to copyedit material submitted by people from embargoed countries.

In your previous emails, your concerns also included limiting member benefits by IEEE. These include denying members in embargoed countries with web access to IEEE publications, the decision of IEEE to stop "promoting" regular members to senior member and fellow status, denying use of IEEE logos by local chapters of IEEE located in embargoed countries, etc. OFAC has yet to rule on these matters. I can imagine that OFAC might restrict some of these practices, and if so all societies will have to go along.

I do not expect a catastrophe. I do not see the slightest interest in the government in making a big issue of this, and the government makes it very clear that its policy is to facilitate the flow of information into embargoed countries. I do not predict that the government will impose big burdens on scientific societies. If they tried to do that, all sorts of hell will break loose, and I do not see that there is much benefit to the government in pursuing the issue rigorously.

On the other hand, there seems to me to be an inherent contradiction between the fundamental goal of professional societies, which is to provide services to their members, and the US law which prohibits "services" to persons living in embargoed countries. That is necessarily going to result in some restrictions on scientific societies.

But this is fundamentally a legal issue -- the IEEE lawyers decided that these measures were required by US law. While waiting for the government to clarify its rules, they took a series of pre-emptive actions to shield the organization from the possibility of prosecution.

Given that legal view, the implications of the codes of ethics are debatable - no code of ethics would require an organization to destroy itself by providing illegal services to its members.

IEEE actions are certainly debatable on legal grounds - other societies have also asked their lawyers to review the situation, and they came to very different conclusions than the IEEE.

Excessive timidity has ethical implications, but it is not a black-and-white issue.

It was certainly prudent for IEEE to ask OFAC for clarification how Treasury rules apply to it, given IEEE's many members in embargoed countries. I do not think that this justifies the extremely risk-adverse approach that the IEEE has taken, which is far different than that taken by other major societies.

On the OFAC website you will find lists of fines for thousands of dollars against such firms as Amazon and Wal-Mart, and even against the NY Yankees, for illegal transactions. Only the one small fine against one scientific society.

Realistically, I do not foresee that major societies or journals will get into trouble. The New York Times can probably continue to publish letters to the editor from Iranians, correcting their English, without being subject to huge fines.

But the possibility of mischief against small journals or dissident writers seems very clear to me. That really scares me.

As I mentioned in my previous answer, the requirement that journals get licenses to "edit" material submitted by people in embargoed countries, where "editing" seems to include mere correction of English errors, could have very far-reaching impacts. And not just against the IEEE. The implications are really scary to me. Not that the government would even think of cracking down against dissident journals but.....

First, the faculty of EE Department at Sharif University of Technology extends its appreciation and thanks to you and the others that indeed are helping to resolve the unfortunate discriminatory policy of IEEE on the Iranian members. We hope that your efforts to remove this policy will prevail.

This policy is against the very core of the cooperative spirit of scientists and researchers that strive to promote harmony and peace worldwide among people, and IEEE as one of the greatest such organization that supports those very people has failed in its mission.

Few questions:

We believe that IEEE image has been tarnished among many researchers world wide. We like to know how IEEE can remedy this tarnished image?:

Does OFAC limit electronic access to IEEE publications by Iranian members?

If IEEE claims that they are limited by the federal government to give access online the Journals and Publications to Iranian members residing in Iran, then why such a law does not apply to M.I.I where it has put over 500 of its best educational classes on sites such that anybody, at anywhere, including Iranian living in Iran can access without any limitation

Kenneth R. Foster:
    Thank you for your thanks!

Realistically, the IEEE has made a legal issue of this, and things now will probably have to be resolved by rulings by OFAC. I am not sure that my fussing about the issue will convince IEEE to change its policies, but in any event the problem needs to be publicly debated.

The rules of OFAC are described on its website. The government is very emphatic about its desire to enhance the free flow of information to people living in embargoed countries, and OFAC regulations exempt educational material, the distribution of completed materials, and so on.

The issue with IEEE is the prohibition against providing "services" to people in embargoed countries. Well, the fundamental goal of a scientific society is to provide services to its members so there is a problem there.

You are referring to MIT's policy of making its course material available on the Internet? I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me that this is educational material and of no concern to OFAC. If MIT started correcting papers submitted by students in Iran, that might be a different matter.

On face value, OFAC's letter to IEEE says that a license is needed to edit material submitted by residents of embargoed countries. Whether the Treasury Department would come after you is a different matter. I see no evidence that the issue is of great concern to them, at least as it relates to technical or scholarly journals. They issued their ruling only at the request of IEEE.

I note that OFAC put the ruling on their website for a while, then took it down. Maybe they are rethinking it.

IEEE says that the issue came to their attention when they were planning to co-sponsor a meeting with an Iranian society, and the legal restrictions against currency transactions with an embargoed country came up.

This is really a US legal issue, related to US government laws relating to trade embargoes, and I seriously doubt whether there is any connection to internal political developments in the embargoed countries themselves.

Actually, I regret that such a decision has been forced by an international (and not national) organization due to a national unjustly policy (i.e., governmental policies), but I think that the process of publishing a scientific paper is a two-way trusting process, and when the authors sign a copyright letter, accordingly, the IEEE association is responsible to publish the papers in this stage of the process. So, I wonder that why IEEE blocks the accepted papers.

On the other hand, I imagine that any problem has a suitable solution, providing that the IEEE president and managers really want. For example, all of the papers from IRAN can be reviewed by non-americans. So, no service is provided by Americans to Iranians. And in the final editing stage a new office abroad of USA can be responsible of editing process. Anyway, I am interested to know whether IEEE managers try to open new ways in this respect or not. And whether IEEE new policies include submission and revision as well as final editing or not.

At the last I imagine that the net result of such trend will be less favorability of IEEE as a scientific organization and other organizations (and esp. Europeans) will become more favourable. New scientific ideas are like water and nobody can prevent water flowing. Thanks.

Kenneth R. Foster:
    I sympathize with your situation and regret very much that your problems have arisen in the first place.

To respond briefly, I think that the publication issue with IEEE will be resolved rather soon. Other issues related to membership privileges will probably take longer to resolve, unfortunately.

Scientific and professional societies have very little to say about the larger problems in international affairs, but at least we can try to address problems that are faced by our colleagues around the world. I only wish, as a member of IEEE, that we had done a better job of it.

Good luck!

Let's hope that the IEEE finds a way to continue its distinguished tradition of service to our colleagues in Iran and other embargoed countries. And let's hope that the US government does not place unnecessary barriers in their way.