Submitted by Michael Deal, May 11, 2007 10:12

This case raises many troubling question. First, the government's erosion of the constitutionally based exclusion for documents and information that are publicly available will have widespread adverse effects on American science and technology. If scientists and engineers can't talk about things that have already been published, then there will be great uncertainty and less international cooperation on basic science that may have a conceivable military application. Second, the Bush Administration is prosecuting only a few foreign-born individuals while major corporations are moving wholesale R&D efforts, glibly named as "Research Centers" or "Technology Centers" to China. In other words, the FBI, ICE and Export Enforcement boys are targeting a few legal immigrants who don't have the resources to mount a large scale defense (as Boeing did in the machine tools case that was settled with a civil monetary payment) while turning a blind eye to wholesale transfers of technology by major corporations that just happen to be major Republican donors.

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