Bigelow Wins a Crucial Round Against ITAR

Red tape in orbit, Economist
“A small company has won an important legal challenge to America’s space-technology export-control regime … In December 2007, a company called Bigelow Aerospace, filed the first legal challenge to America’s rules for exporting space technology. It disputed the government’s claim that foreign passengers travelling on a spaceship or space station were involved in a transfer of technology. The outcome suggests that there may be a chink in the armour of the export-control regime.”
Under the existing rules, any non-American passengers on its space stations would have to comply with onerous export-control rules. These take months to satisfy and could plausibly even require government monitors to be present whenever the foreigner was near American space technology. Even training on the ground in a mock-up module is deemed a transfer of technology and therefore subject to controls.”