Strange Warnings on Media Emails
Keith’s note: This is the scary warning language that Orbital ATK places on everything they send to the news media by email. FWIW the emails are sent to a list such that the actual email address to which the email is being sent is not on the To: portion of the email itself. So … how does one determine whether one is “the intended recipient”? And even if you can figure it out, how do you know if the email contains ITAR sensitive information? Just wondering. And … of all the people to avoid if you do not want to release inappropriate information, why would you be sending it to the news media in the first place? Yes, its a slow news day.
“Notice: This e-mail is intended solely for use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed and may contain information that is proprietary, privileged and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader is not the intended recipient or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. This communication may also contain data subject to U.S. export laws. If so, that data subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulation cannot be disseminated, distributed or copied to foreign nationals, residing in the U.S. or abroad, absent the express prior approval of the U.S. Department of State. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender by reply e-mail and destroy the e-mail message and any physical copies made of the communication. Thank you.”
So who actually knows if information is ITAR restricted/ The short answer is there is NO WAY to know unless every piece of information you generate is officially evaluated by an ITAR compliance officer. At the same time, any foreign government that really wants the information (or, for physical hardware, the technology) can simply send a friend to the US to legally get access to it.
ITAR means “international traffic in arms regulations” but any resemblance between ITAR restricted information and actual arms is purely coincidental.
Yea this is all goofy – plus they never check my nationality and my business partner is Canadian …
*Gasp!* Oh dear me, Keith, I had no idea!….
I-i-is your p-partner…*hushed tone* “Québécois?”
Strictly speaking, the US has repeatedly tried to invade Canada and every attempt was a dismal failure. China isn’t even close to that record. Of course, the last US invasion of Canada was 200 (199?) Years ago, but the underlying principal of ITAR is that you can never be too careful.
That’s just their lawyers talking. You can ignore it.
If their lawyers were really paying attention they’d be making sure that all material was scrubbed of ITAR or sensitive information before it ever appeared in any email – and they’d check the email distribution list to make certain that all recipients are not foreign nationals …
This was my first thought – what the heck are they doing putting ITAR-regulated information in an e-mail?
It’s okay to email ITAR information, but it’s supposed to be encrypted and only sent to the right people.
No one checks the nationality of the recipients and these emails are not encrypted. Oh yes the contents are posted on numerous websites than can be read anywhere on Earth.
I’m confused. If this is a media email (press release to various media companies that will publish it worldwide) but not to foreign nationals, I guess I’m not good at understanding legal documents.
They send it to foreign nationals.
No, their lawyers are less interested in following the spirit of the law than in shifting blame. It is vastly easier to require that warning at the end of all emails, than to actually try to understand and interpret ITAR. Many institutions think the email warning will shift any liability for ITAR violations from themselves to the recipients. I have doubts about what a judge would say about that, but it is a common practice and not just an Orbital ATK thing.
Too bad Orbital is using Lionel Hutz as their… law-talkin’…guy.
Not Troy McClure?
Sure, I’ll order Google/Yahoo/Apple/Microsoft/ to delete it, and then I’ll relay the order to Moscow and Beijing.
You know, that’s interesting. I, like many other people, received a notification from Google a year or so ago that China had been hacking into my email account. This was an official Google announcement, the media got into the story.
Should sensitive government material even be allowed to be sent to Gmail email addresses? Or any other web-based email for that matter?
Or frankly, any email server not under government control?
They need to realize that unless it is kept on an encrypted, unconnected server, it has probably been exposed to any government who REALLY wants access.
Any company with a required email disclosure exposes it self as highly out of touch. You can bet no one at Google or Tesla is required to have such a thing.
The company I work for sometimes deals with privileged data / materials, and even though most of the emails we send out are messages to our customers that the parts they have sent us are wrong, we also have very similar footers attached to our emails:
CONFIDENTIAL NOTE:
This email message and any accompanying data is intended only for the use of the named recipient(s), and may contain information that is privileged and confidential and is subject to applicable law. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, or the employer or agent responsible for delivering the message to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify the sender at the email address above, delete the material from your computer, and destroy any copies immediately. Thank you for your cooperation.
We even have a version that we attach to emails that we know contain ITAR-controlled information:
EXPORT SENSITIVE: ITAR CONTROLLED
Information contained herein is subject to the Code of Federal Regulations Chapter 22 International Traffic in Arms Regulations. This data may not be resold, diverted, transferred, transshipped, made available to a foreign national within the United States, or otherwise disposed of in any other country outside of its intended destination, either in original form or after being incorporated through an intermediate process into other data without the prior written approval of the U.S. Department of State.
These footers are so similar to the Orbital ATK language that I suspect it must be copied verbatim from somewhere…
While not legally binding, these confidentiality notices ARE a level of legal protection against the disimination of the information in the email.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Only Orbital ATK puts this nonsense on the things they send to news media.
I’ll take your word on that.
I don’t get email intended for the news media, so I’ll take your word for that. But in email from aerospace companies to collaborating researchers at universities, this sort of nonsense is quite common.
That may be true, but it’s SO common to receive emails with that disclosure note that I can’t believe anyone does anything but ignore it. It’s a silly, out of date attempt to CYA and I fail to understand why you repeatedly being up this issue. It’s just standard company boilerplate and surely doesn’t actually apply to a media broadcast email. Besides, if THEY email it to YOU, you aren’t obligated to delete it just because they say so. There’s no contract you agreed to simply by reading that email.
I see tbis disclaimer on emails often, many people at NASA use this on their emails. I always find it amusing because it basically states that the sender hasn’t bothered to understand what is in their email and they are trying to pass the responsibility for determining the sensitivity of the content to the receiver. It is the responsibility of the disseminator of the information to make (or have made by the appropriate people) the determination of sensitivity whether it be ITAR, SBU, or whatever. If I receive ITAR information not labeled as such but instead has this moronic disclaimer, and I pass it on to someone who happens to be a foreign national, the State Department won’t be hauling me to jail because I could prove the information was sent to me by someone else who did not properly mark it. They will keep going up the line until they find the idiot that originated the information without proper marking.