quote: Whoops, your free speech social media got merged into a defense contractor. | Okay, let me enlighten some folks on what the heck ITAR even is anyway. It's used as the boogeyman around here sometimes, but it means something specific. And I've had to sit in more than my fair share of ITAR trainings so here's your crash course (but I'm not a lawyer so I invite grains of salt). The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a set of US State Department regulations that control the export of defense articles and military technology. You might read that and think it means guns. Which it does, but it also covers *technical data*, which 22 CFR 120.33 defines as information "required for the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance, or modification of defense articles," it also adds: "This includes information in the form of blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions, or documentation." Yes, photographs. It's quite easy to imagine why the weapons technology regulation would apply to spacecraft. You don't have to imagine though, because launch vehicles and rocket engines are spelled out specifically in USML Category IV of ITAR (22 CFR 121.1). Okay, so there's restrictions around exporting this technical data. Why does that affect someone that's not a US citizen posting information collected by other non-US citizens? Well, it doesn't. Who it affects IS SPACEX. When it comes to ITAR, the exporting issue always lands at SpaceX's feet, or whichever US persons or company are responsible for it. More specifically, ITAR only binds "US persons" (citizens, green card holders, and US companies). A local from Christmas Island taking pictures of a rocket that floated up to their island has exactly zero ITAR obligations. The regulations cannot reach them. (If you're a US citizen, maybe don't play with doing this, even if you don't work for SpaceX). Meanwhile, 22 CFR 120.56 says technical data is released through "visual or other inspection by foreign persons of a defense article that reveals technical data to a foreign person," and 120.50 defines that release as an export. So read that again. Under ITAR's own definitions, the export happened the moment the hardware ended up somewhere foreign nationals could inspect it. Not when somebody posted a photo. This is how ITAR works a lot of the time, exporting really means the information entering the brain of a non-US person. If anyone has an ITAR problem in this scenario, it's the company whose Category IV defense article spent 24 days drifting around the Indian Ocean, and not some fella with a camera. A couple caveats because I know people are going to nitpick this. Not every photo is technical data. Note the regulation says inspection "that reveals technical data." Exterior photographs of what someone can see from a boat generally doesn't reveal design or production information, and 120.33(b) explicitly excludes "basic marketing information on function or purpose or general system descriptions of defense articles." A close-up of internal engine components, like an injector plate, is a different conversation. Also, once information is published, it falls under the "public domain" exclusion (22 CFR 120.34), although the State Department probably doesn't agree that an *unauthorized* release should put data into the public domain. So, why is this site nuking these posts? There's no law requiring any platform to take ITAR-adjacent content down. But in this case, the platform's owner is also the ITAR registrant that lost control of hardware (or didn't care to control it?). Anyway, deleting photos from this platform is cheap evidence of damage control. Either way, the person who posted the pictures is not the one who broke the law and definitely not the non-US person posting another non-US person's photograph. However, it's also not like the US government will ever do anything about the defacto launch monopolist playing fast and loose with ITAR. So this is just lawyers doing CYA.

quote: Whoops, your free speech social media got merged into a defense contractor. | Okay, let me enlighten some folks on what the heck ITAR even is anyway. It's used as the boogeyman around here sometimes, but it means something specific. And I've had to sit in more than my fair share of ITAR trainings so here's your crash course (but I'm not a lawyer so I invite grains of salt). The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a set of US State Department regulations that control the export of defense articles and military technology. You might read that and think it means guns. Which it does, but it also covers *technical data*, which 22 CFR 120.33 defines as information "required for the design, development, production, manufacture, assembly, operation, repair, testing, maintenance, or modification of defense articles," it also adds: "This includes information in the form of blueprints, drawings, photographs, plans, instructions, or documentation." Yes, photographs. It's quite easy to imagine why the weapons technology regulation would apply to spacecraft. You don't have to imagine though, because launch vehicles and rocket engines are spelled out specifically in USML Category IV of ITAR (22 CFR 121.1). Okay, so there's restrictions around exporting this technical data. Why does that affect someone that's not a US citizen posting information collected by other non-US citizens? Well, it doesn't. Who it affects IS SPACEX. When it comes to ITAR, the exporting issue always lands at SpaceX's feet, or whichever US persons or company are responsible for it. More specifically, ITAR only binds "US persons" (citizens, green card holders, and US companies). A local from Christmas Island taking pictures of a rocket that floated up to their island has exactly zero ITAR obligations. The regulations cannot reach them. (If you're a US citizen, maybe don't play with doing this, even if you don't work for SpaceX). Meanwhile, 22 CFR 120.56 says technical data is released through "visual or other inspection by foreign persons of a defense article that reveals technical data to a foreign person," and 120.50 defines that release as an export. So read that again. Under ITAR's own definitions, the export happened the moment the hardware ended up somewhere foreign nationals could inspect it. Not when somebody posted a photo. This is how ITAR works a lot of the time, exporting really means the information entering the brain of a non-US person. If anyone has an ITAR problem in this scenario, it's the company whose Category IV defense article spent 24 days drifting around the Indian Ocean, and not some fella with a camera. A couple caveats because I know people are going to nitpick this. Not every photo is technical data. Note the regulation says inspection "that reveals technical data." Exterior photographs of what someone can see from a boat generally doesn't reveal design or production information, and 120.33(b) explicitly excludes "basic marketing information on function or purpose or general system descriptions of defense articles." A close-up of internal engine components, like an injector plate, is a different conversation. Also, once information is published, it falls under the "public domain" exclusion (22 CFR 120.34), although the State Department probably doesn't agree that an *unauthorized* release should put data into the public domain. So, why is this site nuking these posts? There's no law requiring any platform to take ITAR-adjacent content down. But in this case, the platform's owner is also the ITAR registrant that lost control of hardware (or didn't care to control it?). Anyway, deleting photos from this platform is cheap evidence of damage control. Either way, the person who posted the pictures is not the one who broke the law and definitely not the non-US person posting another non-US person's photograph. However, it's also not like the US government will ever do anything about the defacto launch monopolist playing fast and loose with ITAR. So this is just lawyers doing CYA.

Source:https://x.com/zooko/status/2091271623479300461