Does anyone know what regulatory / legal hurdles they may be facing? Relevant Wikipedia article [0] is strangely silent on the topic, though my guess would be, this might be classified as military technology.
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The idea that source code publication can be restricted (prior restraint) by classifying it as “arms” seems like an attempt at an end run around the bill of rights.
Tipper Gore?
Or they could delete the code, spend their time engineering instead of lawyering, secure in the knowledge a copy of the code is almost certain to end up hosted somewhere outside the US anyway.
My take is it will be significantly more nuanced if it goes to a fight.
Bernstein v US is too blanket of a ruling to say "all code is 100% protected under free speech". It's like trying to argue "all speech is protected under free speech" - this is a gross misunderstanding. There are clear examples of things you cannot freely say - one of them being classified information[0]. Otherwise Snowden wouldn't have to fear anything (he absolutely does).
Like wise, saying all code is free speech is too obtuse. If my code was open source "puts classified_information_str" I'd be in lots of trouble.
Where this falls isn't up to me to decide - I'm not smart enough, but it's just not so clear cut.
[0] https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/859/classified-...
It is like the situation with trade secrets - anyone can publish trade secrets except those who have a duty not to disclose them, and often they can as well once the secret becomes public knowledge.
There are, however, statutory exceptions for national defense information like plans to a military base or plans and specifications for certain weapons. In those cases it doesn't matter how you came into possession of the related documents you can't legally publish it anyway.
1. Actual classified information (Secret, TS, SCI, SAP). This information is classified by people with clearances according to a set of guidelines and all information has to be more or less manually classified. If you were to independently produce this information (without knowledge or information from the classified project), you are legally in the clear to publish.
2. Restricted information (RD, FRD, SNM). Unlike with classified information, what is or isn't considered restricted is regulated by the DOE. Because of this, information can be "restricted at inception" which prevents it from being published regardless of how it was obtained or produced.
Point being that just because information isn't classified and you may have acquired it through independent means, you can still be restricted from sharing it because the US has deemed it "inherently dangerous" to national security.
Note: I don't think the code in question could by any stretch be considered RD or FRD.
Fast high resolution ADCs, which anyone can simulate using fast enough low res sampling (any serdes for modern buses) and some math. Thermal cameras can be sold up to a certain refresh rate but not higher.
It’s not really about the tech so much as it is about making it difficult and annoying to work around.
Yep and it’s incredibly broad. I used to work in one of those shooting ranges in Vegas where tourists go to shoot machine guns. We were told that anything more than “barrel pointed this way, this is the trigger” with a foreign national (which were a LOT of customers) could be construed as “training” and thus a potential ITAR violation.
We built a system with the most humanitarian application imaginable, helping people in need, and it was good. Turns out, it's hard to make money at that and the business people recast things into a new product that could suppress dissent in authoritarian countries, which they sold there. I'm positive it's been used to hurt people.
Ethically, all the people that make generic infra like roads or computers or sdr software are not responsible if someone else does evil with their product.
That said would be nice to someone like google just added a layer on google maps of all objects you can track. There are companies that do all sort of tracking, just not as cheaply as this.
Restricting code like this will make zero difference to governments or any motivated, well funded, capable group. It just hampers the rest of us.
Authoritarian governments just buy normal radars, and illuminate to their hearts content.
In a domestic authoritarian context, an herbal extract salesman could detect when illumination is shone on the house in preparation for a heist.