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Comment by someguydave | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it has nothing to do with taxes. ITAR is a law that says individuals can be charged with crimes and go to jail if they tell/sell/give almost anything defense related to a foreigner without asking the US State department for permission. The law is vast and vague and “captures” many surprising things. ITAR includes items as mundane as a bolt that was designed for military use. The US government’s interpretation of the ITAR law makes almost no exceptions for allies except for Canada, so it is a huge deal if Australia and the UK become exempt

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Compliance is also not cheap. If you think getting soc2 compliant or CIPS or hippa compliance was a pain in the ass.....OTAR is like the major boss.

ITAR can also intertwine with EAR regulations as well.

Parts of itar are very clear....others can be vauge to mean anything and can be up to interpretation of the government. Also key thing to note. If you think HIPPA or OSHA has harsh penalties.... ITAR violations can be career prospect ending. I'm talking massive fines, jail time, and if your a lawyer you get disbarred iirc.

To add to this: that "tell/sell/give to a foreigner" portion applies universally anywhere, and (the way I was taught), it can happen by proxy/passively.

Example: You put up on a whiteboard in a conference room an engineering drawing of a Air-to-Air missile's internals. When you leave the room, you forget the drawing on the board.

Later that day, somehow, a foreign visitor is walking around the office and peeks inside, and sees the whiteboard.

Congratulations, you just committed an ITAR violation.(Why? The apparent logic behind this rule is that spy agencies regularly employ people with photographic memories)

Another example: You take your phone that has your work email/chat on vacation to a foreign country. On arrival, your phone gets confiscated for "inspection" and then is handed back hours later. Bam. ITAR violation.

A nice side effect of this, by the way, is that you just leave all work stuff behind when you go on vacation. No pesky work-calls while chilling on the beaches of Portugal. Don't want to go breaking the law now, would we?

ITAR is dumb madness: A canadian software company, doing business with french hardware manufacturer for a canadian client has ZERO connection to the US, but still under full control and compliance because of... the nature of the hardware

Yup ITAR/EAR follows the specific item/technology. You can get in major trouble even if you never interacted with a US counterpart at any point in the supply chain in this way.

It might seem draconic, but it's to plug a very easy loophole that can be exploited, and people actually do try to exploit when they don't understand exactly to what the regulations apply to.

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