Oded Arbel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > This "snort" business was often compared to the sell of six major > U.S. sea ports to a Dubai state-owned firm, which was approved w/o > too much considerations. The same department is the one that forbade > the Israeli Checkpoint from purchasing SourceFire, all this while > the U.S. is in arms against almost all arab countries. Makes you > wonder, doesn't it ?
Not really. To be fair to the US, as far as I understand, this was not about snort at all, but about other products made by the company and used by sensitive agencies of the US government. CheckPoint agreed to certain restrictions as a part of the deal but that was not enough, so they backed out. And as for DP World, that is not so simple, either. They got into that mess almost accidentally, because they bought a British company called P&O that had been running several US port terminals for a long time. DP World bought P&O to get their Asian operations, actually, the US part was not the focus. IIRC the port deal was killed by the House Appropriations Committee. It actually stands to reason that the same agency that effectively got a serious slap on the wrist over the ports decided to play it extra safe the next time around. Oh, and while the US is not terribly friendly with some Arab countries these days, I suspect the relations with Dubai (or UAE) are actually quite good. Americans do actually take these things seriously. You may sneer, but I work for an American multinational, and there are detailed rules and regulations and special offices and personnel dealing with the question of what can or cannot be done outside of the US or with involvement of foreigners (not American nationals), even within the same company. This is with or without defense-related sensitivity, just due to commercial export restrictions. They will not just look at how American the company is, but who the particular people involved are. I know of cases where very senior people central to a huge project were denied entry to client facilities (where the product they were developing was being installed) because they were not American citizens. By the way, if you suspect that these export restrictions are somehow anti-Israeli, consider this: a part of these restrictions is an absolute prohibition to do any business with any party that supports boycott of Israel. It is the law. The law, of course, says boycott in general, but there is an immediate explicit comment that the primary concern is the boycott of Israel by Arab or other countries. -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.goldshmidt.org ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
