[NYTr] Dell Computer Wants Brazilian Customers to Sign US Loyalty Oath

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

IPS News - Oct 1, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39480

BRAZIL:  Warning - These Computers Come with Strings Attached

By Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 1 (IPS) - The declaration the Dell computer maker
is requiring its Brazilian customers to sign, promising their computers
will not be exported to the "axis of evil" or used for weapons
development, according to reports, highlights the difficulties faced by
scientific research due to U.S. geopolitical considerations.

Paulo Silveira Gomes, a professor of nuclear physics at the Federal
Fluminense University, refused to sign the export compliance agreement
after buying "an ordinary personal computer" from Dell Brazil.

The ban on transferring or exporting Dell products to Cuba, Iran, North
Korea, Syria or Sudan, and on using them for the production or
maintenance of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, is part of the
conditions imposed on the Brazilian market by the U.S. parent company,
in accordance with United States export rules.

The incident had wide repercussions in Brazil because it was reported
in Folha de Sao Paulo, the country’s leading daily. So was the case of
chemist Adelina Pinheiro Santos, a researcher with the National Nuclear
Energy Commission (CNEN).

Pinheiro Santos admitted to buying one gram of carbon nanotubes (tubes
with diameters in the order of nanometres) through a friend in the
United States, bypassing the refusal of a supply company which said it
was not authorised by the U.S. government to sell "certain materials"
to Brazil.

This kind of "contraband" is a mechanism to get around U.S.
restrictions that several scientists told the newspaper they faced when
they wished to buy sensitive products, such as carbon fibres and
nanotechnology components. The vetoes even affect trade with Europe.

Silveira Gomes said he did not sign the Dell document for reasons of
"dignity" and national sovereignty. "I do not accept the division of
countries into good and bad that the U.S. is trying to impose on the
world. I work for a Brazilian university, supported by public funding,
and I can’t do this if I’m subjected to foreign laws," he told IPS.

Neither would it be ethical to sign a statement he cannot be sure of
fulfilling, since the computer belongs to the university and was paid
for by the National Council for Scientific and Technological
Development (CNPq), he said.

Restrictions would be justifiable if the United States does not want to
export "sensitive" products because they might encourage manufacture of
weapons of mass destruction, but to impose them on a personal computer
"made in Brazil" and sold by Dell Computadores do Brasil, a company
constituted under Brazilian law, is an exaggeration of "anti-terrorist
paranoia," he said.

A Dell Brazil salesman, speaking on the telephone to this correspondent
who posed as a potential buyer, explained that Dell computers are made
in Brazil, but use components and technology transferred from the
United States, so they must follow U.S. export regulations. Dell Brazil
is only a subsidiary, he emphasised.

The export compliance agreement is only required "in certain specific
cases," when the customers might export the computer or use it during
travel to countries subject to a U.S. embargo or sanctions, he said.

This distinction makes little sense, however, because a computer can be
used to contact far-off enemy governments over the Internet without
ever leaving Brazil.

But supercomputers, capable of extremely fast calculations and highly
complex simulations, needed for nuclear and meteorological
applications, are the products subject to the greatest controls, and
are the focus of most accusations from developing countries that access
to them is being blocked.

The U.S. government classifies countries in four groups for the
purposes of computer export regulations. Since 2000, Brazil, Argentina,
Mexico and the European countries are among those that do not need
advance authorisation from Washington to import computers of any
capability.

Countries subject to a total embargo are those mentioned in the export
compliance agreement, while the two intermediate groups must have
authorisation to import supercomputers capable of 33,000 and 45,000
million operations per second (MOPS).

The restrictions are due to the high cost of technological development
as a proportion of the total cost of equipment produced in small
quantities, and because these instruments are essential in strategic
areas, such as production of nuclear artifacts and anti-submarine
warfare, as well as cryptography, where the side with the faster
machine wins the decoding race, Gylvan Meira told IPS.

A former head of the Brazilian Space Agency and ex scientific director
of the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Meira led a number
of sensitive international negotiations, including the purchase of
supercomputers. When asked by IPS, he denied rumours about vetoes and
conditions imposed on such acquisitions for INPE.

He also said there had been no U.S. pressure for the Centre for Weather
Forecasts and Climate Studies (CPTEC), opened in 1994, to be built in
Cachoeira Paulista, 110 kilometres from its parent institute, INPE,
which concentrates on aerospace research and industry in Sao José dos
Campos, near Sao Paulo.

There had been rumours that the U.S. had demanded that the facilities
be kept separate.

CPTEC’s first supercomputer purchase was made in full knowledge of the
restrictions, and undertaken in the context of open negotiations with
the U.S. and Japan, the main manufacturers of such equipment, said
Meira, who added that Brazil is recognised as a responsible and
reliable country.

CPTEC has had no trouble in recently acquiring a new supercomputer, one
of the 500 fastest in the world, which is capable of 280 million MOPS.

But in previous decades, before Brazil signed the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty, and while it was developing its armaments
industry, it was a target of mistrust.

Protecting equipment that can be used to build nuclear weapons, attack
nuclear submarines or decipher encrypted messages is normal, and so is
the export compliance procedure for buying normal computers, said
Meira, who is now at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the
University of Sao Paulo.

Sales of some products, like the chemical substances that can be used
for cocaine production, are regulated by Brazil, too, he pointed out.

Brazil’s regulations against biopiracy also draw criticism from
scientists whose research projects may be delayed or completely blocked
as a result. There are plenty of cases of researchers who have been
prosecuted and even imprisoned for transporting animal and plant
species out of the country without the numerous, complex authorisations
required. 

END/IPS/LA IP SC IT ED CV/TRASP-VD-SW/MO/DM/07) (END/2007)