7 ms·

> In job postings and public statements over several years, SpaceX wrongly claimed that under federal regulations known as “export control laws,” SpaceX could h

> In job postings and public statements over several years, SpaceX wrongly claimed that under federal regulations known as “export control laws,” SpaceX could hire only U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, sometimes referred to as “green card holders.” Export control laws impose no such hiring restrictions. This is perhaps pedantically, but not practically correct. ITAR restrictions, for example, prohibit foreigners from using or testing night vision equipment (even on US soil). If a team is hiring a rocket engineer, and it's a violation of ITAR for them to see technical data on SpaceX's rocket program then it's effectively impossible for a non-US person to perform in this role. Perhaps SpaceX could have phrased things differently, like "this job requires access to ITAR-controlled technical material..." Now, as to whether or not asylees are able to access ITAR restricted material seems a bit more complicated. Searching around the internet it seems that only some asylees are able to access ITAR material: https://exportcompliancesolutions.com/blog/2018/09/20/u-s-persons-include-just-citizens/ https://exportcompliancesolutions.com/blog/2018/09/20/u-s-pe...

thebooktocome 3y ago
> SpaceX recruits and hires for a variety of positions, including welders, cooks, crane operators, baristas and dishwashers, as well as information technology specialists, software engineers, business analysts, rocket engineers and marketing professionals. The jobs at issue in the lawsuit are not limited to those that require advanced degrees. The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR.
- btilly 3y ago
  For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes. Doubly so since one of their explicit concerns is having foreign agents steal their trade secrets. And therefore they have to be guarding against intentional attempts to access what your job role says you don't have access to. Given that, it makes a lot of sense for them to simply require ITAR compliance in all roles.
  - thebooktocome 3y ago
    > For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes. They decided to become an aerospace engineering firm in the US. ITAR security is part of the cost of doing business. If the typical e.g. janitor or cafeteria worker at SpaceX has access to ITAR, as SpaceX seem to have alleged before they got caught, then their ITAR security is pure theater.
    - dragonwriter 3y ago
      > ITAR security is part of the cost of doing business. To amplify this: so is compliance with non-discrimination law, and, to the extent the two interact, the cost created by the interaction.
      - thebooktocome 3y ago
        Yes, exactly; thanks.
      - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
        Sure, but shouldn't the government design them to minimize the cost created by the interaction? It seems silly that it's illegal to discriminate against some categories of non-citizens and illegal not to discriminate against other categories of non-citizens.
        collinmcnulty 3y ago
        I believe it’s because of the different standards of vetting the US government does for attaining refugee or asylum status vs a work visa.
        dragonwriter 3y ago
        > Sure, but shouldn’t the government design them to minimize the cost created by the interaction? That’s definitely an argument Tesla might want to make to Congress and the State Department (as the relevant regulatory authority for ITAR) as to what the law and regulation should be. “We think a different policy than that embodied in the current law would be better policy” is less useful as an argument to escape the legal consequences of violating the existing law.
- xoa 3y ago
  It looks like SpaceX may have messed up in terms of how only some, but not all, refugees/asylees are barred by ITAR. Reading deeper into 22 CFR § 120.62 [0] and linked regs shows a complex situation, but that's no excuse for SpaceX at this point who are plenty big enough to have good lawyers on this. But that is separate from your assertion about those who are restricted by ITAR: >The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR. This is way too casual a statement. At a company like that there won't necessarily be anything that doesn't potentially involve ITAR short of serious company reorganization, which is serious-business regulation and actively enforced. To take a simplistic example, even janitors might potentially have access to ITAR controlled materials if engineers threw them out into a bin bound for a shredder/incinerator and janitorial staff are trained and trusted parts of the disposal chain (which they should be!). Anyone might be able to overhear water cooler conversations. Etc. At this point SpaceX might have some roles that can be segmented safely, completely firewalled from the rest of the organization. Tier 1 Starlink customer support perhaps. But it's not trivial when dealing with serious restricted tech to just say "oh these roles do not handle ITAR", because it's not about handling. Read "§ 120.56 Release" [1]: (a) Release. Technical data is released through: (1) Visual or other inspection by foreign persons of a defense article that reveals technical data to a foreign person; (2) Oral or written exchanges with foreign persons of technical data in the United States or abroad; (3) The use of access information to cause or enable a foreign person, including yourself, to access, view, or possess unencrypted technical data; or (4) The use of access information to cause technical data outside of the United States to be in unencrypted form. It's quite broad. So yes, if SpaceX incorrectly excluded a group of people not covered by ITAR, they screwed up and will likely face some sort of fines/consent decree. But that doesn't mean it's trivial to then go and hire people who are covered by ITAR. ---- 0: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/120.62 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/120.62 1: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M/part-120 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M...
  - thebooktocome 3y ago
    > To take a simplistic example, even janitors might potentially have access to ITAR controlled materials if engineers threw them out into a bin bound for a shredder/incinerator and janitorial staff are trained and trusted parts of the disposal chain (which they should be!). Anyone might be able to overhear water cooler conversations. As I mention elsewhere in this thread, if this is really how SpaceX operates then they’re already in (ethical, if not legal) violation of their duty to protect ITAR from dissemination. ITAR documents should never just be sitting in an unsealed bin waiting for disposal. Employees shouldn’t casually be discussing ITAR around the water cooler. Assuming everyone around you is permitted to handle ITAR is a recipe for disaster.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
returningfory2 3y ago
> This is perhaps pedantically, but not practically correct. I think it is practically correct though, if you look at what the DOJ is specifically claiming. They are not claiming that every foreign person is exempt from export control restrictions. They are only claiming specifically that refugees and asylees are exempt, and this is what the lawsuit is about. Based on my understanding of the INA I think they're right, because refugees and asylees are generally put in the same category as permanent residents.
- returningfory2 3y ago
  By the way, SpaceX's updated job descriptions are consistent with this interpretation. They now say: "To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR" They have explicitly added refugee and asylee.
  - zerocrates 3y ago
    Sure, they were told back in 2020 they were being investigated for this, updating their boilerplate for compliance with the law is just about the minimal level of compliance.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      Compliance with the law seems like a fairly binary thing. They (as argued) weren't and now they are. Do you have a specific way in mind that they should become more compliant?
      - burkaman 3y ago
        Updating the job postings addresses "SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying", but does not mean they have resolved the other half: "refused to hire or consider them".
fisherjeff 3y ago
According to the complaint, if I’m understanding this press release correctly, all SpaceX applicants were required to be citizens or permanent residents, even those without access to controlled items.
whats_a_quasar 3y ago
Asylum seekers and refugees are U.S. persons under current law. ITAR treats them exactly the same as a U.S. citizen or green card holder, even though they are foreigners. So the DOJ action is as a result of SpaceX job postings that excluded some non-citizens who are still U.S. persons, which is unlawful discrimination by country of origin or citizenship. From the link: "U.S. person means a person (as defined in §120.14 of this part) who is a lawful permanent resident as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(20) or who is a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)." The section cited for Protected Individuals includes refugees and asylum seekers. Honestly, this is a pretty common mistake in the aerospace industry. Most people have only a vague understanding of ITAR and EAR, and don't realize that U.S. persons includes refugees and asylum seekers in addition to U.S. citizens and permanent residents. I have actually made the same mistake of writing a job posting that required applicants to be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, excluding refugees and asylum seekers, but HR caught it. I don't think this is a huge scandal or anything. I suspect someone at SpaceX wrote the language for the job posting without fully understanding all the permitted categories in export control law, and that language went a long time without anyone noticing the problem. The DOJ will sue them and win (SpaceX might not even fight it) and they'll pay a fine and have the correct language. I really doubt someone at SpaceX made a deliberate decision to discriminate against refugees and asylum seekers. Edit: I read the complaint in more detail, and it's really weird that the DOJ alleged this discrimination happened from 2018 to 2020. SpaceX was a huge company at that point and really ought to have had compliance/HR/Legal that would have caught this. So IDK, maybe there actually is more to the story.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Most people have only a vague understanding of ITAR and EAR. I have actually made the same mistake of writing a job posting that required applicants to be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, excluding refugees and asylum seekers, but HR caught it. I would expect that most people wouldn’t be too familiar with the ins and outs of “who we can hire”, and that that knowledge would often be concentrated in a compliance unit or units (likely in HR and Legal, at least) that would be primarily responsible. I do think its a pretty big deal, though, if those compliance units aren’t doing their jobs.
justin66 3y ago
Holy crap! If only the DoJ had you around to surf the web for them prior to filing this lawsuit, they could have saved themselves some trouble.

thebooktocome 3y ago

> SpaceX recruits and hires for a variety of positions, including welders, cooks, crane operators, baristas and dishwashers, as well as information technology specialists, software engineers, business analysts, rocket engineers and marketing professionals. The jobs at issue in the lawsuit are not limited to those that require advanced degrees. The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR.

btilly 3y ago
For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes. Doubly so since one of their explicit concerns is having foreign agents steal their trade secrets. And therefore they have to be guarding against intentional attempts to access what your job role says you don't have access to. Given that, it makes a lot of sense for them to simply require ITAR compliance in all roles.
- thebooktocome 3y ago
  > For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes. They decided to become an aerospace engineering firm in the US. ITAR security is part of the cost of doing business. If the typical e.g. janitor or cafeteria worker at SpaceX has access to ITAR, as SpaceX seem to have alleged before they got caught, then their ITAR security is pure theater.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > ITAR security is part of the cost of doing business. To amplify this: so is compliance with non-discrimination law, and, to the extent the two interact, the cost created by the interaction.
    - thebooktocome 3y ago
      Yes, exactly; thanks.
    - SpicyLemonZest 3y ago
      Sure, but shouldn't the government design them to minimize the cost created by the interaction? It seems silly that it's illegal to discriminate against some categories of non-citizens and illegal not to discriminate against other categories of non-citizens.
      - collinmcnulty 3y ago
        I believe it’s because of the different standards of vetting the US government does for attaining refugee or asylum status vs a work visa.
      - dragonwriter 3y ago
        > Sure, but shouldn’t the government design them to minimize the cost created by the interaction? That’s definitely an argument Tesla might want to make to Congress and the State Department (as the relevant regulatory authority for ITAR) as to what the law and regulation should be. “We think a different policy than that embodied in the current law would be better policy” is less useful as an argument to escape the legal consequences of violating the existing law.
xoa 3y ago
It looks like SpaceX may have messed up in terms of how only some, but not all, refugees/asylees are barred by ITAR. Reading deeper into 22 CFR § 120.62 [0] and linked regs shows a complex situation, but that's no excuse for SpaceX at this point who are plenty big enough to have good lawyers on this. But that is separate from your assertion about those who are restricted by ITAR: >The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR. This is way too casual a statement. At a company like that there won't necessarily be anything that doesn't potentially involve ITAR short of serious company reorganization, which is serious-business regulation and actively enforced. To take a simplistic example, even janitors might potentially have access to ITAR controlled materials if engineers threw them out into a bin bound for a shredder/incinerator and janitorial staff are trained and trusted parts of the disposal chain (which they should be!). Anyone might be able to overhear water cooler conversations. Etc. At this point SpaceX might have some roles that can be segmented safely, completely firewalled from the rest of the organization. Tier 1 Starlink customer support perhaps. But it's not trivial when dealing with serious restricted tech to just say "oh these roles do not handle ITAR", because it's not about handling. Read "§ 120.56 Release" [1]: (a) Release. Technical data is released through: (1) Visual or other inspection by foreign persons of a defense article that reveals technical data to a foreign person; (2) Oral or written exchanges with foreign persons of technical data in the United States or abroad; (3) The use of access information to cause or enable a foreign person, including yourself, to access, view, or possess unencrypted technical data; or (4) The use of access information to cause technical data outside of the United States to be in unencrypted form. It's quite broad. So yes, if SpaceX incorrectly excluded a group of people not covered by ITAR, they screwed up and will likely face some sort of fines/consent decree. But that doesn't mean it's trivial to then go and hire people who are covered by ITAR. ---- 0: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/120.62 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/120.62 1: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M/part-120 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-22/chapter-I/subchapter-M...
- thebooktocome 3y ago
  > To take a simplistic example, even janitors might potentially have access to ITAR controlled materials if engineers threw them out into a bin bound for a shredder/incinerator and janitorial staff are trained and trusted parts of the disposal chain (which they should be!). Anyone might be able to overhear water cooler conversations. As I mention elsewhere in this thread, if this is really how SpaceX operates then they’re already in (ethical, if not legal) violation of their duty to protect ITAR from dissemination. ITAR documents should never just be sitting in an unsealed bin waiting for disposal. Employees shouldn’t casually be discussing ITAR around the water cooler. Assuming everyone around you is permitted to handle ITAR is a recipe for disaster.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

returningfory2 3y ago

> This is perhaps pedantically, but not practically correct. I think it is practically correct though, if you look at what the DOJ is specifically claiming. They are not claiming that every foreign person is exempt from export control restrictions. They are only claiming specifically that refugees and asylees are exempt, and this is what the lawsuit is about. Based on my understanding of the INA I think they're right, because refugees and asylees are generally put in the same category as permanent residents.

returningfory2 3y ago
By the way, SpaceX's updated job descriptions are consistent with this interpretation. They now say: "To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR" They have explicitly added refugee and asylee.
- zerocrates 3y ago
  Sure, they were told back in 2020 they were being investigated for this, updating their boilerplate for compliance with the law is just about the minimal level of compliance.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Compliance with the law seems like a fairly binary thing. They (as argued) weren't and now they are. Do you have a specific way in mind that they should become more compliant?
    - burkaman 3y ago
      Updating the job postings addresses "SpaceX routinely discouraged asylees and refugees from applying", but does not mean they have resolved the other half: "refused to hire or consider them".

fisherjeff 3y ago

According to the complaint, if I’m understanding this press release correctly, all SpaceX applicants were required to be citizens or permanent residents, even those without access to controlled items.

whats_a_quasar 3y ago

Asylum seekers and refugees are U.S. persons under current law. ITAR treats them exactly the same as a U.S. citizen or green card holder, even though they are foreigners. So the DOJ action is as a result of SpaceX job postings that excluded some non-citizens who are still U.S. persons, which is unlawful discrimination by country of origin or citizenship. From the link: "U.S. person means a person (as defined in §120.14 of this part) who is a lawful permanent resident as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(20) or who is a protected individual as defined by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3)." The section cited for Protected Individuals includes refugees and asylum seekers. Honestly, this is a pretty common mistake in the aerospace industry. Most people have only a vague understanding of ITAR and EAR, and don't realize that U.S. persons includes refugees and asylum seekers in addition to U.S. citizens and permanent residents. I have actually made the same mistake of writing a job posting that required applicants to be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, excluding refugees and asylum seekers, but HR caught it. I don't think this is a huge scandal or anything. I suspect someone at SpaceX wrote the language for the job posting without fully understanding all the permitted categories in export control law, and that language went a long time without anyone noticing the problem. The DOJ will sue them and win (SpaceX might not even fight it) and they'll pay a fine and have the correct language. I really doubt someone at SpaceX made a deliberate decision to discriminate against refugees and asylum seekers. Edit: I read the complaint in more detail, and it's really weird that the DOJ alleged this discrimination happened from 2018 to 2020. SpaceX was a huge company at that point and really ought to have had compliance/HR/Legal that would have caught this. So IDK, maybe there actually is more to the story.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> Most people have only a vague understanding of ITAR and EAR. I have actually made the same mistake of writing a job posting that required applicants to be U.S. citizens or permanent residents, excluding refugees and asylum seekers, but HR caught it. I would expect that most people wouldn’t be too familiar with the ins and outs of “who we can hire”, and that that knowledge would often be concentrated in a compliance unit or units (likely in HR and Legal, at least) that would be primarily responsible. I do think its a pretty big deal, though, if those compliance units aren’t doing their jobs.

justin66 3y ago

Holy crap! If only the DoJ had you around to surf the web for them prior to filing this lawsuit, they could have saved themselves some trouble.