IPS-English BRAZIL: Warning - These Computers Come With Strings Attached
 
Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:59:38 -0700

 
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)


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+ BRAZIL: Women Turning Backs on Information Technology Studies (http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37344)




 
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