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Washington, DC 20230
30 January 2007
- The SITAC meeting was held at the Department of Commerce in Room 3884 from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm. The meeting began with a brief introduction of the attendees. Mr. Goodrich (Fluke Corporation), chair of the SITAC, provided several handouts including the minutes and membership roster for the meeting. These handouts included the meeting agenda and a list of committee members.
- The open session covered the following topics which was followed by a brief closed session:
- John Goodrich opened the meeting with an introduction of all of the attendees. The general session was attended by industry and government members as well as the press. In particular, the Department of Defense was represented by Dr. Anderson and the Department of State was represented by John Albert.
- Shortly after the introductions, John Goodrich introduced the DFO of the SITAC, Christopher Costanzo who summarized licensing statistics for sensors and cameras. From 1 October 2006 to 17 January 2007, the Bureau processed 670 export applications, which were valued at $38.6 million USD. Of these license applications, 632 were approved with conditions, 37 were returned without action, and 1 was rejected. The average processing time for all of these cases was 34 days. The top destinations for these items were Germany, Japan, UK, Russian Federation, France, South Korea, Australia, Mexico, Italy and Brazil. This represented a 31% decrease in licensing volume from the same period last fiscal year. Industry reports this decline represents a loss of US global market share in this technology area as the international markets are experiencing strong growth.
- Mr. Goodrich then introduced Sarah Heidema, a staff member from the Office of Technology Transfer Controls, who commented on the status of the regional stability proposal. She also commented that there would be a technical working group on the low light level proposal sometime in late March. This TWG would discuss the current validity note on thermal imaging devices as well as the associated carve outs. She explained that the validity note could either be extended, removed, or made permanent. She anticipated that it would be made permanent. Jim Harrington was designated by the Department of State to lead the low light TWG.
- Mr. Chuckla explained that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticized the Military Critical Technologies List (MCTL) saying that it was not being updated or being used in conjunction with export controls.
- Mr. Goodrich commented on his company’s understanding of foreign availability of uncooled thermal imagers. He believes that ULIS (a French supplier) had exported several hundred state of the art 640x480 infrared microbolometers in the last year but has the capacity to produce up to 3,000 annually.
- Mr. Little explained that the fire fighting camera standard was still being developed and may be available in 2009. The standard may describe the spatial resolution of the sensor. He also explained that with the US dollar should be attractive to many other countries
John Goodrich then adjourned the meeting at 12:00 pm and after a break the closed session began.