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Jul 2, 2009 07:00 PM | 23
John Reece Roth, 71, a prominent plasma physicist was sentenced to four years in prison for 18 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud and violations of the Arms Export Control Act, after he allowed a Chinese graduate student to see sensitive information on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones.
“The illegal export of restricted military data represents a serious threat to national security,” David Kris of the U.S. Department of Justice, said in a statement, “We know that foreign governments are actively seeking this information for their own military development. Today’s sentence should serve as a warning to anyone who knowingly discloses restricted military data in violation of our laws.”
Roth, a retired professor at the University of Tennessee, helped found the university spin-off, Atmospheric Glow Technologies in 2000. The company won $10 million dollars in government grants to develop a radio-frequency technology to create ionized gas, or plasma, for use in a wide variety of applications, including sterilizing medical devices.
In 2004, the company received a U.S. Air Force contract to develop a plasma actuator that could help reduce drag on the wings of drones, such as the ones the military uses. Under the contract, for which Roth was reportedly paid $6,000, he was prohibited from sharing sensitive data with foreign nationals.
Despite warnings from his University’s Export Control Officer, in 2006, he took a laptop containing sensitive plans with him on a lecture tour in China. He also allowed graduate students Xin Dai of China and Sirous Nourgostar of Iran to work on the project.
Last year, Atmospheric Glow Technologies pleaded guilty to 10 counts of breaking export laws and and company physicist Daniel Sherman pleaded guilty to conspiracy for allegedly lying about Dai's employment.
During his trial, Roth testified that he was unaware that hiring the graduate students was a violation of his contract, otherwise he would not have participated since his plasma research also has non-military applications. "This whole thing has not helped me, it has not helped the university," he told Nature in 2006. "And it has probably not helped this country, either."
Roth's attorney, Thomas Dundon, told Scientific American that he has filed a notice of appeal. "We were hopeful that he would not be incarcerated at all," he says.
John Santarius, a plasma physicist at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who has known Roth for two decades says that he always found Roth to be patriotic and careful. “It is so out of character for him to do something like this on purpose,” he says, “My inclination is to believe he made an honest mistake.”
Image of Predator drone courtesy bryce_edwards via Flickr
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23 Comments
Add Commentprofessor roth was more interested in the expansion of knowledge/discovery, and within a learning/discovery environment knowledge is shared, unlike some that are more interested in artificial bondaries set by fear and greed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA) The Justice Department seems so pleased with themselves for this prosecution, but what department failed to prevent this professor from having foreign nationals work on his project?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisB) We paid him $6,000 for this vital-to-never-ending-international-arms-race research. What would have China or Iran offered him? $10,000?
C) Did the government finally notice that foreign nationals worked on the project when one of the foreign national students was accredited as one of the authors of the published plasma research in 2005... a year before Roth went to China? Well, I mean, did they?
D) I find myself not caring too much that their drones will go as fast as ours. Do they even have drones?
He was warned and chose to ignore the warning.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRTL suggests that nations are Artificial boundaries? like the fact that you have money in your wallet and others want it? You have no appreciation of how much you rely on the security provided by your military.
Yeah the security provided by the military... wait how did the military let this information get out again?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis prosecution is a message to the scientific community to care every inch about technicalities because the government and military functions soley on technicalities rather than say, you know, effectiveness (unless of course when effectiveness is listed as a techinicality).
I agree "He was warned and chose to ignore the warning." It's just that the due course of law can sometimes feel tragic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe all live in a dangerous world. There are responsibilities and rights. But there is a very high responsibility on the politicians on the matter. They are responsible for making this a safer and better world. If the US and other countries would be at peace with each other, this professor's actions would be harmless. Send them all to orbit the earth and I dare them to find any physical borders between countries. How primitive and obnoxious we still are with respect to each on this planet. All because some believe they are better than others.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisapparently a jury of his peers found him guilty of gross stupidity ... and there is a price for this as he has discovered. Here's a clue - we live in a nasty world filled with people seeking advantage at any cost. So wake up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere we have a bunch of people chomping at the bit for his punishment because he is a "traitor"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow about when your own government trained Afghani rebels to fight with US Military techniques and then they ended up becoming the taliban? How about when your CIA trained Bin Laden?
You're all idiots for having faith in your own government and laws.
For the information of this plane? They need not exaggerate. Feel sorry for this Prof as a Chinese.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmazing, "national security" is always the scapegoat. How can we spread and protect freedom if we threaten our own citizens with draconian measures that reflect nothing more than insecurity. The fact is, the utilitarian argument of doing the greatest good for the greatest amount of people does not apply here if the measures taken undermine principles and values our country is supposed to stand for. He did not conspire with mal-intent, therefore the ends do not justify the means.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI totally agree with AScannerDarkly, dont be so foolish and realize the hypocrisy of our "democracy."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI was a foreign student doing defence-funded research in a US school to get my PhD, same as most of the other engineering PhD candidates. The research problems are supposed to come nice and sanitized, but it doesn't take a PhD to figure out what your problem's military applications are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStudents need funding, the military seems to want to fund things (or at least buy technology from contractors who need universities to produce it), usually the students are bright enough to also figure out non-military applications of the technology, and everybody wins. For foreign students it's fairly safe, but the rather ironic desire of the military to keep the technology from falling into foreign hands can make it tricky for the responsible Americans who keep the machine running to keep it all straight.
In this kind of system, the real defense secrets are mostly about integration of technology, not technology itself. The underlying technology is all published, and most of the experts on it are foreign students. It becomes very, very difficult not to discuss any of the lessons learned from applying a technology with the technology's inventor, in this case someone you routinely discuss the underlying technology with.
I'm not familiar enough with the case to really comment, but it looks like it was an honest and thoroughly harmless mistake. The only purpose of prosecuting it would be as a cautionary tale to others (the publicity around it has ensured that everyone now knows which paper to read to make their drones faster), but I'm not sure what the real message is. Though such things may not matter to the law, I really do think it's disgusting that someone with a lifetime of service to the country and to research would be treated this way.
As someone who has been involved with the handling of highly sensitive classified intelligence material, it seems to me that Roth's defense attorney was woefully incompetent to handle his case. After all, someone - a government official responsible for the civilian program - should have been aware of Roth's lack of indoctrination in national security requirements, and should therefore be equally as culpable in his breach of those requirements. That person should have been made to testify as to how Roth was allowed to possess and transport such highly classified material without adequate safeguards. Seems to me that the elderly professor is being made a scapegoat in this affair.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI can't believe that all the comments above completely fail to comprehend any shred of national loyalty or pride of country involved in the crime this lowlife committed. It isn't the $6,000 - its the betrayal of trust placed with him when he was given access to military secrets of a higher order. Our ancestors would have had him hanged or shot and justly so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe probably have (or had) the best drone and saved the lives of many of our fighting young people because of it; now all any potential enemy has to do is to read the instructions that John Roth gave away and they can use it on us. Anyone who isn't outraged at his actions doesn't deserve the rights and freedoms our armed forces fought & died for throughout our history! What makes "scientists" think they don't owe loyalty to their country? You all should have had to serve in the military when you were young then you would have had some character and self-esteem as Americans!
This sentence sends to academics a clear message: Peaceful, tolerant men of science should not get involved with military affairs. They usually regret it and, sometimes, pay for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis sentence sends to academics a clear message: Peaceful, tolerant men of science should not get involved with military affairs. They usually regret it and, sometimes, pay for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisProfesor Roth, whatever his intentions, was very well well aware of his responsiblilities to protect classified information and the bondaries of exporting such information directly or by revealing it to those who have no authority to receive it and could be easily propapage it. Virtually every engineer and manager within companies like Microsoft, HP, IBM, etc. has taken training on this subject years ago. Over the last few years, academia has proven a to be a security seive and should start waking up to their responsibilities if they plan to be at the forefront of security sensitive technology. I pray they do because we need them to be there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExactly what is the point of this comment? Just grumbling perhaps? Has Grumbley lived in China or Iran of the other countries whose governments he seems to put on the same level as that of the USA?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are those two students from those two countries, China and Iran? Mr Roth probably has plans to share the info with students from N Korea or from the EU countries...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIts disgusting and against all national morality to do such thing, espicially when it is with the wrong people...
America is on a suicide mission... thanks to people like John Reece Roth.
The real problem is greed. VCs and investors are so greedy for more profit that in the last 10+ years the pressure has been upon academics to leave their university confines and startup a company, just so these VCs can exploit them and their work. Here we have a case where this guy just seems to have done with scientists do everyday, ignore articifial political differences and just work with his colleagues in an effort to advance the science. Even at the height of the cold war, scientists in Russia and the US found a language to collaborate that transcended all of the rhetoric around them. In some ways, this collaboration kept communication open and may have contributed to the peace that followed. So why should anyone be surprised that a career academic is acting just like an academic always has? If the military wants to give contracts to private companies they should control allegedly sensitive information better or they should not give it out. If they seriously handed over full plans for the drones, which this company did not need in their entirety to fullfill a $6000 contract, then the military contact on this contract is an idiot.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor those who think it's OK to jail a 71 year old scientist who did not sell plans to the "enemy" I think they are seriously are overestimating the importance of the drones. This guy is obviously being made a scapegoat and it would be nice if other scientists spoke up on his behalf for leniency. If Einstein were still around, he surely would pipe up.
These days, post 9/11, you can't be too careful - even if it was an honest mistake!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFunny thing about all this is that the staunch nationalists seem to perceive all Chinese as enemies of the United States. The simple fact is that it is not the people of china that work against the US (i.e. not the academia), but the government.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost (literally the majority) of Chinese civilians do not condone the anti-democratic systems of their government and are actively resisting it, most recently the civil rights riots that happened this month in China.
Why don't you anti-foreigners SUPPORT ANTI-communist movements in china, most of which are based out of their universities by professors and students alike.
A lot of Nationalists acclaim the propagation of American freedoms and ideals in foreign lands but turn around and accept anti-foreigner propaganda used as leverage for stuff like military recruiting and pro-Guantanamo social advertising.
Usually I find these are not educated people who are informed of the circumstance, but people who instantly accept another mans opinion just because he is backed by his/her favorite media outlet and are vastly ill-informed.
Sleeping Beauty, This was quite obviously NOT a "jury of his peers" pffft.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this