IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013 - 71

Advice from IEEE
Piscataway and IEEE
President Ray Findlay
Clarification was given that it
would not help if IEEE were to
move all its operations out of the
united States, because IEEE would
continue to be a non-profit organization incorporated in the state of
New York, and OFAC regulations
would still apply to all the u.S.
persons involved and to IEEE as
a whole, because IEEE would still
be an entity doing business in the
u.S. - so providing no "escape
route" from the OFAC laws.
IEEE arranged a meeting of
various publishers, with an OFAC
representative present, on Feb. 9,
2004. Following that meeting, the
American Chemical Society (ACS)
announced on February 11, 2004,
that it was lifting the embargo,
which it had only started applying
in autumn 2003 as a result of the
OFAC ruling on IEEE. According
to the President of Publications
of ACS:
"the embargo put us at odds
with our own ethical guidelines... It is, frankly, inimical
to the advancement of science, which is a worldwide
activity...".
He went on to say:
"we now have a much better
understanding of what our
situation is, what the laws
are, and the status of the
OFAC ruling."
and he added "we felt we were on
good legal grounds to challenge
the (OFAC) ruling."
IEEE on the other hand, continued to follow the OFAC advice,
to the substantial concern of many
IEEE members, and seemed to be
interested only in getting approval
to "moderate" the embargo as far
as it related to its profitable publications business. The IEEE

members in Iran and their lack
of a Section, Student Branches,
IEEE member services, etc.
seemed to be of much less concern to many in the IEEE's senior
u.S. leadership.
In 2003, Science magazine published the following comment [7]:
"Other scientific societies see
things differently. A spokesperson for the American Geophysical Union, which has a
dozen members in Iran, says
AGU does not consider publishing to be a trade issue and
"accepts paper submissions
from anywhere in the world."
The American Society of
Mechanical Engineers echoes
that view, as does AAAS, Science's publisher. "We do
not put any restrictions on
submission or publication of
papers based on economic or
other sanctions," says Monica Bradford, executive editor
of Science."
Independently of this a website
www.ieeesanctions.com was set
up, to make a petition to try to
persuade IEEE to change its position on the "embargo." The website
no longer exists, of course, but an
Internet search may reveal quite a
lot of information about it.
Another
website
www.
ieeesanctions.org incorporated a
petition that requested signatures
of those against the "law" with the
statement (spelling mistakes reproduced from original):
"Consequences:
-This decision will destry IEEE
Iran Section!
-More than 1700 indivuals
affected!
-This decision kill off 20 Students Branches and 6 Student
Chapters in Iran Section."
Various people quoted the following in support of their reasoned
opposition to the IEEE position:

IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE

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SuMMEr 2013

"... IEEE Code of Ethics
promises to "treat fairly all
persons regardless of such
factors as race, religion,
gender, disability, age, or
national origin".
".... IEEE Constitution
shows that "the character
of its scope is transnational
and the territory in which
its operations are to be conducted is the entire world".
During this time, some personal
opinions emerged from some
IEEE members in u.S. which
were even stronger than the
OFAC interpretations, suggesting that IEEE should not make
its publications available to any
foreign (and by implication,
potential enemy) countries, while
others even implied that IEEE
should publish only material from
these foreign countries - the basis
of this being to keep everything
secret in case it helped an enemy,
and to find out as much as possible about what these "enemies"
know. Of course, this is completely contrary to the policy of
open publication of scientific
and engineering literature as a
fundamental component of the
advancements of science and general progress, and is also contrary
to IEEE's transnational ambitions
and wishes to be a worldwide professional organization.
Further discussion of the issues
was provided in a SIAM on-line
newsletter [8].

After the OFAC Influence
Partial resolution of the problems
began slowly. On March 3, 2004,
a letter was sent by u.S. representative Howard Berman to richard
Newcomb, Director of Foreign
Assets Control at the u.S. Department of the Treasury. The letter
was strongly critical of the OFAC
decisions regarding IEEE Publishing (described as "patently absurd"
and a 'narrow and misguided
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http://www.ieeesanctions.com http://www.ieeesanctions.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Summer 2013
