LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Two men attempting to board a plane to China with nearly a dozen sensitive infrared cameras in their luggage were arrested on Saturday, a federal official said.

The men were preparing to board a flight to Beijing at the Los Angeles International Airport.

Federal agents stopped the pair on the jetway as they were preparing to board the flight to Beijing.

The men had been in the United States for about a week, said Rick Weir, assistant special agent in charge of the Los Angeles office of the Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security.

Yong Guo Zhi, a Chinese national, and Tah Wei Chao, a naturalized U.S. citizen, were arrested for investigation of trying to take thermal imaging cameras with potential military use to China without the proper export licenses, Weir said.

Julie Salcido, a supervising agent with the Bureau of Industry and Security, said one of the men purchased the cameras, assuring the seller repeatedly that they were only for domestic use.

"He repeatedly said he wouldn't export," she said.

Ten of the cameras, which measure about 2 inches square and cost about $5,000 each, were found in the men's checked luggage, Weir said.

Salcido said it appeared they split the shipment up between them.

The cameras have both commercial and military uses but they are "very expensive, highly sensitive," Weir said. "They're not something you could buy off the shelf."

The men were taken to the downtown Metropolitan Detention Center and could not immediately be reached for comment. E-mail to a friend

Hi what about if take a camera out of USA for 1-2 weeks  for  a thermal inspection in Caribbean or Europe ???

Thanks

IG

Ioannis:

Hi what about if take a camera out of USA for 1-2 weeks  for  a thermal inspection in Caribbean or Europe ???

Thanks

IG

I've crossed into Canada and back with cameras. It is always dicey in one direction or the other—usually coming back to the States.  I would suggest you take paperwork showing that you purchased it and own it and it's price. I then also called the border folks a week prior to leaving and filled in additional paperwork that declared I was taking it out of country temporarily. That paperwork then had to be turned back in when I returned to close the loop. On one return trip we got a new person who kept us for three hours as he tried to figure out what paperwork we "should" have filled in! Sad. I don't have any idea about Europe or Caribbean but know many do this regularly.

I wonder what's going to happen when Red Shift Systems' Thermal Light Valve(TLV) optical thermal imaging-to-CCD sensor (www.redshiftsystems.com) is finally built-in to your average Sony HandyCAM?

Is every video camera capable of thermal imaging then going to have to be subject to such an export permit?

GPS Receivers have military applications, but you don't see the Government requiring an export permit for those.  Heck, I'm a BlackBerry handheld enthusiast, and many of those email-smartphones use the SiRF Star III GPS chipset in them, which is one of the most widely used and sensitive receiver chipsets on the market.

Again, BlackBerrys with GPS aren't subject--to the best of my knowledge--to export permits.

I think it's time that all the free-world Governments recognized that, yes, thermal imaging cameras are, indeed, borne out of military useage.  So was GPS.  I think it's time to lift the restrictions on such things.  Sony's HandyCAM series have had infrared, see-in-the-dark ability--a military-borne technology--for years now.

I think all these export permits are ridiculous.

However, as applies to weapons sights, okay, fine.  Have a bit more restriction on them.  But if it's a handheld camera, and it's obviously so, then why not relax the permit issues?

Just my $20.02 (adjusted for inflation). ;-)

Warm Regards and, 

At this time, all IR cameras that operate at greater than 9Hz are subject to extensive export controls because they can, potentially, be modified for use on a weapon. Regardless of what one thinks about such regulations, and I appreciate many of us have differing opinions, the need to conform to them is real and not doing so is serious business.

John may know more than me here, but check before you buy a 9 Hz camera and just carry it out of the US. If I recall correctly, the export restrictions cover many criteria, including the detector material itself, the temperature resolution, the angular resolution, destination country and more. (AFAIK a narrow field of view camera could, in theory, be in violation where a wide angle camera might not.) There are also complicated clauses regarding "foreign availability" of the technology you are exporting.

Certainly distributors I have spoken to will not export 9 Hz models to customers. This is my reading into what I have been told, but as I understand it, it is easy enough for them to get clearance to export 9 Hz cameras in quantity to recognised foreign distributers, but the paper work makes it not viable to sell direct. One manufacturer/retailer has told me that they keep full records of everyone who purchaces their cameras, even the low end models.

Don't think the manufacturers are all in favor of these regulations, in fact they are probably some of the people who are most against them, they have most to loose. I found this interesting when I was reading into it:

http://www.bis.doc.gov/news/2006/executivesummary10_12_06.pdf

Luke

Stephen A. Brown:

GPS Receivers have military applications, but you don't see the Government requiring an export permit for those.  Heck, I'm a BlackBerry handheld enthusiast, and many of those email-smartphones use the SiRF Star III GPS chipset in them, which is one of the most widely used and sensitive receiver chipsets on the market.

Again, BlackBerrys with GPS aren't subject--to the best of my knowledge--to export permits.

GPS is actually quite a tightly regulated technology. To let them be installed in systems for export, US manufacturers have to ensure that the technology will not operate above 60,000ft and 1000 knots. Rumor has it that civilian systems are also much lower resolution then military systems, and that the US Military could (in theory) lock out all non-American use of the system if nessesary.

I don't honestly think there's much worry about China pinching American IR sensors for their own ends (they almost certainly have superior technology already). The danger is that the sensors are sneaked into a country like China, then sold on to less desirable third parties without the knowledge of US Customs. Because of this the sales must be stopped at the border, or carefully regulated.
 

I understand that military gps units have additional decryption capability's that allows them to continue to operate at high resolution when the civilian  signal  is degraded or turned off. 5 meter resolution on civilian gps is a relatively new occurrence. If I remember it used to be along the lines of 20  meters.

 
I think that stopping thermal imaging technology getting into the hands of people the US does not want to have it is a relatively up hill battle as they will source it from European or Asian suppliers but we certainly do not have to help by making it easy.