recently released Government Accountability Office (GAO) report (.PDF) showed that it's pretty easy to buy sensitive military equipment on web sites such as eBay and Craigslist. Obviously, this is a source of concern.
The report said: "GAO found numerous defense-related items for sale to the highest bidder on eBay and Craigslist. A review of policies and procedures for these Web sites determined that there are few safeguards to prevent the sale of sensitive and stolen defense-related items using the sites. During the period of investigation, GAO undercover investigators purchased a dozen sensitive items on eBay and Craigslist to demonstrate how easy it was to obtain them. Many of these items were stolen from the U.S. military."
One such item was an F-14 antenna. F-14 components are in demand by Iran, which is the only country with operating F-14s.
What else did they find? Body armor plates, nuclear biological chemical protective gear (which the GAO felt could be reverse-engineered) - and that's just the start.
The report goes on to say: "Although it is not illegal to buy and sell some defense-related items domestically, many sensitive items are manufactured strictly for military purposes and were never meant to be a part of everyday American life."
And - here's the most troubling part - the GAO found items that it identified as being stolen.
The report was presented before the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs Thursday. Also on Thursday, both Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist's CEO, and Tod Cohen, eBay's Vice-President of government relations, appeared before the Subcommittee.
Testimony from both is detailed on the Subcommittee's web page.
eBay and Craigslist have always maintained it was impossible for them to proactively police their listings. And while the GAO criticized both sites' policies, and said "both Web sites have an international reach," Buckmaster denied that in his testimony, saying "transactions are intended to local." Of course, "intended to be" isn't the same as "are."
I think the issue isn't so much with the sale of goods, but the sale of stolen goods, which many of the items the GAO found were. As Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.), chairman of the Subcommittee said in his opening remarks:
We also want to make sure that the Defense Department and companies like eBay and Craigslist coordinate as much as possible. We’ll be asking if there ways to improve our public-private partnership so that companies who want to do the right thing can better differentiate between sensitive or stolen items versus those allowed to be sold.
Source: by Tech Ex
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