Irrelevant in this case since Elon wasn’t trying to justify excluding immigrants and refugees from a specific position involving sensitive technology. He was making a blanket statement saying his company wouldn’t hire such people at all. Bus drivers, cafeteria workers, custodians, marketing people, etc. don’t need special clearance from the government to work for a company like SpaceX.
If literally any and every employee at the company has access to sensitive technology that could impact national security then SpaceX has shitty security practices and doesn’t deserve to get government contracts at all.
I think as a general rule of thumb, it is far less likely that the DOJ would sue a billionaire’s company based on an incorrect understanding of the law, than that a billionaire who routinely acts like laws don’t apply to him would do so yet again. Without knowing details I’d gauge the situation accordingly.
It’s amazing that people can’t seem to wrap their heads about the idea that Musk, himself an immigrant, is a hateful bigot, despite all the literal piles of evidence that shows he’s a hateful bigot…
ITAR is more or less unrelated to security clearances and classification. It’s certainly likely that a classified system that you need a clearance to work on is on the list; but being classified is not a condition of making the list; except in the indirect sense that being classified likely helps something avoid become “in the public domain” or “publicly available” in the sense that removes it from the scope.
Yep. Control of access to sensitive areas and data is how every one of our employers have addressed ITAR without having to provide clearances for every single employee. Even those with the highest clearances are denied access if they do not actually have a need to know.
At one point in Rocketdyne, we had ~20,000 employees spread between Canoga Park and the Santa Susana area labs, and from what I could see (by need or casually) of peoples’ badges, approximately one in 10 had no clearance.
It’s also almost always a sign of a company with sloppy controls in place. When you decide that it’s “too hard” to control who has access, so you make sure that everyone is allowed to have access you have already lost the thread.*
(citation: 25 years of compliance work at Visa and FedEx, including an early audit of Paypal…which had terrible controls over it’s development and production environments)
No disagreement about Musk engaging in illegal discrimination. My intention was purely to respond to a post that suggested some connection between ITAR and security clearances; when ITAR actually applies to classified and unclassified stuff alike, so long as it falls into certain categories; and the rules for ITAR-covered stuff are largely about transfer to foreign nationals; rather than clearance requirements.
Right, and that’s not a problem. An employer can condition employment of someone who must access ITAR/EAR restricted information upon the grant of an export license. If it is denied, they don’t have to hire the person given Title VII’s national security exception since the applicant doesn’t fulfill the requirements.
The Title VII exception was widely misunderstood to mean you could discriminate against non-US citizens without even trying to get authorization for them. The DoJ started cracking down on it about a decade ago.
All US persons can access ITAR/EAR-controlled information unless they work for a foreign entity. US persons include US citizens and nationals, lawful US permanent residents, and US-protected persons, including refugees and asylees.
Discriminating against refugees and asylees without a “green card” using the ITAR/EAR excuse is illegal, and that seems to be what Elon was admitting to.
But also, I still don’t see how “covered by ITAR or not” is a protected class. Discrimination (i.e. the ability to discriminate between two options/facts/colors/people) is normal in human societies, and when a society decides some class should not be discriminated against, we write a law, and once the law is respected society gets a bit more just.
it’s not. musk is using it as a proxy to discriminate against refugees and immigrants. it’s a pretty straight forward allegation and it’s supported by his crystal clear public posts
you’re conflating two different uses of the same word. surely you know that?
if you detangle the two meanings of the word: it’s fine to discriminate among individuals, it is never fine to discriminate against a class of people based on some innate trait. but again surely you know that.
as a side note: law is not always a useful proxy for what’s right. we see the gop using law to further their idea of a white christian ethnostate. this veers off topic except for the reminder musk clearly desires a similar end goal.
We are talking about ITAR, not security clearances. I keep saying this, but you apparently keep trying to shove words into my mouth. The critical point isn’t “classified national security material”. It’s “on the US Munitions List”. See category 4: Launch Vehicles.
Look! More putting words into my mouth. I didn’t say immigrants can’t recieve ITAR material. I said you have to be a US permanent resident. Once you’re far enough in the immigration process to have permanent residency, you are good. But an immigrant on a visa is not innately allowed to receive ITAR material.
WHAT IS A FOREIGN NATIONAL?
What exactly is a foreign national? Under the export laws – if a foreign person is in the US and has permanent resident alien status – a green card, they are treated as if they are a US citizen under the export laws. If you don’t have a green card – if you are on a visa, you are treated as a foreign person. So someone who is here on an H1B visa, a business visa, a student visa, or no visa treated as a foreign person.
(You have to click over to page 2 for this quote)
Does your company only do ITAR work? The entirety of SpaceX’s lines of business is ITAR covered material, AFAICT.
I didn’t say you said that. I said that’s the fact at hand.
And the problem once again is that Musk has decided against hiring even permanent US residents or any legal immigrants… that’s discrimination. I’m not sure why that point is controversial when its pretty obvious.
Oh bullshit. That’s not how any company works. Yes, they do a great deal with ITAR, but that isn’t going to cover a great deal of work that would not intersect with that - just the regular type of stuff that you need to keep an office running. He’s just finding a reason to discriminate and signal to his right wing dude-bros…
This indicates he is, in fact, hiring US permanent residents. But not necessarily legal immigrants who are not permanent residents, because ITAR prohibits those who are merely on a visa from receiving ITAR material without a previously approved export license.
It is evident from the fact that the DOJ has a lawsuit. I get that some people believe that all government is bad, but the DOJ when it’s free of political influence does good, solid work often times. Especially when it’s run by a competent legal mind like Garland. I doubt they would have brought a suit if it did not have the goods.
People are just pissed off about this because they buy into the right wing narrative that benefits Trump and other right wingers, that it’s a politically-driven by Biden. It’s really not.
Please tell me what of that material is going to be received by support staff that doesn’t deal with it directly? Or is SpaceX so incompetent, that the employees don’t take their security seriously and regularly just wave it around like Trump on a Sunday at Mar-A-Lago with nuclear secrets?
This! This sort of thing is always an indication of an organization that is bad at security, at controls, separation of duties, and at access management. It is a red flag to an auditor, not a sign that they are going above and beyond.
