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ICE Key to Doubling US Exports |
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by Mickey McCarter
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Monday, 15 March 2010 |
Protecting sensitive tech falls to ICE, explains chief John Morton
President Barack Obama's vow to double US exports over the next five years would create more work for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the primary federal agency charged with protecting US intellectual property rights, ICE chief John Morton told HSToday.us.
In a speech before the Export-Import Bank of the United States on March 11, Obama promised to "double our exports, open up new markets, and level the playing field for American businesses and American workers."
But as legitimate exports grow, so must the effort to guarantee the safety and security of those exports, acknowledged Morton, the assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in charge of ICE.
"There were two parts of the President's announcement that very much affect us," Morton explained.
"The President made clear that part of the export strategy was strong intellectual property enforcement. And we are the principle intellectual property enforcers in the federal government," he continued. "It's important that we protect the intellectual property rights of US industry from counterfeiting and it's important that we protect the rights of the American public and the safety of the American public from substandard, shoddy, or dangerous goods."
Intellectual property crime today is not a mom-and-pop operation run out of a criminal's house, Morton cautioned. It's a large organized criminal enterprise that works internationally to defraud hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars from consumers annually.
As such, ICE--which is charged with investigating illicit people, goods and money flowing across US borders--must maintain its readiness to face the challenge of protecting American businesses and consumers.
The second part of the export strategy that creates work for ICE involves the agency's responsibility to keep sensitive US technology and weaponry out of the hands of bad actors.
"The most important piece of that is maintaining the integrity of our export controls," Morton stated. "As we go forward to promote the export of US-made weapons and sensitive technology, ICE will play a very important role to make sure that it gets into the hands of legitimate end-users and not organized crime or those who don't have the authority to have it."
The ICE Office of Investigations holds responsibility for examining the sale of sensitive technology to potential criminals or terrorists. With roughly 7,000 investigative agents, ICE is the federal government's second largest investigative law enforcement agency after the FBI.
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Mickey McCarter |
| About the author: |
| eNewsletter Editor/Senior Washington Correspondent,
is a journalist with more than a decade of experience in reporting
on
military affairs and information technology.
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