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Working with Foreign Persons

Ask before Acting

Interactions with individuals of embargoed, sanctioned, or prohibited countries generally pose significant risk and must be reviewed by the export control office in advance of initiation of a potential activity. When a foreign person is involved in any way, members of the Boise State community must check with the export control office prior to:

    • initiating anything with a military, space, or intelligence aspect (even mere visual/physical access to a controlled item)
    • initiating research or any project that is not intended to be published freely and openly with broad distribution
    • initiating Applied Research (e.g., research which relates to a defense article such as an item on the U.S. Munitions List (USML))
    • sharing export controlled information (e.g., technical data that is not lawfully in the public domain)
    • sharing proprietary data that is scientific or technical in nature (e.g., nonpublic data from an industry partner, an NDA exists)
    • providing an item that is not commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) (e.g., items which have an aspect that is specifically/specially designed, manufactured, modified, or configured)
    • developing nonpublic software code for a scientific, technical, or engineering application/purpose
    • disclosing design methodology for items on the USML
    • disclosing engineering analysis for items on the USML
    • disclosing manufacturing know-how for items on the USML
Recordkeeping

Records of invited foreign person guests of university personnel must be kept by individual departmental units for invited foreign person guests who visit the university or access university resources. Individual departmental units must keep records related to scientific, technical, or engineering information that is released to a foreign person. Individual departmental units, working with OIT, must keep all records related to software disseminated to a foreign person. Software dissemination records must include the export control classification for the software disseminated to the foreign person.

Key Definitions

Foreign person generally means any natural person who, with respect to the United States, is not an asylee, is not a refugee, is not a lawful permanent resident, and is not a citizen. It also means any foreign corporation, business association, partnership, trust, society, or any other entity or group that is not incorporated or organized to do business in the United States, as well as international organizations, foreign governments, and any agency or subdivision of foreign governments (e.g., diplomatic missions).

Defense service includes a) the furnishing of assistance (including training) to foreign persons, whether in the United States or abroad in the design, development, engineering, manufacture, production, assembly, testing, repair, maintenance, modification, operation, demilitarization, destruction, processing, or use of defense articles, and b) the furnishing to foreign persons of any controlled technical data, whether in the United States or abroad.