What exactly was involved?
I plowed through the 'sentencing memorandum' to try and find out exactly what was involved. Its important because you never know quite when law enforcement will come knocking (in the US it typically just kicks the door in and points a gun at you)(no, I'm not joking, its become quite the cliche)(and sometimes they get the address wrong). They're not very explicit -- "power supplies and storage devices" could be a couple of computer PSUs and disks, for example. "Enterprise software development licenses" sound like Microsoft development toolsets, who knows?
What is obvious is that there's a bit of a disconnect between the DoJ and Real Life In Iran. The DoJ maintains that the place is hermetically sealed off with only a few items leaking through due to determined smugglers. Real Life appears in the form of regular youTube videos made by a couple of people walking around Tehran. What the videos show us are pretty normal looking places, nothing like you'd expect from reading our media or listening to our government, and what's notable (apart from the number of women in normal clothing) is just how prevalent technology is there. I suppose sanctions must have hit hard somewhere but you'd never notice it (they seem to have a better choice of phones than we have in the US)(including 'the latest' models). The overall impression is our DoJ is living in some weird Beltway Bubble which actually makes it dangerous to us common folk.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
