Arms Export Control Act

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The Arms Export Control Act requires governments that receive weapons from the United States to use them for legitimate self-defense.^{[citation needed]} It also places certain restrictions on American arms traders and manufacturers, prohibiting them from the sale of certain sensitive technologies to certain parties and requiring thorough documentation of such trades to trusted parties.

In March of 2007, ITT Corporation became the first major defense contractor to be fined for criminal violation of the act. The fines resulted from ITT's outsourcing program, in which they transferred night vision goggles and classified information about countermeasures against laser weapons, including light interference filters to engineers in Singapore, the People's Republic of China, and the United Kingdom. ^[1] They were fined $100 million US dollars, although they were also given the option of spending half of that sum on research and development of new night vision technology. The United States government will assume rights to the resulting created intellectual property. ^[2]