A 52-year-old Huntington Beach businessman got sentenced this week for exporting seven thermal imaging cameras to China in violation of U.S. national security controls.
Jason Jian Liang, a 1985 immigrant from China and president of Sanwave International Corp., admitted that he did not seek export licenses for the expensive cameras, but argued that his punishment should be restricted house arrest or probation.
Liang's reasoning? He's a God-fearing church member, had no prior criminal record and the technology in L-3's Thermal Eye 300-D cameras can't threaten national security because communist Chinese military officials already have similar equipment.
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But Assistant United States Attorney Douglas F. McCormick argued
that Liang's exportation clearly violated federal law and, while the
transfer of the long wavelength infrared cameras may not threaten
national security, it raises “national security concerns.”
(McCormick also noted that Liang, who has a bank account in China, is keenly aware of the tensions between the U.S. and China.)
Technology experts like Christopher R. Costanzo
in Washington, D.C. believe the camera could bring “potential military”
advancements for China, according to McCormick, who sought a 46-month
prison sentence for Liang.
U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ignored the defense request for probation and sided with McCormick.
Liang, who has a daughter attending UCLA and a son at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa, must surrender to federal prison officials by noon on May 21.
Ironically, his father was a nationalist persecuted by the Communists, according to a federal document reviewed by the Weekly.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.