a0600 r abx ^U.S. Computer May Have Violated Export Regulations< ^By PAUL RAEBURN= ^AP Science Editor= NEW YORK (AP) _ The Digital Equipment Corp. abruptly pulled two powerful new computers off a global computer network out of concerns about possible export violations, even though the computers never left the country. The result of Digital's action was to deny U.S. computer users access to U.S. computers operating in the United States. Critics said the episode demonstrates how export laws intended to regulate weapons technology are not only infringing on American civil liberties but also stifling innovation and hurting American businesses. Digital said its concern was that foreigners could connect to the computers from abroad, generate data, and illegally export it over the Internet computer network, which carries data and electronic mail around the world. The computers were reconnected to the computer network on July 7, but access is now limited to people who are screened by the company, Mark Fredrickson, a Digital spokesman, said Friday. The computers are not what industry would call supercomputers, but they do fit the government definition of a supercomputer. A former Commerce Department official who is now a trade consultant in Washington said the connection of a supercomputer to a global network could lead to violations of federal export regulations. ``If it was available overseas and they allowed people overseas to use it, then technically they were allowing access to a supercomputer to people they didn't know,'' said Paul Freedenberg, who was the Commerce Department's undersecretary for export administration at the end of the Reagan administration. Freedenberg is an international trade consultant at Baker and Botts in Washington, the law firm of former Secretary of State James Baker. He emphasized that he had no personal knowledge of the Digital computer hookup and that he was speaking of the regulations generally. ``I can't say Digital violated the law, because I don't know what Digital did,'' he said. Lee Mercer, Digital's corporate export manager, said making the computer available was not a violation. A Commerce Department official, speaking on condition his name not be used, agreed that making the computer available was not a violation, but that export of data generated on the computer would be a violation of regulations. The computer hookup was in place for five weeks in April and May, said Fredrickson. It was intended to give potential customers the opportunity to test-drive the computers. It was terminated by company executives who wanted to avoid any appearance of violating export regulations, he said. ``None of this has been motivated by anyone from the government suggesting that we do anything here,'' said Fredrickson. ``This was simply our own internal people raising the possibility of concern.'' In a separate incident last year, a Digital computer ``bulletin board,'' offered access to programs for encoding computer data. Exporting such software is a violation of federal regulations, Freedenberg said. ``It's a technical data transfer'' that falls under the State Department's control of munitions export, he said. Frederickson said the company shut the bulletin board down to ensure that the software would not be exported illegally. ``Nothing was found that was thought to be a concern even meriting informing the government about it,'' he said. Digital, the nation's No. 2 computer maker after IBM, said that 65 percent of its $14 billion in annual sales are overseas. In December 1991, the Commerce Department charged the company with 62 violations of export laws and fined it $2.4 million. It was the largest fine the department had imposed for export violations. Digital agreed to pay it without admitting or denying guilt. The Digital computers connected to the network were two of Digital's new AXP 4000 computers, operating in a Digital laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif. The computers, which cost from $77,000 to $100,000, are considered midsized computers by industry standards. Freedenberg said that the government would probably soon revise its outmoded standards that define those models as supercomputers and bring them under export regulations. Robert Kaylor, a spokesman for the Commerce Department, said the department was prohibited by law from discussing the details of a specific case. Critics called for speedy revision of the export laws, which date from the Cold War. ``Export control policies are shutting us directly out of certain markets,'' costing U.S. businesses at least $10 billion a year in lost exports, said Howard Lewis, vice president of the National Association of Manufacturers. ``It's harmful to innovation, but we think it's also very harmful to the privacy interests of American citizens,'' said Daniel Weitzner, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group concerned with computers and civil-liberties issues.