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from the making-a-list-and-checking-it-twice dept.
c0lo writes:
An Australian blogger shares his personal experience with orders put on hold by the Australian subsidiary of Element 14 (the former Farnell shop), reportedly based on a watch list maintained by US govt.
From the blog:
The counter person wasn't sure, so checked with someone else who came and wasn't 100% sure, but knew that the system does automatically flag orders based on various identifiers. It could have possibly been one of those stupid US government trade restriction things, because, you know capacitors and opamps can be used by evil terrorists and the like... (International customers have to fill out silly forms with US distributors and manufacturers saying we won't use the parts in nuclear weapons - seriously)
But they enquired further with someone else and the word came back that it wasn't the parts that had been flagged, it was my NAME that was flagged. And they said it was a US government watch list of some description. I was stunned, and it seemed like they didn't quite understand why I was so shocked at this. Because, you know, the whole world has to just sit by and let the US government dictate everything at will.
...
So lets see if I have this straight - An Australian subsidiary, owned by a UK parent company, listed on the UK stock exchange, has an ordering system that automatically matches generic names against some secret US Government watch list, and flags those orders and puts them on hold, for parts that are already stocked in Australia, are likely not made in the US, and likely have come from the main UK warehouse. Call me stupid, but something doesn't seem right with that...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 26 2014, @07:13PM
It would be nice if the summery said what element 14 is.
Yeah, not being Australian I thought it had something to do with silicon (the element, i.e., sand). I was going to bash your spelling (actually your relying on a spell checker) but it is rather summery in Australia right now, good pun there!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by weilawei on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:10PM
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:38PM
I'm familiar with Mouser, Digi-Key, and Newark, but never before heard of this Element 14.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2, Interesting) by caseih on Thursday February 27 2014, @03:27AM
They are one of the main companies that make and sell the Raspberry Pi [raspberrypi.org], and peripherals for it, such as GertDuino [element14.com].
(Score: 2) by unitron on Thursday February 27 2014, @07:15AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_Farnell [wikipedia.org]
In the US, they bought up Newark and MCM Electronics (which was mcm audio back when I was still riding a dinosaur instead of using a horse and buggy)
http://www.premierfarnell.com/our-company/our-bran ds [premierfarnell.com]
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 26 2014, @08:50PM
If I were submitting a story that WalMart was central to I would certainly tell the reader what WalMart was.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Thursday February 27 2014, @08:28AM
Strange as it may seem - I've never heard of Mouser or Digi-Key either. Where in Europe do they trade from?