[bradleyland]

This is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't done business with the Federal government, but your visions of national security letters are very much on one end of a broad spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum is the mundane.

The mundane includes things like contracting with the Federal government or even certain government contractors. Our company just contracted with PAE, and PAE contractors must agree to much of the same Federal Acquisition Regulations as someone doing business directly with the Federal government. One of the vendor forms was 37 pages long, and it contains sections explicitly requiring certifications that your company will comply with sanctions. The form binds the signer to personal culpability for failure.

So if you're a company contracting in this process you're tasked with preventing delivery of your product to Iran, and the Federal government gets to set the bar, not you. If you fail to meet the bar, you end up in Michael Flynn's shoes, only far less public. How long of a bet is it to expect a Federal bureaucrat will interpret compliance the same way you do? Are you willing to risk inquiry if your opinions differ?

I don't like what's happening here. I don't like it at all, but I know just enough about dealing with the Federal government that I can smell the odor from here.