In July 2009 John Reece Roth, a former University of Tennessee professor, was convicted of violating the AECA and sentenced to 48 months in prison. Roth had a United States Air Force (USAF) contract to develop plasma technology to reduce drag on airplane wings. One application was for unmanned air vehicles (drones). Roth was accused of violating the law by sharing technical (not classified) data with Chinese and Iranian graduate students, and of having technical data on his laptop during a trip to China. Roth and others said that the AECA, as applied in his case, would violate academic freedom and force professors to discriminate against students on the basis of nationality.