E/CN.4/2005/62 page 8 25. Manufacturing data. There are a number of limitations to measuring the level of manufacturing. Firstly, identifying a company as a manufacturer can be difficult as many claim to be manufacturers when in fact they are simply distributing products made by others. Secondly, establishing the number of manufacturing companies does not establish the actual number of goods produced or exported. Thirdly, identifying which company (or even country) was responsible for the original manufacture of such equipment is also complicated and obscured by the use of such transactions as “brokering” (i.e. where intermediaries or “middlemen” organize transfers of equipment between two or more parties, bringing together buyers, sellers, transporters, financiers, etc.), or “drop shipping” (i.e. where a retailer in one country arranges for a manufacturer in another country to ship items directly to the retailer’s customer). 26. National export control data. In many countries a manufacturer or supplier is not required to possess an export licence to ship these goods, even if the “end-user” in the destination country has a documented record of using such equipment to commit torture. 27. International trade statistics. International trade statistics do not provide useful data for monitoring the trade in security and law enforcement that can easily be used for torture because the product codes within the Standard Industrial Classification Codes (SIC), the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS), and the various country derivatives of the SIC code are too broad. For example, SIC 5099 is the product code which covers “electronic stun weapons”, but it also includes “pre-recorded audio cassette tapes”, “leather attachés and briefcases” and a range of other electronic goods. The 2002 NAICS Code 332999 is the code which covers “cuffs and leg irons”.5 But it also covers a wide range of other metal products including angle irons, animal traps, car seals, fireplace fixtures, and many other product categories. This aggregation of products in one code makes it difficult to track the trade in torture technology. One example, drawn from national legislation, of a control and transparency mechanism incorporates the use of a control category of “specially designed implements of torture”. 28. Without accurate data on equipment manufacturers, transfers, or on the quantities and destinations of exports, it is difficult to regulate and monitor this trade. Where Governments do operate export controls on such equipment, it is important that the controlled categories of equipment be sufficiently disaggregated for the sake of transparency and effective public scrutiny. B. Future technological trends 29. New products are being marketed internationally for use in security and law enforcement whose use in practice has sometimes revealed a substantial risk of abuse or unwarranted injury, or whose medical and other effects appear not to be reliably known. The medical and other effects of the products should have been subjected to rigorous inquiries by medical, scientific and law enforcement experts who are fully independent of the manufacturers, traders and law enforcement agencies promoting them, and whose proceedings and conclusions are transparent and subject to peer review in public scientific literature. 30. A number of countries are developing equipment for the purposes of crowd control by law enforcement. This equipment employs a range of new technologies, and is referred to as “non-lethal weapons”, including devices which employ high-decibel sounds and microwaves.