Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada • Hacker News Board

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#41

Post by gambiting » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:54 PM UTC

threatofrain wrote: post #2

In this modern age it seems it's not safe to list anything which might come back to haunt you, including ethnicity.

I mean, the exact same thing happened before WW2, where countries were gathering regular census data on their citizens. Surely filling out your nationality or religious affiliation could never be used against you, right?

Well, guess what kind of treasure trove that census data was for the Nazis later.

My point is - it's not just "this modern age". In every age sharing too much information about yourself is potentially dangerous, even if you can't see the danger yet.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#42

Post by jwildeboer » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:54 PM UTC

zeroflow wrote: post #31

As bad as it may sound, but from what I can read in the tweets, he did violate the sanctions by using slack while being in iran. Well, that is called breaking the law and I fully understand why slack terminated his account when he broke the law and violated their terms of service. For example, other services or tools (like cisco anyconnect) clearly state, that you are not allowed to use them when in embargoed contrie…

He lives and works in Canada. I cannot see how this is violating canadian laws.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#43

Post by InGodsName » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:55 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #16

andybak wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iran's been on my list of "wanna go" destinations for a while (Food and architecture mainly). Looks like I'd have to choose between that and having any connection with a US based company. Great.

Everyone I have ever met that has been to Iran absolutely raves about it. I've never met a single person that didn't extend their stay, and doesn't rate it as hands down the best country they have ever been to. It's very, very high on my list. But if you have an American or British passport you currently can't go without an escort. (I'm an Overlander, I drove AK-Argentina and am now driving right around Africa. I've…

I am laughing because i am from Iran and no one here thinks people are nice.

My country people treat foreigners nicer than their own people because for some reason they believe that foreigners are rich and foreigners might give them reward or smth.

It's a common belief that foreigners are rich and locals aren't.

Same way if you are rich in Iran being a local isn't a problem people treat you extra nice

Once one foreigner brought an iPad for my friend.

It might seem odd to foreigners that in East simply looking rich/ or having money can earn you their nice behaviour.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#44

Post by purerandomness » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:55 PM UTC

andybak wrote: post #12

purerandomness wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Face recognition will solve that for you.

Good luck guessing ethnicity for Iran. There will be many who look less middle-eastern than your average "Californian with a tan". You'd have the same problem with most near-east or Mediterranean countries. Being at the crossroads for a few millennia will do that to a place.

Oh, just correlate with a heuristic for the user's first and last name and their browser's language preference headers to improve the matching in case the face recognition algo is unsure.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#45

Post by dpark » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:55 PM UTC

zeroflow wrote: post #31

As bad as it may sound, but from what I can read in the tweets, he did violate the sanctions by using slack while being in iran. Well, that is called breaking the law and I fully understand why slack terminated his account when he broke the law and violated their terms of service. For example, other services or tools (like cisco anyconnect) clearly state, that you are not allowed to use them when in embargoed contrie…

I’m not sure that’s how export controls work. If I ship a weapon to Iran, I’m the guilty one, not the recipient.

If Slack allows connections from embargoed nations, that’s on them, not the individuals who might happen to connect from an embargoed nation. Slack is responsible for their own export, and if a user accesses Slack from an embargoed nation, it indicates that Slack is enforcing the embargo improperly. More importantly, blocking that user doesn’t fix their export issue.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#46

Post by castis » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:55 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #38

dade_ wrote: post #23

Smart move. This shouldn't surprise anyone that makes a point of avoiding US prosecution and jail: https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/07/huawei-cfo-accused-of-frau... https://www.bassberrygovcontrade.com/iran-sanction-violation...

Banning people because of the country they were born in is not "smart", it's abhorrent. That the US, supposedly the leader of the free world, is threatening prosecution and jail to those who want to treat everyone in the world equally, is a ludicrous state of affairs.

The US hasn't been the leader for a while now. I dont see it getting that title back for a long time.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#47

Post by kkarakk » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:55 PM UTC

robotbikes wrote: post #3

Wow. This seems rather unprecedented and unnecessary, based upon the lack of action in this regard by other companies I don't know why Slack would do this. If for instance this kind of arbitrary action took place on GitHub I could see it having a detrimental impact to free software projects. This is another good reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable platforms instead of proprietary SaaS solutions.

>This is another good reason to choose Zulipchat and other self-hostable platforms instead of proprietary SaaS solutions

until someone targets your host and gets it shut down.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#48

Post by dpark » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

jwildeboer wrote: post #42

zeroflow wrote: post #31

As bad as it may sound, but from what I can read in the tweets, he did violate the sanctions by using slack while being in iran. Well, that is called breaking the law and I fully understand why slack terminated his account when he broke the law and violated their terms of service. For example, other services or tools (like cisco anyconnect) clearly state, that you are not allowed to use them when in embargoed contrie…

He lives and works in Canada. I cannot see how this is violating canadian laws.

It sounds like he accessed Slack from an Iranian IP at some point in the past. Though I’m not sure that’s actually breaking the law.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#49

Post by InGodsName » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #14

If you work for an American company, get a bug report from a user you know to be in Iran against an open source project you work on during company time and fix it as a result, can the company be considered to be engaging in commerce with Iran?

Direct exchange of value has to take place.

In this case no, because fixing that bug in your project doesn't benefit him specifically.

Re: Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

#50

Post by amelius » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 12:57 PM UTC

mimi89999 wrote: post #26

Why don't you use a free alternative as Matrix? If you self host, then you are the only one who controls who your users are.

The only advantage of SaaS really is system administration, which should be low-cost if the product is good.