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Slack closes account of an Iranian user living in Canada

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

#191

Post by C4stor »

jimijazz wrote: post #171
C4stor wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Switzerland.

yes. are there any Swiss technological developments? are there any other neutral countries?

Switzerland hosts, among other things, the EFPL, which does a great deal of technlogical achievement. The EFPL itself leads the Scala language development, among a lof of other stuff !

I'm not familiar with other countries as neutral as Switzerland which has a successful track record of staying neutral during two world wars on their borders, but I suspect there should be actually quite some. I _think_ that for example Kazakhstan is currently trying to follow a similar neutral political path.

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

#193

Post by anthonys »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #159
robteix wrote: post #105

Aside from the obvious wrong of blocking people based on their origin, what's up with these companies closing accounts with no warning and no recourse? I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. Why not give the user even a few days notice so they can communicate with support to try and clear things up? Taking the OP's story at face value, Slack should eas…

> I know they're private companies and they _can_ do it, but just because you can doesn't mean you should. Actually, if you look at the image, Slack is beholden to US law, export regulations and economic sanctions - companies doing business with countries they shouldn't are in big trouble. See also: Huawei, who despite sanctions continued to do business with Iran, which caused the US to give them a huge fine. I don't…

No they aren't above the law.

But to clarify, they gave a service to people/teams who maybe they shouldn't have. Did the people signing up/using Slack know that? Maybe. Who's responsible to ensure it's enforced?

Slack.

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

#194

Post by Klover »

jimijazz wrote: post #171
C4stor wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Switzerland.

yes. are there any Swiss technological developments? are there any other neutral countries?

Wire is a Swiss Slack alternative that’s open source. Do note the comment close to this one mentioning that Switzerland would also have to comply with the sanctions.

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

#195

Post by gingerlime »

wil421 wrote: post #180
TheGrumpyBrit wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which might mean American companies can't employ people in Syria, but what does that have to do with the rest of the world?

The EU and U.K. are not in the US last I checked.

last I checked there are no restrictions on employment of Syrian people in the EU/UK, unless they are related to the government or military etc.

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

#196

Post by NoGravitas »

benparsons wrote: post #182

Self-hosted, decentralised solutions such as Matrix ( https://matrix.org ) are available, and allow you to keep control of your own access and data.

I keep hearing people complain about Matrix's interface (Riot), but the little I've used Slack, it looks exactly the same except for the color scheme.

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

#197

Post by malloryerik »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #165
malloryerik wrote: post #91

This kind of thing can kill Slack or other networks because if you have a team of 100 people and just one can't use the platform, you'll switch. The network effect seems likely to work in reverse in this case. Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical.

> Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical. What, complying with national and international sanctions and erring on the side of caution? Losing part of your customer base is preferable over getting fined to the tune of hundreds of millions of USD.

If the sanctions demand this, then the sanctions are outrageously unethical. If the sanctions don't explicitly demand it and banning ethnic Iranians is just "erring on the side of caution" then yes, sorry, but Slack is being outrageously unethical. Even if the sanctions do demand it, to me this is a reason to seriously consider either moving Slack to another jurisdiction like Canada, the EU, Switzerland, etc., or proudly face the fine.

What's the alternative? Just hide your Iranian/Persian colleagues and friends under the digital rafters? It's plain wrong, and I refuse to be on that side of history. If Slack needs to risk a massive fine then that's their duty, so yes, face the fine, take it to the Supreme Court. To be honest, doing anything else is unpatriotic as well as unethical.

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

#198

Post by bostik »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #29

From a technical standpoint what they're saying is if your IP matches any of these countries, we cannot allow you on our services. It's got nothing to do with ethnicity if a Puerto Rican guy from Orlando goes to Iran and gets banned, it's all about the IP not the person. Seems they might want to tone down their bans starting from the moment the policy came to be vs doing it from the dawn of Slack's time, not sure how…

This would be perfect opportunity for some enterprising gray or blackhats to wreak havoc.

We know people reuse passwords. I'm sure there are a lot of weak accounts known, or at least suspected. So... if you had a large number of compromised slack accounts, and a complete lack of morals, you could log in with each of them to Slack through Iranian/Syrian proxies.

If Slack are indeed shutting down all accounts that have ever logged in from Iran or Syria, the above could be a brutal denial of service. Followed by a massive PR s##tstorm.

Disclaimer: I don't advocate doing anything like that. I just point out that there might be a way to weaponise the backfire...

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

#200

Post by jstanley »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #165
malloryerik wrote: post #91

This kind of thing can kill Slack or other networks because if you have a team of 100 people and just one can't use the platform, you'll switch. The network effect seems likely to work in reverse in this case. Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical.

> Beyond that I find it outrageously unethical. What, complying with national and international sanctions and erring on the side of caution? Losing part of your customer base is preferable over getting fined to the tune of hundreds of millions of USD.

> What, complying with national and international sanctions and erring on the side of caution?

Yes.

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