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

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

#311

Post by gruez » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

elmo2you wrote: post #250

1. The export control regulations apply to companies and individuals who do business with any of the sanctioned countries. 2. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is forbidden by law. In the absence of proof that this user had business with Iran (or any of the other sanctioned countries) through Slack's platform, the export control regulations do not apply. If the user has business with Iran…

>2. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is forbidden by law.

>Ergo, the only thing left here is that Slack broke the law that forbids discrimination based on ethnicity.

There's no evidence that's the case. Most likely it's done based on IP geolocation. A white (for lack of a better term) Canadian who was using slack in Iran would probably be banned as well.

>In the absence of proof that this user had business with Iran (or any of the other sanctioned countries) through Slack's platform, the export control regulations do not apply.

Banning based on IP geolocation is not perfect by any means, but what's the alternative here? That you ask suspected Iranian users to check a box saying "I'm not an Iranian, pinky swear!"?

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

#312

Post by kitd » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

saryant wrote: post #272

walterbell wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For more than a decade, Section 230 [1] has protected internet platforms from censorship of user-generated content. Why is Section 230 not applicable here, or is a similar law needed with wider scope? [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 > It is the policy of the United States— (1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media; (…

Because this isn’t about content, it’s about OFAC designations. That’s the office in the US Treasury department that says who Americans can’t do business with. They’re the ones that enforce sanctions and Iran is on their list. Penalties for noncompliance are stiff and there are no safe harbour provisions. (IANAL but I have implemented systems to check OFAC lists at other companies and seen it result in similar situat…

Even if what you say is technically true, Slack appear to have interpreted that as saying that they can't do business with anyone who as ever in the past opened up the Slack app in a designated country, whatever their nationality and/or reason for being there. At the very least, that is a shoddy algorithm.

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

#313

Post by natch » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

bad_user wrote: post #258

This happened to our cofounder as well. His Slack account was blocked today, with that same message. The crazy thing is that he's Irish and living in the EU, with no actual ties with the countries being mentioned. He does travel for business purposes outside of Europe, but again, not in the listed countries.

Ireland, Iran, common mixup. /s

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

#314

Post by Ensorceled » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

Sanctions are a very blunt instrument; sanctions will always harm people we like, indeed often the very people we want to help with the sanctions.

You can disagree with the idea of sanctions based upon this, but this is how sanctions work. Companies need to comply with sanctions and the repercussions of not complying can be severe.

I'm not sure WHY Slack chose this method to respond to the sanctions, nor why they've chosen to do this at time. Slack may have received a shoulder tap from a US agency that forced their hand or their legal department got cold feet. Until we know for sure, this seems like a overly cautious approach but not some kind of nefarious scheme.

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

#315

Post by mirimir » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

basilgohar wrote: post #281

jwildeboer wrote: post #161

So it seems that Slack is going through their log files and closing down accounts that have used IP addresses that are considered to be in embargoed countries. I base that assumption on various comments here and on Twitter. If true, it is definitely the worst way to do. It doesn't take into account any circumstantial evidence that could explain the use of such an IP address (vacation, VPN, BGP or a mistake in the geo…

This is very disturbing for ways that some folks might not realize. One of the servers I've leased was assigned an IP address range whose reverse DNS (i.e., PTR records) ended in .ir. I only discovered this because I was trying to use Google's CLI tools and got blocked, with the shocking message that access from embargoed countries was not allowed. I was utterly confused given that my server, myself, and anything to…

Wow. But yes. I recall news from a year or two ago, about hosting providers not cleaning up old PTR records. Also, I gather that there's quite the market now for IPv4 blocks, so geolocation is an iffy thing.

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

#316

Post by benparsons » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:54 PM UTC

NoGravitas wrote: post #196

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.

Riot is currently undergoing a lot of UX work, the results look really promising. Take a look in January for an update.

Disclaimer: I work on Matrix (should have made that clear in the parent comment too)

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

#317

Post by elmo2you » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #311

elmo2you wrote: post #250

1. The export control regulations apply to companies and individuals who do business with any of the sanctioned countries. 2. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is forbidden by law. In the absence of proof that this user had business with Iran (or any of the other sanctioned countries) through Slack's platform, the export control regulations do not apply. If the user has business with Iran…

>2. Discrimination based on ethnicity, religion or political views is forbidden by law. >Ergo, the only thing left here is that Slack broke the law that forbids discrimination based on ethnicity. There's no evidence that's the case. Most likely it's done based on IP geolocation. A white (for lack of a better term) Canadian who was using slack in Iran would probably be banned as well. >In the absence of proof that thi…

> Banning based on IP geolocation is not perfect by any means, but what's the alternative here? That you ask suspected Iranian users to check a box saying "I'm not an Iranian, pinky swear!"?

The export regulations apply to business. In order for it to apply, there needs to be proof of a business relationship. Simply being Iranian or having non-business related communication with Iran, which is the only thing IP geolocation on its own indicates, does not warrant invoking this law.

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

#318

Post by thumb » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:56 PM UTC

xenophonf wrote: post #308

jordank wrote: post #80

My wife’s Slack account was closed yesterday. She created the account while traveling in Cuba (legally) years ago and hasn’t been back to Cuba or any other sanctioned country since. She is a cofounder of an org that uses Slack heavily and has now lost access to all her messages and files from the past couple years of work. There appears to be no appeal process here.

While it's perfectly legal for your wife, a Canadian, to go to Cuba, it's still embargoed by the U.S., and Slack as a U.S. company must comply with the embargo (even though your wife has done nothing wrong per Canadian law).

That's true, but why does that mean they need to shut down her account just because she visited Cuba? Would that mean a grocery store would then have to refuse to sell you their goods because you visited the country once?

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

#319

Post by wpietri » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

simias wrote: post #234

jstanley wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is the future of the web. This sort of thing is a temporary blip before everybody figures out decentralised solutions for everything. Decentralisation is clearly the end game as long as politics causes problems like this. A decentralised solution will continue to "just work", while centralised solutions continue to boot people off. It's pretty obvious which one is going to win.

Except looking at the past 20 years or so it seems clear that the trend is going the other way around. Slack itself is an example of that, not long ago it would've been a set of self-hosted tools. People have ditched IRC in favor of Discord and friends, they've ditched decentralized forums, BBSs and mailing lists for social networks, everybody hosts everything using the same four or five cloud providers, streaming an…

Exactly. I understand the desire for decentralization. There is certainly a lot of hype, and in the cryptocurrency world it verges on religious belief. But I haven't yet seen any examples of the trend reversing.

Even most of the very technically competent people I know are gradually moving toward central services. I'm part of a co-op of people with collocated servers. We started in 2000. We haven't had a new member in years, and we are gradually losing them. I'm at the point where I should replace my server, and I'm having a hard time coming up with reasons to justify the large capital expense and significant time cost versus moving it to somebody's cloud. And that's not even considering the benefits of moving to hosted services. Not worrying about spam, email deliverability, security patches, et cetera, ad nauseam.

I think part of the problem is that the "decentralize!" crowd is willing to put up with a lot of practical inconveniences as long as something conforms to their ideological desires. Their ideology may be perfectly correct, but until it has practical consequences, most consumers won't shift. So they're going to need to come up with competitive services that are better than the existing ones. Better not just to them, but to regular users.

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

#320

Post by darkerside » Thu, Dec 20, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

https://twitter.com/a_h_a/status/1075691620081623041

This is almost certainly related to the user's travel to Iran, and not any form of racial profiling. Everybody please remain calm.

It's emblematic of today's society that at the first mention of ethnicity, everybody grabs their anti-racism pitchforks. I agree racism is a problem, but let's treat it appropriately. We need to look at it more like drug addiction today (an invisible psychological problem that can be healed), and less like drug addiction 30 years ago (a moral failing that must be punished).