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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

#381

Post by vinceguidry »

wpietri wrote: post #336
SamWhited wrote: post #305

I've been mad at the Go community in particular for continuing to promote Slack for ages, and this is exactly the hypothetical situation I always use to explain why (although there are other reasons too; Slack is a perfect embodiment of everything wrong with this industry, but that needs a fuller writeup). At a previous job we had to start doing this exact same thing when we were considering going public; this is the…

I would love to see more things built on open protocols. But for that to be the case, we have to find ways to make better apps built on top of open protocols. We should start by admitting that Slack beat IRC. Beat it like a cheap hallway rug. IRC was always a terrible experience for novices, and it wasn't a great experience for experts. That it had any users at all is a testament not to IRC, but to what it enabled. S…

If FLOSS developers started building their software products like businesses built their products, then they would have to turn into businesses. You see this in pretty much every segment, I'm looking at you, Canonical.

More to the point, there is always going to be some value-added service a profit-seeking enterprise is going to be able to provide over what's freely available. If we built IRC 2.0, then Slack 3.0 will provide what everyone hates about IRC 2.0 and then the dynamics of profit seeking will drive Slack 3.0 to divorce from the free alternative.

We see this pattern over and over and over again. It doesn't happen necessarily because businesses are being ruthless, but because there's always going to be a market space, even in the face of a fantastic free service. That's just how a market economy works.

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

#382

Post by scruffyherder »

blindwatchmaker wrote: post #228
hnauz wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy is bitching so much in the thread, claiming that he's been profiled based on his race (and not the fact that he connected to Slack from Iran at some point), that it's hard to take him seriously.

Yeah imagine bitching because you lost a primary communication tool and a bunch of your saved data because of your ethnicity.

... so welcome to China?

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

#383

Post by bradleyland »

robotbikes wrote: post #330
sudhirj wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the way Slack handled this, but by now it’s clear (even the original poster seems to have realised) that Slack banned everyone who accessed the service from an Iranian IP, irrespective of who they were or where they were from. It’s pretty clear that’s it not motivated by race or any kind of profiling. Slack has no incentive to boot more people off their platform than necessary, so this overly broad ba…

Who asked them to do this ? I have serious doubts that this action was directly recommended in any official government communication otherwise we would have had someone leak it and debate about it. My hunch is this isn't directed by a national security letter or anything like that with mandated secrecy otherwise we would see similar actions from other tech service providers. As far as I know Facebook isn't deleting t…

This is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't done business with the Federal government, but your visions of national security letters are very much on one end of a broad spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum is the mundane.

The mundane includes things like contracting with the Federal government or even certain government contractors. Our company just contracted with PAE, and PAE contractors must agree to much of the same Federal Acquisition Regulations as someone doing business directly with the Federal government. One of the vendor forms was 37 pages long, and it contains sections explicitly requiring certifications that your company will comply with sanctions. The form binds the signer to personal culpability for failure.

So if you're a company contracting in this process you're tasked with preventing delivery of your product to Iran, and the Federal government gets to set the bar, not you. If you fail to meet the bar, you end up in Michael Flynn's shoes, only far less public. How long of a bet is it to expect a Federal bureaucrat will interpret compliance the same way you do? Are you willing to risk inquiry if your opinions differ?

I don't like what's happening here. I don't like it at all, but I know just enough about dealing with the Federal government that I can smell the odor from here.

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

#384

Post by wastedhours »

beobab wrote: post #349
eponeponepon wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice".

My dad used to say: "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained with stupidity", but I love yours too.

Otherwise known has "Hanlon's Razor" [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

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

#385

Post by tremon »

chisleu wrote: post #359
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…

Vacation isn't a valid legal reason to export crypto.

It also isn't a valid reason to ban an otherwise non-sanctioned citizen for life.

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

#387

Post by mtgx »

walterbell wrote: post #346
SamWhited wrote: post #305

I've been mad at the Go community in particular for continuing to promote Slack for ages, and this is exactly the hypothetical situation I always use to explain why (although there are other reasons too; Slack is a perfect embodiment of everything wrong with this industry, but that needs a fuller writeup). At a previous job we had to start doing this exact same thing when we were considering going public; this is the…

An effort is underway to standardize E2E encrypted group messaging in the IETF with the MLS [1] protocol. Open-source participants include Wire and Matrix. Commercial participants include Facebook, Cisco, Google and Apple. [1] https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/mls/about/ Wire is open-source today and usable by regular people, with E2E encryption and email-only accounts.

I'm curious, have you followed those discussions, and have you noticed say Google or Facebook do anything to "nudge" the protocol towards being "more convenient to use" (read: less secure) and less privacy friendly than it was originally intended to be?

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

#388

Post by giancarlostoro »

SamWhited wrote: post #305

I've been mad at the Go community in particular for continuing to promote Slack for ages, and this is exactly the hypothetical situation I always use to explain why (although there are other reasons too; Slack is a perfect embodiment of everything wrong with this industry, but that needs a fuller writeup). At a previous job we had to start doing this exact same thing when we were considering going public; this is the…

There's a move to work on ircv3 as well. Not sure how far we are from these sort of changes, but I would love to see rich IRC clients. I've seen IRC clients that preview images and such, so Slack isn't any more special in comparison (in my opinion anyway). Since it's all things a client can just support.

https://ircv3.net/irc/

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

#389

Post by user5994461 »

lostmyoldone wrote: post #375
user5994461 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Highlight doubt that. France and Europe have similar sanctions. We had an alumni from my university who opened a company and sold some stuff to a client in a middle east country. Hardware parts, not software. One shipment got stopped at the border for a random control, before the police showed up at the office and arrested everyone. Turns out there are sanctions. Couldn't sell there.

The main issue seems to be that they are not only blocking people actually in embargoed countries, and furthermore not only nationals of that country, but everyone who has ever used the service from an IP geolocated - or otherwise - associated with embargoed countries. If former nationals are more likely to have visited an embargoed country, it could conceivably fall under discrimination laws. But it is probably even…

Agreed. It's very obvious that Slack has zero experience dealing with regulations. They totally went overboard with deleting any account that ever connected from a restricted location.

There is no conflict with discrimination though. Sanctions takes precedence over pretty much everything else.

Don't expect your phone and applications to be usable when you travel to Iran/Syria, many services won't work. There was a news not long ago about Google Cloud blocking network access from Iran.

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

#390

Post by mtgx »

dustinmoris wrote: post #147

Wow the Twitter thread and the experiences which are mentioned here sound so extreme and crazy that I am seriously confused to what believe. - Is this all made up to prove some point? - Is this just how the US ticks right now? - Is Slack just completely gone mad? - Is this what companies believes is acceptable nowadays? - Is this the future of the web? The fact that I am not sure what to believe and that I wouldn't b…

I mean, Slack recently announced that they would give employees complete access to employee's private conversions.

When a company starts thinking this way, you know there's no turning back, and more such (censorship/surveillance-friendly) actions will be taken in the future.

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