An Apology and an Update • Hacker News Board

Re: An Apology and an Update

#201

Post by daveFNbuck » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:15 PM UTC

mirimir wrote: post #188

hrktb wrote: post #126

It’s still profoundly disturbing to my eyes. Technically their underlying problem is relying on IP ranges, wich is flawed and raises false positives all the time. They seem to recognize they shouldn’t be doing irreversible and critical action with only that info, yet will still use it to drop traffic. To me their message is “sorry we screwed with your accounts, going forward we’ll only screw with your messages”. Am I…

I totally agree. But the problem then is what they ought to rely on. If in fact they are legally required to deny service to those in sanctioned countries. The whole thing is silly. I mean, anyone in a sanctioned country who was truly up to no good would be spoofing their IP address in some way. So most of the users that they ban or block will be innocent.

Sanctions aren't about stopping people who are up to no good. They're supposed to hurt the country as a whole, which mostly means hurting the innocent. The idea is that this will incentivize the country to stop doing the thing it's being sanctioned for.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#202

Post by nmca » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:16 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #194

dbdjfjrjvebd wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spilling something is an accident. Other things can be mistakes but not accidents.

Spilling something is usually a mistake, and often can be mitigated; the point is that mere repitition of error is insufficient to prove moral degeneracy.

IDK at some point you should be investing in a sippy-cup

Re: An Apology and an Update

#203

Post by mirimir » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:30 PM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #201

mirimir wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree. But the problem then is what they ought to rely on. If in fact they are legally required to deny service to those in sanctioned countries. The whole thing is silly. I mean, anyone in a sanctioned country who was truly up to no good would be spoofing their IP address in some way. So most of the users that they ban or block will be innocent.

Sanctions aren't about stopping people who are up to no good. They're supposed to hurt the country as a whole, which mostly means hurting the innocent. The idea is that this will incentivize the country to stop doing the thing it's being sanctioned for.

OK, so I know nothing about the legal context for sanction enforcement. But in the US, the standard of proof in criminal cases is something like "beyond a reasonable doubt". And even in civil cases, it's something like "preponderance of the evidence". In my experience with pollution torts, that typically meant >50% probability of causation. But it usually devolved into battles of experts, and Daubert challenges.

I don't get how IP-based geolocation could satisfy either standard.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#204

Post by alanh » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 4:45 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #194

dbdjfjrjvebd wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spilling something is an accident. Other things can be mistakes but not accidents.

Spilling something is usually a mistake, and often can be mitigated; the point is that mere repitition of error is insufficient to prove moral degeneracy.

your willful misunderstanding is making this thread unbearable.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#205

Post by mac01021 » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

dkersten wrote: post #196

mac01021 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your personal life sounds more exciting than mine. In each case though you did it to begin with because 1) while you knew you would be sorry, you surmised you would be more sorry not doing it, or 2) did not believe anyone would mind your actions, or 3) did not realize you would so much regret it when others took offense to your actions. #3 absolves you of nothing. #2 absolves you unless you thought they wouldn't mind…

All three of your possibilities imply that it was on purpose and understood to be wrong to begin with. What about if you made a mistake: you thought you were doing the right thing, but turns out it was the wrong thing. Or you thought what you are doing wouldn’t impact anybody negatively. Or you did the right thing but it didn’t work out the way you anticipated. Or it was an innocent and honest thing you did, but some…

Don't those all fall squarely under #2 (supposing the act won't bother anyone)?

Re: An Apology and an Update

#206

Post by morpheuskafka » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #41

morpheuskafka wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought embargoes didn't apply to information anyway? You're still allowed to text someone in Cuba or even call North Korea, so how come Slack is banned?

Texts/SMS/voice calls etc are not encrypted. The NSA slurps that data up like a sponge wrapped in Brawny wrapped in a ShamWow. There's a huge list of why we can't export/sale things to certain countries, but encryption is one of them. Things that seem "innocent" enough like a hardware video box might qualify as embargoed because it has the ability to decode SSL network traffic. Can't let that tech get in the hands of…

But what encryption does Slack actually ship? If it just uses SSL then that is being done by the browser not the Slack JS code.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#207

Post by lazerwalker » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

n_e wrote: post #170

bad_user wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 days for people being locked out of their account, through no fault of their own, is a long time. Slack is only apologizing due to the public uproar, as apparently many people were affected. Our cofounder was also locked of his account. He's Irish and living in Romania, with nothing to do with the embargoed countries. To make matters worse, he tried contacting support to prove his nationality and country of residen…

> 2 days for people being locked out of their account, through no fault of their own, is a long time. In absolute terms yes. Compared to how for example google handles this it’s outstanding.

Most times Google has issues like that, it's for a free service, rather than something affecting paid customers, yeah?

Re: An Apology and an Update

#208

Post by dogecoinbase » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:44 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #135

dogecoinbase wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I've spent the day messaging and talking with friends ... Some of us use Slack because we have work to do. How noble in reason! Some of us were banned without justification from our jobs today via the unjustified unilateral action of a private company. In fact, my job is to help companies secure their internal communications. So, talking with people about this was my job . What was yours?

Not shilling cryptocurrencies. ;)

Ok, that was great.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#209

Post by NelsonMinar » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 5:50 PM UTC

Gibbon1 wrote: post #141

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #22

> We will soon begin blocking access to our service from IP addresses associated with an embargoed country. Users who travel to a sanctioned country may not be able to access Slack while they remain in that country. Is Slack legally required to do this? As long as they aren't knowingly accepting payment from these countries, shouldn't they be in the clear? How are other tech companies dealing with this? Does Google b…

> Is Slack legally required to do this? No, the reason is Saudi Arabia told them to. > The Crown Prince also invested $45 billion into a SoftBank subsidiary, the Vision Fund, which made subsequent investments in a number of US tech companies. The Vision Fund made significant investments into Slack, DoorDash, and Nvidia. Slack declined to comment and DoorDash did respond to a request for comment as of publication.

I'd ask you if you had any evidence for this claim, but of course you don't. You have a very odd view of how investments work. Perhaps MBS went straight from ordering Kashoggi's execution to getting a random Iranian banned from an Internet chat system.

Re: An Apology and an Update

#210

Post by lkrubner » Sat, Dec 22, 2018, 6:06 PM UTC

pyrophane wrote: post #11

This is yet another good reason to prefer decentralized networks. When Slack or Facebook or whomever agrees to block someone there is no resolution other than appealing to a company with a closed decision making process, something I don't think any of us really want.

Why is this a good reason to prefer decentralized networks? Slack is a tool for employees at a company to communicate with each other. At some point those communications need to arrive back at a server that lives inside the boundaries of a nation state that is one of the world's major economies. Most of the major governments of the world work together to regulate the worlds networks. But even if that wasn't true, what would you get by trying to leave the networks? Are you trying to evade the law? If so, why? If you don't like the law, you can always lobby to change it, but there will always be laws. You can and should work to make the laws better, but still there will be laws, and we all gain some benefit from living in a society with laws. Or if you disagree, what do you think the alternative is?