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GitHub blocked my account and they think I’m developing nuclear weapons

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Re: GitHub blocked my account and they think I’m developing nuclear weapons

#22
post #13

Reminds me of case when Slack blocked the accounts of Iranian s living outside of Iran(ie. Iranian national with Canadian permanent residency). Tech companies should be more careful with these blanket blocks. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724107

All this reminds me of the death throes of a dying empire.

The US is flailing incoherently. Most of it's actions are ultimately making it weaker. It's blown all it's its international credibility. It's spending about 50% of it's GDP on a worthless security state and rent seeking. And this sort of thing is tossing the US's corporate credibility in the fire.

Re: GitHub blocked my account and they think I’m developing nuclear weapons

#23
post #10

> I do live and work in Finland So, they are blocking based on nationality rather than on location? How do they determine a user's nationality? Do ITAR laws really require blocking a nationality regardless of their physical location? Would an Iranian living in the U.S. also be blocked?

Where are you seeing that? Ctrl+F for "Finland" doesn't return anything for me in this article, but I do see this: > I am a software developer based in Iran as well as: > I know that I’m a resident of the sanctioned country

it's an embedded tweet:

https://twitter.com/Farzad_YZ/status/1154640983377797120

Re: GitHub blocked my account and they think I’m developing nuclear weapons

#26
post #19

Why focus on the irrelevant paragraph about nuclear weapons and ignore the very next paragraph, which even says the same thing as the website notice? Github repository services aren't food or medicine, or otherwise exempted from sanctions, as far as I can tell. [1] [1] https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Sanctions/Page...

I had the same thought. I feel sorry for this individual, who is being hurt. However, his complaints make no sense. They're weird comments about "nuclear weapons" and "free" as if they had some relevance. Hint: they don't have ANY relevance.

The US has laws that specifically sanction Iran. Companies in the US must follow US law, or risk serious consequences, and so they're following the law as required. That's it. The blocking doesn't have anything to do with whether or not you're developing a nuclear weapon, or if the service is free. Details here: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Sanctions/Page... which say: "630. Is the provision or delivery of goods or services to an Iranian counterparty after November 4, 2018 allowed? [No, ] The wind-down period has ended and the United States intends to fully enforce the sanctions that have come back into effect. The provision or delivery of goods or services and/or the extension of additional loans or credits to an Iranian counterparty after November 4, 2018 — even pursuant to written contracts or written agreements entered into prior to May 8, 2018 — may result in the imposition of U.S. sanctions unless such activities are exempt from regulation, authorized by OFAC, or otherwise not sanctionable. The United States maintains authorizations and exceptions under U.S. sanctions that allow for the sale of agricultural commodities, food, medicine, and medical devices to Iran by U.S. persons and non-U.S. persons [in certain cases]."

GitHub provides a service that is not "the sale of agricultural commodities, food, medicine, and medical devices". So under US law there must be an attempt to block services to Iranians.

It's very reasonable to discuss whether or not the US should do this; argue away! But let's focus on what's actually happening, and not some irrelevant strawman argument.

Re: GitHub blocked my account and they think I’m developing nuclear weapons

#27

Put bluntly, fuck ITAR. I understand and applaud the intent of keeping extremely dangerous weapons out of the hands of just anybody. But the implementation is insane. Until recently, this same regulation was preventing people from freely distributing SSL libraries! I also understand that Microsoft feels forced to act on this, but as a developer I consider it user-hostile and will investigate other alternatives. Losin…

I don't think this has anything to do with ITAR. It's a sanction that includes export restrictions, but it's a completely different law. I think the law you want to focus on is: CISADA (Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010).

ITAR is just one of several export control laws in the US. The Export Administration Regulations (EAR) is another. In most cases these don't interfere with international software development... but sometimes they do.

I don't think Microsoft has a choice here.

Re: GitHub blocked my account and they think I’m developing nuclear weapons

#28
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you seeing that? Ctrl+F for "Finland" doesn't return anything for me in this article, but I do see this: > I am a software developer based in Iran as well as: > I know that I’m a resident of the sanctioned country

it's an embedded tweet: https://twitter.com/Farzad_YZ/status/1154640983377797120

Gotcha, thanks. That embed had apparently been hidden by default due to my browser's do-not-track setting.

Re: GitHub blocked my account and they think I’m developing nuclear weapons

#29
post #7
post #4

While author is obviously in a pretty unenviable situation, it seems strange to me to entrust anything that you can't do without to a free service...

We can't even commit to private repos of the company we work for! this puts our job security in danger!! even if you or the company is not in Iran!!!

Yes you can. Git doesn't require GitHub to work. Anything from setting up your own git servers, to committing to repos on shared drives, to sending patches through email, you can do without GitHub.

This is not even about relying on a single third party service for anything critical to your business, this is just laziness to learn the tools you use.

Re: GitHub blocked my account and they think I’m developing nuclear weapons

#30
post #20

Does gitlab provide federation, such that forking, linking, issue reporting etc. works accross gitlab instances?

Git provides forking/commit/etc. federation, and GitLab can automate some of that, but it doesn't have issue federation support.
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