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Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

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Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#51

Post by scurvy »

cyberferret wrote: post #34

While I acknowledge the pragmatic approach taken by the company to protect their user's data, I am curious as to how this will play out over time. Factors such as longer term travel or working vacations to these countries by their employees? Or, What about if one of their employees is married (or wants to get married) to a legal resident of one of these countries? How far removed does the employee have to be from thi…

"Working vacation."

Do one or the other, please. Otherwise you're not doing either very well.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#52

Post by type0 »

wolco wrote: post #42
type0 wrote: post #9

@edjdev wrote There is an unacceptably high risk that these nations may apply pressure to individuals living within their borders with sensitive data access (based their role at GitLab). Given the current australian law changes, the rampant israelian IT spy sector and despotic Belarus position on human rights, it's surprising that they only mention China and Russia. This whole debacle doesn't look good and makes one…

Debacle? The week hasn't even started yet. Let's take a moment to breathe. China and Russia are known to put pressure or watch/listen on nationals who work in key positions in foreign companies. As US allys Australia, Israel don't pose the same threat. A lot of information that could be gained would be available through the US government and shared with the those parties if there was a need.

Yes debacle, because why are we only talking about gov secrets here. You know, industrial espionage is real too and some big potential customers could just as well reside outside the US.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#54

Post by mr_tristan »

Iv wrote: post #47

I don't understand what I am reading, I feel I am missing some context... Is it about being afraid the Chinese and Russian state will spy on user data if some employees are located in those countries? Or were there updates to their laws that made it mandatory to open databases to the state if an employee is located in these countries?

It's actually in the discussion:

> There is an unacceptably high risk that these nations may apply pressure to individuals living within their borders with sensitive data access (based their role at GitLab). It is our concern. And it is the stated concerns of several customers.

The discussion is actually pretty significant, as they sort out how they might manage the _customer demand_ that is creating these hiring blocks, and in turn, how that is reported and tracked.

I don't see this as a purely "done deal", it's a company having very important discussions in the open that most would just default to "restricted". All this transparency is a great source for others to learn from.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#55

Post by babesh »

wolco wrote: post #42
type0 wrote: post #9

@edjdev wrote There is an unacceptably high risk that these nations may apply pressure to individuals living within their borders with sensitive data access (based their role at GitLab). Given the current australian law changes, the rampant israelian IT spy sector and despotic Belarus position on human rights, it's surprising that they only mention China and Russia. This whole debacle doesn't look good and makes one…

Debacle? The week hasn't even started yet. Let's take a moment to breathe. China and Russia are known to put pressure or watch/listen on nationals who work in key positions in foreign companies. As US allys Australia, Israel don't pose the same threat. A lot of information that could be gained would be available through the US government and shared with the those parties if there was a need.

That is a load of cow manure aka confirmation bias. Israel has no compunction spying on the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/...

There are definitely Chinese and Russian spies but there are spies from many countries besides those. The question is why are you singling out those countries and why now.

The reason is that there is a Cold War brewing between the US and China and this company has become an agent of that war.

The seems to be a propaganda war against China brewing in the US. I last saw this level of jingoism when Bush Jr decided to take over Iraq on the pretense of Saddam Hussein supposedly having nuclear weapons. All the TV network anchors were pushing for war and pushing the supposed threat. Later we find out it was all lies.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#57

Post by edoceo »

cyberferret wrote: post #44
throwawaypolicy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been told (at a different company based in a different country) "don't bring your work laptop to China, don't bring materials to China without authorization, we'll provide what is effectively a burner device for whatever you are bringing to China (I believe they re-used them as different employees went to China)". I imagine Gitlab would have a similar but less restrictive policy, "don't bring a work laptop to Ch…

Consider this scenario: Loyal and long time high performing Gitlab employee Bob, is happily married to Su, who originally hails from China. They live and work in the US. All good. Until Su's ageing parents back home succumb to ill health and she decides that the family need to move back to China to care for them for maybe one or two years - perhaps longer. Bob then has to make the choice between (a) resigning his job…

Sound like "loyal and high performing" Bob could land a new gig. Life is about choice and Bob might have a difficult one. I hope he'd stay with Su. Better and Worse and all that.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#58

Post by Iv »

Ok, that discussion made it clearer for me, and I am kind of behind @cciresi at that point:

https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/5555#not...

They have a customer that required the personal data they'll give to Gitlab not be handled by people living in Russia and China. Could be a group doing humanitarian or journalistic work.

That's actually an interesting conundrum: you want to hire a company, need to trust it for handling sensitive material, and can't afford it to fall between specific states' hands.

I don't think there is an objective process to do that. I know that USA and France and probably many other countries have laws to authorize seizure of data they consider linked to a variety of vaguely labeled activities (from "trouble to public order" to "terrorism"). You may end up excluding 80% of the world if you use objective criterion there.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#59

Post by dwd »

benologist wrote: post #12

Probably an idea to throw Australia on that list - https://www.zdnet.com/article/whats-actually-in-australias-e...

Sucks to have such a retarded Gov.

In the case of Chinese-based employees the assumption is that anything they did would go through Chinese Government controlled networks (there's VPN ban even for foreign businesses) and likely result in your intellectual property being shared with your Chinese-based competitors. Not to mention their access being potentially compromised and used.

If an Australian-based employee complied with a letter, they could destroy your business reputation when it got out, even if you threw them under the bus. Probably the main reason Australian employees are still given latitude is that committing compromised code into the codebase would require involving everyone who could possibly see that code change.

Re: Gitlab considers not hiring SREs and Support Engineers in China and Russia

#60

Post by type0 »

cyberferret wrote: post #44
throwawaypolicy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been told (at a different company based in a different country) "don't bring your work laptop to China, don't bring materials to China without authorization, we'll provide what is effectively a burner device for whatever you are bringing to China (I believe they re-used them as different employees went to China)". I imagine Gitlab would have a similar but less restrictive policy, "don't bring a work laptop to Ch…

Consider this scenario: Loyal and long time high performing Gitlab employee Bob, is happily married to Su, who originally hails from China. They live and work in the US. All good. Until Su's ageing parents back home succumb to ill health and she decides that the family need to move back to China to care for them for maybe one or two years - perhaps longer. Bob then has to make the choice between (a) resigning his job…

Then the good thing is that you are not married to the company you work for. You can even work for more than one at the same time; to be married to more than one person is so much more difficult :/>
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