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Okta and Auth0 Blocking Cuba, Iran, N Korea, Syria, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk

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Re: Okta and Auth0 Blocking Cuba, Iran, N Korea, Syria, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk

#11

Post by viraptor »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #2

So it turns out that when you outsource auth, you also outsource some of the governance on who can access your platform. Isn't access control a set of patterns rather than a service? When did it stop being a core competency of web applications?

I think you're missing the point of okta. It's not for access control to your specific application. It's for companies to deal with many groups of users and on/off boarding easily.

It transforms "Andy is andy@foo on service A, AndyA on service B, aaaandy on service C, maybe has two factor enabled on some of them and hopefully hasn't joined other groups to give them access" into "Andy is andy@company in Okta and we can turn services on/off and set policies as needed".

Re: Okta and Auth0 Blocking Cuba, Iran, N Korea, Syria, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk

#14

Post by jhugo »

One thing I've always been curious about is why the opportunity created by this sort of thing doesn't seem to be taken advantage of.

To take Iran as an example: when US sanctions prevent Boeing or Airbus from selling to them, I can understand why Embraer doesn't step in and offer to supply planes, because they are afraid of secondary sanctions affecting their business with the rest of the world.

But tech isn't like aircraft production — building a GitHub, Okta or Auth0 clone is a chunk of work but hardly infeasible — hell, most companies routinely built a partial Auth0 clone in-house until not that long ago. Many still do.

So why don't we see alternatives pop up that don't block Iran? It's a niche, but you get the whole niche to yourself, and Iran is not a small market.

From a legal perspective you would set up somewhere like UAE where they have a good climate for business but regularly do business with Iran, so that part shouldn't be an issue.

Network effects are a factor, but when you're blocked from the popular platform, you have a bigger incentive than usual to consider the less-popular one.

Re: Okta and Auth0 Blocking Cuba, Iran, N Korea, Syria, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk

#16

Post by kube-system »

capableweb wrote: post #8

Wow, and here I thought Okta had split up their service into US and non-US, like many other big companies, but seems they have not, so now just because the US has some arbitrary list of who can be a user, everyone using Okta needs to follow that... Seems like the laws are a bit outdated and haven't really been updated for a global internet, hope we see some changes in that direction.

There’s nothing “outdated” here. The OFAC Controls being applicable to business done over the internet is not an unintended effect.

Re: Okta and Auth0 Blocking Cuba, Iran, N Korea, Syria, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk

#17

Post by k__ »

jhugo wrote: post #14

One thing I've always been curious about is why the opportunity created by this sort of thing doesn't seem to be taken advantage of. To take Iran as an example: when US sanctions prevent Boeing or Airbus from selling to them, I can understand why Embraer doesn't step in and offer to supply planes, because they are afraid of secondary sanctions affecting their business with the rest of the world. But tech isn't like a…

There are alternatives.

Problem is, that people think they are a grift.

Re: Okta and Auth0 Blocking Cuba, Iran, N Korea, Syria, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk

#18

Post by vertis »

capableweb wrote: post #8

Wow, and here I thought Okta had split up their service into US and non-US, like many other big companies, but seems they have not, so now just because the US has some arbitrary list of who can be a user, everyone using Okta needs to follow that... Seems like the laws are a bit outdated and haven't really been updated for a global internet, hope we see some changes in that direction.

Multi-nationals have to exist in the Venn diagram of laws.

Which is problematic in a bunch of scenarios:

  - US foreign policy (note: I don't really want to stick up for a bunch of the countries/regions on that list).
 
  - Chinese (and other countries) with censored internet. 

  - GDPR reaching far further than the EU borders.

  - Badly written cryptography laws[0]
I don't really see a solution to this problem though. It's more of a problem when there is no transparency or ability to provide feedback and move democratic mechanisms toward "correct" solutions.

In the case of Okta/Auth0, however they've segmented their business (I use their EU region) they're still at the end of the day a US company with US board and directors. They can make a "service region" that respects EU laws because they don't contradict US laws (mostly), but there is nothing in EU laws mandating offering services to these regions. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/australian-government-...

Re: Okta and Auth0 Blocking Cuba, Iran, N Korea, Syria, Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk

#19

Post by pritambarhate »

jhugo wrote: post #14

One thing I've always been curious about is why the opportunity created by this sort of thing doesn't seem to be taken advantage of. To take Iran as an example: when US sanctions prevent Boeing or Airbus from selling to them, I can understand why Embraer doesn't step in and offer to supply planes, because they are afraid of secondary sanctions affecting their business with the rest of the world. But tech isn't like a…

Most of the time these sanctions are global in nature and various treaties that US has with different countries prevent companies in those countries also doing business with sanctioned nations.
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