Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 515 posts

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#111

Post by CaptArmchair »

arghwhat wrote: post #68
dustinmoris wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose this implies that the employee is Iranian Sorry what??? I have family in India, but not because I'm Indian, I just have family there. I have family in Poland, not because I am Polish (well I am kind of, but not on paper). I have family in the UK, but I'm not British. This is 2021, not Christopher Columbus times.

You seem rather outraged by the sensible assumption that parents living in Iran are probably Iranian, and that a person with two Iranian parents is probably also Iranian. In 2021, people are still directly related to their parents, and the majority of citizens in most countries is indeed the local population. They may of course have obtained American citizenship now, but we're talking in the context of crazy US sanct…

Such presumptions have, historically, led to such actions as the wholesale internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. This included 2nd and 3rd generations born in America, who never had left America. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...

So, no, it's not merely a "sensible" assumption.

It's an assumption that carries collective trauma and negative connotations for many who's ancestors have experienced painful discrimination because of their ancestry.

> I don't think there should be any consequence to being Iranian, but I don't have a say in American politics.

No, you don't. But you do have a voice to ask critical and nuanced questions out loudly.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#112

Post by cies »

brmgb wrote: post #96
cies wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny how GH gets shit for what the US has as laws. I'd focus my outrage on the law, the lawmaker, and those who uphold it. GH is merely trying to go by the book/ avoid penalties, as expected.

The US embargo prevents doing business with Iran. Providing service in Iran would be a violation of the embargo. Blocking a whole European company not conducting business with Iran because one of its employee tried to login while there is not respecting the embargo, it's just overreach. GitHub should get flak for that in the same way Paypal regularly get flak for randomly freezing accounts.

> GitHub should get flak for that in the same way Paypal regularly get flak for randomly freezing accounts.

Random? I think the problem with Paypal was that they do not warn or provide reasons for freezing. GH's reasons are clear.

> Blocking a whole European company not conducting business with Iran because one of its employee tried to login while there is not respecting the embargo, it's just overreach.

Says who? There is a law, the law is unclear and IHMO a bad law. The law is overreach. Blaming GH for shitty US laws is akin to killing the messenger.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#113

Post by kkapelon »

Illniyar wrote: post #64
kkapelon wrote: post #61

This means that as a disgruntled employee I can simply visit Iran, log in my company Github account and boom! I have now taken revenge on my whole company with minimal effort.

Or just use a vpn that has servers in Iran? I think there are a few, hidemyass is one also I think, services designed to test access from different countries.

Great idea! Maybe GitHub does some additional checks for determining if somebody is in Iran? Or they have a special way to know if a VPN is used?

I think that some VPN services offer a "random server" access, so you are essentially playing Russian roulette if you just happen to log in via an Iranian server.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#114

Post by zoobab »

jamesmishra wrote: post #108

I'm on GitHub/Microsoft's side here. They are not responsible for the content of US export control laws, and they have an incredible amount to lose if they are found to be in violation of US export control laws. Presumably GitHub needs some automated tool to prevent inbound traffic from sanctioned countries, and it's hard to be certain that they are complying with US law if such automated tools have some wiggle room…

Github does not respect Schrems2 neither.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#116

Post by icelancer »

EdwinLarkin wrote: post #74

Entrusting your business to an american entity is the stupidest idea you could have thought about. Especially us europeans should not rely on American services at all.It's not worth it. American corporations are just as much a liability as their counterparts in China.

The top 33 "software and programming" companies by revenue in the world can be found below [0]. 28 of them are American. Two are in the EU. One is in the UK. One is in Australia. The last is Russian.

One of the companies in the EU produces enterprise software almost no one on this website uses (SAP). The other is Dassault.

In the US the top five companies are Microsoft, Oracle, ADP, Adobe, and Salesforce. If you include Alphabet and Amazon, well...

When the EU or Asia (non-China, I guess) can offer mature alternatives even remotely competitive with the American companies, I guess your strategy could work. Until then, no one is going to flock to Hetzner over AWS.

And I like Hetzner.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_software_c...

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#117

Post by icelancer »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #104
EdwinLarkin wrote: post #74

Entrusting your business to an american entity is the stupidest idea you could have thought about. Especially us europeans should not rely on American services at all.It's not worth it. American corporations are just as much a liability as their counterparts in China.

>Especially us europeans should not rely on American services at all.It's not worth it. Sure, please let me know how the EU plans to build Office 365, AWS, GitHub competitors of similar scale, quality and success. We have no private investors that would pony up enough money to go against US tech titans and fat chance the EU would ever fund such initiatives and if they would, the money would evaporate over night to co…

I generally agree with your post (we both made the mistake of posting during EU peak times and not US peak times, so downvotes incoming), but it's worth noting that Airbus is a success story bolstered by the now-EU to combat American aerospace dominance.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#118

Post by u801e »

arghwhat wrote: post #68
dustinmoris wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suppose this implies that the employee is Iranian Sorry what??? I have family in India, but not because I'm Indian, I just have family there. I have family in Poland, not because I am Polish (well I am kind of, but not on paper). I have family in the UK, but I'm not British. This is 2021, not Christopher Columbus times.

You seem rather outraged by the sensible assumption that parents living in Iran are probably Iranian, and that a person with two Iranian parents is probably also Iranian. In 2021, people are still directly related to their parents, and the majority of citizens in most countries is indeed the local population. They may of course have obtained American citizenship now, but we're talking in the context of crazy US sanct…

> that a person with two Iranian parents is probably also Iranian.

It depends on the countries' respective laws, but it's certainly possible that the person in question is not Iranian at all in terms of nationality as opposed to ancestory. As I recall, the law in question pertains to Iranian nationals, not those who happen to have Iranian ancestory.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#119

Post by zuzun »

jeroenhd wrote: post #29
benjaminwootton wrote: post #15

Github refused to help me regain access to an 11 year old account when I changed jobs so lost access to 2FA and email account at the same time. We lost access to tens of thousands of dollars worth of project code which we had to rewrite. The customer service support was Google style brick wall. I wish this guy luck in getting access.

To be fair to GH, I wouldn't trust them if their customer service could be convinced to unlock an account with neither email nor 2FA access. Passwords leak all the time (because people are bad at using unique passwords) and social engineering efforts are quite effective at hijacking high-value accounts in a great deal of companies, so while I sympathise with the loss of your account, your experience actually improves…

They just turned 2FA on for all accounts and that was the moment I found out that mine was pointing to the wrong email address. I wish they would allow you to sign something with your private SSH key to get an inactive account back.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#120

Post by pelasaco »

mebr wrote: post #91
pelasaco wrote: post #78

I had similar issue visiting Crimea. I was simply looking through my issues, while in holidays over there.

What happened after? your account was unblocked later?

yes, it was unblocked later, after some email exchanges, but it took me some days and a lot of nerves.
Post reply on HN