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Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

ahmadhaghighi.com

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Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#121

Post by einpoklum »

dijit wrote: post #84

Quick note that anyone using a US based cloud provider will likely be blocking all sanctioned countries. It’s not configurable at all. It was a sticking point for us when deploying the sequel to a game I was working on. Ultimately we determined that the benefits of using the provider outweighed the benefit to users since we weren’t shipping the game there officially anyway. (With one notable exception) It still leave…

> I was principally annoyed at the lack of usability in Crimea, as any way you slice it it’s part of a country that is not being sanctioned in the same way and the citizenry did nothing wrong.

If "doing wrong things" is a criterion for being blocked on GitLab, then there are _so_ many organizations and states which should be blocked, and arguably hundreds of Millions of people who serve in military forces which do wrong things etc.

So, there is really no justification for this regardless of slicing. IMHO.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#122

Post by r-w »

Dunedan wrote: post #100
miracle2k wrote: post #88

People should resist the temptation to defend this. 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost certainly over-compliance. Note that the vast majority of websites do not do this. Even big ones, such as Gmail, do not do this. 2. It does not speak well of the United States justice system if someone could be prosecuted for failure to block Iranian IPs. If this were required, the law should be clear. Other…

> 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost certainly over-compliance. Note that the vast majority of websites do not do this. Even big ones, such as Gmail, do not do this. I can tell you for certain that at least AWS and Atlassian do that. I learned that while surfing from an IP address which was mistakenly associated with being located in Iran. I only discovered that, because said websites weren't…

> I learned that while surfing from an IP address which was mistakenly associated with being located in Iran. […] As I got that fixed quite fast afterwards I haven't done more browsing

Tor?

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#123

Post by Dunedan »

r-w wrote: post #122
Dunedan wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost certainly over-compliance. Note that the vast majority of websites do not do this. Even big ones, such as Gmail, do not do this. I can tell you for certain that at least AWS and Atlassian do that. I learned that while surfing from an IP address which was mistakenly associated with being located in Iran. I only discovered that, because said websites weren't…

> I learned that while surfing from an IP address which was mistakenly associated with being located in Iran. […] As I got that fixed quite fast afterwards I haven't done more browsing Tor?

That was just a regular internet connection. Not sure who messed up, but somehow the (dynamic) IP address block the ISP handed out was associated with Iran at that point in time.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#124

Post by r-w »

londons_explore wrote: post #107
542458 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a little confused at people who are mad at GitLab here. I’m under the impression that sanctions and export control laws tend to be fairly strict, and penalties for knowing non-compliance are harsh, including the possibility of jail time. GitLab’s hands are pretty tied here.

We should change the rules so that anything that's provided, for free, to the entire world can also be given to sanctioned countries and individuals.

Not in an era when information is the most valuable commodity. Just look at the discrepancy in patent treatment been the US and China: openness on our part can still go unrequited and be taken advantage of. No matter what we give a sanctioned county free access to, they can just bend it to their own will.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#125

Post by jrochkind1 »

da39a3ee wrote: post #103
dijit wrote: post #84

Quick note that anyone using a US based cloud provider will likely be blocking all sanctioned countries. It’s not configurable at all. It was a sticking point for us when deploying the sequel to a game I was working on. Ultimately we determined that the benefits of using the provider outweighed the benefit to users since we weren’t shipping the game there officially anyway. (With one notable exception) It still leave…

You might want to delete the "and the citizenry did nothing wrong" ending to your otherwise reasonable post. I don't think you meant it the way it sounds.

I legit am not sure how it sounded to you in a way that seemed unfortunate.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#127

Post by judge2020 »

tpetry wrote: post #113

So the consens is that many companies are doing this because of sanctions by the US. What about cloudflare? They are responsible for more and more of the internet‘s traffic. And even if you are a non-us company and have servers not in the US many people use cloudflare because of its ddos protection. Does cloudflare block these countries too as they are an american company despite you not being a us company.

It might be over-compliance on GCP’s part, or it might not be. The DOJ isn’t currently prosecuting companies for not complying with sanctions, but that doesn’t mean they won’t decide tomorrow to hit every big US website that doesn’t block Iran IPs by default. The law certainly isn’t clear on where in the OSI model you’re supposed to stop doing business with Iran traffic. Maybe even IX’s are liable if they route traffic that are from Iranian IPs.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#128

Post by Siira »

I am Persian. From what I gather, the middle-plus class here still mostly believes that changing the regime is costly and risky (especially since it might very well lead to a civil war, as the regime has no humanity and has shown that it will kill every single one of the people to survive). These sanctions certainly help align our incentives more with the US agenda, but they do not seem to be enough after all. Obama's strategy was definitely a failure, as well; It simply gave power and legitimacy to the Islamic regime and only got temporary limits in return, limits that ultimately did not abate either domestic abuse or extraterritorial meddling. In the end, dictators know that the Western block is finicky, unstable, and short-termish; This makes it so that high-pressure strategies do not work. I do not know of a solution, frankly; Most of my peers see immigration as the only viable solution. But the blame of the quagmire mostly lies with the democrats and the EU. If they had committed to the high-pressure strategy from the Obama era, a much better compromise would have been reachable with the IR. (The democrats+EU mostly sided with the IR in recent protests as well, just to spite Trump. They are only good for virtue signalling, and do not help the oppressed where it matters.) Western democracies generally are very bad game-theoretic agents; They play repeated games as if they are oneshots.

PS: Imagine if the USA sponsored Telegram MTPROTO proxies (and other anti-censorship tools). That'd deal a huge blow to the IR, and make the people more US-friendly as well. Does anyone know why they don't? It's an obvious LHF ...

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#129

Post by einpoklum »

miracle2k wrote: post #88

People should resist the temptation to defend this. 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost certainly over-compliance. Note that the vast majority of websites do not do this. Even big ones, such as Gmail, do not do this. 2. It does not speak well of the United States justice system if someone could be prosecuted for failure to block Iranian IPs. If this were required, the law should be clear. Other…

> People should resist the temptation to defend this.

You yourself are defending these ludicrous sanctions to some extent:

> 1. Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost certainly over-compliance.

So blocking Iranian IPs is fine?

If you tell me "but GitLab is in the US, it has to" - it chose to base itself in the US only after apparently having previously being based elsewhere. With the way things stand, it is unreasonable for an online universal service provider, with individual user accounts, to operate from the US - similarly to how it should not operate out of China or Turkey (where restrictions are even stronger).

Anyway...

> Summary: Gitlab should grow a pair, and Americans should ask themselves if this kind of legal uncertainty is desirable.

Most people in the US are barely aware of international affairs. This comes to mind from a few years back:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/04/0...

> Finally, legal effort to make websites inaccessible in Iran is entirely incompatible with being taken seriously when complaining about internet freedom in Iran.

You're mistaken. The US is not taken seriously on the merit of its arguments (and probably hasn't been for a couple of centuries already); it is taken seriously due to its ability to exert military and economic pressure.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#130

Post by ahadinyoto »

monkin wrote: post #3

GitLab can’t do nothing about it, and whining will not help. Everything is on government level.

Not whining. Bringing this into our attention is important, especially for those who live outside the US. I've been naively trusting the US-based services as always open and free, as in freedom. It's not. Any political move may mean my data can get frozen out and become unreachable anytime. A real wake up call.
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