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Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

ahmadhaghighi.com

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Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#271

Post by sudosysgen »

closeparen wrote: post #248
mirekrusin wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We shouldn't be upset at github/githlab/npm/dockerhub but our industry and ourselves - how did we let our projects/packages/tools/infrastructure to be hosted on such platforms in the first place? Hopefully this will trigger more activity on decentralised solutions; git is decentralised already, needs some ipfs/torrent/etc wrapper for issues/rest or maybe something based on fossil etc.

I don’t think I want to live in a world where software engineers make up their own foreign policy. At the very least, enforceable sanctions give us options other than war. Giving that up could carry an immense human cost. An understanding of distributed software architecture does not come with the ability to understand and weigh that cost, nor does it make you a legitimate authority on which tradeoffs to choose. It’s…

I don't think I want to live in a world where all software engineers have to bow down to US foreign policy.

If there is a real need to put sanctions in place to avoid a war, they can go through the UN and a vote on the UNSC.

Otherwise, it's just great power games, and I don't want to have to deal with that.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#272

Post by miracle2k »

momokoko wrote: post #158
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…

This is dangerously inaccurate information. To those reading this, the US absolutely considers blocking Iranian IPs a required action under the sanctions. The person posting this could get you in serious legal trouble. With that said, most companies do not start blocking these IPs until they are either contacted by US authorities and asked to comply or via the recommendations of an audit by an outside private company…

Prominent examples disagree with you. Gmail for example. They even allow accounts! Now maybe Google wants to argue that Gmail qualifies for the personal communication tools exception. But wait, GitHub doesn't block Iranian IPs either! They allow free accounts as well! Call in the feds!

Is there any government guidance or legal precedent that says IP blocking is required? There is not.

Any evidence that the government warned companies privately? And is this the way things are done in the US? Private threats while the citizenry at large is left on the dark about what the law requires?

A Gitlab executive facing prison time over failure to block Iranian IPs would be unjust even with clear guidance, on the import of the offense alone. But given the lack of legal clarity, this would be banana republic stuff. One of my main points here is, Americans should not accept such a state of affairs.

It's bad enough that there is so much over compliance, it's disappointing to see people running to normalize the idea that fear of jail time in the face of legal uncertainty is a way to run a country.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#273

Post by miracle2k »

tinco wrote: post #111
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…

> Blocking Iranian IPs, as opposed to accounts, is almost certainly over-compliance. Do you have a source for this being over-compliance? Gitlab and Github are both actively sharing technology. It's not like Gitlab randomly decided "Hey let's block Iran today", obviously they have in house legal council who advised this course of action. With regards to your second point, everyone knows there are sanctions on Iran, i…

Note that Github does not block Iranian IPs, nor Iranian accounts.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#274

Post by miracle2k »

dijit wrote: post #207
lucb1e wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US based cloud provider Huh, I thought it was GitLab B.V. and that still exists[1], but Wikipedia says they're headquartered in the USA as of 2018[2] and the official "About" page[3] mentions Amsterdam, the Netherlands nor B.V., but does mention a "GitLab Inc.". The history on Wikipedia doesn't mention them having moved and still has the "Tech companies from the Netherlands" category (not sure if that's because the…

Gitlab is hosted on google cloud, and fronted by cloudflare... those IP restrictions apply to google cloud, AWS, Azure and Oracle Cloud. (and Cloudflare since that's a US company also)

To my knowledge, services hosted on AWS are not blocked in Iran.

Also, if that were the case, literally have the internet would cease to function w/o VPN, which should give pause to those who would shrug off such a policy.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#275

Post by RedComet »

freehunter wrote: post #254
names_are_hard wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the past I worked for an Israeli company listed on a US stock exchange. They were proud that they had customers in virtually every corner of the world, and had just six countries they couldn't do business in. One (Lebanon) because of the Israeli government, and five (including Iran) because of the US. Most interesting to me: apparently when they first went public and became subject to US regulation they had to clo…

It’s interesting to me that the US views Iran more harshly than Israel does.

It doesn't, the US is just Israel's proxy warrior in this fight. (cf. the Clean Break memo, etc)

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#276

Post by miracle2k »

DetroitThrow wrote: post #178
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…

>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 wish dang would ban users for blatant misinformation such as this. The number of people who end up believing these lies as truth probably outweighs the benefit of any civil discussion it could lead to: in the US, it's now obvious th…

You are quoting a very specific claim. That big providers such as Gmail and GitHub do not block Iranian IPs. Are you saying they do?

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#277

Post by miracle2k »

einpoklum wrote: post #246
einpoklum wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

s/So blocking Iranian IPs/So blocking Iranian accounts/ in my previous message :-(

Im dedending them in no way, but I believe that IP blocks, especially wide reaching ones such as the Google Cloud block, are especially pernicious.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#278

Post by boomboomsubban »

Causality1 wrote: post #235
boomboomsubban wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So because they chanted "Death to America," you are in favor of imposing sanctions that will cause the death of Iranians?

If someone communicates that they want to kill you, I think refusing to do business with them is an incredibly subdued response.

Even though refusing to do business with them will cause some of their family to die of starvation or lack of medicine?

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#279

Post by basilgohar »

sudosysgen wrote: post #271
closeparen wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I want to live in a world where software engineers make up their own foreign policy. At the very least, enforceable sanctions give us options other than war. Giving that up could carry an immense human cost. An understanding of distributed software architecture does not come with the ability to understand and weigh that cost, nor does it make you a legitimate authority on which tradeoffs to choose. It’s…

I don't think I want to live in a world where all software engineers have to bow down to US foreign policy. If there is a real need to put sanctions in place to avoid a war, they can go through the UN and a vote on the UNSC. Otherwise, it's just great power games, and I don't want to have to deal with that.

I appreciate what you're trying to say here, but a UNSC resolution is not even a full step away from "great power games". It's not the same, but it's hardly different.

Re: Gitlab Blocked Iranians’ Access

#280

Post by Kranar »

momokoko wrote: post #158
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…

This is dangerously inaccurate information. To those reading this, the US absolutely considers blocking Iranian IPs a required action under the sanctions. The person posting this could get you in serious legal trouble. With that said, most companies do not start blocking these IPs until they are either contacted by US authorities and asked to comply or via the recommendations of an audit by an outside private company…

In the absence of an authority who can comment on this or an authoritative reference, I think your comment is just as dangerous and inaccurate as the parent comment. Unfortunately everyone is using very strong language to silence the other side and no one is offering up any kind of evidence to substantiate their position. Different groups of people get harmed when such strong assertions are made without any kind of evidence.

>With that said, most companies do not start blocking these IPs until they are either contacted by US authorities and asked to comply or via the recommendations of an audit by an outside private company.

Most companies don't block IPs from within Iran, including Github, Google, or Microsoft. Is it your suggestion that GitLab's legal team knows something that Microsoft's and Google's legal team doesn't?

Now I am not an expert myself, so no one should consider my post authoritative, but the evidence that is available suggests that there is not only any requirement by U.S. companies to restrict access to people in Iran for a wide variety of software and Internet services, there actually appears to be a section regarding "Expanding Internet and Communications Freedoms" which in 2010 was used to promote the spread of mass communication technologies and internet services within Iran without the need for a company to apply for a waiver.

Now once again, I am not claiming to be right on this issue, but at the very least I am willing to provide evidence for my claims that come from authoritative sources.

Here is the interpretative guidance by the Treasury Department which authorizes the export to Iran of online services such as, and I quote "instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging, provided that such services are publicly available at no cost to the user." And there are additional examples of software that may be exported to Iran for personal use, with specific examples provided including Dropbox.

https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/t...

Here is an FAS report prepared for Congress that explains the kinds of software that is legally permissible to export to Iran (page 34):

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RS20871.pdf

It appears that companies are permitted to export online services to individuals in Iran so long as, and I quote " is classified by the Department of Commerce as mass market software under export control classification number 5D992, and is publicly available at no cost to the user."

Given that this is the only authoritative evidence anyone has bothered to present in this discussion, it appears a case can be made that GitLab is over-enforcing trade restrictions with Iran.

Now the reason they may have for doing so is that it's not worth serving that part of the world and so be it... but the counter argument is that there are people living in Iran who can use these technologies especially during times of protest to share communications technologies with one another and so if it's not a major burden for Github, or Dropbox, or Slack to keep their services available, then they can be of great benefit to that part of the world. At the very least the Treasury Department's own interpretation of the law agrees with my position as it is documented in the link I provided.

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