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GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

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

#311

Post by offtop5 »

viseztrance wrote: post #177
ceejayoz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub is in possession of substantial additional information in that scenario, namely, "we're quite certain we don't have Iranian employees on staff".

Do they keep an up to date database on who's dating whom?

Funny Story.

When I went to London for the first time I meet a ridiculously attractive Swedish Arab girl. She had mentioned she really wanted to visit America, but with the recent election of Donald Trump she was a bit scared.

Not all of us like Eastern European women, Trump blocked my game right there.

The point of this story is anyone can meet anyone from anywhere and the nasty racist system the US has for blocking certain people because they have the wrong last names or whatever doesn't do anyone any service.

I also don't think embargo serve anything aside from radicalizing other people's. Take Vietnam, now you have Coca-Cola, and McDonald's succeeding to do what 20 to 30 years of Western imposition couldn't, they've made Vietnam capitalist. That was accomplished once the embargoes were removed in the nineties. Even with Cuba ,I'd imagine if the embargo didn't exist you'd see much more reform as individuals would eventually be able to succeed on their own merits.

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

#312

Post by mc32 »

beshrkayali wrote: post #305

So are we not going to talk about how economic sanctions end up as a way to use the people of these countries as a way to pressure their governments for political gains? How these sanctions directly and indirectly cause an increased poverty gap and negatively impact the living standards? How the governments of these sanctioned countries magnify this economic pressure to prevent people from revolting and to entrench t…

You can make the same arguments against capricious Google and YouTube delisting, Facebook or Instagram bans, Twitter bans, App Store takedowns etc.

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

#314

Post by Siira »

raziel2p wrote: post #292
x3c wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular case was overreach by Github and not the US Lawmakers. https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/... 118. I have a client that is in Iran to visit a relative. Do I need to restrict the account? A: No. As long as you are satisfied that the client is not ordinarily resident in Iran, then the account does not need to be restricted. See FAQ 37. Source: https://twitter.com/Hamed/status/13…

If you read this literally, you could get away with leaking state secrets as long as you're visiting a relative while doing it. Github cannot be expected to reliably differentiate between the coworker who just checked the status of a PR on a webapp versus the employee who opened a crucial piece of encryption code to leak it to the Iranian military or whatever.

Spies can send information from anywhere in the world to anywhere else, so I don’t see how they being in a specific location at all matters.

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

#315

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

It looks like the company has now gotten access to their GitHub account again, according to the original poster on the Twitter thread.

I don't know, it just looks like some kind of surveillance automation kicked in, froze the account, and customer service was slow.

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

#316

Post by mro_name »

sebslomski wrote: post #196

Shit happens, but I would really appreciate if you would re-activate our Github Org now, @github. You know, some PRs are waiting there for me.

can't you just push elsewhere, be it a self-hosted location or the one of a reliable 3rd party and tell Microsoft to go f§ck themselves?

I mean, what do you need github for to integrate and deploy?

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

#317

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #306
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work with sanctions. I think both can be easily blamed. Similarly to DMCA notices, most companies opt to for the path of least resistance ( it is cheaper to blanket ban than to investigate ). Yes, politicians are to blame for creating the environment, but companies deserve flak for taking the path that is bad for the customer ( unless they are sufficiently well-heeled ). My thoughts are my own. I do not represent a…

So look at (one one hand) a customer worth... well, PureLabs is "10 incredible FTEs," let's give them the $21/user/mo Enterprise plan at $210/month in revenue. On the other hand, a sanctions violation could be a $65,000 fine (Trading with the Enemy Act) or $250,000 (International Emergency Economic Powers Act) for each offense. (I leave aside the million-dollar narcotics-kingpin act). On top of this we also see the r…

It is hard to discuss hypothetical violations so I won't do that. It absolutely is a safe course of action to do a blanket ban. That said, is it reasonable to assume violation based on IP address ( and that is what seems to have happened here )? Banks don't automatically (typically ) block MUHAMMAD JIHAD even if they may end up questioning it.

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

#318

Post by nolok »

beshrkayali wrote: post #305

So are we not going to talk about how economic sanctions end up as a way to use the people of these countries as a way to pressure their governments for political gains? How these sanctions directly and indirectly cause an increased poverty gap and negatively impact the living standards? How the governments of these sanctioned countries magnify this economic pressure to prevent people from revolting and to entrench t…

Two kind of sanctions:

- sanction the leaders responsible and their buddies, the most common (that's what we do with russia, turkey, ...), hurt their wallet but ultimately is a soft sanction, and also your populace sees it as ineffective / nothing is done

- sanction the country directly, embargo, complete block, kick out of swift, that sort of stuff is what was done to Iran. Can only be done if you're part of the bigger/more powerful group. Massive effect, causes lots of poverty and pain for the populace but that's on purpose, so they are forcing their leaders to change some stuff. Doesn't always work, but both outcome are victories in a way: either the country is forced to change and stop the original abuse, or it doesn't change but is so crippled that it's not longer a problem.

This is bound to something very, very, important: if the country does change and does what you asked, you start lifting.

Part of the message that's more of an european rant: that's why Trump action on the Iran deal was a disaster, because, now the population doesn't believe it's their own leaders fault, and even if they did their leaders don't believe it would ease if they did what was asked. That's how you end up with a north korea.

According to every report I've seen, Iran was fully respecting their part of the deal, and allowing all the inspection necessary, when the USA did a "AHAH ! it's a trap !" trick on them and screwed them. You're not convincing countries to behave, you're telling them that if they don't behave, they better go all the way to the other side.

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

#319

Post by tehwebguy »

Microsoft should boycott the sanctions, they are cruel and the only reason they exist is that our current president hates our previous president.

They are way too big to actually be penalized in a meaningful way and doing the right thing once in a while feels great.

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

#320

Post by rurban »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #201
x3c wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This particular case was overreach by Github and not the US Lawmakers. https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/... 118. I have a client that is in Iran to visit a relative. Do I need to restrict the account? A: No. As long as you are satisfied that the client is not ordinarily resident in Iran, then the account does not need to be restricted. See FAQ 37. Source: https://twitter.com/Hamed/status/13…

It may be overreach by GitHub, but given the severity of the sanctions lawmakers have set for if they happen to get it wrong, I'd like to at least blame lawmakers for creating such a risky situation.

I would blame the automatic sanctioning software triggering such as situation, without checking if the new access from Iran was by a tourist or citizen. Adding an org block for minor access within two weeks is overreach.
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