GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by amir734jj » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

Triv888 wrote: post #229

amir734jj wrote: post #211

I'm an iranian-american and this saddens me deeply. When you travel to Iran you need to make sure you don't get arrested by iranian regime because they have a history of taking dual nationals as hostage. Then you open your laptop and suddenly you have taken down your company and potentially lost your job.

> When you travel to Iran you need to make sure you don't get arrested by iranian regime because they have a history of taking dual nationals as hostage. Isn't it trivial for them to catch you at the border if they wanted to do it?

They usually arrest people at the airport when they are leaving. It's called "hostage diplomacy"[0]. There is a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostage_diplomacy#Iran

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

#372

Post by beshrkayali » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #361

beshrkayali wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Businesses have the right to refuse service.

By that logic, so do governments have the right to exercise their prerogatives...

Not really. They both may be immoral, but the government is chosen by the people, and I don't believe they "bestowed" on you your personal rights (in your private life or in how you run your business), they are there to protect you from others trying to prevent you from practicing your rights. Businesses/companies are regulated by the market. By you stopping to use them, you indirectly affect their decisions. If enough people think that what Google is doing is wrong, they can stop using them. Google will either shutter or change. This last bit also applies to governments in terms of actual vote power. If enough people thought that US gov policies are bad/wrong, they wouldn't vote for them. Obviously they still vote for the same people, so they still don't see it.

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

#373

Post by skrebbel » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

jpxw wrote: post #354

jitbit wrote: post #310

GitHub: "Lets rename master to main because Inclusion & Equality" Also GitHub: "sorry you're from a wrong country"

Github’s help text when opening a new repo irks me. It contains the following: git branch -m master main With absolutely no explanation of what they are doing, or why. I can imagine this being confusing to beginners, and it requires mental effort for me to ignore it each time.

This cost me 20 minutes + lots of confusion when teaching a Git course to newbies some weeks ago. I switched to GitLab for the next group.

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

#374

Post by eesmith » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:26 PM UTC

Whoo-hoo! Set up a free wi-fi node outside of a tech conference (perhaps with cheap pastries for conference goers), routed through a proxy in Iran. Don't need to decode https or anything - assuming you can proxy https through Iran.

Then watch as bunches of companies are blocked from GitHub.

If the Iranian government wanted to have fun with US laws, they could totally set this up. And it wouldn't even be illegal.

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

#375

Post by arthurmorgan » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:35 PM UTC

Was the employee logged in with the organization account? When I visited Iran my personal and work account got locked but the org account was untouched.

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

#376

Post by whimsicalism » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

beshrkayali wrote: post #372

mc32 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, so do governments have the right to exercise their prerogatives...

Not really. They both may be immoral, but the government is chosen by the people, and I don't believe they "bestowed" on you your personal rights (in your private life or in how you run your business), they are there to protect you from others trying to prevent you from practicing your rights. Businesses/companies are regulated by the market. By you stopping to use them, you indirectly affect their decisions. If enou…

> your personal rights (in your private life or in how you run your business)

What "personal"/natural right do you have to establish a limited liability corporation? That is a social construct, intended to facilitate business, but it is not some "private sphere" distinct from the society we live in.

Your account of consumer choice "regulation" fails when confronted with even the most basic externality.

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

#377

Post by bitzl » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:44 PM UTC

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.

What do you suggest to use instead of GitHub?

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

#378

Post by delfinom » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

scott_s wrote: post #350

elmo2you wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a government, yes. As a commercial company, operating on a market outside of US jurisdiction, please explain me the legal basis for that (if you can).

The government where the commercial company is based expects the company to do so, and will hold that company accountable if they do not. You may not agree with this situation, but it is how it works. The US government will investigate and penalize companies that violate US sanctions, even if the parts of those companies involved did so entirely outside of the US.

Yep, the current US administration is somewhat to blame on the shift. It has always been a requirement, it's just that the government up until this admin mostly didn't care to enforce it. It's pretty obvious a number of companies got threatening letters to comply or face jail time.

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

#379

Post by ogre_codes » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:46 PM UTC

oytis wrote: post #259

whack wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have relinquished so much control, why be surprised if that stares you back in the face? We live in a market-based economy with highly specialized division of labor. The idea of "keeping control" of all our necessities and dependencies, is an archaic one. The system generally works, because we create sensible laws that foster trust, vet for partners who are trustworthy, and name-and-shame entities that violate…

Spinning up your own git server is not a huge effort though even for a startup. As to what is archaic - I believe a point can be made that the division of labor thing can suit poorly our brave new cloud software world. You can't just buy things (or software) from others, and completely own them. If you are outsourcing some part of your business to others, you also lose a lot of sovereignty that is crucial to stay fle…

> Spinning up your own git server is not a huge effort though even for a startup.

At a previous job we self hosted Git and it worked fairly well. At my current job we use GitHub and while we could migrate away, it would hurt.

Personally, I think GitHub's value is more about the fact that it integrates so well with so many other services. Without GitHub we would lose:

- Most of our PR/ Code Review flow

- Integration with Pivotal (our ticketing/ story system)

- Integration with our Travis server for CI

- Integration with our hosting service for automated deployment.

All of this stuff can be done independent of GitHub, but most of it takes a lot of time and effort you could be spent delivering the product you are trying to ship. You also lose a lot of flexibility.

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

#380

Post by delfinom » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

another-dave wrote: post #148

cies wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Th…

> Says who? There is a law, the law is unclear and IHMO a bad law. Says the US Department of the Treasury, as mentioned in the Twitter thread further down: > 118. I have a client that is in Iran to visit a relative. Do I need to restrict the account? > 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. from their "FAQs: Iran sanctions"…

GitHub didn't decide in their actions blindly. They have lawyers who review the laws, look at their services and write the rules to follow internally. The lawyers obviously have a reason to disagree with the Treasury and GitHub under Microsoft aren't exactly going to be using cheap lawyers either.