GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

Post by lawnchair_larry » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

elmo2you wrote: post #288

michaelt wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But in this particular case, GitHub appears to enforce US foreign policy on what appears to be a company on the EU market. Surely enforcing your politics outside of your jurisdiction is the whole point of an embargo?

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).

Post by nindalf » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 5:00 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #222

qayxc wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2FA should be bypassable after some longish lockout period. Nope. No backups, no sympathy, simple as that. 2FA is worthless if you start to put holes in it like that. So if you value your data, make backups - preferably locally the old-fashioned way, e.g. HDDs stored in at least two different locations or at least using several different cloud providers (which have their own infrastructure and aren't just relying o…

> Nope. No backups, no sympathy, simple as that. For your personal stuff, sure. But when engineering a service, you should care about everyones stuff, not just those who are careful. You should design your service to try to help those users who use the same password they did on myspace in 2004 and write it on a sticky note on their desk. Engineer for those who shared their password with their now-hated ex. Even if th…

Post by weka » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 5:02 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.

Post by mcguire » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 5:06 PM UTC

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.

Post by edumucelli » Tue, Jan 05, 2021, 5:09 PM UTC

factorialboy wrote: post #396

umarniz wrote: post #382

The US sanctions on Iran has such a massive impact on Iranians that most of us don't realise. All US companies have to comply and majority of the tech companies are unfortunately in the US. I know you can use a VPN and configure it on a router level to make sure that you are always connected via a VPN but just the fact that 1 slip-up can result in account level blocks (which google is notoriously good at and can esse…

(Controversial comment) I am not condoning the actions of the United States government, but arguably the Iranian Islamic theocratic regime has unleashed more horrors on the Iranian people in the last 50 years than any other foreign government.