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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

#461
post #153
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ironically, Git is a decentralized version control system. And Git is open source. Github is a US-registered company under MS. The US has a history of weaponizing its economic power. Stallman (RMS) was right once again.

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…

Since I can’t edit the comment, I want to paste this here so readers are informed about the extra mile Github travelled as well.

  Advancing developer freedom: GitHub is fully available in Iran
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648585

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

#463
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine being a programmer in Israel and hearing that the leader of a neighboring country wants to kill you and everybody you know. We're not unaware of the impact of sanctions. Fundamentally, starving a generation of Iranians of information and experience is worth it if leads to civil unrest and regime change, therefore preventing Iran's current leaders from committing the genocide they've said they want to commit s…

Imagine being almost any other religion in the Middle East and learning that Israelis on a day to day basis are lobbying to carve your countries apart by imperialist wars via their American proxies, bulldozing the homes of your coethnics in Palestine, raping their children, forcibly hijacking their TVs and exposing their kids to pornographic broadcasts, organizing a famine in Syria by their Kurdish proxies, and occup…

> Add to this the historical genocides that the nation of Israel completed and rejoice in within their scriptures

You do realize that the bulk of "other religions" in the Middle East (namely Islam) - and, for that matter, the US (namely Christianity) - are derived from those same scriptures and rejoice in those same genocides (and have happily added to them over the past couple millennia, of course), right? There's no moral high ground on either side of this mess.

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

#464
post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"…

Is Github on the hook if the client is actually a resident? If so, the law is still bad and github's response may be appropriate(just blocking login from Iran sounds better though). You can't expect them to investigate the personal details of their users.

They could at least have a grace period for country changes.

But I sure as hell can expect them to investigate before cutting service to a long-time customer.

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

#465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is starving several generations of Palestinians of opportunity and experience [0], resulting in civil unrest. Israel could de-escalate its tensions with its neighbors (including Iran) at any time. It just needs to start treating its neighbors with respect. Unfortunately, peace in the Middle-East would shift political power in all countries involved, shift government spending, reduce military aid from superpowe…

What does Israel's conflict in Palestine have to do with Iran? The Ayatollah doesn't care about Palestinians. Saying that Israel could resolve the issue by de-escalating is nonsense, as much as saying the same thing about North and South Korea. One side has leaders intent on acquiring nuclear weapons and publicly claims it will use them against its neighbors.

The analogy to North Korea is quite appropriate. Each superpower supports its vassal states and ignores their brutality.

USA : Israel : Palestinians :: PRC : North Korean Dictatorship : North Korean People

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

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem rather outraged by the sensible assumption that parents living in Iran are probably Iranian, and that a person with two Iranian parents is probably also Iranian. In 2021, people are still directly related to their parents, and the majority of citizens in most countries is indeed the local population. They may of course have obtained American citizenship now, but we're talking in the context of crazy US sanct…

Such presumptions have, historically, led to such actions as the wholesale internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. This included 2nd and 3rd generations born in America, who never had left America. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America... So, no, it's not merely a "sensible" assumption. It's an assumption that carries collective trauma and negative connotations for many wh…

The problem with that internment was not the part where the government labeled first generation immigrants as Japanese.

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

#469
post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one wants to use something where the consequence of making a mistake is "well I guess you're f_cked now". You're ignoring the entire usability side of computing and innovation. Wow wow wow, so you're basically saying that users who are capable enough to even need/use decentralised version control systems are too dumb and incompetent to setup Time Machine, Timeshift, or File History? Really? > There are other way…

> you're basically saying that users who are capable enough to even need/use decentralised version control systems are too dumb and incompetent Do not put words in my mouth. I did not say that, you just did. I said that usability is a real concern, because no matter what you expect people to do, it will never work perfectly 100% of the time. > I'm not talking about security in general. You can say that now, but that'…

>> I'm not talking about security in general.

> You can say that now, but that's not what you said previously. "There's no such thing as a "trade-off" when it comes to cyber security"

I literally followed that up by "either commit to it fully or don't use 2FA at all". You omitted crucial context there. Now I could have expressed that more clearly, sure, but the context is right there nonetheless.

>> the CEO running the show is in an entirely different category

> Not sure what you mean by this.

What I mean is that the guy is not just "a CEO" - it's the CEO of the very company in question here. So what I'm saying is that someone within an organisation - let alone the head of said organisation - has very different tools at their disposal than can or should be provided to their users.

> It is full of amateurs. Just because you don't find someone's work valuable, doesn't mean that they don't. Saying "Well it's not professional, so if you lost it then it doesn't matter" is not correct.

Amateurs don't lose 10s of thousands of dollars from losing their GH account. Again - omitting context. If your data isn't valuable to you (be that in terms of money of for sentimental reasons) then it doesn't matter indeed. Just like you'd protect physical assets, non-physical assets require protection as well and if you don't do that, said assets cannot be of much value to you, no?

> But people are human beings. Even if 99% of people have perfect back ups, that's still 560k (according to Github home page numbers) that will have failed backups or some other issue.

So what you're suggesting is putting 100% of users at risk because there's the odd chance that someone might lose data? That's just not reasonable at all.

> you keep widely including the term "decentralized", as if just because git is decentralized, that nothing on Github should matter.

Because it does matter in that all you need to do is to keep a local copy of your repo. With a centralised system you'd lose the most important part of the repo: the complete commit history and all branches.

This is not the case with git and "all" you'd lose would be external configuration, issues and Wiki pages, but even those can easily be exported and saved externally.

You can even re-import all of that to a new account if need be. Heck, you can setup triggers that synchronise the entire repo - including issues, projects and wiki to other providers or a local copy if you really want/need to.

The fact that millions rely on services like GH, GL, and BB doesn't change the nature of git.

Again - if your data is important to you - be that for monetary or private reasons - don't keep it in one place. Especially if that place can be locked away from you at any time for any odd reason. I don't understand why people these days have such a hard time understanding this, but using GH implies that you put your data on someone else's machine with little to no guarantees whatsoever.

None of these multi-million and billion dollar corporation deserve any of our trust and using their services comes with strings attached. Whining doesn't help - being aware of this and becoming a responsible and critical user who knows their options is what helps avoiding disasters like this.

PS: you should really start by looking into how git itself works (especially compared to centralised repos like SVN) to actually understand the importance of decentraised version control.

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

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing state sanctioned killing and torturing with sanctioning people trading with each other. The first one is a violent crime against individuals, the second one is basically a tax. I'm against both but they carry a different weight.

Sure, the impact is different. But on the other hand, I try to follow this rule as much as possible: “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. Microsoft is no stranger to breaking laws and certainly has the resources to fight this one, or at least to argue that it shouldn't apply in this case.

I consider immoral to threaten individuals with jail time unless they give you 40% of their salary.

I consider immoral the USA's warmongering and spying on its own citizens.

Still, if I don't pay my taxes or if I try to stop the army from going to bomb some poor people in the middle east, I'll be put in jail.

If I have a way to sabotage the government which won't ruin my life, I'll do it, but I'll pass on the rest.

We're lucky enough not to live in a country that require us to kill people in concentration camps, because we would surely do that.

At least, I would do it if I didn't have another choice (but I would also try to desert).

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