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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

#81

Post by traveler01 »

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.

I gotta agree with you. I understand GitHub doing that, they fear repercussions (remember that Huawei employee being arrested?). But, these things are too serious for a company to ignore.

Chinese and USA services should be avoided...

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

#82

Post by est31 »

dustinmoris wrote: post #54

Why don't we have internet havens yet? Companies are so clever in legally avoiding tax by registering companies in the most favourable jurisdictions and only running the absolute minimum of operations through tax expensive countries and so on, why don't we have the equivalent for avoiding dumb laws such as US trade wars, DMCA takedowns, etc.? Can most internet operations not run through companies who are registered a…

The reward for dodging taxes is pretty high. What's the reward of letting a few folks open their laptop while at their parents?

If you are ideologically motivated, you might do it. Apparently project Gutenberg has set up servers in locations with shorter copyright durations so that they can mirror public domain books. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25610024

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

#83

Post by kiallmacinnes »

goodpoint wrote: post #58
kiallmacinnes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not fair to blame people (well, companies...) for obeying the law. Personally, I'd rather a world where companies obey the law than one where they pick and choose what laws they would like to obey.

You are making a strawman. Companies are often following the law strictly or loosely as it suits them. GitHub could have warned the company before blocking and/or blocked access only from Iran. It did neither.

> You are making a strawman. Companies are often following the law strictly or loosely as it suits them.

You're right that companies don't always obey the law. However, what has that got to do with "Personally, I'd rather a world where companies obey the law"?

My point is that companies SHOULD obey the laws, not that they always do - and that - allowing and encouraging companies to pick and choose the laws they are going to obey is wrong, and will simply not end well.

> GitHub could have warned the company before blocking and/or blocked access only from Iran. It did neither.

I'm not familiar enough with the specifics of the US laws regarding Iran to know if this is a lawful course of action to take upon a customer attempting to use your products/services from Iran.

Maybe they could have? Maybe they can't? I've no idea & I've made no attempt to address anything other than the "It's alright to blame people for lawfully following harmful laws" comment.

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

#84

Post by wccrawford »

kkapelon wrote: post #61

This means that as a disgruntled employee I can simply visit Iran, log in my company Github account and boom! I have now taken revenge on my whole company with minimal effort.

Only if you're okay with the legal consequences of sabotaging the company. They absolutely can sue you for it, and you might even face criminal prosecution for such a thing.

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

#85

Post by asddubs »

numlock86 wrote: post #42
zed88 wrote: post #11

What's the difference between a Chinese company and a US company? None. Both work for the state, although US ones operate under the guise of democracy. This sort of union between tech and politics is not going to take us anywhere.

Nice phrasing. A bit edgy and exaggerated, though. But since they are the same, I bet you can show us where the USA holds a few (at least 5 digit range) people in abduction camps, just to name one difference. Now that would be interesting.

the US prefers using drone strikes to inflict suffering, I believe

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

#86

Post by wccrawford »

otagekki wrote: post #24
benjaminwootton wrote: post #15

Github refused to help me regain access to an 11 year old account when I changed jobs so lost access to 2FA and email account at the same time. We lost access to tens of thousands of dollars worth of project code which we had to rewrite. The customer service support was Google style brick wall. I wish this guy luck in getting access.

Rewrite? Wow. Hopefully for them it is just code so all they'd have to do is push their branches to a new self-hosted server.

Right? Why wasn't there a backup somewhere other than Github? Even just a repo that was checked out somewhere.

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

#87

Post by londons_explore »

jeroenhd wrote: post #29
benjaminwootton wrote: post #15

Github refused to help me regain access to an 11 year old account when I changed jobs so lost access to 2FA and email account at the same time. We lost access to tens of thousands of dollars worth of project code which we had to rewrite. The customer service support was Google style brick wall. I wish this guy luck in getting access.

To be fair to GH, I wouldn't trust them if their customer service could be convinced to unlock an account with neither email nor 2FA access. Passwords leak all the time (because people are bad at using unique passwords) and social engineering efforts are quite effective at hijacking high-value accounts in a great deal of companies, so while I sympathise with the loss of your account, your experience actually improves…

2FA should be bypassable after some longish lockout period.

For example, someone has lost their password, email access, phone number, and 2FA app. Make them wait a month to regain account access.

If any time during that month, the account is used or logged into, cancel the takeover request. During the month, every day send an email to all points of contact on the account letting them know what will happen.

It's a trade-off of the harm of unauthorized access to a dormant account Vs blocking someone from accessing their data (that is probably not backed up, and probably took considerable effort to create).

Have an account-level setting to disable such a process, for the people who might be offline for extended periods.

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

#89

Post by chrisandchris »

factorialboy wrote: post #34

So many dimensions come to play here. 1. There's the obvious legal aspect i.e. how these laws are framed and interpreted. 2. Then there's the geopolitical aspect. Is it fair to impose sanctions on Iran. 3. There's another aspect around GitHub policy that asks if an entire organization be banned for the location of one team member. 4. Finally, there's the aspect of relinquishing control. Your app development is on the…

So many reasons why I prefer on-prem over cloud for software that is directly attached to the value-chsin of the business. I wouldn‘t care if they cut me off of some backoffice app which manages the snack bar. But as a software company, my code is the heart of my company, so I would never give control of that to a 3rd party.

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

#90

Post by ceejayoz »

dustinmoris wrote: post #57

Is GitHub going to take itself down when one of their employees goes to Iran for holiday and logs into their GitHub account? If not, then why are they treating others with such contempt?

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