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Comment by gingerlime | Hacker News Reader

A couple of our employees from Syria also got blocked today. They were using Slack from Syria though.

EDIT: I don't understand why they ban/block the account rather than "simply" block access from IPs from the country. This seems really strange and overreaching.

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> They were using Slack from Syria though.

This doesn't excuse anything. People in Syria are people too.

This is similar to how people were calling for websites to block access to Europe over the copyright thing. The internet is a place where you don't even need to have a nationality. It is a place where we can all exist as pure thoughts. Why are we letting politics fuck it up?

The Syrian ban comes from a U.S. federal sanction. Not arguing that the sanction is right, or that Slack is correctly implementing its adherence, but this is not a similar situation to people calling for a boycott to make a point.

Yes, I can imagine it's hard for Slack to ignore those sanctions, but it does appear overzealous to ban individual accounts after having logged-in from Syria/Iran, instead of implementing a country ban from accessing slack. The latter would be far simpler from a technical standpoint, and I would imagine just as compliant with the sanctions.

Ye it's probably worse. Companies are happy to go along with US law, but can't be bothered to follow the law of other jurisdictions...

What about fines and jail time?

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Programs/...

I think people are trying to stop politics from fucking it up. Politicians have started using the internet for political purposes.

Politics is just people, and we’re all people.

The internet is not a place. It only functions to connect people and places which exist in physical locations that are bound by national and regional laws, and the transfer of data between locations is subject to these rules.

That's true of snail mail, or telegrams, or even phone calls. But I'd argue the internet is so fast, and so high bandwidth, and so always-available, that it is a qualitatively different thing from merely a transfer of data between physical locations.

It is a place where things happen that aren't just transfers of information between physical places. For example, Hacker News is a place within the wider place that is the web.

You can argue that it is something other than a "place" (maybe "community"? or "society"?) but then you can just substitute "community" or "society" where I wrote "place" in my previous comment and everything still holds.

I think the important point is that it's bound by laws, and nations will (and must) enforce their laws.

Right now, it means revendicating parts of that place that is internet as waving their flags, and holding accountable individuals and companies powering those parts.

You can argue that there are no nationalities on the internet, bust most nations beg to differ.

I don't see what the velocity of the transfer has to do with the rules. Seems rather arbitrary.

Hacker News isn't a place because you're just requesting data from their servers with a well-known DNS name. In fact everyone who "visits" is technically getting a private copy sent to them, and it's all data being transferred between borders. You can clearly see it reflected in internet routing where transit is defined by political and business connections, and things like the Great Firewall of China.

Calling it a community fits better sure, but that just describes a group of individuals and doesn't create any political sovereignty. People still live in physical locations which are bound by laws, there's no way around that.

Well said! About this particular case, what rules are applied?

- To some extent likely 15 CFR chapter VII, subchapter C.

- 31 CFR Part 560 and Appendix A to Chapter V

- Public Law 115–44 (the CAATSA)

> Why are we letting politics fuck it up?

Yes why?

Fight back: use Tor, have proxies, Tor nodes, bridges, gateways. Use ZeroNet, help crypto projects. Make it hard to discriminate on IP.

Is the sanctions mentioned on Syria the country, or Syrian nationals? Both?

Steve Jobs' biological father was Syrian.

How do you have employees in Syria? It’s a violation of federal sanctions.

Edit: In the US, UK, and EU.

There's more countries in the world other than the US, you know.

I love when people just assume that everyone in the world just live in the US. Hackernews users are international and he uses Slack.

Presumably the employer isn't based in the US? (Sorry, but that seems the obvious answer to your question.)

Which might mean American companies can't employ people in Syria, but what does that have to do with the rest of the world?

The EU and U.K. are not in the US last I checked.

last I checked there are no restrictions on employment of Syrian people in the EU/UK, unless they are related to the government or military etc.

You just said you didn’t know and now all of the sudden you do?

It seems the harder restrictions were lifted in 2014 in the EU due to member state disputes.

I said that I'm not sure, but that I doubt it. I then spent some time checking, and couldn't find anything to support your claim. If you have any sources that EU countries are forbidden from employing "normal" Syrian people (now or even before 2014), I'd love to see them. Otherwise, it really feels like you're just trolling to be honest.

Yes I am wrong and will admit it. Certainly not a troll!

Why don't we go and look? We do have the internet.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/sanctions-on-syria

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/financial-sanctio...

Well, there is nothing about restricting general employment of Syrians in there.

We're not a US company (I hope there are no sanctions in our own country. I somehow doubt it, but I'm not entirely sure to be honest, so I won't mention the country to avoid getting us in potential trouble... Anyone knows which other countries enforce similar sanctions on Syria??).

The US, UK, and EU.

I wound be careful of you or your company reside here. The company I used to work for was fined for continuing services in Syria.

I think your are in Germany and the EU might have lifted restrictions based on certain industries.

https://www.ajc.com/business/investigation-into-syria-accusa...

I'm not a lawyer, but I am not aware of any restrictions to employ people from Syria, unless they were involved in military or related to the government etc.

This is like when you see an HN thread about labour conditions and everyone says W-2, H1B, and "at-will state" as if the world has only one country.

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