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?
This simply wouldn't happen at my company because special permission is needed to take any company assets out of the country. If anyone at my company casually took a company laptop to Iran that would be instant termination. It absolutely astonishes me that a company wouldn't have a policy about taking company resources to foreign countries.
Beyond just the Iran issue, it's known that trade secrets on employee laptops are at risk when crossing some international borders, particularly in airports. Border agents can confiscate electronic devices on vague suspicions, compel you to unlock them (or hack them open in some cases), and then leave them in unsupervised settings with yet more border agents who have the barest electronic security training. These risks terrified me during my travels!
All devices are subject to search, seizure, and duplication when crossing international borders and border agents may tamper with devices as well. If assets cross borders there has to be a good reason, it has to be documented, and phones/computers may have to be scrubbed before and after depending on circumstances.
Regardless, this person logged into GitHub, which could have been from any device including a phone.
2) I can assure you there's policies at Microsoft that include performing work abroad and accessing any company resources from abroad. Obviously nobody will be approved to access any company resources from Iran, especially not source code.
3) I can say there is policies at MS this with a very high degree of confidence because I personally have done work with Microsoft involving code and data that is export restricted.
4) Companies should have policies in place in order to avoid situations like this. Taking your company laptop to, say, Germany probably isn't a big deal for most companies, but any "exporting" company assets should at least be pre-approved/documented.
I'm not sure what team you worked in, it's possible some teams have stricter policies. If you were doing business with Microsoft, the export control language is boilerplate contract language.
When I went to London for the first time I meet a ridiculously attractive Swedish Arab girl. She had mentioned she really wanted to visit America, but with the recent election of Donald Trump she was a bit scared.
Not all of us like Eastern European women, Trump blocked my game right there.
The point of this story is anyone can meet anyone from anywhere and the nasty racist system the US has for blocking certain people because they have the wrong last names or whatever doesn't do anyone any service.
I also don't think embargo serve anything aside from radicalizing other people's. Take Vietnam, now you have Coca-Cola, and McDonald's succeeding to do what 20 to 30 years of Western imposition couldn't, they've made Vietnam capitalist. That was accomplished once the embargoes were removed in the nineties. Even with Cuba ,I'd imagine if the embargo didn't exist you'd see much more reform as individuals would eventually be able to succeed on their own merits.