
“My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea” - pizza
https://github.com/tkashkin/GameHub/issues/289
======
kragen
During the Cold War, the primary thing that distinguished the US side from the
USSR side was that, while speech by USSR people and people sympathetic to the
USSR (like, say, CPUSA) was published in the US, publishing speech sympathetic
to the US in the USSR would get you arrested.

It seems like the US has become what the USSR was: companies who publish
speech from people in Iran or Crimea are now violating the law by doing so.
Moreover, in cases like this one, already-published material is being
destroyed, in a way that wasn't practical in the USSR, due to technological
limitations (though they did try — famously Beria was airbrushed out of
official photographs). The US doesn't yet have massive prison camp systems
full of political dissidents — but then, for the first couple of decades,
neither did the USSR.

This is a crucially important reason to move away from centralized and
proprietary systems and onto decentralized, peer-to-peer, secure, free-
software systems.

Learn from history.

(Edit: previously I gave Noam Chomsky as an example of someone sympathetic to
the USSR, but that is at best debatable. The Communist Party USA, now in its
101st year, is a much clearer example, one that published continuously
throughout the Cold War despite US prosecutions of its leadership.)

~~~
paulintrognon
I don't think Noam Chomsky has ever been sympathetic to the USSR, he just said
that the US was not much better than USSR.

For example in that speach he clearly states that USSR was a a flawed
totalitarian system from the start
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06-XcAiswY4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06-XcAiswY4)

(he has in fact also stated many times that his political views were indeed
censored in the US)

~~~
jhbadger
When Western intellectuals like Chomsky say they have been "censored", they
mean that that their publishing house asked them to leave out or add stuff
because they felt that such changes would help the book sell better, as their
goal was to make money off authors they published. That's quite a bit
different from the threats of jail time that Eastern Bloc intellectuals faced.

~~~
tasubotadas
A modern westerner doesn't really get how it was in the Soviet block.

"Wasn't much better than USSR" is such bullshit on so many levels that it's
hard to even to begin. In the US:

\- you didn't have quotas to write "correct literature"

\- you wouldn't disappear in a gulag for 10 years

\- you didn't have to worry about standing in a queue for 1-2h to get fresh
bread and sausage (it's easier to contemplate stupid shit when you don't have
to worry about food)

\- you didn't get assigned to a specific workplace where you HAD to work

\- the books you read didn't have ideological crap (due to quotas) like "and
children stopped starving because country X is a part of a friendly USSR"

I skipped not relevant bits but probably I still missed quite a few because I
can only relay what my parents and others told me (I was born in the late 80s
so I didn't get to experience the full glory of USSR).

EDIT: I forgot to mention a well-known practice of labelling people physically
ill[1], getting them into physical wards, and pumping them with drugs until
they are no longer "a thread". There is no need for a trial, and you can be
held there indefinitely.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union)

~~~
ivanhoe
All true, and yet a lot of people in USSR and many other East block countries
miss those times nowadays, as there were also good things about it, mainly a
sense of financial and social security and also "equality" between people
(yes, equality in being poor compared to West, but still very little
differences in life styles for 99% of people - all kids in your school would
wear the same kind of shoes and same kind of cloths, living in the same kind
of apartments - there was no rich kids singling out poor ones and all that
shit that you have now)

------
dngray
I'm from a US-friendly nation but I get terribly sad when I hear things like
this.

Contribution to the free software world should transcend where someone is from
whether it be China, Russia, Iran or whatever new "enemy" our leaders decide.

As much as I dislike Facebook for privacy related reasons, maybe it's time
that more tech companies setup a Tor Hidden Service and not ask where people
are from.

Could this be used to protect them against having to implement sanctions
against various countries if they don't actually know where their users are
from?

It would also make blocking those websites difficult by repressive regimes
too. They could implement the ability to upload a private PGP key so email
notifications can be encrypted end-to-end, Facebook also allows for this.

The impending bifurcation of the Internet is something that I hate to think
of, but it seems something a lot of governments are hell bent on, particularly
with their insistence on "backdoors in encryption". One country's back door
will be another country's vulnerability.

 _Now I think I will go and and donate to Tor Project to make myself feel
better_.

~~~
moksly
Would that really change anything? I think what we’re seeing is the inevitable
result of the internet and tech companies becoming the most important aspect
of modern civilisation. We’re not a bunch of hippie geeks fooling around with
open tech anymore while the political level largely ignores us. With almost
everyone in the world using the internet for hours a day, regulation was
simply bound to come.

Not knowing where your customers come from isn’t going to make the regulation
go away, but it might make your entire company illegal.

It’s not something I think is good by the way, but the regulation and
legislation is likely going to get more and more restrictive as our
governments catch up.

~~~
dngray
> _Would that really change anything? I think what we’re seeing is the
> inevitable result of the internet and tech companies becoming the most
> important aspect of modern civilisation._

I think what we are seeing is the implementation of authoritarian governments,
something that has been on the increase nearly everywhere, in the last 20
years.

People have in the developed world had it, too good for too long. Complacency
and populism is what led to this.

We voted in "strong leaders" and this is what we're gonna get, strong policies
that might not really be all that smart.

What these policies forget is a lot of general citizens don't have much choice
over the regime that leads them. They are just often people doing their thing.

Free software is actually something which brings us together, as it's about
what we do and have in common, rather than race, religion or politics. I think
that's why it feels so awful.

~~~
moksly
I’m Danish and in our very recent election we voted the authoritarians and
populists out, by a large margin. Margrete Vestager is from a very liberal (as
in free) Danish party, and she’s pushing some of the toughest regulations on
big tech companies that we’ve seen in years.

So I’m not convinced it’s really authoritarian. We have a big scandal right
now in Denmark, because a company secretly sold jet-fuel to Russians and
that’s been illegal since sometime during the Cold War. Because other
industries have been regulated on what they could trade with our “enemies” for
decades. The tech sector somehow snuck under the radar on this, but that
sneaking has certainly ended, and it’s now being regulated like any other
industry.

I mean I could certainly be wrong, but I really do see it as governments being
governments. When I was a child there weren’t seatbelts or airbags in cars.
Automakers didn’t suddenly start putting them there because it was the right
thing to do, or because it’s sell more cars. They did it because regulation
forced them to do it and then they later turned safety into a marketing point.

~~~
dngray
> _Margrete Vestager is from a very liberal (as in free) party, and she’s
> pushing some of the toughest regulations on big tech companies that we’ve
> seen in years._

Then it's the illusion of freedom. Free when they declare freedom, but not
when they don't.

Code doesn't have color, race or politics. It is something that brings us
together and we have common ground over. We argue over whether it is good code
or bad code.

The fact is embargoes do nothing to benefit anyone here. All it results in is
less code being available.

Also it is the very thought control, ie a Government telling _me_ how I will
make _my_ code available that annoys me.

I didn't vote my government in, and I don't particularly like it when that
Government tells me I cannot communicate, or express my intellectual creations
with the people that I want, just because I was born within it's borders.

~~~
programmarchy
Code is political, to the degree it matters. See: Bitcoin, Stuxnet, Intel ME,
Facebook, Google, missile guidance systems, the Enigma machine, etc.

------
rdl
A (very bad) US bank of mine froze my account in a way which was exceptionally
difficult to fix because I tried to use the mobile app to check my balance
while physically in Ukraine (not anywhere near Crimea; they chose to fucking
sanction the entire country because Ukraine got invaded, which was the
opposite of the intent of the law).

~~~
colechristensen
They would be doing that to prevent money laundering, trying to stop people
going to sanctioned places and transferring money around for the locals at
hefty profit. (in other words, not the opposite of the intent of the law)

~~~
maxheadroom
> _They would be doing that to prevent money laundering, trying to stop people
> going to sanctioned places and transferring money around for the locals at a
> hefty profit. (in other words, not the opposite of the intent of the law)_

Did they forget we have modern inventions, like VPN and airplanes? Localising
it to Ukraine (in this context) sounds like they're generally just after the
low-hanging fruit (read: the poor who can't afford such things).

~~~
colechristensen
It's the result of a risk calculation with limited information. Hanging out
near war zones and sanctioned countries significantly increases the chance
that you're committing financial crimes, so when they have some information
that you're doing that kind of thing you're much more likely to trip an alarm.

VPNs don't help you with bank apps that report your GPS position.

Sanctions aren't particularly excellent at stopping bad actors.

~~~
maxheadroom
> _Hanging out near war zones and sanctioned countries significantly increases
> the chance that you 're committing financial crimes..._

Citizens of Ukraine are just "hanging out" in Ukraine? We're still talking
about Ukraine being sanctioned because of Crimea, aren't we? Or have you
unintentionally broadened the scope of the discussion?

Wouldn't it be more truthful to say that citizens of a country sanctioned
and/or that have become war zones are at an increased chanced to do things
(however uncolourful) to _survive_ as a direct result of that very same
reality?

~~~
colechristensen
I guess we're talking about different things.

------
ivanhoe
This story reminds me of my own growing up in Serbia in 90s under UN
sanctions. One of the side-effects of it was that we couldn't access Internet
directly for a while, we were almost completely cut off (Belgrade University
was half-illegally exchanging emails once a day over a private link to Greece
thanks to some professors at University of Athens, but otherwise all
connections to the world were cut off). And at that moment, first half of 90s,
users of Internet were mostly young educated people grouped in and around
academia, and they were 99.9% against Milosevic's government. So by
bureaucracy applying blindly the rules, not thinking about side-effects of
those action, they basically directly targeted and alienated those very people
who were pro-west and progressive and their best bet for allies in the country
- stopping them from communicating with the world and receiving free news and
information, thus directly aiding Milosevic's propaganda.

~~~
nsajko
I am interested, in case you remember, what do you perceive were the main
reasons for the antagonism towards Milošević (where it existed)? I mean, it
could be many things, like authoritarianism, censorship, "nationalism",
"communism", ethnic policies, ...?

~~~
ivanhoe
All of the above, plus the lost wars, thousands of people killed and
displaced, broken dreams and promises, broken economy, huge rise of crime, mob
bosses and crime-connected tycoons, one of the greatest hyper-inflations ever,
nationalization and then organized pumping out of banks money and people's
savings out of the country to the secret accounts on Cyprus that left millions
without their life savings, the whole social and moral structure of society
got turned upside-down in very short period of time... the list is quite long,
Milosevic was a typical dictator who used force and propaganda to hide his own
incompetence and crimes. Contrary to common picture painted of him in West, I
don't think he was ever a real believer in communism, nor he was really a
hard-core nationalist either, he used the both simply as a source of power
when it was convenient for him, but then also made moves that were completely
opposite when it was needed. He was really just an opportunist greedy of
power. And unfortunately in 90s most of other political leaders in Yugoslavia
were pretty much the same, and the old system was broken and unsustainable
anymore...

------
git-pull
GitHub page: [https://help.github.com/cn/articles/github-and-trade-
control...](https://help.github.com/cn/articles/github-and-trade-controls)

Ukraine: [https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/programs/pages/ukraine.aspx)

Iran (from a few days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20493699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20493699))
[https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/programs/pages/iran.aspx)

------
busterarm
Most software is exportable to OFAC sanctioned companies under their rules.

In fact, it's possible to apply for an exemption to transact business with
sanctioned countries. GitHub would probably have a good case for such an
exemption and their parent company is already exempted to sell things like
Microsoft Office to there.

[https://complyadvantage.com/knowledgebase/sanctions-2/ofac-s...](https://complyadvantage.com/knowledgebase/sanctions-2/ofac-
sanctions-what-are-the-consequences-of-breaking-them/)

------
realusername
That's exactly the reason why we need to decentralise Github, that's way too
much power for a corporation.

~~~
tnorthcutt
What does “decentralize Github” mean?

~~~
realusername
For me, that means having all the features of Github available in p2p.

~~~
techntoke
Pretty much like IPFS. You can already host your pages and DNS using an IPFS
gateway.

------
amingilani
Related: a little while ago, a Iranian developer's post[0] hit the front page.
He commented 12 hours ago that GitHub has restricted his account as well.[1]

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20493699](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20493699)

[1]: [http://shahinsorkh.ir/2019/07/20/how-is-it-like-to-be-a-
dev-...](http://shahinsorkh.ir/2019/07/20/how-is-it-like-to-be-a-dev-in-
iran#comment-4553788305)

------
olivierduval
Sadly, US companies are more and more unreliable, but not for technical
reason, not for economical/business reasons, but for political reasons. Sadly,
it looks, more and more, like "America First" will shift to "America Alone".

Hopefully, it will require other countries/organisations to build alternatives
and not rely on the US. These new players will grow stronger, on their own
market, building their success on US defiance. And might be someday US
competitors (hello Baidu, Tencent and co.)

~~~
drstewart
That makes the assumption that these alternatives would give up access to the
US market in order to serve sanctioned markets like Crimea, North Korea, or
Iran.

~~~
olivierduval
Like "open source" alternatives, you mean ? ;-)

On my toy android app, I'm trying to avoid anything Google-licensed: replacing
Maps by OSM for example. Just a small step... but a new mindset.

Problem is: today the US sanctionned some well-known "bad" actors (under UN
scrutiny) but will sanction EU too... just because of business or strategical
interest (and without any UN consensus).

~~~
solidasparagus
You think the US is going to sanction the EU?

~~~
olivierduval
I'm affraid that the current US administration has a really wide
interpretation of what "US national security" is, far wider than any other
administration, including not only the political or geostrategical scope but
the business scope too. And technology is a core part of business.

Before this US administration, EU was considered a "friend" or "allied" of the
US, meaning sharing common values, like human rights, universality, or that
it's better to have win/win trade than win/loose trade. There was competition
AND cooperation.

But now, it seem that the US administration sees the EU only as a competitor
and as a foe. This US administration is only restricted to bully the EU
because the EU is strong enough to not let it be that way and may retaliate.

So yeah, sadly, I think that US will try to sanction the EU in some or other
way (and in fact already started). The more the US is centered on itself, the
less it cares about the rest of the world and the more it think that it
DOESN4T NEED allies and friends, and it can treat EU like a servant.

And more sadly, I think that EU will have to stand for itself, to not depend
nor a Russia or China... but not on US too.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I'm affraid that the current US administration has a really wide
> interpretation of what "US national security" is, far wider than any other
> administration, including not only the political or geostrategical scope but
> the business scope too.

It's not actually wider than recent Administrations, which have had similarly
expansive definitions and in at least on case expressly included environmental
concerns that this Administration rejects as even real, much less matters of
national security.

What does differentiate the current Administration’s view of national security
from prior ones is that it is utterly unmoored from reality.

------
guelo
Should have used a distributed VCS. Oh wait.

------
nournia
Thank you GitHub, thank you Microsoft and thank you U.S. for all the love you
bestow upon people.

~~~
rimliu
Not thanks to Russia for the occupation?

~~~
gdy
The US punishes with sanctions the population of occupied Crimea. Where is the
logic in that?

~~~
Nasrudith
The only illogic is that is not having Russia to a similar degree while doing
so. The point of the sanctions is to give an extra cost to their ambitions and
limit the growth in power of the targetted entries.

~~~
gdy
Why Russia's ambitions are less legitimate than American ones?

~~~
ohithereyou
The US is not morally or legally obligated to support or enable Russian
ambitions and has the right, as a sovereign nation, to react to actions
against their interest.

~~~
gdy
What exactly is their interest in Crimea on the other side of the globe?

------
chr15m
It may be possible for you to route around this with Tor:

[https://github.com/chr15m/gitnonymous/](https://github.com/chr15m/gitnonymous/)

~~~
avierax
This is forbidden by github. The consequences of this is having your account
suspended.

------
option
sanctions like these only alienate (otherwise mostly pro-democracy) people
from US/West.

Do impose sanctions on individuals who are associated with the rules of
undemocratic regimes. But punishing whole populations (especially if they
don’t have a democratic voice in the matter) is dumb and immoral.

~~~
gotts
What's the alternative?

Keeping the status quo and pretending like nothing significant happened when
some country decides to annex another country's soil in 21th century?

In that case loosing moral ground would alienate people from US/West even
more.

~~~
fredthomsen
Well not sanction the country that got annexed for starters. If you are going
to annex a whole country, which I am not advocating, then sanction Russia

------
NERDiT
[https://bitbucket.org](https://bitbucket.org) \- pretty sweet alternative,
works with Git just the same.

~~~
avierax
Atlassian is an Australian company but they own companies in the US so they
comply with US embargo to sanctioned countries as well. In fact this was the
first company who blocked their services to Cuba.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
It sounds weird.I don't know the specifics of your case so it is difficult to
comment, but it seems like an overreaction to the specific location ( for a
good reason ). Did you reach out to github? Did they ask any addition
questions? Ask for license? Blanket restriction seems excessive.

[https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/ukraine.txt)

------
golergka
I'm glad that US is pressing in this. Five years since Crimea happened, it's
still cut off Russia in terms of business – all the major companies won't
touch it with a ten-feet pole exactly because of sanctions. It's a sad state
of affairs for people who still live there, but a good precedent for the world
peace, showing that this annexation will not be normalized.

~~~
tasubotadas
I don't really get why is this downvoted. If anything, the response to that
was too weak.

Again, to some soft-hearted people, this might look like a terrible story when
alone dev in Crimea can't access his GitHub but I have 0 sentiments here.

Ukraine's sovereignty was guaranteed by the UK, the US, and Russia when they
gave up their nukes. So somebody had to at least pretend to do something. The
US (compared to the UK) showed a much stronger response.

Now Russia came and claimed a part of Ukraine as their own. If there is 0
response to that, you know how it makes all the small countries feel that have
borders with Russia? Ask Estonians or Georgians.

So when the next time they gonna occupy Tallinn or Riga, we all gonna be
really happy that some dimwits are really concerned that our developers can't
access GitHub. Great.

------
ryanmercer
I'm guessing the same then applies to SY, CU, IR, KP and SD which are also
embargoed countries.

Possibly also BL, BY, CF, CI, CD, IQ, LB, LY,, SO, SS, UA, VE, YE and ZW which
have current sanctions.

------
zoobab
Time to fix the protocols of Cyberspace.

HTTP and other centralized protocols are the weapon of choice of the powerful
players: large corporations and states.

------
cnst
[http://We.Are.Sanctioned.RU/](http://We.Are.Sanctioned.RU/)?

------
shmerl
So it affects even those who aren't Russian citizens (let's say Ukranian
citizens) who live in Crimea?

~~~
colechristensen
According to Crimea and Russia and the basic facts on the ground, people
living in Crimea are Russian citizens and have been for 5 years, Russia has
poured billions into the region's infrastructure.

While it was definitely engineered by Russia doing things to violate the
sovereignty of Ukraine

1) The US and all the powerful nations around the world do this kind of crap
all the time and have a long history of it

2) It appears as though the people living in Crimea generally prefer being
Russian to being Ukrainian, at least there doesn't seem to be any major
opposition to the change.

3) Crimea was only part of Ukraine from 1992 to 2014, before that it was it's
own entity under the umbrella of Russian empire or the USSR for hundreds of
years

I'm not pro-Russia but I am pro-reality, and this sanctions game seems to be
about highschool-level-bullshit between world leaders and nothing else. It
certainly has made politicians on both sides much more popular with their
bases as a result. Having "enemies" does that rallying well.

If you want to sanction Russia, do it over corruption, election meddling, or
human rights abuses (although maybe put a higher priority on your own
country's faults along those lines first so you have a platform to stand on)

I'm here feeling like Fangorn "I am not altogether on anybody's side, because
nobody is altogether on my side"

~~~
piranha
Your point 3 is complete bullshit. Crimea was part of Russian empire since
1783. During that time Ukraine was also a part of Russian empire - mind you,
not autonomic one. After empire collapse in USSR Crimea administratively
belonged to Russian SFSR up to 1954, since when it was a part of Ukrainian
SSR. So it’s a part of Ukraine for the last 60 years.

~~~
pessimizer
It would only be complete bullshit if the Ukrainian SSR wasn't a part of the
USSR. Since it was, point 3 is completely true.

~~~
shmerl
It was part of Ukraine, and republics of USSR formally could leave it (not
that anyone would allow that though, due to the legal trickery). So that point
3 is not true.

------
ilaksh
A truly decentralized GitHub replacement would not have this problem. One such
is called mango.

------
kbad10
This actions basically demands a de-centralized blockchain-based repository
storage system.

------
vectorEQ
i love how people impede on freedom in the name of freedom.

------
finnjohnsen2
I would think VPN solve this problem?

------
dvt
I'm sure HN will try throwing some shade here, but just about everyone has
sanctioned Crimea, including Canada[1], the EU[2], and Ukraine itself.
MasterCard, Visa, Discover, PayPal, etc., etc. also don't work in Crimea.

[1] [https://www.international.gc.ca/world-
monde/international_re...](https://www.international.gc.ca/world-
monde/international_relations-
relations_internationales/sanctions/ukraine.aspx?lang=eng)

[2] [https://europa.eu/newsroom/highlights/special-coverage/eu-
sa...](https://europa.eu/newsroom/highlights/special-coverage/eu-sanctions-
against-russia-over-ukraine-crisis_en)

~~~
avocado4
Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia?

~~~
dogma1138
Because Crimea is a defacto Russian state now and for the most part a large
portion of the population and the current government is participating in it.

The sanctions are for the most part per the request of the Ukrainian
government.

If Catalonia becomes a separatist state tomorrow and Spain and its allies
sanction it everyone in it will be under sanctions regardless of who or what
they support.

This is what happens when your sanctions are geographical in nature.

No one has the capability to validate if a person in Crimea is a Russian
supporter or not.

The idea behind the sanctions is in the end to make the life of the populous
sufficiently difficult so they will rebel.

~~~
ShinTakuya
I don't like what's going in Crimea either, and I support most sanctions
against it, but I also don't understand why they should be excluded from open
source software participation. On an idealogical basis I reject the idea of
OSS being politicised. Otherwise, where do we stop?

~~~
CalChris
Whether it is open source or not, GitHub is an American corporation (owned by
Microsoft) and what it does is commercial activity.

This isn't a free speech issue. It's not even a corporate free speech issue.
This is commercial activity.

Whether this is good policy or not, is another matter but it isn't a free
speech matter.

~~~
leereeves
How did the free software movement allow a private commercial business to
obtain so much power over it?

~~~
codetwelve
Private commercial businesses do this, they fool you with their marketing and
make you think that their product is also free and open source. Github's
branding and marketing are to thank. And the blame also goes to us and other
developers for not seeing this.

~~~
acqq
Yes, the similar stories happen again and again. As a good reflection, there
was that comics with the "world tiniest open source violin"
[https://xkcd.com/743/](https://xkcd.com/743/)

------
exabrial
Yikes. Sanctions are a scorched earth policy. In my humble uninformed opinion
the best thing would be to attempt to get out for many reasons :(

------
ajross
[ _Heh, this is also one of those "Best way to get a correct answer on the
internet..." kind of situations. Oh well, live and learn._]

This is one of those threads that's going to be coopted as a way to flog
arguments against either or both of the US or GitHub when the truth is almost
certainly that it's just a mistake.

I'm aware of no US sanctions against Crimea. There are sanctions against
Russia over the Crimean annexation, but those are targetted to specific
industries (which certainly don't include some dude's open source game
downloader) and in any case are not actually being enforced by the current
administration for reasons that no one here wants to discuss.

They messed up. Or plausibly the author is actually not in Crimea or has some
other undisclosed affiliation, I guess. But most likely they messed up and
will fix it.

~~~
elliekelly
The only mistake was that it took GitHub so long to block the account. The
Crimea sanctions[1] aren't new but they do pretty clearly cover GitHub:

> prohibition on the exportation or importation of goods, technology, or
> services to or from the Crimea region of Ukraine

[1] [PDF] [https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/...](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/ukraine.pdf)

