4 ms·

If Slack has a presence in France, they can be sued for this. And I think in any country with anti-discrimination laws which I thought included many US states?

by Iv 8y ago

gaius 8y ago
You should be able to use GDPR to force them to give you your data, probably not to reinstate services.
user5994461 8y ago
Highlight doubt that. France and Europe have similar sanctions. We had an alumni from my university who opened a company and sold some stuff to a client in a middle east country. Hardware parts, not software. One shipment got stopped at the border for a random control, before the police showed up at the office and arrested everyone. Turns out there are sanctions. Couldn't sell there.
- lostmyoldone 8y ago
  The main issue seems to be that they are not only blocking people actually in embargoed countries, and furthermore not only nationals of that country, but everyone who has ever used the service from an IP geolocated - or otherwise - associated with embargoed countries. If former nationals are more likely to have visited an embargoed country, it could conceivably fall under discrimination laws. But it is probably even more problematic if using a service from an country specific IP actually should triggers the embargo from a legal point of view? Then we have a problem, because suddenly you won't be able to use your phone, even turn it on at all while traveling an embargoed country if this starts to be applied broadly. Furthermore, it would imply that things like a single BGP route hijack could kill all of a company's accounts on any US service, without recourse. If this would be the case, using any service from a country interpreting embargoes this way becomes an impossibly risky proposition. Which was probably not the intent of the embargo.
  - user5994461 8y ago
    Agreed. It's very obvious that Slack has zero experience dealing with regulations. They totally went overboard with deleting any account that ever connected from a restricted location. There is no conflict with discrimination though. Sanctions takes precedence over pretty much everything else. Don't expect your phone and applications to be usable when you travel to Iran/Syria, many services won't work. There was a news not long ago about Google Cloud blocking network access from Iran.

If Slack has a presence in France, they can be sued for this. And I think in any country with anti-discrimination laws which I thought included many US states?

by Iv 8y ago

If Slack has a presence in France, they can be sued for this. And I think in any country with anti-discrimination laws which I thought included many US states?

gaius 8y ago

You should be able to use GDPR to force them to give you your data, probably not to reinstate services.

user5994461 8y ago

Highlight doubt that. France and Europe have similar sanctions. We had an alumni from my university who opened a company and sold some stuff to a client in a middle east country. Hardware parts, not software. One shipment got stopped at the border for a random control, before the police showed up at the office and arrested everyone. Turns out there are sanctions. Couldn't sell there.

lostmyoldone 8y ago
The main issue seems to be that they are not only blocking people actually in embargoed countries, and furthermore not only nationals of that country, but everyone who has ever used the service from an IP geolocated - or otherwise - associated with embargoed countries. If former nationals are more likely to have visited an embargoed country, it could conceivably fall under discrimination laws. But it is probably even more problematic if using a service from an country specific IP actually should triggers the embargo from a legal point of view? Then we have a problem, because suddenly you won't be able to use your phone, even turn it on at all while traveling an embargoed country if this starts to be applied broadly. Furthermore, it would imply that things like a single BGP route hijack could kill all of a company's accounts on any US service, without recourse. If this would be the case, using any service from a country interpreting embargoes this way becomes an impossibly risky proposition. Which was probably not the intent of the embargo.
- user5994461 8y ago
  Agreed. It's very obvious that Slack has zero experience dealing with regulations. They totally went overboard with deleting any account that ever connected from a restricted location. There is no conflict with discrimination though. Sanctions takes precedence over pretty much everything else. Don't expect your phone and applications to be usable when you travel to Iran/Syria, many services won't work. There was a news not long ago about Google Cloud blocking network access from Iran.