4 ms·

Sanctions aren't about stopping people who are up to no good. They're supposed to hurt the country as a whole, which mostly means hurting the innocent. The idea

Sanctions aren't about stopping people who are up to no good. They're supposed to hurt the country as a whole, which mostly means hurting the innocent. The idea is that this will incentivize the country to stop doing the thing it's being sanctioned for.

mirimir 8y ago
OK, so I know nothing about the legal context for sanction enforcement. But in the US, the standard of proof in criminal cases is something like "beyond a reasonable doubt". And even in civil cases, it's something like "preponderance of the evidence". In my experience with pollution torts, that typically meant >50% probability of causation. But it usually devolved into battles of experts, and Daubert challenges. I don't get how IP-based geolocation could satisfy either standard.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
  Sanctions work like this: One country decides "fuck that other country in particular", either alone by their power of sovereignty or together with some international body. The sanctioning country (say, the US) now declares economic sanctions against another country (say, Iran). Since the US can only directly make rules for citizens/entities within the US, they say "it is illegal for anyone to export goods or services to anyone in Iran - if your company does it, the company gets fined and the CEO goes to prison". They might also say "and if anyone else that I can't punish directly sells to Iran, I will prohibit my people from selling things to you!" to force others to also participate in their sanctions. Now, the US gets a suspicion that Slack provided services to Iran. They arrange for the FBI (or whoever is responsible) to raid their offices, build a case beyond reasonable doubt that shows Slack provided services to a company in Iran, e.g. because said companies egress NAT IP was connecting and the user names match people working for that company in Iran. On top of that, they also show that Slack didn't do enough to prevent that from happening. Now, Slack gets fined and their CEO goes to jail (not sure if that's the penalty for sanction violations but I'd assume so). Since the CEO doesn't want to go to jail, and the company doesn't want to be fined, they'll do whatever they can to avoid selling services to Iran. They can generally choose who they do business with, and its in their best interest to err on the side of caution. You have little recourse if Slack doesn't do business with you because they don't like your IP, and they're almost certainly well covered by their ToS.

mirimir 8y ago

OK, so I know nothing about the legal context for sanction enforcement. But in the US, the standard of proof in criminal cases is something like "beyond a reasonable doubt". And even in civil cases, it's something like "preponderance of the evidence". In my experience with pollution torts, that typically meant >50% probability of causation. But it usually devolved into battles of experts, and Daubert challenges. I don't get how IP-based geolocation could satisfy either standard.

tgsovlerkhgsel 8y ago
Sanctions work like this: One country decides "fuck that other country in particular", either alone by their power of sovereignty or together with some international body. The sanctioning country (say, the US) now declares economic sanctions against another country (say, Iran). Since the US can only directly make rules for citizens/entities within the US, they say "it is illegal for anyone to export goods or services to anyone in Iran - if your company does it, the company gets fined and the CEO goes to prison". They might also say "and if anyone else that I can't punish directly sells to Iran, I will prohibit my people from selling things to you!" to force others to also participate in their sanctions. Now, the US gets a suspicion that Slack provided services to Iran. They arrange for the FBI (or whoever is responsible) to raid their offices, build a case beyond reasonable doubt that shows Slack provided services to a company in Iran, e.g. because said companies egress NAT IP was connecting and the user names match people working for that company in Iran. On top of that, they also show that Slack didn't do enough to prevent that from happening. Now, Slack gets fined and their CEO goes to jail (not sure if that's the penalty for sanction violations but I'd assume so). Since the CEO doesn't want to go to jail, and the company doesn't want to be fined, they'll do whatever they can to avoid selling services to Iran. They can generally choose who they do business with, and its in their best interest to err on the side of caution. You have little recourse if Slack doesn't do business with you because they don't like your IP, and they're almost certainly well covered by their ToS.