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This is a good point. To add a slightly different perspective, I work for a US company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by Iranian professionals, p

This is a good point. To add a slightly different perspective, I work for a US company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by Iranian professionals, probably government sponsored. I think most people don't realize how incredibly serious this is, and how basically there is already a global war being fought. And the nations with the most freedom have the most to lose. Certainly most of the people in Iran are similar to most of the people around the world. In kindness, compassion, in just trying to get their daily job done and enjoy time with friends and family. If only it was easy to distinguish between the good, the bad, the indifferent. Probably a lot of sanctions don't hinder the most threatening of Iran's activities, while impacting the population. But it does have an effect (not always the ones intended, perhaps). If the government in power over you is in conflict with others, and/or in conflict with it's own people, it's going to impact you. If you want your life to be better, look for ways to improve your government. True for the USA and everyone else. Another lesson that the USA has been illustrating repeatedly recently is that it's probably better for a nations citizens to reform their government themselves, instead of a foreign power. Until that happens, yes their lives are not going to be as free as they'd like. It's hard and there is a cost to be paid for those freedoms. Many of us are fortunate in that those before us did the hard work and we get to enjoy the benefits. Good luck to the author of the blog, hopefully they can find good solutions.

gdy 7y ago
"If the government in power over you is in conflict with others ... it's going to impact you. If you want your life to be better, look for ways to improve your government." Or help your government because it is the other government who is imposing sanctions on your country and making your life worse.
askmike 7y ago
Just wondering but: > I work for a US company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by Iranian professionals, probably government sponsored. The full article is about services blocking IPs from Iran (and how it's effecting him as a dev). I don't see what cyber attacks have to do with anything? Or do you think these IP bans are a defense against cyber attacks? All countries do cyber attacks, most countries in the EU have been infiltrated by the NSA and friends. How is that related to companies geo fencing entire countries? > If the government in power over you is in conflict with others, and/or in conflict with it's own people, it's going to impact you. If you want your life to be better, look for ways to improve your government. Not to get all political but I think it's pretty clear that the US is the only western country not liking Iran, and they use their influence to have the whole world obey US sanctions. You expecting OP to raise against their government? I say odds of succeeding are slimmer than storming Area 51.
- chibg10 7y ago
  >Not to get all political but I think it's pretty clear that the US is the only western country not liking Iran, and they use their influence to have the whole world obey US sanctions. You expecting OP to raise against their government? I say odds of succeeding are slimmer than storming Area 51. This isn't exactly true. The EU is opposed to Iran's aggressive policies in the region (e.g. in Yemen, Syria, and now Hormuz) and its continued development of ballistic missile technology. They're just content with the 2015 nuclear deal as a starting point, whereas current US policy is not. It's also worth noting that the EU disproportionately benefits from oil purchases from Iran relative to US so they have their own political self-interests factoring into their decision.
  - gdy 7y ago
    So you think Iran will use ballistic missile against the EU because... what? Because Iran gets money from the EU in exchange for oil?
  - goodcanadian 7y ago
    It's also worth noting that the EU disproportionately benefits from oil purchases from Iran relative to US so they have their own political self-interests factoring into their decision. Oil is fungible. The EU only benefits disproportionately because the US refuses to do business with Iran.
    - chibg10 7y ago
      Not exactly. There are varying costs to extracting and transporting oil depending on where it is sourced. It's estimated that American natural gas, for example, would be 20% more expensive than Russian natural gas through the Nordstream 2 pipeline -- even though natural gas is nominally fungible. Furthermore, the US is net oil exporter in 2019 and Europe is notoriously dependent on imported oil due to lack of resources on the continent. Consequently, adding a large marginal foreign supplier has significantly different impacts on oil prices in the region.
- whydoineedthis 7y ago
jacobolus 7y ago
The main reason for US policy changes vis-à-vis Iran in the past couple years has been spite toward the previous US administration. There are some nasty folks in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, but Iran is a large, diverse, and complicated place, and there are many other internally powerful people with different agendas (just like most large diverse countries). In general openness and cultural/economic exchange help progressive forces within the country, and sanctions help xenophobic hard-liners.
- Udik 7y ago
  > The main reason for US policy changes vis-à-vis Iran in the past couple years has been spite toward the previous US administration. Well, this is a bit simplistic. A lot of Trump actions show a pretty clear pattern: recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, recognition of the annexation of Golan by Israel, recognition of the right of Israel to annex parts of the West Bank. Israel has been campaigning for the US to attack Iran for at least the past 15 years, and has used every diplomatic resource to campaign against the nuclear deal with Iran. Connect the dots.
- chibg10 7y ago
  >In general openness and cultural/economic exchange help progressive forces within the country, and sanctions help xenophobic hard-liners. I've read in various places that the opposite is actually true -- sanctions from the liberal US strengthens the liberals in Iran by highlighting how the regime's aggressive policy is resulting in economic pain for Iranians. This didn't really work with China either. Granted, there are plenty of examples where sanctions have failed/backfired but I'd like to reject any "general" statement on the best way to liberalize a country through foreign policy.
  - chewbaxxa 7y ago
    I doubt that US foreign policy has anything to do with the desire to “liberalize” a country. Unless you’re using that term in a different sense...
    - 7y ago
h0l0cube 7y ago
> I work for a US company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by Iranian professionals, probably government sponsored. It's hard to posit a moral high-ground here, when basically every state is actively seeking to undermine the others' cyber security, including the US. Stuxnet is one of the most formidable state-sponsored cyber security exploits, and that was targeted at Iran, it seems easy justification to increase their offensive capability. I have to admit some naivete here, I don't know the frequency and scale of cyber attacks emanating from Iran, but I'd guess that hostile foreign policy from the US would only intensify that threat towards the US.
- chewbaxxa 7y ago
  Maybe it’s just me, but I’m always baffled when people categorically claim that they know the source of their cyber attacks. It’s not exactly difficult for someone with the most basic knowledge of networking to disguise that information or masquerade as someone they’re not.
  - TACIXAT 7y ago
    There is a lot more to tracking these groups than ip addresses. To impersonate any of the known groups you will need a lot of knowledge about the tools and infra that they use.
    - gdy 7y ago
      And how these 'known' groups got attributed to a particular country in the first place?
    - A2017U1 7y ago
      And if you have that knowledge it's impossible to imitate? Can't really tell if your comment is refuting or agreeing, attribution is hard.
      - kd5bjo 7y ago
        Knowing that a thing is true is categorically different from knowing how to do something— Knowing that group A uses technique B doesn’t automatically make you proficient at using B yourself. Masquerading as a particular cyber-attack group requires not only knowing what techniques and tools they tend to use, but also how to do those things yourself, while imitating their style. It’s not impossible, but neither is it trivial: We’re not talking about simply first impressions here, but fooling a concerted, post-hoc investigation.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
grecy 7y ago
> And the nations with the most freedom have the most to lose. I'm genuinely curious - can you please expand on what exactly you mean by this?
- throwaway-klsdj 7y ago
  - The nations with the most freedom also have complex, efficient industries and markets that provide high standards of living - These nations have complex governments designed to protect people from each other and from external threats - These nations are technologically advanced and highly reliant on things attached to networks - These nations have a lot more information freely available, and access to things All this adds up to a much larger surface area. It's like we're in a stone throwing fight and one side is living in a glass house and the other side is in a mud hut. Losing a cyber war could destroy governments and economies in the West. Imagine no electricity everywhere, no water, no sewer, no planes or trains, no tv or internet. It would be an apocalypse. The same thing happening to Iran might be difficult, but mostly annoying. I'm not sure. In North Korea most people wouldn't even notice.
  - gdy 7y ago
    "Imagine no electricity everywhere, no water, no sewer, no planes or trains, no tv or internet. It would be an apocalypse. The same thing happening to Iran might be difficult, but mostly annoying." I can imagine people in Iran reading this and quite strongly disagreeing.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pooya13 7y ago
Censoring TeamViewer or Slack doesn’t do anything to stop the Iranian government’s cyber task force from carrying out attacks. It hurts the regular people and the Iranian economy. I’m not sure what the ultimate agenda is but considering the travel ban and extra visa requirements for visitors of Iran it appears that the goal is to isolate Iran and strangle its economy.
gdy 7y ago
"And the nations with the most freedom have the most to lose." What on Earth does this mean?
- neoberg 7y ago
  "muh freedoms" probably.
- james_s_tayler 7y ago
  maybe that totalitarianism is the default and that "freedom" is a recent development that has been very hard won. It is not the default state of things. If you lose it i.e the state becomes totalitarian, it is orders of magnitude harder to go back the other way.

gdy 7y ago

"If the government in power over you is in conflict with others ... it's going to impact you. If you want your life to be better, look for ways to improve your government." Or help your government because it is the other government who is imposing sanctions on your country and making your life worse.

askmike 7y ago

Just wondering but: > I work for a US company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by Iranian professionals, probably government sponsored. The full article is about services blocking IPs from Iran (and how it's effecting him as a dev). I don't see what cyber attacks have to do with anything? Or do you think these IP bans are a defense against cyber attacks? All countries do cyber attacks, most countries in the EU have been infiltrated by the NSA and friends. How is that related to companies geo fencing entire countries? > If the government in power over you is in conflict with others, and/or in conflict with it's own people, it's going to impact you. If you want your life to be better, look for ways to improve your government. Not to get all political but I think it's pretty clear that the US is the only western country not liking Iran, and they use their influence to have the whole world obey US sanctions. You expecting OP to raise against their government? I say odds of succeeding are slimmer than storming Area 51.

chibg10 7y ago
>Not to get all political but I think it's pretty clear that the US is the only western country not liking Iran, and they use their influence to have the whole world obey US sanctions. You expecting OP to raise against their government? I say odds of succeeding are slimmer than storming Area 51. This isn't exactly true. The EU is opposed to Iran's aggressive policies in the region (e.g. in Yemen, Syria, and now Hormuz) and its continued development of ballistic missile technology. They're just content with the 2015 nuclear deal as a starting point, whereas current US policy is not. It's also worth noting that the EU disproportionately benefits from oil purchases from Iran relative to US so they have their own political self-interests factoring into their decision.
- gdy 7y ago
  So you think Iran will use ballistic missile against the EU because... what? Because Iran gets money from the EU in exchange for oil?
- goodcanadian 7y ago
  It's also worth noting that the EU disproportionately benefits from oil purchases from Iran relative to US so they have their own political self-interests factoring into their decision. Oil is fungible. The EU only benefits disproportionately because the US refuses to do business with Iran.
  - chibg10 7y ago
    Not exactly. There are varying costs to extracting and transporting oil depending on where it is sourced. It's estimated that American natural gas, for example, would be 20% more expensive than Russian natural gas through the Nordstream 2 pipeline -- even though natural gas is nominally fungible. Furthermore, the US is net oil exporter in 2019 and Europe is notoriously dependent on imported oil due to lack of resources on the continent. Consequently, adding a large marginal foreign supplier has significantly different impacts on oil prices in the region.
whydoineedthis 7y ago

jacobolus 7y ago

The main reason for US policy changes vis-à-vis Iran in the past couple years has been spite toward the previous US administration. There are some nasty folks in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, but Iran is a large, diverse, and complicated place, and there are many other internally powerful people with different agendas (just like most large diverse countries). In general openness and cultural/economic exchange help progressive forces within the country, and sanctions help xenophobic hard-liners.

Udik 7y ago
> The main reason for US policy changes vis-à-vis Iran in the past couple years has been spite toward the previous US administration. Well, this is a bit simplistic. A lot of Trump actions show a pretty clear pattern: recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital, recognition of the annexation of Golan by Israel, recognition of the right of Israel to annex parts of the West Bank. Israel has been campaigning for the US to attack Iran for at least the past 15 years, and has used every diplomatic resource to campaign against the nuclear deal with Iran. Connect the dots.
chibg10 7y ago
>In general openness and cultural/economic exchange help progressive forces within the country, and sanctions help xenophobic hard-liners. I've read in various places that the opposite is actually true -- sanctions from the liberal US strengthens the liberals in Iran by highlighting how the regime's aggressive policy is resulting in economic pain for Iranians. This didn't really work with China either. Granted, there are plenty of examples where sanctions have failed/backfired but I'd like to reject any "general" statement on the best way to liberalize a country through foreign policy.
- chewbaxxa 7y ago
  I doubt that US foreign policy has anything to do with the desire to “liberalize” a country. Unless you’re using that term in a different sense...
  - 7y ago

h0l0cube 7y ago

> I work for a US company that routinely has to deal with cyber attacks by Iranian professionals, probably government sponsored. It's hard to posit a moral high-ground here, when basically every state is actively seeking to undermine the others' cyber security, including the US. Stuxnet is one of the most formidable state-sponsored cyber security exploits, and that was targeted at Iran, it seems easy justification to increase their offensive capability. I have to admit some naivete here, I don't know the frequency and scale of cyber attacks emanating from Iran, but I'd guess that hostile foreign policy from the US would only intensify that threat towards the US.

chewbaxxa 7y ago
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m always baffled when people categorically claim that they know the source of their cyber attacks. It’s not exactly difficult for someone with the most basic knowledge of networking to disguise that information or masquerade as someone they’re not.
- TACIXAT 7y ago
  There is a lot more to tracking these groups than ip addresses. To impersonate any of the known groups you will need a lot of knowledge about the tools and infra that they use.
  - gdy 7y ago
    And how these 'known' groups got attributed to a particular country in the first place?
  - A2017U1 7y ago
    And if you have that knowledge it's impossible to imitate? Can't really tell if your comment is refuting or agreeing, attribution is hard.
    - kd5bjo 7y ago
      Knowing that a thing is true is categorically different from knowing how to do something— Knowing that group A uses technique B doesn’t automatically make you proficient at using B yourself. Masquerading as a particular cyber-attack group requires not only knowing what techniques and tools they tend to use, but also how to do those things yourself, while imitating their style. It’s not impossible, but neither is it trivial: We’re not talking about simply first impressions here, but fooling a concerted, post-hoc investigation.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

grecy 7y ago

> And the nations with the most freedom have the most to lose. I'm genuinely curious - can you please expand on what exactly you mean by this?

throwaway-klsdj 7y ago
- The nations with the most freedom also have complex, efficient industries and markets that provide high standards of living - These nations have complex governments designed to protect people from each other and from external threats - These nations are technologically advanced and highly reliant on things attached to networks - These nations have a lot more information freely available, and access to things All this adds up to a much larger surface area. It's like we're in a stone throwing fight and one side is living in a glass house and the other side is in a mud hut. Losing a cyber war could destroy governments and economies in the West. Imagine no electricity everywhere, no water, no sewer, no planes or trains, no tv or internet. It would be an apocalypse. The same thing happening to Iran might be difficult, but mostly annoying. I'm not sure. In North Korea most people wouldn't even notice.
- gdy 7y ago
  "Imagine no electricity everywhere, no water, no sewer, no planes or trains, no tv or internet. It would be an apocalypse. The same thing happening to Iran might be difficult, but mostly annoying." I can imagine people in Iran reading this and quite strongly disagreeing.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pooya13 7y ago

Censoring TeamViewer or Slack doesn’t do anything to stop the Iranian government’s cyber task force from carrying out attacks. It hurts the regular people and the Iranian economy. I’m not sure what the ultimate agenda is but considering the travel ban and extra visa requirements for visitors of Iran it appears that the goal is to isolate Iran and strangle its economy.

gdy 7y ago

"And the nations with the most freedom have the most to lose." What on Earth does this mean?

neoberg 7y ago
"muh freedoms" probably.
james_s_tayler 7y ago
maybe that totalitarianism is the default and that "freedom" is a recent development that has been very hard won. It is not the default state of things. If you lose it i.e the state becomes totalitarian, it is orders of magnitude harder to go back the other way.