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Programming United States

The Iranian Developer Deadlock: Stuck Between Censorship and US Sanctions (thenextweb.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the deadlock dept.
In July, GitHub blocked several accounts to prevent users in Iran from accessing several portions of its service. A few days later Amazon Web Services followed suite. With major cloud services pulling support for developers in the country, many lost their academic work and several apps ceased to function. A solution for these developers now is to cut reliance on American giants and build their own services. But there's a catch: Internet in Iran is heavily censored, so they can't rely on local networks.

After Trump backed away from the nuclear deal, there's been a tremendous pressure on tech companies to block IPs from Iran. Plus, Mozilla decided to omit a whole transparency section in its report on the country succumbing to the government pressure. With sanctions on one side and censorship on the other, there's a tough road ahead for developers. Ivan Mehta, a journalist at The Next Web, looks at the issue.
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The Iranian Developer Deadlock: Stuck Between Censorship and US Sanctions More

The Iranian Developer Deadlock: Stuck Between Censorship and US Sanctions

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  • Blah blah blah
  • How can that not be a viable solution?

    • A mesh network will let you connect to your neighborhood; what good is that? Unless your neighbors are AWS, Google, and GitHub, I'm not sure how that solves anything.

      At $450 billion, Iran's economy is slightly smaller than Dallas. It's tech economy is much less than Dallas or Denver. They need to be able to connect to the rest of the world.

      -- Tangent Ahead --

      Speaking of the size and economics of pesky countries, North Korea's GDP is a measily $40 billion. Equivalent to suburb of Dallas. Can you imagine R

  • Internet in Iran is heavily censored, so they can't rely on local networks.

    So before Trump pulled out the "Let Iran Build Nuclear Weapons Freely" plan, people there had one reason to try to change the leadership of Iran...

    Now they have two. If they can get the leadership to something more friendly to people around the world, then then will have less censored networks at home, and get back all of the access to internet features the rest of the world provides.

    That's the point of the sanctions, is to try and

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      So before Trump pulled out the "Let Iran Build Nuclear Weapons Freely" plan...

      Fake Hannity News

      Now they have two. If they can get the leadership to something more friendly to people around the world, then then will have less censored networks at home, and get back all of the access to internet features the rest of the world provides.

      The existing regime was "friendly" enough to negotiate a deal to lift sanctions, but the orange person reneged on the agreement. That country got slapped for being friendly, wh

      • Fake Hannity News

        Real News disagrees [nytimes.com]

        The existing regime was "friendly" enough to negotiate a deal to lift sanctions

        You are confused about who was friendly - yes Obama was friendly enough to agree to send Iran a plane full of cash [cnn.com] in secret, while Iran was busy sending Iranian backed soldiers to kill Americans in Iraq...

        And the reward we got was that Iran continued work on nuclear weapons anyway (as the previous link demonstrated, but that all people with intelligence greater than a rock knew to be the case

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Nidi62 ( 1525137 )

          You are confused about who was friendly - yes Obama was friendly enough to agree to send Iran a plane full of cash [cnn.com] in secret,

          You mean money from Iranian government accounts we froze back in the 70s? Yes, how dare Obama give Iran back money that was rightfully theirs anyway. You know how you make deals get done? You make signs of good faith. You don't just try to bully people until they give you everything you want.

          • You mean money from Iranian government accounts we froze back in the 70s? Yes, how dare Obama give Iran back money that was rightfully theirs anyway. You know how you make deals get done? You make signs of good faith. You don't just try to bully people until they give you everything you want.

            And, you can't just give them everything they want until they guit bullying you...

          • You mean the money that should have been given to the victims and families of the "Islamic Revolution" who were held for 444 days?

            Go fuck yourself.
        • Did you read your linked NYT article? Or as some would put it, "read news instead of talking points"?

          But Mr. Netanyahu did not provide any evidence that Iran had violated the nuclear agreement since it took effect in early 2016.

          Looks like the Iranians archived their shit when the agreement took hold.

          I'm no fan of their current regime, and they certainly exert military and political influence that can be dangerous, but I have not seen anything that shows that they did not honor the nuclear agreement.

          • Did you read your linked NYT article? Or as some would put it, "read news instead of talking points"?

            But Mr. Netanyahu did not provide any evidence that Iran had violated the nuclear agreement since it took effect in early 2016.

            Did you read your own post? Note that there is a difference between "Mr. Netanyahu did not provide any evidence that Iran had violated the nuclear agreement" and "Iran did not violate the nuclear agreement."

            Note also that burning an intelligence source (by, for example, announcin

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          send Iran a plane full of cash in secret,

          It was their cash to begin with, as others explain. Do you want to debate or just echo Fox Spin Memes?

          As far as the Israeli claims, they should be taken with a grain of salt. They, just like you, often spin such matters.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shotgun ( 30919 )

        The existing regime was "friendly" enough to negotiate a deal to lift sanctions, but the orange person reneged on the agreement. That country got slapped for being friendly, which doesn't give international friendliness a good reputation among the population. It made the USA look like jerks. Very few are motivated to be friendly with jerks.

        A deal that got them a midnight delivery of a planeload of cash, and no requirement to stop nuclear development. Sure. That is why Obama was so quick to get that deal voted on in the Senate.

        The USA didn't look like jerks, because the USA didn't make a deal. The President doesn't get to make a deal by himself, as every government negotiating with the US knows. Only Obama looked like a jerk for claiming to the world that a deal was made.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          and no requirement to stop nuclear development.

          El Wrongo.

          The President doesn't get to make a deal by himself, as every government negotiating with the US knows.

          O followed the same approach many prior Presidents had. You have a double standard.

          • and no requirement to stop nuclear development.

            El Wrongo.

            You are incorrect. If the JCPOA had been strictly followed by all parties, Iran would have had a 10 year delay in nuclear weapons development. During that time, they would have been permitted to continue nuclear research, including upgrading their heavy-water reactor, proceed with modernizing their centrifuges, and continue development of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. By 15 years after the "agreement", Iran would be free to resume any nuclear development, enrichment, or breeder scheme without penal

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Tablizer ( 95088 )

              I assumed by "nuclear development" you meant actual weapons, not the related tooling. Anyhow, delaying actual weapons production and testing is better than no delay.

              Just because we didn't get everything we wanted doesn't mean the deal is overall bad. Negotiations are give and take.

              Considering Iran has spent 40 years as the worlds largest state sponsor of terrorism, and has run at least two proxy wars continuously for those decades, helping the Iranian government in any way is a bad idea.

              It is bad, but not a

      • That country got slapped for being friendly, which doesn't give international friendliness a good reputation among the population. It made the USA look like jerks.

        I know a lot of Persians. While they do dislike the Ayatollah and the Revolutionary Guard, much of the rest of their government is democratic and representative, and many of them view the US favorably. But when Trump re-instated sanctions, it made life much more difficult in Iran, and increased their distrust of the United States.
        Thinking that our being assholes will cause people to change their own governments is woefully misguided.

    • I hope someday the kind people of Iran will have the government they deserve, instead of the crappy intolerant and irrational government they have.

      They had it. They voted for a superior ruler. We interfered because that wasn't convenient for us.

      • Bullshit. Mosaddegh was a would-be tyrant that used forged votes to gain power, used secret police to silence and murder his opposition, and eventually illegally dissolved the parliament to grant himself 'emergency' absolute rule over the country.

    • Vastly preferable than the approach where you try to change regimes externally.

      It's better to let people in countries choose their own government, rather than trying to have foreign countries change regimes for them. That is the philosophical approach.

      Every time the US tries to force a regime in a foreign country, it doesn't go very well. That is the practical approach.

      Finally, it makes more sense for people who are closer to the government make decisions. Thus Topeka shouldn't make laws for San Francisco, and vice versa. That is the theoretical approach.

  • Fermi's Paradox solved (Score:3)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday October 24, 2019 @02:24PM (#59343614) Journal

    Civilization will end when StackOverflow crashes and nobody can fix our software-controlled infrastructure.

  • that the US and its minions, the US companies doing business abroad, are a threat to any country's national sovereignty. Countries that are friends of the US now just don't realize it - or pretend to ignore it. But the fact remains that all the world's states effectively have their cojones in His Orangeness' hands, and that should worry the shit out of all of them.

    Any country that truly wants to guarantee its own national independence should cut ties with US-based suppliers and subcontractors whenever possi

    • Absolutely. The response is not only Iran or similarly effected countries developing their own local infrastructure, although that is part of it, but cooperating with infrastructure based in other countries which don't blindly submit to US dictat. Anybody, living/based in America, who does not wish to further US hegemony can also utilize infrastructure based in such countries. Every US Silicon Valley company which happily cooperates with US orders, meanwhile taking advantage of international jurisdictions f

    • This has nothing to do with national sovereignty. They companies are given a choice: Do business in and with the United States OR Do business with Iran and outside of the United States.

  • Okay, I can accept that many programmers can't spell worth a crap - it's not part of the job description, after all.

    But EDITORS who can't spell??? C'mon, surely we can make literacy in written English part of the job description for the /. editors....

    • But EDITORS who can't spell??? C'mon, surely we can make literacy in written English part of the job description for the /. editors....

      I wasn't here in the C&D days, but I was around for most of the Slashdot era (I lurked before joining) and the editors have always been horrible in literally every way. I guess the current owners figure there's no reason to mess with tradition, because they are still all horrible. I could do better with one hand behind my back, one eye poked out, and a modem connection.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed by the illiteracy on display here.

  • It is really hell on earth here in Iran even though we pretend that everything is alright From companies such as digital ocean, amazon, spotify and apple blocking your IP access to the country's poor and old network infrastructure and their censorship with DPI and other tech they get from china, You just really don't want to be here as a developer or a technology enthusiast. While the rest of the world advances at gene editing, aviation and space research, The children here are brainwashed daily on religiou

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