In an ignoble move, the messaging company ‘Slack’ has deactivated accounts of hundreds of Iranian users across continents, saying that the decision has been made in accordance with US sanctions against Tehran.
After Iranian Slack users took to Twitter to report the ignominious move, over a dozen news outlets from The Hill, to the Verge, TechCrunch, BBC, and Business Insider published stories about the ban.
On Wednesday, Amir Abdi, a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada tweeted, “Slack closed my account today! I’m a Ph.D. student in Canada with no teammates from Iran! Is Slack shutting down accounts of those ethnically associated with Iran?! And what’s their source of info on my ethnicity? #slack #UsSanctions”
He published a screenshot of the message he has received from Slack which reads as follows:
“In order to comply with export control and economic sanctions laws and regulations promulgated by the US Department of Commerce and the US Department of Treasury, Slack prohibits unauthorized use of its products in certain sanctioned countries and regions including Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and the Crimea region of Ukraine. We’ve identified your team/account as originating from one of these countries and are closing the account effective immediately.”
A Slack spokesperson in a statement to The Hill said that the company complies with all US regulations that prohibit Slack’s use in “embargoed countries and regions, as does every US-based company.”
“We only utilize IP addresses to take these actions,” the statement said, adding, “We do not possess information about nationality or the ethnicity of our users.”
According to The Hill, the deactivations occurred when Slack updated its geo-location services, which rely on IP addresses. Slack did not say what prompted the last round of deactivations.
“If users think we’ve made a mistake in blocking their access, please reach out ... and we’ll review as soon as possible,” the Slack spokesperson added.
Ban First, Ask Later
Many see the company’s interpretation of sanctions as overly broad, going far beyond the actual restrictions put in place by the US government. “They are either incompetent at OFAC interpretation or racist,” Oxford researcher Mahsa Alimardani told the Verge.
Most technology exports to Iran are illegal under US Treasury rules, particularly when those exports involve financial transactions. But since 2014, US sanctions have included a general license for personal communications tools, described in the license as “fee-based services incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging.” That clause is generally understood to include services like Slack.
“Detecting an Iranian IP address on a paid account (which is presumed to be for business) login as a violation of sanctions is a wrong interpretation of these regulations,” Alimardani says. “At best it’s over-regulation to prevent any sort of misunderstanding or possible future hassle with OFAC.”
However, the mechanics of sanctions enforcement make it simpler for companies to ban first and ask questions later. The cost of violating US sanctions can be enormous, while the cost of deactivating an account is relatively small.
In many cases, companies prefer to avoid the details of sanctions licensing for fear of making an expensive mistake. Google places similarly broad restrictions on the Google Cloud and App Engine, although the Google Play Store and iOS App Store are available under the personal communications license.
With US President Donald Trump’s administration growing more aggressive about enforcing sanctions against Tehran and considering Slack’s underhand move, many local technology experts suggest that it would be wiser for Iranian users to create backups of the information they have stored on foreign servers and be prepared for further restrictions to be imposed by American firms.
