I'd imagine Github/Microsoft has extremely strict rules about not taking company resources to, or performing any work at, or accessing any company resources from countries that are embargoed.

This simply wouldn't happen at my company because special permission is needed to take any company assets out of the country. If anyone at my company casually took a company laptop to Iran that would be instant termination. It absolutely astonishes me that a company wouldn't have a policy about taking company resources to foreign countries.

My startup had similar rules when we were only 10 people.

Beyond just the Iran issue, it's known that trade secrets on employee laptops are at risk when crossing some international borders, particularly in airports. Border agents can confiscate electronic devices on vague suspicions, compel you to unlock them (or hack them open in some cases), and then leave them in unsupervised settings with yet more border agents who have the barest electronic security training. These risks terrified me during my travels!

Right - this is actually the main reason for such policies; we receive regular training on this.

All devices are subject to search, seizure, and duplication when crossing international borders and border agents may tamper with devices as well. If assets cross borders there has to be a good reason, it has to be documented, and phones/computers may have to be scrubbed before and after depending on circumstances.

This is not the case at most large companies (FAANG) - no special permission is required to take a laptop with you across borders. They'd generally rather you have your laptop with you so you can get work done.

Regardless, this person logged into GitHub, which could have been from any device including a phone.

1) In this case the laptop was taken to Iran, so that's what we are talking about here.

2) I can assure you there's policies at Microsoft that include performing work abroad and accessing any company resources from abroad. Obviously nobody will be approved to access any company resources from Iran, especially not source code.

3) I can say there is policies at MS this with a very high degree of confidence because I personally have done work with Microsoft involving code and data that is export restricted.

4) Companies should have policies in place in order to avoid situations like this. Taking your company laptop to, say, Germany probably isn't a big deal for most companies, but any "exporting" company assets should at least be pre-approved/documented.

I checked with my old classmates who currently work at Microsoft and LinkedIn, and they do not require permission for accessing company resources from abroad. One of them has been working from Israel and Turkey for many months in 2020. Another has been in Mexico since the pandemic began.

I'm not sure what team you worked in, it's possible some teams have stricter policies. If you were doing business with Microsoft, the export control language is boilerplate contract language.

GitHub is in possession of substantial additional information in that scenario, namely, "we're quite certain we don't have Iranian employees on staff".

Do they keep an up to date database on who's dating whom?

yes

Funny Story.

When I went to London for the first time I meet a ridiculously attractive Swedish Arab girl. She had mentioned she really wanted to visit America, but with the recent election of Donald Trump she was a bit scared.

Not all of us like Eastern European women, Trump blocked my game right there.

The point of this story is anyone can meet anyone from anywhere and the nasty racist system the US has for blocking certain people because they have the wrong last names or whatever doesn't do anyone any service.

I also don't think embargo serve anything aside from radicalizing other people's. Take Vietnam, now you have Coca-Cola, and McDonald's succeeding to do what 20 to 30 years of Western imposition couldn't, they've made Vietnam capitalist. That was accomplished once the embargoes were removed in the nineties. Even with Cuba ,I'd imagine if the embargo didn't exist you'd see much more reform as individuals would eventually be able to succeed on their own merits.

I think it is ridiculous to treat this misbehavior of letting someone log in from Iran as a mere transgression of a subsidiary. Clearly Microsoft needs to shut down all their servers as they are paying for Github.

I can’t speak for Microsoft but certainly at Amazon there was a very strict policy about working from specific US locales for tax liability reasons: it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn Microsoft employees are quite explicitly banned from ever taking equipment into places like Iran. Would they ban themselves if it did happen? No, but also it should never happen vs. this case where they have an employee working from Iran.

its simple, they dont pass a background check on them probably.