Google Gives Free Security Keys to Activists, But Not if You're in Iran or Syria (vice.com) 48
An anonymous reader shares a report: Go to an activist, technologist, or journalist gathering, and you may find a free pile of Google's security keys, dubbed Titan. These are small devices a Gmail user can plug into their computer via USB to make their account much harder to hack. The keys don't just work with Google accounts; Twitter and other large sites now support hardware security tokens too. But if you're an activist inside Iran, Sudan, Syria, Cuba, the region of Crimea, or North Korea, Google probably won't give you a Titan key. Google bars nonprofits and other groups from providing these tools, or promoting the availability of any Google product to activists in those countries, according to two independent sources familiar with Google's approach and a legal document viewed by Motherboard.
Export sanctions (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't blame Google for this. You don't want to be caught violating US export controls, which is what Google is here trying to prevent from happening. If anything, you can blame the US Government.
Re:Export sanctions (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, as soon as I saw that list I said WTF, that is the list of embargoed countries. You can't export anything to those countries.
Re: (Score:2)
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Good thing the CIA is above the law when it uses tor.
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Some little one is confused between POWER and LAW. What a cute serf.
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So, Motherboard is mad that Google won't help countries that are on a list for human rights abuses and which are developing nuclear weapons use encryption to thwart US government efforts to prevent them from causing widespread harm?
Yeah, okay Motherboard. Why don't you have a seat over there...
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If the list is of countries that are bad human rights abusers, why is Saudi Arabia not on that list, led by the House of Sawed?
Export Restrictions? (Score:1)
This might not be out of malice towards activists there or support of the regimes, but arms control regulations. I'm not sure on the present regulations, but I know the YubiKey hardware security tokesn include a hardware AES engine and exporting strong cryptography has been regulated as a weapon.
Re:Export Restrictions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically these activits would mostly be opposed to the regimes that should be actually be hit with those export restrictions and thus actually helping them....
But besides that "Google abides laws: Today's episode: Export restrictions" isn't really newsworthy.
Google has no choice (Score:5, Informative)
Attacking innocent civilians (Score:2, Insightful)
Activists talk, a lot.
Militants attack leaders of the opposition.
Terrorists attack civilians.
Which make Antifa ...
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Its a vice.com article what do you expect, its clickbait garbage 'reporting'.
You don't want to get caught with one of these in (Score:2)
Lots of people have pointed out that Google can't distribute these keys because they aren't allowed to export technology to the those countries.
But, there is another thing to consider, you wouldn't want to carry one of these around in those countries either. It would be physical proof that you were "subverting" the government.