The US brings us down [LWN.net]

The US brings us down

Posted Oct 24, 2024 10:43 UTC (Thu) by atnot (guest, #124910)
In reply to: The US brings us down by jlm2000
Parent article: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

no, because those countries could not credibly threaten to jail Linux Foundation staff, but the US can.

to post comments

The US brings us down

Posted Oct 24, 2024 13:20 UTC (Thu) by zoobab (guest, #9945) [Link] (2 responses)

"jail Linux Foundation staff"

Move the Foundation elsewhere, like it was done with RISC-V to Switzerland.

Although, for Switzerland, I think they also have trade sanctions against other countries.

Pick up a country (an island) which does not have trade sanctions.

The US brings us down

Posted Oct 24, 2024 13:26 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

This goes back to ordering Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman (among others) to leave the USA, give up their US citizenship, and risk never seeing the USA part of their families ever again (and possibly the Swedish parts, too).

If you can't get the key people to move, moving the rest of the foundation doesn't matter, because Linus and Greg will still need the foundation to comply with US sanctions for them to continue associating with it.

The US brings us down

Posted Oct 25, 2024 7:00 UTC (Fri) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

The US government has been playing this game for longer than most of us have been alive. Finding loopholes is a fool's errand. If you do find a loophole, they close it, put everyone involved on one or more lists, and arrest any participants who happen to be on US soil.*

In this particular case, the purported loophole is to use an intermediary in Switzerland. This is not a novel strategy, and the US hit upon the idea of "sanctions are transitive, so now your Swiss intermediary is sanctioned too" a long time ago.

* "But I had a valid loophole!" you protest. That's not going to cut it. When you piss off the feds, they are not just looking at one specific action to see if it was a crime. They are looking at your entire pattern of behavior leading up to that point, and comparing every little thing you did against every little law and regulation that might possibly fit. Given the sheer complexity and oppressive thoroughness of OFAC regulations alone, it is highly unlikely that your loophole really does comprehensively cover all of your activity leading up to the point at which the feds decide that you are a criminal. Plus they can also charge you with things like wire fraud, money laundering, and structuring, so you have to worry about all of those laws as well. Do you think a bank is going to help you evade sanctions, if you tell them that that is what you are trying to do? No, you're going to lie to them, which by itself already opens the door to a panoply of secondary crimes.