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November 5, 2019 01:20 am

GitLab Considers Ban On New Hires In China and Russia Due To Espionage Fears

GitLab is considering blocking new hires from countries such as China and Russia over espionage fears. "There is a general train of thought that both Russian and Chinese intelligence agencies might use the same blueprint and plant agents or coerce GitLab staff into handing over data belonging to western companies," reports ZDNet. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from the report: Eric Johnson, VP of Engineering at GitLab, said discussions on banning new hires from the two countries began after enterprise customers expressed concerns about the geopolitical climate of the two countries. If approved, the hiring ban will apply to two positions; namely Site Reliability Engineer and Support Engineer, the two positions that handle providing tech support to GitLab's enterprise customers. Johnson said these two support staff positions have full access to customers' data, something that companies had an issue with, especially if tech support staff was to be located in countries like China and Russia, where they could be compromised or coerced by local intelligence services. Johnson said GitLab does not have "a technical way" to support data access permission systems for employees based on their country of origin. "Doing so would also force us to confront the possibility of creating a 'second class of citizens' on certain teams who cannot take part in 100% of their responsibilities," Johnson said. The new "hiring ban" is not yet final. Open conversations on the topic started last month, and are scheduled to end November 6.

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