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Comment by _iyig | Hacker News Reader

I'm an American citizen who is happy to see the law enforced. I don't live in Atherton or Palo Alto. There were two Central American gang-related shootings near my family's home last week; there were two MS-13 murders in the broader area earlier this year. I grew up here, and it didn't used to be like this. I want to see those who come here illegally, or who have been denied refugee status as the result of due process, deported.

I don't care what race, nationality, or religion they are. I also want to see families and young kids kept together, and treated humanely. But at the end of the day, we [the U.S.] are a nation of laws, or we are not. I'm proud of Palantir's efforts to help enforce the (democratically-enacted, internationally-conventional) law of the land.

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Much of what they are doing stretches and very likely breaks constitutionality. The fact that they can track you without any probable cause for any amount of time and then store that information means that essentially they no longer have to get warrants, meaning there is no oversight, on anyone they want as long as they claim it's related to a case. That's absolutely wrong.

No one wants gang members running around shooting people up. We are very clearly not a nation of laws as laws apply differently depending on the very things you claim not to care about. Sentences are harsher, applications of justice are different depending on what race, nationality, or religion they are or even how much justice they can afford. This isn't an affront against the police, I'm good friends with officers, but at the end of the day as citizens it's our responsibility to hold our police accountable and establish the limits imposed upon them. Our founding fathers lived under a police state that was unaccountable to the people and we are drifting closer to that line. Our character as a nation is not defined by what we do when it's easy, but how we act when the decision are hard.

> very likely breaks constitutionality... they can track you without any probable cause... they no longer have to get warrants.

Does anything in Palantir's database require a warrant? Law enforcement can absolutely follow your car without a warrant, check if you've come up on a license plate reader, call another department and see if they have your phone number, list of associates, ect. Point being, police don't need a warrant to investigate you. I don't know if they even need reasonable suspicion or probable cause. You might be able to claim harassment if they interfere with your life. Otherwise, constitutional protections apply to restricting your freedom (eg. detaining/arresting you), ceasing/searching your property, and monitoring your private life (eg wiretaps, bugs, ect). It seems like what Palantir's doing is making it easier for departments to share information that would normally require lots of digging.

I'm not defending the practice at all. I despise this kind of mass surveillance, and am particularly concerned that it's being done in secret. My opinion is that we don't have enough, or practically any, privacy protections in the USA; at least on public property. Might sound like a contradiction, but we spend much of our lives in public, and shouldn't have to hide in our homes to prevent mass surveillance. I don't think the constitution goes far enough to protect us anymore. The founding fathers could not even imagine the world we live in today. Even George Orwell couldn't conceive of the capabilities we have today when he wrote 1984. Yet we've done close to nothing to rein in these capabilities, and all the movement is in the wrong direction.

The fact is that human rights violations and child abuse are happening now. Here is one recent example from DHS' own inspector-general: https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2019-07/O...

Take a look at the pictures and pretend it's your family members. Still proud?

Palantir doesn't build holding cells. They've worked with the government for many years, long prior to this recent and ongoing debacle. I'm ashamed of DHS for providing unhealthy facilities, and I'll agitate for their rapid improvement. Family separation was quickly curtailed after the initial public outcry, and I expect a similar result here. None of this would diminish my goodwill towards Palantir for improving government I.T. systems.

They don’t build the cells. They just help fill them.

If you’re helping put people into inhumane conditions, you’re at the very least an accessory to these crimes.

As someone that has been incarcerated, I would be instigating a riot in those conditions.

The problem is most people that want undocumented immigrants deported don't actually want them deported. They just want them to be an underclass available for cheap labor and keep their mouths shut. Undocumented workers are essential to the economy and the same people that hate them hire them.

If you want rule of law, provide work permits and a path to citizenship. Immigrants of all variety aren't going away. We need them.

>The problem is most people that want undocumented immigrants deported don't actually want them deported. They just want them to be an underclass available for cheap labor

Do you have source backing this up?

They are essential to the economy because American employers can pay below-market wages for back-breaking labor. I'd prefer to make such practices illegal, rather than continually subjecting undocumented immigrants to awful working conditions with no healthcare or legal recourse in cases of abuse.

If a concerted effort was made to improve the lives of such workers, I think you'd be surprised how quickly Americans would be willing to do those jobs.

I think you'd be surprised how fast the companies hiring all those workers would go bankrupt, leaving the United States without an agricultural industry (which is as critical to national security as the rule of law).

Americans are, on the whole, unwilling to pay the prices required to provide people with a living wage and proper labor protections.

>Americans are, on the whole, unwilling to pay the prices required to provide people with a living wage and proper labor protections.

I would frame it as, "Americans are, on the whole, unwilling to pay higher prices for ethically-sourced food when lower prices can be had elsewhere." The solution is to eliminate the cheaper, unethical alternative.

Labor is only a small percent of agricultural costs. They could profitably pay pickers far more without a substantial increase in food prices.

US citizens never stay past lunch at any of the farms doing picking. The work is too hard, nobody here wants it.

The work is so back breaking that no US citizens want the work. They get easier jobs. I heard interviews with a couple of farmers, no US citizens had ever come back after lunch.

Do you know if they were paid a wage worthy of destroying your back for? Or is it in our best interest to subject brown people to slave tier labor for little pay?

I think the job is for people without more opportunity. Paying more would help, but I still think it would mostly be immigrants doing the job. The other issue is that paying more would result in more automation for crops that can be automated.

If paying more money for back-breaking work is going to result in more automation, we should welcome it. There's no way that I will stand on the side arguing that unemployment is worse than slavery. But yeah, if they raise the wage for these slave-tier jobs and still only immigrants do them, why the hell not? (As long as they aren't here illegally of course).

I agree. A minimum wage for everyone, with no underclass, would be ideal. As would a work permit program.

I believe a [citation needed] is required for the claim that US immigration policy is "internationally conventional".

There is of course enormous variance in how countries handle immigration, but the ethical and conventional policy could be summarized as:

1. Border enforcement. Ie, try to prevent people from entering illegally

2. Tolerance for those who are illegally present

(2) Means that a person who emigrated illegally should be able to exist outside the shadows. That is, they should be able to get ID, work, drive, etc while their immigration case is decided, often indefinitely. As well, parents of children born-in country can apply for residence in the EU, for example.

This obviously makes an enormous amount of practical sense. All of the "problems" with illegal immigration ('job stealing', not paying taxes, etc) are exacerbated when people cannot legally work. Distinguishing between MS-13 members and hotel room cleaners is harder when the latter cannot integrate.

Lastly, there is an enormous moral cost to the "crackdown" immigration policy enacted by the US Government. Undocumented immigrants live in constant fear, poverty and exploitation. This is a real ethical and moral cost for an act which is, at the end of the day, pretty benign.

The US is a nation of laws, but the punishment (Can't complain when you're exploited! Can't sign a lease! Get deported to a country you left when you were two weeks old!) for illegal immigration is completely disproportionate to the crime.

Mexico is deporting illegal migrants at the highest rate since 2006, and has deployed the military on their southern border:

https://www.teledoce.com/telemundo/internacionales/mexico-au...

The E.U. tightened their border control policies after a wave of terrorist attacks and upsurge in far-right political activity. We ran the experiment, and it turns out that's what happens when you let in millions of people with little job skills from cultures that broadly have, among other things, very regressive views on women's civil rights.

1) I think if you re-read my comment you'll notice that the issue with the US policy isn't loose borders, it's unethical treatment of people who make it _past_ the border.

2) Mexico's deportations are just as unethical as the US ones.

The main issue with the US policy is that states doesn't follow it, leaving millions of undocumented immigrants in the country. The correct course of action is to document undocumented immigrants and then keep track of them while you decide if they are allowed to stay or not, not to try to hide them like many American states do.

> 2. Tolerance for those who are illegally present

I don't think this is true in any other country than USA, and it is only true in USA due to States not being allowed to enact their own immigration laws. California is very tolerant of illegal immigrants since according to them they are not really illegal.

In most countries it works like this: People arrive to a country, as soon as it is noticed that they are illegal they get contacted by authorities and they get to seek asylum etc. If they don't then they are not tolerated. If they do then during the asylum process they are not illegal any longer, and hence tolerated. As soon as a decision is made to deport them they are illegal if they stay and will not be tolerated no matter what they do.

  I don't think this is true in any other country than USA

Are you unaware that a majority of refugee applicants in Sweden (for one example) are ultimately deported?

I am from Sweden, so yes I am aware how it works. Sweden doesn't tolerate undocumented immigrants. What happens is that people arrive, they get documented, then after a while they get either get deported or get allowed to stay. Having undocumented immigrants never makes sense ever in my opinion.

> (2) Means that a person who emigrated illegally should be able to exist outside the shadows.

This doesn’t make much sense to me. You are saying people who win the lottery of illegally getting in to a country without detection should be rewarded. People who figure out how to beat country’s systems of legal entry should be handed awards of permanent residency. Why? If citizens don’t want to punish illegal immigrants then they should just eliminate relevant laws. But if laws exist then it should be applied uniformly, equally and with due process to everyone.

Most countries in eu (if not all) dont give birth-right citizenship. So i dont know if your arguments hold true. Usa is one of the few countries which does that.

4 incidents in an unspecified broad region within a years time isn't really significant unless you're talking about an extremely underpopulated region.

What specific region are you talking about?

Something tells me you’d have a very different reaction if the same piece of software was used to track “legal” firearms crossing us state borders, for example.

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