Developers join call for GitHub to cancel its ICE contract
latimes.com
latimes.com
If it was Boeing providing bombers to the PRC to use against civilian populations, many people inside and outside of Boeing would be pressuring that contract to be cancelled.
What exactly is the problem with applying pressure to get a corporation to stop taking money from an organization/corporation/government/person that you find immoral?
The company doesn't have to /care/. The company can go after their almighty dollars for their shareholder if they want. And people can then choose to target that company in different ways, or target other companies that do business with that company, etc.
Boycotts, strikes, sabotage, sit-ins, work slowdowns, etc has all been used to pressure companies to take actions because of political reasons.
> sabotage
Not sure about this one, this sounds a tad illegal
People have been getting arrested dismantling US war machinery for decades, etc.
I'm not saying it's legal, I'm not even commenting on whether I agree, I'm just saying the "it's not appropriate to pressure a company for political views, companies should be off limits from politics" doesn't hold water.
You haven't actually presented a supporting argument for it, though.
What exactly is the problem with applying pressure to get a corporation to stop taking money from an organization/corporation/government/person that you find immoral?
You are interfering with their freedom of association. You must weigh the morality of that violation vs what you hope to gain. It's not an obvious answer and is why the example of Boeing selling bombers actively being used to bomb civilians is misleading and why I objected to it.
A corporation has no inherent "freedom of association." A corporation has exactly what rights we choose to give it, because it is fundamentally a legal fiction - the concept of a "corporate person" is useful for legal reasons, so we create such a thing in our laws. But it only has the rights we ascribe to it, because it isn't an actual being.
With that in mind: we've given corporations no "freedom of association." But even if we accepted your claim here - how does "pressuring a company to drop a contract" violate its supposed "freedom of association?"
"Freedom of association" is not freedom from consequences. "Freedom of association" means "you may associate with whomever you please and the government may not interfere". It does not mean "you may associate with whomever you please and no one may protest."
Your attempts at refutation are all general and fail to address the critical equation.
It makes sense that you don't think my refutations are valid: I fundamentally disagree with your underlying premise that a corporation has any rights beyond the limited ones explicitly assigned in various bodies of law. And I specifically disagree that a corporation has a "freedom of association" or a "freedom to do business."
So of course I'm not engaging with your question of "is whether a corporation's freedom to do business is worth more than stopping the action you consider immoral". Why would I? I disagree with the whole, underlying, fundamental premise of your question. A company has no freedom of association! It has no freedom to do business! These things do not exist, so refuting your question is impossible!
(And, setting aside the whole absurdity of the central question: even if companies had these rights as you claim, how on earth would a letter from concerned developers infringe upon those rights? It's patently absurd to think that a group of customers sending a letter to a company somehow infringes upon its rights, unless you think that these "rights" entail freedom to do business without any criticism or bad press whatsoever)
Can you explain to me how does people pressuring them to stop a contract affect their freedom to do business? This is a free market, Github can still do business with ICE, they just know that people won't share that same view and that theses peoples may move their business elsewhere.
Let say there's 2 business that sell chocolate, you want to buy chocolate. One is 1$ cheaper, but they kill a kittens for each purchase. Is it wrong to go buy the one that doesn't kill kittens because for you it infringe on their freedom to do business?
I would, for example, expect climate change activists to start actively interfering with shipping logistics (the ILWU has long used pressure at ports for political goals) causing the possibilities of large amounts of economic costs across entire industries if there isn't significant movement towards addressing their goals.
If one were to make this level of sacrifice would it be at an ICE office, or the Whitehouse? Where would the protest be more effective?
This is more like CAT refusing to sell road construction equipment to the highway department in the PRC.
The only thing the cancelation of this contract will do is make those within GitHub who are dissatisfied feel better that they have "done something". It actually accomplishes very little, and I would argue nothing at all.
CAT should refuse to do business with organizations that operate concentration camps, including ICE and the CCP.
ICE detention is just plainly that, and that's all. Some conditions are poor because facilities are overflowing, not because they are designed that way. Most migrants are economic in nature, there's no pressing need for them to try to cross, and they know it's illegal - moreover - all of those economic migrants clog up the system to the detriment of actual refugees.
Of course, the migrants can leave any time - there's a policy in place such that they can chose to return home without having any mark on their record with respect to future ability to migrate to the US, and it's processed generally quickly, within several days.
There is really no comparison at all between those detained trying to enter a country, and 'concentration camps' - in terms of motivations, lawfulness, conditions, effects, legal recourse, fallout, etc. - they are in every way different.
The PRC camps in China could be referred to as 'concentration camps' because people are arbitrary detained on the basis of their culture, for any duration, they don't have legal recourse, they cannot leave, there is no judicial oversight, there is no freedom of information or freedom of press, they are not allowed any contact with the outside world, and they are put through some very aggressive 'thought control' programs that in many ways is worse than physical torture or confinement. To boot, the system itself is corrupt and prisoners organs are being sold through irregular channels.
Except politically, of course, which is why terms like that are abused so often.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/07/01/an-open-letter-to-t...
It then quotes The American Heritage Dictionary's definition of concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."
Ergo, prisons which only contain people who have been convicted in a trial or agreed to a plea bargain cannot be regarded as concentration camps.
By comparison, the US held Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WWII, and held Filipino civilians in concentration camps ("reconcentrados") during the Philippine–American War. These can be distinguished from prisons as there was no trial for those held.
As I understand it, if the people being held at ICE are asylum seekers, then entry into the US is not illegal (even if they are not granted asylum). The US instead argues that they can be detained until that process is finished, even if that is indefinite.
This certainly sounds a lot closer to the definition of a concentration camp than US prisons containing prisoners who have be convicted in a court process.
In any case, we're talking about people in an organization which argued that the requirement for "safe and sanitary" conditions was so vague that it was okay to refuse toothbrushes, soap or adequate bedding to children.
Are all US juvenile prisons the same way? No. The 'typically under harsh conditions' is yet another distinction between "concentration camp" and "prison".
That said, many US jails and prisons are horrid, inhumane places.
"No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens but its lowest ones." - Nelson Mandela in Long Walk to Freedom.
This is not true.
I looked into it. It seems that crossing the border not at a port of entry is a misdemeanor offense and typically results in "only" a few days in jail.
I was confusing that with the US law which says that the asylum process does not require entry at a designated port of arrival.
> Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien's status, may apply for asylum in accordance with this section or, where applicable, section 1225(b) of this title. - https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid%3AUSC-prel...
Since the people are being held for more than a few days, and not as a result of a judgement or plea bargain done over a misdemeanor offense, then "illegal" in the context seems more like a red herring. It's like saying that most people are illegal drivers, because few have never exceeded the speed limit.
As for the harsh conditions, I completely agree they should be improved. But that would require funding that the Democrats refuse to provide, and services from other companies that Democrats like these activists are trying to block.
How many prisons are there where the people in detention are free to leave?
That is, isn't your current statement at odds with your previous statement?
Were the Japanese-Americans in the American West during WWII free to leave, and if so, what would happen if they were found in the exclusion zone? That is, do you think those were internment camps?
Not at all. As you've correctly shown, prisons are closer to being concentration camps than ICE detention facilities are. Therefore, if you move the definition far enough to include ICE facilities, you also include prisons.
Again I ask, were Japanese-Americans in the American West held in concentration camps during WWII, or not?
Many of the Japanese-Americans who were there have long fought to have those facilities (correctly, IMO) recognized as concentration camps, and high-level officials at the time, including Roosevelt, referred to them as concentration camps. Do you disagree with them?
Were the Japanese-Americans in the American West during WWII free to leave those facilities, and if so, what would happen if they were found in the exclusion zone?
What does it have to do with ICE detention facilities?
I pointed out that your own statements contradict your own conclusion, in that at least some prisons in the US 1) contain only people who have gone through the court system are the result of a crime, and not merely waiting for a hearing, 2) are not in harsh conditions.
I also pointed out that to many Japanese-Americans held in concentration camps in the American West during WWII, that to them "concentration camp" is a very important term.
Do you agree that those Japanese-Americans were in concentration camps?
If you agree, then why are the ICE detention facilities not concentration camps?
If you disagree, then why weren't they concentration camps, and why did high-level US officials at the time regard them as concentration camps in internal use, while officially avoided that term?
https://www.hrw.org/news/2004/11/21/israel-caterpillar-shoul...
Yes, I am not from US so I have very little understanding of ICE other than a few policy problems on the surface.
Since it would achieve very little, but wouldn't it be better to actually have the contract and has all its profits funded to an organisation against ICE?
After all it is not that ICE in itself that is wrong, it is the policy maker or the government. ( Forgive me if this is not correct )
Funding a political side that abolish ICE, wouldn't that be better?
ICE was less of an issue under the previous administration.
All this energy and effort would be better spent on getting the current admin out. It is how things work in our top down democracy. The problem is that the votes of most Bay Area companies are going toward people who already align with these goals.
TO that end the effort could be better spent on contributing TO organizations that will help advocate for the changes they want. That might be money or time or technical talent...
For what it's worth, getting the Republicans out is almost certainly what this stunt is about. Maybe not consciously, but the groundwork of propaganda that led to villainization of ICE is certainly oriented around combating Trump and his policies, not actually disbanding ICE. Something like this is a way to help supporters feel engaged, passionate, and committed to the left's immigration policies (or at least attacking the right's), so that they will be more likely to vote and vote favorably in the next election.
Breaking up a contract like this won't directly accomplish any other realistic political goals.
- The Intercept published a report by the DHS Office of Inspector General revealing that 1,224 sexual abuse complaints while in immigration custody were filed between January 2010 and June 2017.
-As part of the 2018 Trump administration's zero tolerance policy, nearly 3,000 minors were separated from their parents, or the adults accompanying them
- From 2012 to early 2018, ICE wrongfully arrested and detained 1,488 U.S. citizens, including many who spent months or years in immigration detention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Immigration_and_Customs_E...
As for protests "doing something" they absolutely do in this case,as github is only valuable for Microsoft so long as they acquire and grow a base of developers to use it. The brand already excludes several foreign nations, likely as part of a policy by Redmond to court the present administration. Their failure to maintain an ICE contract without an exodus of developers would slowly turn their newly acquired developer website into a 21st century hotmail.
Github isnt the only player in this field, no matter how badly theyd like developers to think this. Gogs, Gitea, and gitlab especially are all equally suited to quickly and effectively fill any gap Github might present. Most have auto-migration features to quickly ferry code away from Github.
Any data on what the rate post-Trump has been? Or during the Bush years? Because it's hard to reason from this alone.
(Not to mention that the rate of complaints is influenced by a whole bunch of factors other than the rate of incidents - for instance taking complaints seriously might make the number of complaints go up relative to ignoring them or retaliating against the complainants, and rewarding people for making complaints would likely increase the false complaint rate. What we care about is the number of actual incidents, but that's really hard to determine with any level of validity)
On the other hand, is it appropriate for GitHub to fire said employees, or perhaps press charges in the case of illegal activity?
When they have good enough reason to believe that breaking up the contract will achieve a positive end that is worth the violation of freedom of association and precedence for using coercive, destructive and potentially illegal methods.
In this case, I don't think any of the activists can really articulate the goal they think would be reasonably achieved, beyond having a vague personal feeling of satisfaction for making ICE's job harder and punishing their employer for doing something they didn't like. In fact, it seems to me as if temporarily crippling ICE's software development workflow is not likely to improve the situation on the ground for migrants at all.
Of course, it's not...
> Boycotts, strikes, sabotage, sit-ins, work slowdowns, etc has all been used to pressure companies to take actions because of political reasons.
As long as I'm getting downvotes, I might as well add: These actions are usually done to achieve a realistic goal, not simply to punish a company for doing business with your own government because it's currently controlled by the opposition party.
It's not because it's controlled by the opposition party, it's because it's doing something we believe is immoral. The distinction is important.
it's doing something we believe is immoral
There was no broad knowledge of it too.
There was no broad knowledge of it
Uh, no.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security/obama-...
It is the populist left and populist right.
Fair enough. So the goalpost is moved back a bit as to whether or not the U.S. government is morally reprehensible in enforcing border security just as all other governments do.
I take issue with this, as the manner in which other state actors enforce their border security do not all involve similar cruelty to the particular manner in which ICE enforces border security.
But they're in bad shape because Democrats refuse to fund them. What share of the blame do you allocate to the Democrats for that?
Edit: Downvote away, if you want to bury the truth, but this is a fact. Democrats are limiting the number of beds in ICE facilities, causing overcrowding, in a misguided attempt to stop immigration enforcement.
https://www.npr.org/2019/02/11/693460861/ice-detention-beds-...
But how much do you blame the far-left Democrats, who want exactly the same open borders policy you want, for the predicable consequences of their policy of defunding ICE?
And if these activists succeed in blocking ICE's contract with GitHub, and that causes even worse conditions, will you also blame these activists for that?
Congress is divided. Democrats only have the power to block funding, because it's easier to block legislation than to enact it.
When your boss tells you "do X" and you don't agree with it you have choices. Do it, or don't do it and face the consequences.
There are very few people in ICE who can actually make this sort of decision and not risk consequences. Most of the people who COULD set this sort of policy are politically appointed, they aren't the (more or less) apolitical staffers who simply do as they are told (assuming it is respectful of the law).
> After all, that is clearly the intent of Congress
The intent of congress and the president interpreted by the courts, NOT individual ice agents, or for that matter you or I.
> whose duty it is to set policy priorities via budgetary allocations.
Again, that isn't how it works. Budget can be guiding but it is not always absolute, and sometimes it is (earmarks, pork) but in this case the "cut" isn't a "removal of the underlying law that is to be enforced".
How many other open source projects are used in ways the authors didn't intend? Lots of military hardware running mysql and the like. "MySQL Cluster is used by the US Navy to power the flight deck and operations management system on US Navy aircraft carriers.[1] I wonder how many men, women and children were killed by aircraft launched from those carriers powered by mysql.
"The Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) alone hosts 665 SQL Server databases and, of course, NCMI is just part of the DOD ecosystem. As a public affairs spokesperson for the Defense Information Systems Agency said, “[SQL Server] supports hundreds of applications, including email, content management, document management, enterprise search, business intelligence and workflow management.”"[2]
[1] https://www.mysql.com/industry/government/
[2] https://fedtechmagazine.com/article/2016/03/army-and-navy-us...
Grow up, kids. You can't control what others do with your tech. In fact, you helped to create this world. Your works are being used for evil. And "this" is the battle you choose to fight? You're SJW hypocrites.
I don’t really know what will come from this but I’m super interested in seeing what will happen.
This is correct, however, it does not follow that developers have the right to join an organization and force their political demands on management and ownership. Don't like working for a company that collaborates with your government? You're in luck! You're free to leave your job at any time and won't be penalized for it.
It actually does follow that they have a right to do that, as doing that is explicitly protected by US labor law as a concerted organizing activity.
https://www.hklaw.com/en/insights/publications/2016/07/polit...
Anyone at GitHub participating in this can be fired at any time.
>As interpreted by the NLRB, employee communications are "concerted" not only when he or she acts with or on the authority of other employees but also when the employee seeks to initiate, induce or prepare for group action or brings truly group complaints to management.
Richard Stallman, for example, is extremely political. But any implied call for boycots and other sorts of direct action has always been with clear and specific reason that usually has to do with active moral violations by the company itself and not guilt by association. He clearly articulates what he considers to be moral violations on the part of companies such as Netflix and LinkedIn, and none of those violations involve merely doing business with an unpopular (among some) government agency. They almost entirely involve abuses of the provider/consumer relationship.
Meanwhile, he loudly advocates engaging in positive support of causes he cares about and rarely (if ever) advocates canceling an organization for mere association.
The change is not scope. The change is in how easy it has become to quickly organize a mob of people to lash out at a perceived enemy with the most convenient economic sanctions available.
Are these developers external?
It is warranted when the democracy is failing, but as far as I know USA is still holding fair elections at regular intervals.
(I have no affiliation — I was just impressed by it when I moved a couple repos over after getting frustrated with GitHub and GitLab.)
[2] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-first/
But I personally think that uncontrolled migration flows lead to horrific human trafficking problems. The rapes and murders that get committed along this flow because we don't control our border as well as we did 20 years ago are unconscionable.
Yes, the next generation will vote Democrat, due to America's birthright citizen situation. But is that really worth the cost?
Github should help ICE do the best job that it can.
From what I understand we actually control our border much harder than we did 20 or even 30 years ago.
And remember that the numbers in the above graph aren't even population adjusted. This doesn't cover the Trump years, but deportations are even lower under Trump than Obama.
Stopping the flow doesn't stop it, it just pushes to less visible but far harder to control channels. Frequently more dangerous channels like inside containers, refrigerated trucks, boats in the middle of the night.
You will never stop the flow as long as there are third world nations who are being sold "a better life" via people traffickers, or don't have political or economic forces effectively demanding they migrate.
The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882.
> Stopping the flow doesn't stop it, it just pushes to less visible but far harder to control channels. Frequently more dangerous channels like inside containers, refrigerated trucks, boats in the middle of the night.
These dangerous channels tend to be more and more used when internal enforcement mechanisms are abandoned. The dangerous and often fatal migrant flows across the Mediterranean in recent years exploded when countries on the other side stopped turning boats and migrants back. Paradoxically, it's the immigration enthusiasts that lead to the massive flows that then lead to the human tragedies.
The context for the container issue is a container of 31 dead Vietnamese found in the UK recently. The person responsible for that is in effect one of the worst mass murderers in the UK.
Except it's not a "UK container issue", it's a route that's been used and is being used throughout the EU. In the week of the deaths in the UK, there were reports of similar seizures in Germany and IIRC Greece and Holland. It's been commonly reported for years - EU wide. It is not the politicians (of any colour), unless you wish to blame the lack of detailed inspection of every individual lorry and container, i.e. remove all contents, inspect every package, measure for hidden compartments etc. Which given the level of imports and global trade we all indulge in would push severe delays to every product and import. Probably enough to start killing migrants often, and ruling out import/export of perishables as even vaguely viable.
We'd probably have to go back to pre-war open cargo to have even the slightest chance of retaining an import/export economy for perishables.
The migrant camps getting into the EU, and relocating from one EU country to another (e.g. Calais) have gone from strength to strength through clearances, crackdowns and multiple administrations. The issue has been there decades.
> E-verify and crackdowns on employers of illegal immigrants
...is already there, particularly harsh, and applied in more than just one EU nation. Yet has not had the blind bit of effect on immigrants. The problem stems from a Vietnamese paying $20-50k to someone in their country for their "opportunity" for a better life in Paris, London, Berlin - and presumably NYC, Washington and San Diego too...
Many of whom they have paid for a lifelong debt, threats to family and have bought themselves into modern slavery and perhaps a life in something outright illegal or the sex trade. If you're shipped into the underground economy a crackdown on employers and e-verify is targeting exactly the wrong thing, only ever destined to find collateral.
It remains a growth industry in all of the developed nations. Walls and internment camps barely register to discourage while much of the pressure is external profiteering... A complete redesign of import-export capitalism might. No more coffee, tea, bananas and other "exotica" for US and Europe then.
Not to mention the increase in wars and climate impacts forcing people who otherwise wouldn't to consider migration. Those external pressures just keep on rising...
So instead of using the existing systems that we have in place to make sure that everyone is paying their income tax, etc., you'd like to remake all of capitalism?
Your picture of illegal immigrants being quickly caught and deported in the UK and Germany (the nations in the EU where this problem is biggest) is fantastical. The investments in information and enforcement have not been made. As Scandinavian countries go cashless -- making it very hard to cheat on taxes and pay people under the table -- you really have to wonder why Europe as a whole can't do better on immigration.
It seems that preventing and/or detecting illegal entry over the border is the most effective way to reduce the number of known criminal aliens entering the country.
The next generation will vote Democrat if the opposition continues to make absolutely no effort to appeal to the next generation. Don't blame birthright citizenship for bad politics.
However, the agency has - in the course of their duties - committed horrible acts that fly in the face of what Americans claim to value. They continue to do so, and the "Dear Github" letter linked in the article outlines them: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0/
The problem isn't simply that they're enforcing immigration law. It's _how_ they're doing it.
This may be your perspective, but I can assure you that the desire for open borders and "Abolish[ing] ICE" are very real among liberals in America.
There's an example in this very thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704157
Yes, abolishing ICE will take us back to the pre-borders time of... checks notes March 1st, 2003.
Do you have a preferred link with a stolid, well-documented account of the worst abuses?
1. Build a wall to control flow.
2. Allow anyone to come to the border and seek asylum.
3. Have enough humane beds/housing to store them at the border while their application is processed.
4. Hire enough officials and judges to process all claims timeously.
5. Fingerprint, photograph and document anyone that applies.
6. Turn away all individuals that re-apply without new evidence and attempt to clog the system by creating too much load.
Oh and 7: If they come as a family, let them stay together under monitoring.
And corollary to 7 would be 8: Do DNA tests on all family groups to affirm family status to prevent trafficking
At this point, if no hiccups arise, the wall is only necessary for those that wish to bypass a well-functioning system designed to treat people humanely and allow them to get refuge if they are being persecuted.
Edit: fixed formatting.
There's also the issue of parole: releasing asylum seekers if they were initially approved for asylum by the court but the government is appealing the decision. In Damus v. McAleenan. In the recent decision (https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/as... ) the Judge notes that, while parole was granted in over 90% of these cases in 2016, parole hasn't been granted for a single such case in all of 2019.
Somehow I doubt that. There was that whole "being made to drink out of toilets" fiasco, in which the activist (I forget who it was) was the best kind of correct: technically [0].
[0]: https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/03/67/06/17789330/5/920x920.jp...
https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/irpb-4-up...
Simply put the boomers are currently the retirement generation, as they age out of the system, the system will skew less unfairly to the right. (Older voters naturally lean a little right despite most parties of the right having abandoned small c conservatism).
Birthright citizenship is an incredibly foundational American principle. Acting like it's some oddity that exists for political gain is just plain wrong.
This detail is in the article, but the headline feels like embellishment by omission.
> ICE conducts random violent raids throughout the United States, invades communities and workplaces with military equipment, detains busses and trains, and arrests people solely on the basis of their perceived nationality, skin color, or native language. Their agents lurk outside of schools in order to abduct the children of immigrants and force their families to surrender themselves into custody. ICE imprisons people in deplorable and unsanitary conditions and denies them medical care.
The dislike of ICE appears much more prominent in more left-leaning areas such as the coastal cities. As with any topic there are many moderates on either side with their own opinions and also more vocal, radical, opinions as well.
ICE releases teen US citizen wrongfully detained for over 3 weeks:
https://nypost.com/2019/07/24/ice-releases-us-citizen-18-wro...
ICE wrongly arrested over 1,000 US citizens in recent years:
https://thehill.com/latino/385261-ice-wrongly-arrested-over-...
U.S. Citizen Who Was Held By ICE For 3 Years Denied Compensation By Appeals Court:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/01/540903038...
How ICE Works to Strip Citizenship from Naturalized Americans:
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/14/ice-denaturalization-nat...
U.S. Citizens Targeted by ICE: U.S. Citizens Targeted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Texas:
https://www.cato.org/publications/immigration-research-polic...
And that's not touching upon some of their more grievous ethical violations.
ICE is effectively a way for the executive branch to do away with due process.
She is also of the opinion that the cause of the refugees seeking refuge is the bad behaviour of the Americans government, and she fundamentally opposes borders.
As I’m neither American nor a resident of America, I cannot vouch for how accurate her beliefs are, only that those are her beliefs.
Edit:
Just remembered, she went to one of the child detention facilities as part of her campaign support efforts in… I think it was the most recent California governor’s election? So she’s probably quite justified in her beliefs.
In reality ICE has a tough job of having to enforce borders when the extreme liberals have a belief of "no borders".
Unfortunately countries can't operate without borders.
All the other "evil" things listed in this thread can be torn apart one by one, it's a thin spin and morally it all falls apart when you realize that the main atrocities are the girls being raped (33% according to doctors w/o borders) that are dragged across the desert.
Blame the people dragging kids over, not the people giving them shelter.
To the "lock" comment below:
Child-locks on car doors are locks on the outside. It's for protection.
And they aren't dragging their kids, it's usually "a" kid.
They're doing it because they have incentive. Yes everyone wants a better life, but we can't support the world's population.
Every country has quotas, if you say otherwise you're living in a fairy tale.
And “shelter” is what people like my ex want to provide. Shelters have the locks on the inside, though, and the detention centres have the locks on the outside.
No, she doesn't want to provide them shelter. She wants to make them citizens, by the millions, with no plan for how our economy and society will integrate them.
If she's really being honest, she'll admit that she's looking to import individuals who will be dependent on the state for support, thus securing a large new voting block for her political party.
Because life sucks in many parts of the world. Ever wonder how the borderless utopia your ex supports is actually supposed to scale?
> And “shelter” is what people like my ex want to provide.
She wants to provide it, or she wants others to provide it? How many people is she personally willing to host in her home and materially support?
She wants to provide. And she’d break herself to support as many as possible at her own expense if she could.
If everyone like her was allowed to, there wouldn’t be any cost to anyone else.
Out of interest, why not let the migrants build their own houses? It’s not like houses are a finite resource.
The people who are overly compassionate here are contributing to a human trafficking apparatus that is truly ghastly in its scale.
I’ve never understood the attitude that a USA-internal-state border is really more important than an international border. I get the benefit of stopping smuggling and dealing with different sales taxes, but that applies to both.
If they are so concerned, team up, pool money and buy enough MS stocks (like an activist investor) and direct Microsoft's actions.
Until then, Microsoft and Satya Nadella must do what is best for their stock holders not to activists of any kind.
If any of the devs / employees are not happy with the direction MS is heading, leave the employer. If enough devs leave, MS may tweak it's approach.
And besides, if a concerned group REALLY wanted to change things and not just whine they would simply raise billions of dollars to accrue a significant block of voting shares in one of the world's largest corporations to change policy via board action!
This is just not true and I warn everyone from believing this is the case. GitHub is based on git which can be hosted anywhere and by anyone. The features which GitHub provide above and beyond git can be replicated with some work (either by switching to Gitlab, which you can host yourself, or using one of the other alternatives like Gitea) if you want to.
Is GitHub useful? Yeah! Is it indispensable? No!
We live in a system of laws and it has created a lot of certainty for actors within the system.
I personally believe that GitHub can do whatever they feel is right because they're a private company, but if this were the case, isn't that pretty undemocratic?
But I don't think that's a claim we should accept - frankly, there are plenty of alternatives to GitHub. Moreover, there are plenty of alternatives to git itself. They are viable and in-use today - git has not always existed and will not always be the tool of choice. And continuing further down the stack... people wrote software even before version control existed as we know it today. You do not need version control to write software (although, I'm sure we both agree it's a good idea).
Even if we accept that ICE needs software to do its job - which I don't personally think is true, but neither of us can really claim to know - it's categorically untrue that they need GitHub specifically. They have a myriad of ways they could accomplish their goals without GitHub.
But there's another element of your argument we should discuss, and it's one I've heard from CEOs recently - that it's somehow "undemocratic" for a company to deny software to the government, because it privileges the voices of a minority of people.
That argument makes very little sense to me. It first conflates "democracy" with a company declining to do business with the government. Democracy is a form of government - the actions of businesses are not and cannot be "undemocratic" - they aren't the government.
Setting aside rhetorical annoyances, though - the claim you're making is that a company's actions are depriving the majority electorate of what they voted for, and that they voted for ICE in its current form. I don't think the majority of the country voted on it, and even if we assume they did indirectly via the presidential election ... it's not a contested fact that the current president lost the popular vote. We can't even say a "majority" of people support this without contorting ourselves, or without redefining "majority" to mean "the majority of electoral college votes"... and we get into seriously absurd territory there.
Yet we can even dig deeper: if we accept that it's somehow "undemocratic" for a company to deny services to the government - we must also accept the counter-claim that all companies must provide services to the government upon request. They're two sides of the same coin - if you cannot refuse, then you must. That's a scary thing, in my mind - and I do not want to live in a country where a company cannot legally refuse to do business with the government. Current legal theory in the US doesn't support that, and I hope it doesn't change.
And finally - even if we accept all of the claims you make (the few explicit ones made, and the many implicit ones that must be made to support the explicit claims): why on earth couldn't the government write the software itself? The federal government employs hundreds of software developers. More than GitHub! If GitHub's software is required, and the agency cannot function without it, and there is no alternative available to the government in the market - what stops them from writing the software themselves?
At worst, ICE can mail around zip archives as source control like the old days. It doesn’t give them new capabilities like some signal processing service.
Basically, the devs here don’t have a compelling case - quit and start their own scm hub and pick their own customers. If they can achieve a business as such, then props.
If GitHub was the exclusive provider of some important service - like a utility - I would feel strongly that they should continue to offer the service despite political differences (even if not strictly classified as a utility).
On the other hand, since there are plenty of alternatives, there's no huge & lasting damage that could result from Github choosing not to have a particular customer - and as such they should have more freedom to deny any particular customer. As such, I think it's should be fine, ethically speaking, to discontinue a professional relationship with ICE should Github management decide that continuing a relationship with ICE is counter to their values or something, in which case the devs do have a case they can try to make (that ICE is counter to their values).
Tell me how it could be worse because of software.
if rejectApplication = true { …
This was a deliberate decision to not track and software won't help.
I don't think it is fair to make a judgement that this is a politically charged action rather than just business as usual.
The decision to continue to service specific entities is a political move, same as selling weapons to Saudi Arabia or Iran, or the stance the NBA has taken with China regarding its pro-HK player. It’s why finance institutions have some amount of checking that they’re not being used to help wire funds to terrorist groups.
Now government discounts are common way if you are expanding to Federal or State government clientele. For Enterprise the discounts will have a different name or flavor thats about it.
If some one prove a case that a rabid anti-immigration activist salesman or executive gave this service pennies on dollar to ICE, you can argue for walking back on this contract, otherwise its Enterprise Sales doing what it is supposed to do.. make it rain and improve top-line.
I mean, yes? Working with China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, etc. are stances.
Imagine if companies started bowing down to this kind of behavior and stopped supporting politically contentious entities. There is a large portion of the country who would agree that Planned Parenthood is doing things just as bad as ICE. Should companies stop supporting Planned Parenthood because large groups of people are offended by their services?
The domestic government organization is highly controversial along political lines.
” There is a large portion of the country who would agree that Planned Parenthood is doing things just as bad as ICE. Should companies stop supporting Planned Parenthood because large groups of people are offended by their services?”
I mean, yes, thats exactly what happens. Planned Parenthood was dropped from the government medical service program as a provider. Several organizations are often criticized for working with the police- we have a thread on the front page right now about the DoJ being given personal info via Google.
Let's say GitHub was working with domestic intelligence agencies to add backdoors to various repos for the sake of increasing US security. Would you say that is apolitical?
Or does it only become political when you disagree with it?
You know there’s a clear distinction between directly serving an organization and serving an individual that happens to work for an organization. Don’t be disingenuous now.
They would become political the minute they make a choice of who can visit which site. Providing services to an organization is not political at all. The NRA or Chineese government using Windows does not make Microsoft political (for that reason).
The stance that you’ll sell to anyone regardless of politics is a political choice. It has, past and present, been used to absolve oneself for one’s choices and provide cover for terrible things
People react negatively to this (by downvoting my comments, for instance) because acknowledging one’s responsibility is frightening.
I'm the ISP on your area, and whoops- I won't let my internet be used by LGBT activists. I'm Tesla and won't sell cars to people who get Coal powered electricity. I'm Google and I won't let Republicans search on my site. I'm the electric company and won't let my power be used for abortion clinics. I'm Microsoft and I won't tell software to Gay people. I'm Apple not selling their phones to people who hunt.
I assume you would support those above scenarios? There are two options. Be a-political in your business dealings, or be political. There is no middle ground.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather live in a world where companies act a-politically then ones that don't.
Well yes, that's generally how moral choices work.
Not to Godwin, but it is the perfect example here: was it okay for companies to provide goods and services to the Nazi regime, which facilitated the atrocities they committed? We don't need to conjure up scenarios, we have plenty of real-world current historical ones that illustrate the point. Boycotts of South Africa in the 80s, for instance, played a part in bringing down the apartheid system. Would it have been better for the companies involved to instead declare their "apolitical" stance and make sales to that regime?
Why is "just following orders" not an acceptable defense for personal wrongs, but "just doing business" okay?
>I don't know about you, but I'd rather live in a world where companies act a-politically then ones that don't.
But again, there's no such thing as " a-politically". That's a political choice to support the status quo.
For example, the 80s and 90s the gay rights movement came to prominence, and fought against both legal and social discrimination against homosexuals. If a company said, "Look, we're not taking a position either way, we just want to do business and not get into politics, so we're not going to address this", that's a facially "apolitical" stance. But that stance, then, is then one that supports the then-current reality that legal and social discrimination against homosexuals still existed.
There's nothing "apolitical" about that.
Don't change the topic. This is the sweeping assertion I was addressing.
Plenty of things are apolitical.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Personally, I don't find the view that "nothing is apolitical" to be silly.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Clarifying that "all" should be "most" is a good contribution. Writing off the comment with an insult is not. Especially if you don't even offer an example of one of the "plenty of things" to justify your claim.
In a casual forum, people use casual language, like using "all" for "most". Context matters, as when the comment is in response to saying something isn't political by an overly-narrow definition of "political"
I would posit that common sense obviated the need to justify this particular claim. As in, performing your morning dump rituals, for example, isn't a "political" act. Does that really have to be spelled out?
The reality of the world is that no company operates in a vacuum. If a political organization gains power it wouldn't have had because you willingly entered into a contract with it, you are absolutely responsible for that. Pretending otherwise is just trying to absolve yourself of the real harm that you have done.
If people were more cognizant of the effects the things they made put out into the world, we'd be living in a better one. Claiming you have no responsibility doesn't absolve you of anything.
No.
When I buy coffee (or chocolate), I make the choice that even though I am not sure the coffee doesn't involve slave labor, I am okay with buying it. Perhaps if I'm completely unaware of the slavery involved or the ineffectiveness of no-slavery certification I can claim ignorance, but that lasts only until someone informs me.
So while I disagree with what they were literally saying (because of that tree), I think the more limited message they were (at least in my opinion) meaning has far more truth to it.
any organization or person with a capacity to be aware of politics and the consequences of their actions is political.
https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2019-10-31...
Doesn't sound very apolitical.
The analogous action for GitHub to Blizzard’s would be booting a user ICE doesn't like to maintain friendly ties with the latter. That hasn't happened.
GitLab modified their customer acceptance so that it gives them an option to refuse a client, saying that they will reach such a decision on a case-by-case basis: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...
...while Chef's CEO openly said that they will not renew their contract with ICE and CBP, as well as to donate the equivalent revenue of their current contracts to charities that help people impacted: https://blog.chef.io/an-important-update-from-chef/
> After deep introspection and dialog within Chef, we will not renew our current contracts with ICE and CBP when they expire over the next year. Chef will fulfill our full obligations under the current contracts.
It’s not it being your own government vs. a foreign government that’s at issue. It’s what they’re doing to people.
that's some authoritarian nonsense
If they are successful here, the activists will not declare “mission accomplished”. Nope. They will then search for other contracts to be cancelled. And then there will be infighting as to why one should remain and another cancelled as disagreements mount.
Don’t get into politics when you’re providing enterprise services. Stay away from it as far as you can.
I am totally for the argument that enterprise services servicing specific entities is apolitical, and discussing the merits thereof. But I believe this is a slippery slope fallacy that weakens your argument and is hyperbolic.
A legitimate logical fallacy of the "slippery slope" variety is when one observes a transition from state S_0 to state S_1 via some step/action X taken, and without evidence or justification (!) assumes/claims that the step/action X will therefore be repeated indefinitely until the system evolves to state S_2, S_3, S_4, ... S_n (where S_n is presumably a state we all consider to be undesirable). The "without evidence or justification" part here is EXTREMELY important. If you actually have evidence or justification of a slippery slope, it is not a fallacy; it becomes a valid argument.
Tip: When you see what looks like a slippery slope fallacy at first glance, it's probably best to give the opposing argument the benefit of the doubt by asking for evidence/justification for the induction (S_0 -> S_1) -> S_N. In most cases, some evidence will be provided to justify. If you disagree with the justification, the debate continues in that direction (which is good, because this is productive).
It's the same on some level as freedom of speech. We "kinda" used to have a general standard about what we disallowed. But that's being challenged in recent years, and from my perspective, is only being driven by outrage rather than actual discussions to figure out a good and clearly defined common ground that acts in the best interests of our entire society.
Is it a slippery slope fallacy?
If we do A then B must happen and I think if we do A then B will happen are two different claims. The latter does not explain the reasoning and is thus not a slippery slope.
To give an example.
If we legalize same sex marriage, polygamy will become legal because of it.
This is a slippery slope slope because it is directly saying one will cause the other just because the first one will happen.
I think if we legalize same sex marriage, polygamy will eventually become legal. (Unsaid reasoning behind the opinion: Upon re-evaluating the existing laws in our push to legalize same sex marriage, combined with an existing acceptance of polyamory, we will see that there is no justifiable reason to keep 3+ adults who wish to form a family from doing so, and though the laws will be a bit more difficult to accommodate them, we will lose any sense of 'wrongness' that is used to justify the ban.)
This is not a slippery slope. The original claim is just not displaying their logic behind their opinion, but that does not mean their logic is a slippery slope.
The difficulty is that in the English language, the two can be written the same way and one won't know the intent without asking the author.
Just to use an absurd example, let's imagine an alternate universe where Hitler and the Nazis were in power in the U.S. here in 2019. Would it be acceptable, then, for Github to cancel their contracts? Or would that be playing politics too?
Please note: I'm not suggesting ICE is equivalent to Nazis. I'm simply suggesting there is a limit to your assertion that enterprise services should always avoid politics. It's easy to bucket politics as this thing that doesn't really matter. We're privileged as hell in the U.S. in 2019 that that is mostly true. But for the majority of world history, politics has dire consequences for major segments of the population.
With respect to ICE, they absolutely are violating some pretty fundamental human rights. I don't think it's beyond the pale for technology companies (often heavily reliant on immigrant labor) to take a stand here.
1. Release parents and children into the US regardless of legal status.
2. Keep children in jail with their parents.
3. Separate children by sending them back to their country.
4. Separate children by placing them somewhere in the US (either with family or social services).
5. Send the entire family back to their country they came from.
Keeping innocent kids in jail is not right. Separating kids is not right. Having open borders is not practical. Sending back people to their own country is not right.
There is no solution. Many people who make the same argument as you would say just let them into the US but it is not practical when you have a welfare system. Many who criticize the current system even Bernie Sanders [0] says you can't have open borders since it would cause too much strain with our welfare system.
So what is the solution?
[0] https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/08/bernie-sanders-ope...
And yes, crossing the border Illegally is illegal by definition.
What else do they do to violate human rights?
The thing is while we disagree with those companies and their government, there isn’t a mechanism to address those issues. Just like there wasn’t a way to address the Gulags.
That has to be addressed by the people internally in that jurisdiction. It has to be addressed by the laws available. Fortunately the US is better at following our own system of laws that say China where on paper people might be better off than us, but sadly their constitution is simply a formality.
So your question is not answered very simply and does not have a simple solution. For example, we were not about to invade the USSR over the Gulags, we were not about to invade China over its multiple purges, despite the horrendous atrocities. I can think of Vietnam as the only country invading another to stop mass systemic purges when they went into Cambodia.
By your line of reasoning, no one in the west should’ve have supported divestment from South Africa during apartheid, even though that was a wildly effective strategy.
You don’t wait for power to grow a conscience, you force it into a corner with your own and the solidarity you build with others.
We do some of those things with DPRK, Iran and Russia, among others. Still, some countries are more resilient than others of more stubborn than others and will press on. Iran is a decent example. We sanction and apply other pressures, they go in killing and persevere despite all that.
Most everyone nowadays seem to wander around thinking their views are obviously correct, and the people who disagree with them are either ignorant, immoral, or arguing in bad faith.
Rationally that doesn’t make sense. No one knows everything, and everyone has blind spots. Most people are doing their best to have decent opinions.
So we have this kind of genius political and economic system that assumes everyone is going to be biased and small minded, and mostly just act in their own interests as they perceive them, and yet things mostly come out pretty ok.
With that in mind, it follows that corporations should mostly just pursue profits, even though that doesn’t sound right. But certainly they should not take stances on the “issues of the day” ... especially if they are publicly held companies.
Your scenario doesn’t make sense because our system is designed so that voting and legislating and regulating and so forth address the hypothetical Hitler problem. The corporation has a different role to play.
If corporations actually mostly pursued profits, there'd be nothing left but fire.
Rather, corporations should (according to an extension of your argument, which I don't necessarily agree with) pursue the goals of the people who make up the corporation. Except that doesn't really happen; corporations are rather a power-multiplier for those in charge of them, subject to the constraints of the corporate structure that forces those people to prioritise profit over their own goals.
Thus, it makes sense for people to lobby large companies en-masse; they can't use the corporations as force-multipliers, but they can use their ability to threaten the companies' profit sources (and so direct the companies' motivations) to their shared interest.
I glossed over a lot of steps in my hacker news comment about a specific context.
The context is some people trying to get github to take a stance, an opinion, about a department of the us government.
It’s hard to be creative enough to imagine a more partisan or divisive topic, where moral consensus is effectively impossible.
Within this context is is absolutely safe to describe the role of the for profit (public in this case) corporation - as opposed branches of the government, or non profit organizations, or unions, or groundswell movements or any of the various emergent structures you might want to throw in here - as seeking profit.
...at least, that's what IBM claims happened to its German subsidiary during WW2: https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/1388.wss
(I think my favorite part of that book is learning that Hitler literally gave Watson a medal.)
Many here are slave to the money god and have a capitalism-derived definition of morality. It's a VC forum after all it isn't _that_ surprising :/
How can they avoid it? Refusing to take some action is still making a decision.
That's good. Someone in Github will have to calculate the cost of doing business with such entities.
Up to this point, doing business with socially despicable entities had no cost--now it does. It's time for business to have to evaluate that cost.
That it furthers your goals is not relevant to Github's accounting.
Is it?
Are there not people that will prefer to do business with companies that don't engage with such despicable entities? Are there not companies that specifically want to do business with those who engage such despicable entities? (Hint: there are several funds and private equity groups that do just that.)
However, Github's current actions certainly give me pause as to whether I should continue doing business with them--especially for $50,000. Really. $50,000. That's a price to be celebrated with an entity that kills children?
Yeah, I think I avoiding github just jumped up my priority list--a lot.
Do ex felons get rejected? Does every Russian and Chinese national have to swear not to work for their governments?
No. Don’t get into that business. The people through politicians can set policies.
Corporations ARE political entities--at the state level, to boot. It's only recently that "corporations solely exist to make profit for shareholders" has perniciously taken root. Corporations used to have to at least acknowledge "the public good" in order to get a charter. People have forgotten this.
Perhaps it's time to bring it back.
Companies make choices of who they partner with based on PR all of the time. GitHub isn't immune to this. I don't want to support companies partnering with organizations I don't like, whether it's ICE or e.g. Nazis or ISIS.
How is this not the mother of all slippery slopes?
Should all political parties - apart from the one you currently support - ought to be denied service from, well, any and every possible service provider?
Companies make or break partnerships based on how they affect public opinion (see the recent Chick-fil-A situation)
Which particular fragment of "public opinion"?
Allowing public opinion to directly and immediately govern whether something is allowed to happen risks handing power to tiny but vocal - or simply well-funded - groups.
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
Have you considered the extent to which your opinion is influenced by the long-running political propaganda campaigns designed to villainize ICE as much as possible and discourage hard realistic discussion about solving problems? I'm not saying you have to agree with ICE'd methods or what they are doing, but the border situation is not as simple as political opportunists would have you believe.
I ask largely because from what I have read (from multiple sources that I trust), the claims made about ICE are largely true - in that they are engaging in inhumane actions against people at the border. To me, from what I have read, it seems well-documented and supported with a lot of testimony, first-hand accounts, video, and images. Satellite photos, even.
That's why I'm curious why you're asserting that it's propaganda. I don't see evidence of that.
ICE doesn't conduct border operations, that's the domain of Border Patrol. Considering you don't even know this basic fact, what else might you be completely wrong about?
I’ll also note that you are yourself not accurate in stating that “ICE doesn’t conduct border operations” - in fact, ice.gov/about says specifically:
> The ERO directorate upholds U.S. immigration law at, within, and beyond our borders.
Thus it is not accurate to say that “ICE doesn’t conduct border operations” - they themselves say they do.
I think what you’re trying to do is set up then knock down a straw man: I never said anything about patrolling borders, and I’m well aware that CBP is the agency literally patrolling the border. You picked a specific interpretation of a broad statement in a blatant attempt to make me look dumb, which goes against what HN ostensibly stands for.
OK, I'll bite. You originally stated: "...in that they are engaging in inhumane actions against people at the border. To me, from what I have read, it seems well-documented and supported with a lot of testimony, first-hand accounts, video, and images. Satellite photos, even."
What, exactly, are you referring to? What ICE operations have occurred at the border involving any of the above claims?
> I think what you’re trying to do is set up then knock down a straw man: I never said anything about patrolling borders, and I’m well aware that CBP is the agency literally patrolling the border.
No, I assumed that your reference to "satellite photos" at the border involving ICE is probably wrong considering the border itself isn't really their domain. Whatever the ERO directorate "upholding U.S. immigration law at" the border may mean, it probably doesn't involve any spectacular incidents captured on satellite photos or video. But maybe I'm wrong and you have a source to show me otherwise.
> You picked a specific interpretation of a broad statement in a blatant attempt to make me look dumb, which goes against what HN ostensibly stands for.
Not knowing the exact specificity of what government agency performs what functions in a particular area doesn't imply stupidity; so no, I wasn't attempting to make you look dumb. I was, however, attempting to get you to consider that you could be wrong. [Edit: reading my original comment again, I will concede it was a bit of a smug snipe. Clearly too smug, considering what you found on the ICE about page.]
As to the original request for information, while not unreasonable at all, it would take some time to competently source and present. But I will note that to me it seems obvious that the rhetoric surrounding ICE really only started in earnest after Donald Trump took office. I never observed this level of frothing criticism of that agency under the Obama administration, even though Obama's ICE, by and large, operated exactly the same way.
Do you disagree with this assessment?
1- His administration took a bad situation and made it objectively worse, and people (rightfully) got upset about that. Across all border-related agencies, things seemed to take a nosedive: Obama’s DHS(? ICE? I forget which one specifically) wasn’t in court arguing that they had no legal obligation to provide soap to detainees, for example.
2- People absolutely overlooked a lot of what Obama’s administration did wrong. That’s a fair criticism: I know I personally should have paid more attention.
I think what bothers me about your question is that it seems to imply that one shouldn’t be upset about things because “the other guy did it.” But that doesn’t excuse this administration. And I’m furious that Obama’s administration did similar things, now that I know! And if Obama’s administration were still somehow in charge... I would loudly protest them as well.
It’s wrong, no matter which administration is doing it.
Even if it’s not in their name.
Only time that would be reasonable is if your democracy is failing. Would you say that USA's democracy is failing currently?
Well that's quite the pigeonhole, and I will not duck my head to enter.
I refute your premise as fundamentally un-American. As a business, you are under no obligation to compete for government contracts. That notion, IMO, would be a sure sign of a broken democracy. I'd describe such a policy as authoritarian. It's happened before, under martial law; a constitutional mechanism to temporarily suspend democracy. It's happened elsewhere, under communist regimes.
Of all things, the third amendment informs how the founders might address this. Don't see that one every day.
Claiming that there are no political consequences for your actions is simply burying your head in the sand. You have a measurable effect on the world around you. If you do something, you are responsible for the effect it has on the world around you. You don't get to just dump toxic waste into the environment and claim it's an externality so it's not your problem. Your political effect on the world is just as real as any other effect you have on the environment, you are responsible.
However, ICE will do what they are told and allowed to do and I don't see how this makes any difference. If they're forced off GitHub, they'll just take more taxpayer money to migrate to another platform because those above them in the hierarchy support what they're doing. The anger toward ICE is valid, but just like in medicine, treating a symptom does nothing toward treating the root cause.
imagine if someone told you that it won't make a difference to give you a painkiller for your broken leg because it won't cure the broken leg.
the root cause is not easily accessible. but that doesn't mean all other approaches to lightening the burden are useless. it means that a plurality of approaches will be necessary to solve the problem.
It is immeditately political the moment you sell your product to people working along politically charged lines, for political ends. It is no different (speaking of being political or apolitical, that is) to US companies selling software to the Chinese state. You have posited that technology is neutral without anything to back that up, and in opposition to the current scholarship on the intersection beween technology and politics[0].
[0] https://cris.maastrichtuniversity.nl/portal/files/615442/gui...
Ice needs to find a new tool and the people at Github who didn't like it can pat themselves on the back and say "we did something"
The problem is that all the energy and effort they are putting into this, doesn't fix the fundamental underlying issue that caused this problem in the first place.
It is a "feel good" move by the people at GitHub, if they don't like what is going on they should quit their jobs and write software for an activist group, or many activist groups... There are plenty of ways their talents could be put to use making actual change!
No, it is not.
Choosing to do business with the PRC is political. Period.
If that means the PRC will develop their own services and not have access to the rest of the world, fine.
The "China will open up" rhetoric was wrong. Since it was wrong, it's time for the West to change tack.
I fully support the rights of employees to peacefully encourage their organizations to weigh the moral components of business decisions. It is obvious that, left to their own devices, large businesses will support slavery, genocide, and any number of horrors in the pursuit of profit - something has to restrain their behavior and it certainly isn't going to come from the C-level without serious pressure being applied.
the camps serve no productive purpose, yet here we are with a bunch of them in the country anyway.
If these people attempting to enter were simply turned around and immediately deported, the same people claiming that these are “actual in real life holocaust-2.0-about-to-happen concentration camps” would be upset about the “barbarism” of this stance instead of holding them while they wait for hearings.
[1]: The tribunal hearings are effectively a kangaroo court -- there are cases of pre-teen children being asked to make a legal defense without an attorney or their parents.
[2]: https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/11/27/ic...
So my question remains. When all of these agencies are practising legal entrapment, would you agree never to provide services to them?
Trump has asked for additional funding for supplies including beds and toothbrushes. Trump as the head of the executive branch is in charge of ICE. So ICE has effectively asked for additional supplies. Congress hasn't done anything about that. It is not ICE's fault.
>entrapping legally-resident students into violating their visa conditions by setting up a fake university
This was started under Obama. Surely if this was a big issue then Github shouldn't have gotten into the contract in the first place.
Was that before or after the public outcry over it? Also, there's the separation of parents and children which he definitely hasn't done anything about.
> This was started under Obama.
How is that a defense? It's still unethical.
Trump advocated additional funding for ICE while he was still a candidate. As far as I know he did not specifically mention beds, toothbrushes, soap, etc until he was in office. Since practically nobody cared about the poor conditions of ICE detention centers while Obama was in office Trump may not have even know that they did not have enough supplies. I am unsure if Trump would have advocated for additional supplies if he had known.
>Also, there's the separation of parents and children which he definitely hasn't done anything about.
What is he supposed to do? There are 5 different things he can do and none of them are good.
1. Release parents and children into the US regardless of legal status.
2. Keep children in jail with their parents.
3. Separate children by sending them back to their country.
4. Separate children by placing them somewhere in the US (either with family or social services).
5. Send the entire family back to their country they came from.
A lot of the who make your point say to release them into the US. The problem is it would put a large strain on the welfare system. Even Bernie Sanders and others like him have explicitly said that it is not practical with the current system.
So what would you do with the children?
>How is that a defense? It's still unethical.
I am saying if setting up fake universities and entrapping people was a big deal then the deal between Github and ICE never should have been entered into. Github did not start the deal under Trump. They started it under Obama. Almost nobody seemed to care when Obama did the same thing Trump is doing. The media wasn't talking about it multiple times a day. People were not making speeches while crying about how awful it was. It feels like people only care now that Trump is in power. It was well known what was happening with ICE (and INS before them). It feels so political. That is all I was trying to convey.
> This government agency is actively committing numerous crimes and human rights violations, in contravention of both US and international law. ICE conducts random violent raids throughout the United States, invades communities and workplaces with military equipment, detains busses and trains, and arrests people solely on the basis of their perceived nationality, skin color, or native language. Their agents lurk outside of schools in order to abduct the children of immigrants and force their families to surrender themselves into custody. ICE imprisons people in deplorable and unsanitary conditions and denies them medical care. They separate the children they imprison from their families and offer them for adoption by others via agencies with shady histories. ICE agents subject both the adults and children they imprison to horrific physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. They continue to commit these heinous acts in defiance of multiple judgments issued by US courts and condemnations by humanitarian organizations. Many people, including children, have now died in their custody.
I understand some people just don't like immigrants for many reasons outside of racism/bigotry/xenophobia. Economics and culture being two of many reasonable reasons to dislike immigration.
But having a wing of government acting like the taliban does nothing but empower actual racist/xenophobic/bigoted individuals to enact their deepest sadistic fantasies on these people. This is clearly not simply immigration enforcement.
I support immigration enforcement. I do not support ICE. Supporting ICE is supporting and empowering racism and xenophobia full stop.
Source? Citation?
> Supporting ICE is supporting and empowering racism and xenophobia full stop.
No, it isn't.
In the face of all the horrific reports coming from those jail cells, tell me how actively supporting ICE is not. Hell, name even one government facility where numerous children have died because of neglect and abuse at the hands of government officials.
And again, I can guarantee that illegal immigration will not stop because of ICE's shock tactics. It's just another hoop to jump through. Some of these people escaped the clutches of cartels, for chrissake. You underestimate the resolve of people who find no hope in their current situations.
I said in another comment the way to stop illegal immigration is via jailing business owners that hire illegal immigrants. This is just the war on drugs all over again. You're jailing the users, not the pushers.
All ICE does is enable actual racists and bigots (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/15/us/politics/border-patrol...) to enact their fantasies of making immigrants lives a living hell.
Can you state what immigration enforcement you support? The level of hyperbole in your response indicates that you see all immigration enforcement as cruel and unusual.
ICE is simply trying to pull weeds when what you need to do is kill the root. Illegal immigrants come because of many reasons, but primary is to cheat the system that legal immigrants use to find a better life.
If you make the job opportunities sparse, you kill the desire at the root. Open borders is a problem, especially in today's climate change world but it exists because people are willing to employ illegals for below market rates. It's the worst of all worlds for all, except the employer who gets off with cheap labour.
If we do this, we'll finally see if the xenophobes put their money where their mouth is and take back the jobs illegal immigrants have "stolen" from them.
David Heinemeier Hansson, @dhh (Ruby on Rails)
Tatiana Mac, @TatianaMac (Self-Defined Dictionary)
If ICE are treated as a pariah by mainstream commercial institutions it may counteract the "normalization" of what they do.
Github is large and pretty well known. Their choice, either way, will set an example.
Why would you go with a company that may pull your contract when you haven't changed what you do in 20 years? Github signed the contact knowing what ICE does and didn't care years ago. Now its suddenly an issue.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21706133
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21704192
I doubt anyone really thinks ICE in 2003 is actually the same as ICE in 2019. Not anyone who's paying any attention.
ICE patrolled the border. ICE stopped people illegally crossing the border. ICE jailed people suspected of crossing the border. ICE separated children. Nothing has changed in that regards.
The other issue is that the posts don't say if things are actually getting better. For example the first claim is "The Intercept published a report by the DHS Office of Inspector General revealing that 1,224 sexual abuse complaints while in immigration custody were filed between January 2010 and June 2017." We need to see the rates before 2010 or we need to see the rate for each year. Based on what that person posted we cannot draw any conclusions if things are actually improving or not. If things are improving then people shouldn't really be boycotting.
Is it the immigration policy, the immigration court system? individual agents/employees?
Doesn't every country have a counterpart to ICE that handles immigration rules?
Are there any countries that allow people to come and go without identifying themselves and having permission?
How is requiring identification and a visa (authorization) human rights abuse? If that's the standard for human rights abuse, then how can we own/lease/operate a car, have a bank account, rent an apartment, have an email account, access the internet, and so on?
Isn't identification and permission justified merely for the sake of bureaucracy? How else would you be able to keep an email inbox and go back to it without someone saying its you, and/or the mail being lost?
Maybe immigration policies could be improved, what specifically is it that could be done better?