Comment by csydas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csydas | Hacker News Reader

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It's not a punishment for punishment's sake, individuals were allegedly affected by SpaceX's incorrect (and apparently illegal) policy, and they lodged a complaint via the official channels.

https://www.justice.gov/media/1311656/dl?inline

There are 17 specific examples of instances where Musk/SpaceX were publicly and repeatedly disseminating incorrect information about their hiring requirements (sections 34-51), the appropriate governmental department looked into it, found out that yes, Musk and SpaceX officials were repeatedly providing incorrect and false information, and that the complaints they received were legitimate complaints.

It's not a targeted attack; persons had legitimate grievances against SpaceX, went to the appropriate governmental departments to register their complaints, the department investigated and found out that indeed, Musk and SpaceX were violating the law. The emphasis on Musk is only because there are multiple instances cited in the filing where Musk himself was spreading the incorrect information on his social media sites consistently and repeatedly. Even if we give the most benign understanding that SpaceX just misunderstood the laws, it still was incorrect behavior that needs to be stopped.

I really cannot see this as political motivated; regardless of the reasons SpaceX did this, they were not compliant with the law and actively spreading incorrect information. If it was any other company not Musk-adjacent, probably we wouldn't be having this conversation :) Instead we have another example where Musk and Musk-adjacent companies are being held to tasks for the things they say and actions they've taken which have negatively affected others improperly.

It’s utterly malicious on the part of the government. Note the only complainant on the lawsuit is the Justice department, who have standing as part of the law. No one harmed individual is suing SpaceX.

The idea that SpaceX is pursuing some invidious scheme of anti-immigrant discrimination is ludicrous. If you read the complaint, every incident DOJ cites really appears to be a good faith attempt to comply with ITAR rules.

- "No one harmed individual is suing SpaceX."

I think it is right and proper that low-income victims of labor law crimes don't need to be able to afford attorneys to resolve grievances, and that there exist public institutions that litigate on their behalf, for free.

The DoJ should not be representing non-citizens against citizens. This is not in dispute.

The DoJ should enforce laws within in its jurisdiction, and that should not be in dispute. Your suggestion that they turn a blind eye to crimes committed against victims belonging to a certain category is odious and lacking civic principles.

Our constitution applies to all humans on our soil except where it specifies otherwise.

That is a strict constructionist view which is widely and appropriately mocked.

English common law informs literally every word of the constitution. "The People" are the demos. dêmos (δῆμος): “ordinary citizens, common people from a district, in a city-state.” It never included tourists. Also, the Privileges or Immunities Clause explicitly concedes that citizens have both privileges and immunities. Why would that be?

>It would be inappropriate, however, to require every statutory exclusion of aliens to clear the high hurdle of "strict scrutiny," because to do so would "obliterate all the distinctions between citizens and aliens, and thus depreciate the historic values of citizenship." Mauclet, supra at 432 U. S. 14 (BURGER, C.J., dissenting). The act of becoming a citizen is more than a ritual, with no content beyond the fanfare of ceremony. A new citizen has become a member of a Nation, part of a people distinct from others. Cf. 31 U. S. Georgia, 6 Pet. 515, 559 (1832). The individual, at that point, belongs to the polity, and is entitled to participate in the processes of democratic decisionmaking. Accordingly, we have recognized "a State's historical power to exclude aliens from participation in its democratic political institutions, as part of the sovereign's obligation "to preserve the basic conception of a political community.'" 413 U.S. at 413 U. S. 647.

Foley v. Connelie, 435 U.S. 291 (1978)

This means that there need not be a compelling government interest to justify discriminating between citizens and non-citizens. Nor need the discrimination be done via the least restrictive means available. At least not in the general case.

Well, the lawsuit would probably be much simpler now.

Every company that has to follow ITAR does this. Its simply not feasible to determine and continuously monitor the legibility of asylees and refugees.

Set aside how expensive it will be, you will inevitably end up breaking ITAR laws which is significantly worse.

Not even that, ITAR and other regulations are "vague" because a non-legal person just being in the room where ITAR work is performed can be considered a violation of ITAR. Then you have to spare significant expense sectioning off buildings, access control and security just to maintain that ITARness.

This makes non-ITAR compliant janitors a harder bargain to hire. Same for the cafeteria workers the DOJ mentions, they may overhear discussion of ITAR work in the cafeteria and that's a problem.

For companies that mostly do ITAR work, it's a no brainer to stick to hiring just ITAR compliant individuals. Companies would fall over themselves to hire cheap labor otherwise LOL.

It's... not expensive at all? Companies don't do their own investigations. The FBI does them, and they charge the same rate for everyone. If the clearance application fee is what's going to break your company, you've got some bigger problems.

I've worked for several DoD contractors. The question on the job application is "is there anything that would prevent you from obtaining a clearance?" It's not "are you a citizen or green card holder?"

And all that doesn't even really matter. Export controlled information is Controlled, Unclassified Information (CUI). It's one of the lowest grades of information we handle. It's in the name, you don't need a clearance to have access to it. Thus you don't need an investigation. The most you need is a background check, which most companies do for everyone, anyway.

Sorry, but you clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

> "is there anything that would prevent you from obtaining a clearance?"

If SpaceX asked that, it would be even easier for govies to prosecute them, because very few of SpaceX employees actually need clearance, and you cannot require clearance eligibility if you don't actually plan to clear them and have them work on cleared work. You are confusing ITAR regulations with classification regime, and these two are wholly separate things.

> Export controlled information is Controlled, Unclassified Information (CUI).

It's not, how could it possibly be? CUI is labelling the government bodies put on stuff. ITAR and EAR covers stuff regardless of whether the government had anything to do with it. For example, if you work as a hobby on software to model nuclear bomb explosions, you'd better not show it your colleagues on H1B, as it's covered by ITAR. It's not CUI, because no govie has slapped CUI on it.

In this case its not about clearance, its about immigration status.

I'm not an expert on any of this but my understanding is you can work straight away as a refugee with a pending status. This is fine for normal companies but it gets very tricky for companies under ITAR.

If the asylum application gets rejected, the work the person did when on pending status could be a violation. All the work they do after rejection would be an ITAR violation (so the company would have continuously monitor status).

I'm not really sure what you're trying to communicate here. If this is the requirement for the type of business someone ones, it's expected they are following the law, and corrected when they are not. Ignorance might grant some clemency, but you still need to follow it.

My above post is not commenting on the validity of the regulations surrounding ITAR, SpaceX, etc, it was responding to the implication that this effort was politically motivated when it clearly was not.

I don't know how many other companies the governmental department was checking, and it's not really relevant, just like the naughty things other kids may or may not have done when you're explaining why it's not correct to punch another kid just because they didn't share their toys.

"It's hard" isn't really an excuse; other industries are held to pretty strict regulatory standards (the entire medical industry for example) and while there are violations and it's a lot of work to validate that a hospital and the doctors and nurses are meeting these requirements, they do it. There are times hospitals need to be corrected, but they still do it. Same with the legal field, same with engineering fields, etc.

So I'm not sure what exactly is meaning to be communicated here; especially with a company like SpaceX, I expect they should be able to follow the regulations and check their applicants appropriately, not just decide "it's too much work" and deny legitimate and legal candidates a chance for employment.

Yes it is extremely difficult and expensive but thats besides the point, what I'm getting at here is its unworkable/unfeasible.

You will inevitably break ITAR, this is why most companies under ITAR (& gov agencies like NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/careers/working-with-nasa) does exactly what SpaceX is being prosecuted (persecuted) for.

This is a cut and dry case of political persecution. Not only was this practice not scrutinised, its commonplace and recommended by other agencies (intelligence/enforcement). Refugees/Asylees is a common way to get spies into the country.

SpaceX (any other company) would love to hire cheap labour that would be extremely gracious for the opportunity. They are literally using videos by Elon Musk in the case where he is saying ITAR laws are silly (I disagree btw).

> You will inevitably break ITAR, this is why most companies under ITAR (& gov agencies like NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/careers/working-with-nasa) does exactly what SpaceX is being prosecuted (persecuted) for.

NASA employees are in civil service, not the private sector; there are different rules.

Yes, it's not like we can hold the government to the same standard that the government tries hold the private companies to. Clearly, government couldn't possibly be expected to follow the regulations it imposes on everyone else.

The regulations for the government are more stringent than the regulations for private employers.

No, not the ones that are under discussion.

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