DOGE is building a master database for immigration enforcement, sources say | Hacker News Reader

DOGE is building a master database for immigration enforcement, sources say

cnn.com

27 pointsf38zf5vdt8 comments

so, on one hand, i am more than familiar with building super cross-functional teams that break through all sorts of process to get stuff deployed quickly into production. i did some of this in my cloud consulting days, and what DOGE is doing shares a lot of parallels with the kinds of shortcuts we took to "force" business outcomes. i.e. move fast; break things.

on the other hand, you can't outrun process at big orgs, and the USG is the biggest of them all. eventually, once the skunkworks project is done, you'll have to pay the piper and do everything the "right" way. that's why hearing things like RU IPs getting access to presumably-sensitive data within these departments is so concerning. what kinds of risks are being introduced from DOGE operating like this with data that effects people's lives?

on the other other hand, this database project existing, and it being SOLELY for improving deportation efficiency, is really friggin' terrifying.

Wired reported that his might be happening previously, but this is a separate report assembled by CNN. Please kindly do not report as dupe.

If you believe it's for immigration enforcement, I have a bridge to sell you.

They're building concentration camps in El Salvador.

ICE is gearing up to be the Gestapo.

They're arresting judges.

Now they're building an AI-powered dissident hunting machine.

Don't believe for a second this is only for immigration enforcement. It is for you and me and anyone else they don't like.

This is what fascism looks like.

This is what hyperbole looks like.

They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic"

[...]

""But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens.|

- They Thought They Were Free, The Germans 1933-45

https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.htm

i.e. boiling the frog, at scale

Read the government's court filings. They're saying they can declare that someone is an enemy alien, provide minimal notice and opportunity for due process (12 hours, and that's only after the Supreme Court made them give any notice at all) and then send that person to a labor camp in El Salvador, at which point even if a court orders the government to bring them back, the government says it doesn't have to do anything. That's not hyperbole, that's their legal position.

So unless you're already represented by counsel, can understand the notice that they are providing you, and your counsel can get into court in the district where you're being held with a habeas corpus petition and get the court to rule within 12 hours, that's it, you'll be spending the rest of your life in a Salvadorean labor camp with no hope of recourse. That is literally what the government is saying.

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