Platforms bend over backward to help DHS censor ICE critics, advocates say
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
In fact, theoretical Chinese informed was the entire (performative) justification for the Tiktok ban. The reality of course was that TikTok wouldn’t censor what the US government wanted to censor.
The irony is that these companies are sowing the seeds for their own destruction and the US government is undermining US tech dominance, which is a potent foreign policy tool.
I think Steve Jobs would be rolling over in his grave at Tim Cook’s capitalization. I once trusted Apple to be more user-forest than any other platform. Now? I think I’d trust Huawei more.
That said, they also use them as slave labors.
Maybe that's what ICE is going to do with the plan to setup large detention centers in the US
ICE detention is already beginning to resemble the Salvadoran prison system.
Due process rights get violated. Detainees get shuttled around to different facilities to be lost in the system through engineered incompetence, making it difficult for legal counsel or family to find them, or even to know who has been taken. They subject them to torturous conditions, abuse, and often hold people who've committed no crimes for months.
They are thwarting oversight and defying court orders left and right. And they are trying to scale up like 10x+. And once they do, the detention system won't just be for immigrants. They are going to target anyone they want.
D's have successfully blocked DHS funding for now, but if they (or SCOTUS) allow any of this to go forward, things are likely to get far worse
https://rsf.org/en/beaten-death-state-security-rsf-shocked-g...
It's the prototypical example of authoritarian crackdowns and mass slaughter of innocent protestors.
Discussion or even mention of it is still forbidden in China.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...
If 1989 is all a country has as a problem, then that's a sign it's doing great.
I was simply replying to the original statement that China doesn't kill protesters in the street. The notion is so risible that in hindsight it may well have been sarcasm or bait.
But, if you wish to expand the scope of this discussion, sure. There are several clear distinctions between the (horrible) events you list and what happened in Tiananmen Square.
The most obvious is that we are free to talk about them now. I submit that the Chinese state's continued censorship of the subject is a sign that (1) the state is still complicit in these crimes and (2) it is not "doing great".
The scale of brutality is also just incomparable. I say this fully agreeing the events you list were terrible. The horrors committed at Tiananmen Square were simply on another level.
Unless I’ve been severely misinformed, someone saying similar things about Xi Jinping on a Chinese tech forum would be swiftly banned and likely arrested.
The content of the lawsuit argues, correctly in my view, that American speech protections are so strong they go beyond mere criticism. American citizens have a right to publish detailed information about the location of government agents, even if this information makes law enforcement harder and even if the agents fear being tracked might be dangerous for them.
On paper americans have all these rights, but surely you are seeing how the paper is not matching the reality in many ways, and very little is being done to fix that as tens of millions of americans outright support the paper being ignored, so how can you trust that disparity to not come for your paper rights to speak? Already those same courts you are relying on have thrown away real rights, and the administration itself flouts those same courts regularly.
Chinese citizens have a lot of rights on paper too, including right to freedom of expression. I would bet you could find occasional cases or situations in China where some lowly citizen "wins" against the government, as that always looks good, but that doesn't make it meaningful and I can't read or speak any Chinese languages to back up this suspicion.
It's only going to take one Supreme Court case to change the paper rights. Do you feel this supreme court has shown a preference for principles over administration?
What protected him wasn't being in America - it's that he had a strong union. Which most Americans don't have.
but yes, you can criticize as much as you want as long as nobody is listening to you (for now).
in europe we are getting close to parity with china in this aspect though.
Apple: sure, but only if you pretend you didn't get access
Brits: jolly good
One of my favorite conspiracy theories is that this is what the CIA Stargate program was. You don’t leak the existence of informants or satellites because you just got the information from “a psychic“.
Taking down an app is hardly unprecedented. Forcing companies to add backdoors in secret is, so it's a stretch to think that ADP is compromised.
We have precedent: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-...
Apple has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that the US federal government “prohibited” the company “from sharing any information,”It really isn't. The reason I used the specific wording for "records kept in the usual course of business" is that's the legal standard for subpoenable information. It shouldn't be surprising to any legal expert that it was fair game for the government to request. The only thing surprising is that we didn't know it specifically happened before, so it's only as "surprising" as chatgpt logs being subpoenaed. Yes, it's "surprising" for the people using chatgpt as their therapist and think it should have been protected, but ask any lawyer and they'll all agree it's fair game. On the other hand forcing apple to specifically insert a backdoor runs into all sorts of constitution/due process issues.
Literal back door, in secret. I doubt things have gotten better since this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter
The company couldn't say, even if they wanted to.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2024/09/australia-thr...
> Technical Capability Notices (TCNs): TCNs are orders that require a company to build new capabilities that assist law enforcement agencies in accessing encrypted data. The Attorney-General must approve a TCN by confirming it is reasonable, proportionate, practical, and technically feasible.
Maybe it is time people move to that. Sadly I forgot its name or where to get it. Of course the app stores could block that too.
There is always USENET I guess. I wonder if there are apps on Cell Phones that can access USENET and format the posts to work with the small screens. And of course reformat posts to comply to USENET formatting requirements (ie: wordwrap at Col 70).
A portable device that could effortless hook up to the existing decentralized wireless networks would be even better, Freifunk covers large part of Germany, Guifi covers large parts of Spain, probably there are more somewhere else too, but AFAIK there is no portable device that lets you easily just connect and chat, still requires a bit of setup to participate.
Are you thinking of HKmap.live?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKmap.live
> Of course the app stores could block that too.
And Apple did.
That is the problem with technical solutions. Governments can ban them, or mandate on device scanning to monitor your usage.
Add to the list of grievances social media platforms that include bot farms and organized political operatives. Also political activist celebrities.
All of these diminish the one person / one vote / one voice ideal.
AFAIK the bar is even higher - incitement to violence is allowed, as long as it's not 'imminent': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action
You'd need to say something which directs others to violate the law or commit acts of violence, at a specific time ("imminent"), and your statement must be likely to be effective at causing them to do so.
Protesting, encouraging others to protest, expressing your political beliefs, organizing a protest, etc. are not incitement to violence. Nor is "doxxing" (filming, identifying) a public employee. None of these activities satisfy those criteria.
Remember the "Twitter files" nonsense? I recall they were upset at the government influencing the expression of political views on social media. Not hearing much backlash about this from the same people, because this is what they were claiming, but 100x worse.
Does it matter? If all their actions are in support of a regime, does it matter if they secretly don’t agree with it and don’t even say it? Does it matter that your neighbour says they don’t agree with ICE of they still rat you out to them? Ideologies without action aren’t worth much. At this point, we should assume these CEOs are fully on board with and support Trump’s policies. There’s no reason to make up excuses that they might not be when they repeatedly demonstrate the opposite.
I definitely don't think what these CEOs are doing is moral, but it's certainly rational.
I think that a 30%, 64% or 145% tax on Chinese imports would be a huge blow for a $400 billion business importing Chinese-made phones.
And Trump can impose such taxes (and grant exemptions from them) at will, apparently.
And it IS farcical! I mean, look at the FIFA “peace prize.” They literally invented it to give to Trump because he was threatening US World Cup matches. What’s farcical is that this behavior actually apparently works on the president.
The only thing these executives are allowed to care about is money & profit. If Trump is able to unilaterally threaten those profits (via tariffs or other regulations), obviously the executives have to respond to that.
Plus, Trump has proven to be extremely receptive to farcical “bribes” — just look at the “FIFA peace prize.” It doesn’t take much to placate his ego.
So the rational, easy path through for the executives is to get with the program and play nice with Trump.
Are they spineless cowards? Sure, but since when does capitalism and shareholders incentivize anything else?
And I'd still make the same point I've done so many times before; sometimes maybe there are more important things than "business makes much money so I make much money".
I'm just disagreeing with that "To survive as a large entity during this administration you have to kiss the ring" is actually the reality. The reality as I see it is that individuals want to make money, lots of money, and authoritarianism is more favorable for that.
They'll still make lots of money if they fight against it. But they'll make less.
Having been around for a while, to go from optimistic, but sort of naive techno-libertarianism that was once a thing in Silicon Valley to kissing up to a would-be authoritarian is a very sad arc.
[1] https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
(This is surely the underlying component models' censuring, not Kagi's.)
To strongly make the claim you’re making you’d have had to perform extensive before/after tests to be able to compare.
That said - the lack of transparency that’s making you feel uncomfortable with this whole thing, that is concerning.
I'm curious to have other Kagi subscribers try it out to see what can and cannot be done.
My entire life it’s been about nothing more than domination of the “immoral” and the end justifies any means when the alternative is someone else winning the vote.
They are the people the phrase “there is no hate like Christian love” is referring to.
Yes. Both sides censor people. I'm sure we'll see a comment about Biden censoring anti covid vaccine posts and the poster is somewhat right.
The difference is the Republicans run on freedom of speech making them hypocrites.
Being a hypocrite is the worst attribute a politician can have in a representative democracy
As I've gotten older, I've become less fond of slippery slope style arguments. People love making them for censorship-related rules and laws.
"Oh if <biden> is allowed to ask/tell social media to stop publishing so many lies about covid then that means trump will be able to <whatever>"
First of all, trump and his ilk are probably going to do <whatever> regardless of what people did in the past and the technical legality of the actions seems to be of only minor concern.
Secondly, I hate this idea that laws and rules can't have nuances. We can, with our collective brain power, probably come up with a law that helps reduce covid lies and doesn't also apply to government criticism or whatever.
I get the appeal of a simple "all speech is free! No laws about speech allowed!" But fairly obviously you're going to have laws about fraud/threats/slander/"porn" at which point we're back to nuances and deciding which bits we allow and where.
As for modern republicans, I'm not old enough to have ever believed their states rights/small gov/freedom lies, but I thought I could at least count on them to be anti-russia invading other countries.
They are against very specific parts of big government and censorship
The liberal position on bodily autonomy (and indeed most things) has never been absolute. If an action is likely to cause harm to others (and forgoing a vaccine in the midst of a deadly pandemic is indeed likely to cause harm to others), then reasonable action to curtail the harm is justified. As recently as the 2010s, both parties supported vaccine mandates. I remember conservatives making fun of the antivax movement as liberal lunacy as recently as 2019.
>"I thought liberals were for free speech" (with regards to cancel culture).
Cancel culture is itself a form of free expression and association.
Until the COVID-conspiracism came around, vaccine mandates had been supported by a massive bi-partisan consensus - for decades - because they make sense. Just take a look at this article on The Federalist of all places, from 2015: https://thefederalist.com/2015/02/03/the-insane-vaccine-deba...
> Fundamentally, the protection against life-threatening plague is one of the original reasons government exists. We’ve had mandatory vaccines for schoolchildren in America since before the Emancipation Proclamation. The Supreme Court has upheld that practice as constitutional for over a century, and only the political fringes believe there ought to be a debate about such matters. This is one of the few areas where government necessarily exercises power.
> You shouldn’t be compelled to vaccinate your child, but neither should the rest of us be compelled to pretend like you did.
> It’s the failure to deal with those consequences that frustrates me about this debate. If you choose to not vaccinate your children, that is your choice. In the absence of an immediate threat, such as a life-threatening plague or outbreak, the state doesn’t have a compelling reason to administer that vaccination by force or to infringe on your rights. But that doesn’t mean there are no tradeoffs for such a decision. If you choose not to vaccinate, private and public institutions should be able to discriminate on that basis.
Sometimes I like to look up the stuff people are throwing a little fit about.
> On November 4, 2021, OSHA released an emergency temporary standard (ETS) that generally requires private employers with 100 or more employees to establish and enforce a policy that either (1) requires all employees to receive a COVID-19 vaccination, subject to legally required exceptions; or (2) requires employees to receive either a COVID-19 vaccination or provide proof of regular COVID-19 testing and wear a face covering when indoors or occupying a vehicle with another person.
Looks like it was private companies' choice whether or not to allow face covering and regular testing in lieu of a vaccine. Requiring masks indoors during a global pandemic. The comparison to women being denied medical care was and is still offensive.
Republicans today are far-right extremists straight out of an authoritarian regime, operating within the friend-enemy mode of politics ("everything for my friends, the law for my enemies"). And the project is to preserve this hierarchy with themselves at the top.
https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/your-comprehensive-guide-to-...
> The far right is animated by the revolutionary project of reconfiguring society along the exclusionary or hierarchical lines patterned after a “divine” or “natural” order. Far-right figures envision societies organized through hierarchies—whether racial, ethnic, religious, or ideological. They aspire to deploy state power to defend the “true people” (sometimes called the Volk), who often already occupy the top rungs of society, from a constellation of perceived enemies or from relative or outright disempowerment. The far-right ideal is a homogeneous society, and that ideal is diametrically opposed to a liberal, pluralistic order. The far right believes that liberal pluralism represents a dangerous and unprecedented upheaval of the natural order. The far right blames most or all social problems on that upheaval—that is, on liberalism. Instead of seeing social order as emerging from the interactions of many diverse persons and groups cooperating in a polycentric system, the far right believes a homogeneous order must be imposed—and imposed in a holistic fashion, incorporating all forms of social interaction, from the structure of the nation-state to the most intimate relationships in the home.
> The far right’s commitment to freedom extends only to the “true people,” whose values align with far-right goals. This is an exclusionary conception of freedom, entirely contraposed to a neutral rule of law. Generally for the far right, discussion and deliberation are denigrated in favor of authoritarianism and “decisive action,” although the far right will also frequently invoke values like “freedom of speech” to exert pressure on discourse communities to welcome its ideas and rhetoric (see Why do far-right groups often talk about “freedom”?).
On the other hand, the long term trend of billionaires and large companies getting their way politically will likely continue.
I'm going to guess they'll have fled the country with their winnings by then.
Democrats have been picking on the poor tech billionaires ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when they were thought to be at fault for getting Trump elected.
We have so many agencies that can regulate businesses to death without any congressional intervention that it would be beyond idiotic to stand against them.
Not to mention that it's been proven again and again that the American populations attention span is far too short to do anything meaningful about the aforementioned powers / abuses.
Maybe it's age, or the attention I've paid to the erosion of liberties post 9/11. but is this headline a surprise to anyone?
It's common in the EU that if you don't do what they say they threaten to put regulations that compel you, but it's still different. it's a threat not a reality. That's the issue my dude.
I’m not sure why people look to corporations for political resistance. It’s the wrong place to look. They’re not structured for it and it’s not their purpose.
Sure corporations have to respect the LAW in their juradiction, even if said law is unpopular or unethical. But they don't have to, and shouldn't where ethics and human rights are involved, go beyond what is required by the law. Since Trump has come to power a lot of big organsations seem to be reversing their previous positions to gain political favour, which is wrong.
The solution is probably for them to appeal to the public. "We stand up to ICE abuse" would probably help them in the markets.
Something interesting happened recently in France where it turned out that the American subsiduary of CapGemini was selling serives to ICE. They were forced to sell that subsiduary after public outcry.
Same with the Epstein files, same with the accusations of groomer while their ranks are filled with rapists, same with the Jan 6 insurrection, and likely this fall, accusations of election fraud and intimidation.
And, since the price almost always recovers within a week... does it even matter?
That kind of access and "control" is why they think they can just tweet at Coke to stop using artificial dyes instead of, you know, changing the rules at the organization they run.
And the way they all fell inline with sanctioning the ICC (Microsoft/Google) when the only laws in play were US domestic ones being pushed globally.