Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 251 posts

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#151

Post by jgaa »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #117
jgaa wrote: post #45

Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. When I wrote the War FTP Daemon in 1996, as freeware, this became a problem to me. I did want to give away my work for free, but I did not want any government agency to abuse it. So I came up with a solution - a GPL license with an additional clause - that the government - any government - could not use it for any purpose…

Corporations are no less evil than governments. If anything, they may be more evil, as they are motivated solely by profit and have no particular reason to care about the population at large. Why single out governments?

> Corporations are no less evil than governments. If anything, they may be more evil, as they are motivated solely by profit and have no particular reason to care about the population at large.

Corporations are accountable. They are accountable as entities, and as individuals (owners, managers, employees). If they do fatal decisions, the corporation may go bankrupt. If people act immoral, they may get fired. If they cheat, they may be caught and go to jail.

Corporations can also choose to act ethically - and, according to a recent Freakonomics podcast, actually benefit from that by attracting better employees :)

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#152

Post by eesmith »

Ntrails wrote: post #89
jadedhacker wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child concentration camps run a lot smoother on Office 365, now on Azure! EDIT: Anyone that collaborates with ICE from this point forward is complicit. In a just world, collaborators, ICE officers, and high officials would be tried in the International Criminal Court. Following orders or making money was not an acceptable defensible at Nuremberg, nor will it be in the coming future when the US loses enough internatio…

Why on earth would you want to prosecute the supermarket where ICE buys loo roll? The builders merchant who sold them fence posts? I mean, the hyperbole is real here - because there's zero chance the international courts prosecute any US citizen - but if they did it's not going to be the people who sold them spreadsheet software.

Perhaps for the same reason the US extended its trade embargo with Cuba to include foreign companies trading with Cuba - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms%E2%80%93Burton_Act

Or for the reasons that people have divested from companies doing business with South Africa under apartheid, or the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement regarding Israel, or any of a number of other examples.

See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_action .

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#153

Post by weiming »

allenz wrote: post #77
ggg9990 wrote: post #48

I just don't think we're tracking towards a healthy world where your email vendor pulls the plug on your contract because of your activities. I don't think any business should be allowed to deny their offering to any paying customer. Edit: Does that mean I have to sell lumber to the KKK even though they will likely burn a cross with it? Yes, unless they explicitly say they're going to. Leave those policing problems t…

When ICE violates human rights, it's no longer a free speech issue. Microsoft shouldn't work with ICE in the same way that banks shouldn't work with sanctioned oligarchs.

ELI5 what human rights is ICE violating in this case? Is due process not being followed?

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#154

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

huffmsa wrote: post #149

They do know that if M$FT cancels, the contract will just go to someone with zero scruples about this, right? It's better to keep things you dislike close so you can keep an eye on them than to pretend like they don't exist.

Haven’t seen anyone non-ironically use M$FT in like 20 years. It on the same fringe scale as wiring “First!” on a comment section.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#155

Post by ajeet_dhaliwal »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #117
jgaa wrote: post #45

Governments will always do evil. Not to everyone, all of the time - but they are by nature evil. When I wrote the War FTP Daemon in 1996, as freeware, this became a problem to me. I did want to give away my work for free, but I did not want any government agency to abuse it. So I came up with a solution - a GPL license with an additional clause - that the government - any government - could not use it for any purpose…

Corporations are no less evil than governments. If anything, they may be more evil, as they are motivated solely by profit and have no particular reason to care about the population at large. Why single out governments?

Unless there is crony-capitalism going on companies have to find voluntary buyers of their goods and services to generate revenue. Governments use force to generate revenue. It's that coercive behavior that elevates governments to the potential for more evil than a corporation.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#156

Post by _khau »

kojon99 wrote: post #139
pluma wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. "Does it violate the UN Convention on Human Rights?" is a good start. Also "Does it violate the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?". Or, y'know, the Kantian Imperative.

[flagged]

I'm struggling to understand what you mean here.

You believe being entitled to a life free from false imprisonment, torture and persecution is left-wing rubbish?

Is this satire?

The only people who are against the concept of basic human rights are those priviliged enough to never have been threatened in such a way.

That can change very easily.

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#158

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

gameswithgo wrote: post #15
macspoofing wrote: post #12

>part of a backlash against the agency’s policy of separating children from their families at the U.S. border. Is that a policy that ICE can simply drop?

trump/sessions specifically mandated this policy.

[flagged]

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#159

Post by [deleted] »

dawnerd wrote: post #83
cr1895 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Kids were being separated then Incorrect; the story you linked describes unaccompanied minors. Separating families is solely the doing of the Trump Administration. "Detaining child border crossers was a policy during the Obama administration, where Breitbart Texas exclusively reported on the conditions in which unaccompanied minors were being packed into crowded cells and holding facilities." https://www.nytimes.com…

I think the part people like OP are missing is if it was happening as they say then, it doesn't make it right now. They're just shifting blame for something they can be a part of stopping.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

#160

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

dawnerd wrote: post #83
cr1895 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Kids were being separated then Incorrect; the story you linked describes unaccompanied minors. Separating families is solely the doing of the Trump Administration. "Detaining child border crossers was a policy during the Obama administration, where Breitbart Texas exclusively reported on the conditions in which unaccompanied minors were being packed into crowded cells and holding facilities." https://www.nytimes.com…

I think the part people like OP are missing is if it was happening as they say then, it doesn't make it right now. They're just shifting blame for something they can be a part of stopping.

Sort of. More like if you are outraged now but not then, if it is only covered now and not then, if “reasonable” people only care now that it can be attributed to BadManTheyDontLike... that’s dishonest.
Post reply on HN