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GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

latimes.com

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Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#561

Post by 1111236112347 »

kaikai wrote: post #362

"I was just doing my job" is not an excuse. It is absolutely not only our right to decide how our work is used in the world, but our duty to make sure we're not enabling human rights violations. I applaud and support tech workers making ethical calls around their work. Unfortunately we may need to put our money where our mouths are and leave employers that refuse to stand by any ethical code, and that's already happe…

Do we know that Github is being used to enable human rights violations, and that their use of Github for potentially negative actions outweighs potentially beneficial actions, given that ICE has a wide variety of responsibilities beyond immigration enforcement?

For example, it seems reasonable to guess that they might be using their Github deployment to help run the National Child Victim Identification System:

The National Child Victim Identification System (NCVIS), owned by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), is an application that assists federal, state, local, and international law enforcement agencies, INTERPOL, and other supporting organizations, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) (hereafter, authorized partners) in the investigation and prosecution of child exploitation crimes, specifically those involving images of child sexual exploitation.

https://www.dhs.gov/publication/dhsicepia-010-national-child...

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#562

Post by rumanator »

istjohn wrote: post #514
manigandham wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point of morality is that it is subjective. You can not determine what is right as a rule.

That's nonsense. Philosophers will debate subtleties around morality until the end of time, but that shouldn't prevent us from taking a stand against evil when we see it.

> taking a stand against evil when we see it.

Except that "evil" is just a loaded word that tries to pin an absolute take on morality on a personal opinion. There are people who take stances against evil by persecuting others based on religion, gender, race, and even political leanings, and they feel so strongly about the morality of their positions that they feel that even extreme violence is justified.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#563

Post by harryh »

1111236112347 wrote: post #545
harryh wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a GH employee nor do I speak for them. But I think a fair point of view is that it would be GREAT if the employees of Xerox and Canon and Lenovo and Apple and Ford and the airlines and even the farmers all took the same stance as GH employees. If that actually happened, ICE would cease to be able to function incredibly quickly. Which would be good. This is basically the point of these protests.

Would it be really be good to prevent Homeland Security Investigations, a major division of ICE, from investigating sexual abuse of children, and rescuing children from abusive situations? And about one of every 10 agents in Homeland Security’s investigative section — which deals with all kinds of threats, including terrorism — is now assigned to child sexual exploitation cases. Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/inter…

There are lots of organizations that do both good and bad things. I hear that the KKK sometimes did some good community building work in addition to lynching black people.

It is, apparently, the judgement of a large swatch of GH employees that whatever good ICE does, it is not outweighed by the bad. Given that, I believe their actions make sense.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#564

Post by CapricornNoble »

dunstad wrote: post #451
wil421 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you point to some sources so I can understand how they are concentration camps? I’ve been to Dachau and nothing on the news shows anything like what I saw there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_and_inte... From the article: > In 2019, many experts, including Andrea Pitzer, the author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps, have acknowledged the designation of the detention centers as "concentration camps" [227] [228] particularly given that the centers, previously cited by Texas officials for more than 150 health violations [229] and re…

Judging by the definition of "internment" linked from that wiki page....Japan runs "concentration camps", as it regularly imprisons people without charges and without trial for up to 23 days, under harsh conditions.

Seems like a pretty low bar for defining the term, and obscures the pretty real distinctions in overall human suffering that occur at different places.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#565

Post by harryh »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #547
harryh wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core idea here is: this organization is doing bad things. By not supplying them with goods and services we can stop those bad things from happening. Whether that happens because the organization reforms or because the organization ceases to exists is a secondary concern.

>>>I think the core idea here is: this organization is doing bad things. By not supplying them with goods and services we can stop those bad things from happening. Government programs NEVER just end, and certainly not do to simple supply disruptions. So they won't STOP doing bad things, they'll just continue to do bad things with even less resources, making the net effects even worse. Eventually you might end up with…

"Don't ever try to stop bad people from doing bad things because if you do they will only do worse things" is not a point of view I am willing to accept.

In addition, "Government programs NEVER just end" is also obviously incorrect. Our government once had a program of segregating black people from large swaths of society. This program, thankfully, no longer exists.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#566

Post by metacritic12 »

supernova87a wrote: post #348

I question how much an employee should concern him/herself with how a product is used once it's created. You have to let certain control go after a point. Or if your product is open to everyone, you'll have to live with the fact that people may use it in ways you disagree with. Xerox or Canon (or whoever) probably makes copiers that ICE uses to make copies. Lenovo or Apple probably makes hardware that they use also t…

Why not let workers who want to "pressure" GitHub exercise their First Amendment rights and quit?

At the same time GitHub should absolutely pay a bit more to get engineers who don't care about this issue.

We don't need to censor employees, and at the same time we shouldn't expand the moral opinions of a vocal minority of opinions to be automatically indicative of what GitHub "should" do. What Github "should" do is replace these employees who are exercising their right to quit.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#567

Post by baggy_trough »

istjohn wrote: post #518
userbinator wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This politicisation of tech that's happened at a surprisingly rapid rate since a few years ago is scary, because it threatens to split the industry and maybe even eventually society into a number of opposing factions.

Everything is political.

A pernicious notion.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#568

Post by CoryShmallager »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #547
harryh wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the core idea here is: this organization is doing bad things. By not supplying them with goods and services we can stop those bad things from happening. Whether that happens because the organization reforms or because the organization ceases to exists is a secondary concern.

>>>I think the core idea here is: this organization is doing bad things. By not supplying them with goods and services we can stop those bad things from happening. Government programs NEVER just end, and certainly not do to simple supply disruptions. So they won't STOP doing bad things, they'll just continue to do bad things with even less resources, making the net effects even worse. Eventually you might end up with…

At least then we can call it what it is. Remove the façade.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#569

Post by slykat »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #498
slykat wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok so would you ok with a restaurant not serving republicans because the party currently supports ICE's actions?

Political alignment isn't a protected class.

You are right - I always forget that political affiliation is not a protected class within our legal system. However, I think it should be, because we've seen the whole ugly side of persecution and discrimination that came about during the McCarthy era and beyond where people like MLK, Chaplin, WEB Du Bois, and Linus Pauling were targeted for their political beliefs.

Re: GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract

#570

Post by Ygg2 »

istjohn wrote: post #557
throw_m239339 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's nonsense. Philosophers will debate subtleties around morality until the end of time, but that shouldn't prevent us from taking a stand against evil when we see it. "evil" is exactly what religious people called homosexuality for centuries, which is ironic considering your statement. Morality is purely an opinion, just like religion.

[flagged]

Looks at US, Russia, China, Turkey, etc.

Yeah, good thing everyone can agree on A), right?

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