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After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

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Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#791

Post by syshum »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #588
syshum wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I can't see how this helps improve immigration, In many ways it does the opposite, for reforms to work you need to build coalitions from all political segments of society, vilifying political opponents (the ones that believe in some kind of immigration control and do not support fully open borders) does not build that coalition that is need to fight the unethical and illegal acts. Instead it puts people on the def…

> vilifying political opponents (the ones that believe in some kind of immigration control and do not support fully open borders) The only vilification happening here is your misrepresentation of the critics of ICE, many of whom do not advocate for "open borders". ICE is not equivalent to "border security", which should be obvious when you consider that this agency was only created in 2002. ICE doesn't even work at t…

>>misrepresentation of the critics of ICE, many of whom do not advocate for "open borders".

Almost all the vocal critics of ICE I am aware of are Social Democrats that want Open border, Free Everything for Everyone, and curtailment of capitalist systems. They use ICE as an easy target to push their other agenda which is replacing capitalism with Socialism and open borders

>ICE exclusively works within the US.

Actually they work in 53 nations, and has a active role at many ports of entry but that really is not relevant

>>Since illegal immigrants have little protection, it acts much like any unchecked police force

Given the context around this discussion I would be hard pressed to pain ICE any worse than every day police

Law Enforcement in this nation need MASSIVE reforms, ICE include, as do every level of Law Enforcement.

Police Abuse is rampant and not simply a domain of illegal immigration enforcement.

>>There were 1,200 complaints of sexual assault in ICE custody[0], for example. Less than 2% of these were investigated[1]

lol, your "2 sources" are all the same source... They all reference the same intercept story which is very biased and highlights the problem with Wikipedia today

Further The Intercept does not claim that only 2% of the reports were investigated it says that the OIG only shared investigations on 2% of the cases with intercept as s result of the FOIA request, that does not mean there were not investigations on the other 98% only that the investigations were not released under FOIA. That can be for a number of reasons.

>From 2012 to early 2018, ICE wrongfully arrested and detained 1,488 U.S. citizens, including many who spent months or years in immigration detention.

I would like to know the actual total that spend months or years in detention "many" is a subjective term used to incite an emotional reaction. Not a data driven analysis to understand the scope of the problem

That said 1 is too many as as I have said before we need police reform

Unfortunately we are at a political impasse for any-kind of real accountability reform because the Social Democrats block any reforms that do not involve complete amnesty and open borders including full access to tax payer funded social welfare for all immigrants. That is a non-starter for most people. I will support open borders in the absence of social welfare, or I will support social welfare in the absence of open borders but I will never support both at the same time as that is not economically feasible.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#792

Post by koheripbal »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #759
camdenlock wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the real threat we should all be talking about. It’s so sad to me that it’s barely discussed. These new religions and their witch hunts are great at silencing discussions out of fear.

The perceived overreach of political correctness is a vast area of discourse, especially on the right.

...which means it's hardly mentioned in the MSM

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#793

Post by rattray »

sitkack wrote: post #616
rattray wrote: post #14

What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies). But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a pri…

I am bummed that you are making what are in effect, velvet fascist statements. This is literally one of the freedoms we have left, in that the businesses we run don't have to support things that we don't believe in.

Disclaimer: I am jewish, and found that accusation offensive.

After Trump took office, I began reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, to be on guard – I was afraid. The ICE camps are evil, scary, cruel, and probably illegal, but not indicative of the sort of fascism we saw under the Nazis. After all, they functioned similarly under the previous US president, who did not seem to have fascist tendencies. As others have mentioned, the detainment of the Uighurs rings much, much closer to Nazi Germany. In some ways scarier.

We have the freedom to leave work and sit in front of courthouses in protest until those responsible for ICE atrocities are prosecuted. We have other similar such freedoms.

Demanding your employer to take a foolhardy action which will register as a minor inconvenience in the target's IT department is... just silly. It's grasping at the closest power center you can find instead of making the effort to find a relevant one.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#794

Post by rattray »

29athrowaway wrote: post #636
rattray wrote: post #14

What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies). But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a pri…

How would you feel if you know your work is being used to facilitate what is described in this video: https://youtu.be/mRUxDNE8uzc?t=36 ? They're incarcerating newborns and forcing unrelated 5 year old detainees with no relation to them to take care of them. They smell, they're covered in lice, bodily fluids, they're denied personal hygiene, food, water. They are forced to drink water from toilets. Kids that are too…

Yeah, I'd be really upset. Angry and disgusted. Thanks for that perspective.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#795

Post by kgin »

devalgo wrote: post #678
kgin wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The specific incarnation of border controls as ICE isn't the only way to control the border. I'm sure that some people are advocating for completely open borders without concern for consequences. But I think the larger call is saying that ICE as it currently is conceived as a paramilitary-style organization is not the way control the border and manage immigration.

>But I think the larger call is saying that ICE as it currently is conceived as a paramilitary-style organization is not the way control the border and manage immigration. This seems like what people on the right do with Trump. He'll say some outlandish or indefensible thing on Twitter and pundits will walk it back and lay out some complex argument to support it. It's not convincing in either case. It's the same with…

If there’s one interpretation that makes sense and one interpretation where thousands of millions of people are just stupid or crazy, it’s worth going with the interpretation that makes sense.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#796

Post by rattray »

munificent wrote: post #685
rattray wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true – businesses are legally allowed to refuse service to anyone (apart from protected classes like race or political affiliation, but that probably does not apply here). It's an important right, and probably many businesses would be more profitable and happy if they exercised that right more often. It's still politically dangerous, and would earn a company a lot of enemies and mistrust (as well as some alli…

> It's still politically dangerous, and would earn a company a lot of enemies and mistrust Yes, doing the right thing often is dangerous and earns you hatred from other people doing bad things who love the freedom of hiding amongst a herd of other equally guilty people. The reason we have so much respect for people who take stand and do what they believe is right is because doing so is so hard. That doesn't mean you…

If you're going to risk your business's livelihood to bravely take a stand, it should be in a situation where you can win. Where your bold action will be the turning point towards victory of righteousness. And where the magnitude of that victory is commensurate with the risk of your business's failure.

Denying the use of racially biased facial recognition software is a much clearer example where the risks are lower and the impact much, much greater.

It's much less clear that a source code repository is the fulcrum that enables 40 children to be jammed into a room without hygiene. Maybe if you worked for a critical supplier for ICE you could have an impact (which I would much encourage).

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#797

Post by rattray »

nextaccountic wrote: post #705
rattray wrote: post #14

What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, and I generally want my country to be a welcoming one. ICE has certainly committed unethical and probably illegal acts (probably true of most federal agencies). But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a pri…

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. Microsoft itself is denying service to police departments right now regarding face detection tech. "Microsoft won’t sell facial recognition to police until Congress passes new privacy law" https://www.theverge.com/21288053/microsoft-facial-recogniti...

The facial recognition case is a terrific counterexample. That's totally the right thing to do, and much less dangerous.

Note that MSFT isn't denying the use of Microsoft Office or Outlook to the FBI et al. That's essentially what GitHub's employees are asking for. They're denying the use of a tool which can be directly used to do harm, until they're sure it'll be used appropriately.

If a tech company were supplying software that was a key enabler for ICE's cruelty (such that ICE's cruelty would be significantly hampered without the tool), by all means they should stop the sale.

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#798

Post by rattray »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #569
rattray wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just seems like a weird, ineffective way to put pressure on ICE to stop detaining people excessively, inhumanely, or lethally. Anger and outrage are valuable, and it's important that we channel them in the right directions.

This just seems like a weird, ineffective way to put pressure on ICE to stop detaining people excessively, inhumanely, or lethally. It might very well be, and it's worth debating how much giving business support to an organization whose policies you (possibly vehemently) disagree with is a kind of implicit support of those policies. But, it's also worth asking: if protest by workers to put pressure on their employees…

Yes exactly! There are lots of more effective ways to take action (and changing your twitter pic likely isn't a big one). Donating to BLM causes, employee time, lobbying, etc, as you have mentioned.

In this case, GitHub took actions similar to what you describe, donating $500k to "nonprofits helping communities adversely affected by the Trump administration’s immigration policies": https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2019-10-31...

Personally I think $500k is a bit small, and if I were Nat Friedman in this situation, maybe I would have announced a few extra paid leave days for employees engaging in protest, strikes, visiting elected officials to lobby for change, etc.

Nat Friedman's quote on this particular request from employees is "Picking and choosing customers is not the approach that we take to these types of questions when it comes to influencing government policy."

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#799

Post by LunaSea »

kennywinker wrote: post #563
nodesocket wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the connection between supporting black lives matter and enforcing our immigration laws. If they want completely open borders, then they need to come out and say that, but demanding ICE lose contracts and technical software access is absurd.

As we are about to see in minneapolis, just like defund the police doesn’t mean no law enforcement, abolish ice doesn’t mean an open border. It means ICE is a structure that is harming american values (liberty, justice, due process). And the idea here is to apply pressure any way possible. Maybe losing github doesn’t practically change much, but if I was working somewhere and companies started cancelling contracts du…

Should GitHub employees refuse to work on legal related matters to put pressure on the government to prosecute BLM protesters that recklessly put lives at risk during a pandemic?

Re: After GitHub CEO backs Black Lives Matter, workers demand an end to ICE contract

#800

Post by jacobr1 »

rattray wrote: post #513
takeda wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm happy that people are allowed to protest, but I don't think they should protest for causes that I don't agree with" "I think ICE needs reforms, but I don't believe a pressure should be put on them to impose changes" Makes me wonder if you truly support people protesting or even agree that ICE is doing anything wrong.

This just seems like a weird, ineffective way to put pressure on ICE to stop detaining people excessively, inhumanely, or lethally. Anger and outrage are valuable, and it's important that we channel them in the right directions.

Another thing to consider is culpability.

Even if there is no direct impact (such as another supplier stepping in) an individual choosing to avoid directly, supporting an organization they cannot morally abide has personal moral value. Probably not in a utilitarian sense, but that isn't the only basis for moral action in humans - see the trolly-problem for the canonical example.

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