13 ms·

Microsoft Employees Pressure Leadership to Cancel ICE Contract

233 points by rumcajz 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
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deegles 8y ago
> “Our current engagement with ICE is focused on moving legacy infrastructure such as mail, calendar, messaging and document management to the cloud using Azure.” I don’t understand why this makes it any better. I’m sure there’s a lot of “messaging and document management” needed to run those detainment centers. And besides, what’s going to happen in the future when they do ask to use Cognitive Services in their mission? “Sorry, you only get O365?”
- deleted 8y ago
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- jadedhacker 8y ago
  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 international standing.
  - netsharc 8y ago
    Smells like IBM supplying tabulating machines to the Nazi government...
  - Ntrails 8y ago
    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.
    - mschuster91 8y ago
      > Why on earth would you want to prosecute the supermarket where ICE buys loo roll? The builders merchant who sold them fence posts? In mafiya/organized crime, (serial) murder cases it's common to prosecute knowing supporters as "aiding in criminal activities". The supermarket cashier selling loo rolls to the ICE may not be a "knowing supporter", but the fence post seller certainly is. As for the people involved: there won't be justice, not as long as the US has nukes and refuses any international control.
    - eesmith 8y ago
      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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_action .
  - jgaa 8y ago
    > Child concentration camps run a lot smoother on Office 365, now on Azure! They should add crying children as a ring-tone in Skype!
  - dangcansmyd 8y ago
    The political elites are using your emotions to get power. Here: see this fake photo https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/8sdb23/telemundo_busted_for_staging_fake_caged_kids_scene/ https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/8sdb23/telemund...
  - patrickg_zill 8y ago
    This is an utterly ridiculous statement. ICE buys their envelopes from Office Depot (example), they buy cell phones from ATT (example) - is Office Depot supposed to physically stop ICE agents from entering their stores and paying for office supplies? Is ATT supposed to refund ICE their money and immediately cancel all their phone service. The rhetoric is really getting ahead of the reality here...
- setquk 8y ago
  This sounds like the standard Microsoft marketoids. When asked about privacy and telemetry or anything critical the answer is always for a question that wasn’t asked followed by some template brand reinforcement followed by a metric ton of blog posts about improving insignificant things that aren’t related. No one at MSFT will answer a question straight ever.
retox 8y ago
The media sure are doing a number on these useful idiots.
noobermin 8y ago
dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17351353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17351353
factsaresacred 8y ago
> I think that what we’re seeing right now with ICE is deeply immoral. It’s a violation of human rights on all kinds of levels. Treating criminals as criminals happens every day in every country and comes with the same consequences - children are separated from their parents. Right now there are tens of thousands of broken black homes as one or two parents are in prison - where's the outrage for them and what about their human rights and their families? This moral panic, fanned by the media, truly reflects an inability for critical thought. Illegal aliens ignore US law, knowing full well that their acts are illegal and have consequences. Go to a port of entry or embassy like all other immigrants. It's that simple.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- zasz 8y ago
  These people are asylum seekers. What they are doing is literally not illegal. According to USCIS, asylum seekers must be physically present in the US to apply: To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum status regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status. https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum/obtaining-asylum-united-states https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum/ob... These people are being punished for following the law. Additionally, there is no need to detain parents separately from children, and prior to the Trump administration, while deportations of asylum seekers did happen, families were not split up. > Right now there are tens of thousands of broken black homes as one or two parents are in prison - where's the outrage for them and what about their human rights and their families? Nice of you to pretend to care. Can I refer you to your closest Black Lives Matter chapter?
  - macspoofing 8y ago
    The legal way to claim asylum is to do so from official points of entry.
    - 8y ago
everdev 8y ago
As I get older, it's becoming clear how intertwined our morality is with our politics. And how that bleeds into business, sports, religion, etc. It's nice to think of aspects of life that should be free from politics, but in reality that seems hard to achieve.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  Is it only becoming more clear or are they actually becoming more intertwined too?
  - adjkant 8y ago
    I think both as tech becomes more ubiquitous, but I think the clarity is coming from a lag in perception because of the exact sentiment of "keep politics out of tech". I think a lot of programmers, particularly ones from a generation older than the average tech worker today, got into the field for partially the reason of that separation. It's honestly a great way to live a fulfilling life without having to address the bigger problems in the world personally. That type of ignorance is no longer possible in tech for the most part, but the desire for it still is there for some, in all generations.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      > It's honestly a great way to live a fulfilling life without having to address the bigger problems in the world personally. I thought it's a great way to actually address the bigger problems in the world personally. Because most political involvement is precisely the opposite of effective helping. Politics is arguing that climate change is a communist/leftist/whatever invention. Tech is launching a satellite letting us quantify the actual impact. Politics is talking that education is important (except it must be the right education). Tech is giving people access to it (all of it) for free. Politics is driven by conflicting ideologies, and mostly detached from reality. Tech culture used to stick to the real world. Dilution of that is what people complain when they lament tech mixing with politics. (Yes, I'm probably older than average tech worker.)
macspoofing 8y ago
>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?
- deleted 8y ago
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- gameswithgo 8y ago
  trump/sessions specifically mandated this policy.
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    How is this policy changed from when Obama was in office again? The fakenews that started all this was a few photos from 2014. Russia didn’t stick, yelling about guns didn’t stick, now that Trump wants the wall funded it’s going to be an assault on immigration. Right or wrong, good policy or bad, if “Trump” is coming out of your mouth about this and Clinton, Bush and Obama aren’t... you’re being played.
    - refoundglory 8y ago
      > Immigrant families are being separated primarily because the Trump administration in April began to prosecute as many border-crossing offenses as possible. This “zero-tolerance policy” applies to all adults, regardless of whether they cross alone or with their children. > The Justice Department can’t prosecute children along with their parents, so the natural result of the zero-tolerance policy has been a sharp rise in family separations. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/06/19/the-facts-about-trumps-policy-of-separating-families-at-the-border/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/06/... Stop spending so much effort trying to sound clever and put it towards actually understanding what you're talking about.
jhanschoo 8y ago
It would be nice if the recent instances of employee pressure in Google and Microsoft are early signs of software workers organizing.
- jadedhacker 8y ago
  It's a sign of nascent change that springs from the grassroots. The only way we'll know for sure is if organizers appear and begin to succeed. In the context of the child separation policy, some of my colleagues asked what can be done, just giving money didn't seem to be enough. I mentioned a general strike, and they didn't react like it was a crazy idea though unlikely to take hold since this openly fascist policy only affects non-white foreigners. Maybe things are changing though. Spring forth cadres of the revolution! Your people need your leadership.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  How would employees at Google or Microsoft benefit from unionizing?
  - blind_boy_grunt 8y ago
    The same way any other unionized employees do: higher wages, better benefits, collective bargaining, serious representation in the corporate hierarchy, better job security.
    - briandear 8y ago
      And Google employees don’t already that? What better benefits could a Google possibly want? How much higher could their salaries go?
      - dagw 8y ago
        What better benefits could a Google possibly want? More vacation time, more reasonable working hours, a more transparent process for promotions and raises, better paternity/maternity polices, a seat on the board and more say into how the company is run. There is a lot more to collective bargaining than salaries.
mlamat 8y ago
Yes, because selling software to border enforcement agencies is like IBM selling tabulating machines to Nazis, right?
jgaa 8y ago
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. Someone actually complained to the Free Software Foundation about this clause, and they concluded, at that time, that it was permissible. In years to follow I received many emails from universities, schools, hospitals, research facilities - with requests to use the software. In most cases I granted them permission. But by doing it this way, I could sleep well at night - knowing that my software could not - legally - be used to separate children from parents, or for any other evil purpose by any governments around the globe. ---- War Software series Copyright (C) 1996 - 2018 by Jarle (jgaa) Aase (www.jgaa.com) This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation version 2 of the License - WITH THE FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS: * GOVERNMENTS, GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES OR COMMERCIAL COMPANIES OWNED 50% OR MORE BY THE GOVERNMENT ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE THE SOFTWARE OR SORCE CODE FOR ANY PURPOSE. THIS RESTRICTION ALSO APPLIES FOR PROGRAMS DERIVED FROM THE SOURCE CODE, OR PROGRAMS/ SOURCE CODE THAT USE SPECIAL TECHNICS/ALOGRITHMS INVENTED IN THIS SOFTWARE. * THE FULL SOURCE CODE IS WITHELD FROM A PUBLIC RELEASE UNTIL THE LINUX VERSION IS RELEASED. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
- adrr 8y ago
  Curious how that is enforced as a copyright clause. I grasp how GPL and other copyleft licenses work when copies are distributed but can't see how a usage restriction can be applied unless the party is distributing the software.
  - jgaa 8y ago
    It is very difficult to enforce any clause in any user agreement (or even in law) - as bad people will just ignore them. My clause was a statement: Don't use my software - I did not make it for you. The Microsoft employees wish to put restrictions in commercial contracts is interesting - and also scary. There are so many interest groups, and so many agendas, and so many views on whats right and whats wrong - that things could get really messed up.
ggg9990 8y ago
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 to the police, don't ask everyone to become a member of the police.
- madaxe_again 8y ago
  This cuts both ways, and a precedent has already been set, recently, with the wedding cake debacle. If a business can refuse service due to soneone’s gender or sexual orientation (I.e. it conflicts with the business owner’s sense of morality), why should a business not be able to refuse because they morally object to their client using their product or services to harm human beings? Honestly, I don’t see the distinction. If one is legal then the other must be. I take your point that this could end in a situation where all businesses end up being discriminatory in one way or another, but it’s then up to the market to reward or punish businesses for their stance. If you don’t like Microsoft selling Azure to human rights abusers, don’t buy their stock, don’t buy their products. If you don’t like that a bakery didn’t sell a cake to a gay couple, don’t buy their cakes. Yes, it can be argued that we will end up back with “no blacks no dogs no Irish”, and if we do that’s a damning indictment of the times - but it can also be argued that large corporations have substantial power to influence policy, which they somewhat have a track record of using for Not Good. It would be nice to see it being used for good. I don’t think it’s asking businesses to be police, rather to act as moral entities rather than purely economic ones. I mean - corporations are people, too (corporate personhood, emergent intelligence), and unless we want an entirely mechanistic and amoral future (think Cloud Atlas and kin), we need to allow businesses to be moral arbiters. Is it a good idea? I don’t know, but it can it really be worse than selling zyklon b knowingly for genocide as Testa did? https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jun/04/gay-cake-ruling-supreme-court-same-sex-wedding-colorado-baker-decision-latest https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jun/04/gay-cake-ruling-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesch_%26_Stabenow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesch_%26_Stabenow
briandear 8y ago
Weird, employees had nothing to say in 2014 when these images were published: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/06/18/photos-obama-used-same-so-called-cages-to-detain-child-border-crossers/ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/06/18/photos-ob... Kids were being separated then and being housed in the exact same facilities being used now. Interestingly, this story “breaks” the exact same week the FBI inspector general’s report was released. I am not judging the wrongness or rightness of what is and has happened in terms of illegal immigrants, however, a thinking person ought to be very skeptical about how this story catches fire at exactly the same time a significant piece of news happens: the inspector general’s damning report of the FBI. Were Microsoft employees sleeping when reports of these sorts of situations where being reported in 2014? Or was it more acceptable then because it was a different president?
- cr1895 8y ago
  >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/2014/06/03/us/politics/new-us-effort-to-aid-unaccompanied-child-migrants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/politics/new-us-effort... https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/us/us-sets-up-crisis-shelter-as-children-flow-across-border-alone.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/us/us-sets-up-crisis-shel... >Were Microsoft employees sleeping when reports of these sorts of situations where being reported in 2014? Or was it more acceptable then because it was a different president? The key issue here which is different from what you suggest is the same in 2014 is that the Trump administration separates children from their parents. The Obama administration, rightly or wrongly, detained unaccompanied minors. The Trump administration is detaining children who had their parents with them, and in cases deporting parents without their children. Surely you see this as a different situation??
  - dawnerd 8y ago
    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.
ThbTs4wbXC9Qjv 8y ago
Fire every single one of those Microsoft employees. People in ICE protect me, mine, and our way of life with their lives every day of the week. I'm not going to flippantly say fuck those people because the politics of the day are making a mockery of a law that was duly imposed and enforced by both parties spanning multiple administrations because it's the fashionable political protest fad of the day. Protest the leadership, not the in-the-trenches folk, the retail workers, or the on-the-ground law enforcement officers for what the people we elected decided to enact as law. I stand proudly by those who risk their lives for my safety and security against those who break our laws. I will never support housing children with adults who we don't know 100% are their parents. Anything else would be disgusting, reprehensible, and vile beyond measure.
- refoundglory 8y ago
  Lies. Willful lies. Absolutely everybody knows that the way these immigrants are handled changed THIS YEAR. There is no law mandating this horror. There is no concern that these children are not with their own parents (because we already knew about that possibility, and worked to identify it without wholesale kidnapping!) There is only the desire to hurt families and children in order to scare other families and children - and a whole lot of lying to pretend that's not the entire purpose.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    >no laws https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/06/15-56434.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/06/1... >mandating this horror Yes, instead when the parents are arrested for breaking our laws, the children should also be placed in jail. Hey, if we have such horrors, maybe that would seem like a deterrent to illegal border crossing? IDK. I think it’s pretty funny that some people want to die on this hill while talking about how wonderful other countries are like Canada who has sticker immigration laws. But whatever, I know the people most “outraged” about this don’t actually care about Mexican children.
    - refoundglory 8y ago
cm2187 8y ago
The problem is that "doing evil" is in the eyes of the beholder. To some it is performing a gay wedding. Are we supporting a world where it is ok to refuse to sell a cake because it would be used in a gay wedding? Is it a good thing that the major cloud providers and OS makers enforce a democrat agenda on their clients? I think this is undesirable and dangerous. Already there are many calls for social medias to step in to police the political debate and suppress comments that are deemed to carry fake news. It is only too obvious how such a responsability can be abused (and if human nature and history teaches us anything, will be abused).
- Certhas 8y ago
  That last part is just the slippery slope fallacy though. There are many cases where you are not allowed to lie, and knowingly helping someone lie is also a criminal offence.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    Was Trump's water sport in Moscow story fake news? It has been widely used by CNN. As far as I know it as never been proven. Political debates are riddled with half truth, exaggerations, and carefully selected statistics. It is a slippery slope. It's not as binary as a computer program where it is either correct or not correct.
    - bkor 8y ago
      The fallacy is about doing nothing because one action might eventually lead to a bad action being taken. The solution is to still take the action (e.g. not working together), while being careful not to immediately go on a witch hunt for any deemed wrong. The response from Microsoft management is good I think. They mention it's just about email, calendar, etc. There's nothing special in providing that. The Google case was quite different.
      - cm2187 8y ago
        The US constitution is built on the idea that if a power is given it will be abused, and it is this fundamental distrust of any power given and the builtin counterpowers that have made its success over the long run. It is not a fallacy, it should be the first thing anyone should consider when establishing a new authority.
techterrier 8y ago
Don't panic, I'm sure Peter Theil can pick up the slack if Microsoft cancel.
huffmsa 8y ago
They do know that if M$FT cancels, the contract will just go to someone with zero scruples about this, right? It's better to keep things you dislike close so you can keep an eye on them than to pretend like they don't exist.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Haven’t seen anyone non-ironically use M$FT in like 20 years. It on the same fringe scale as wiring “First!” on a comment section.
  - joeframbach 8y ago
    By all means they should keep typing the "$" so I can more quickly skip over their post as someone who hasn't changed their worldview since the 90s, and someone who is susceptible to memetic bandwagonning.
    - mindslight 8y ago
      Yeah after two decades and the adoption of Unicode, everyone knows the contemporary problem is Fac€book.
    - huffmsa 8y ago
      Have you used Azure? They're the same company, just a new product line.
rumcajz 8y ago
Statement from Satya Nadella: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-views-us-immigration-policy-satya-nadella/?published=t https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-views-us-immigration-polic...
RickJWagner 8y ago
Yet another reason to choose Open Source. There will be other political skirmishes. How to decide what to take a stand on? What if time reveals you made a mistake (i.e. NOW supporting Bill Clinton)? People are too easily manipulated.
- jobigoud 8y ago
  > Yet another reason to choose Open Source. I'm an open source fan but I fail to see your point. Open source software can be used by anyone, including people you don't agree with. You can suddenly find yourself helping bad people just by maintaining or developing your open source software. I have had it happen with one of my project, where people used it (and are probably still using it) for activities I disagree with. The only thing you can do is not interact with them, but they are still benefiting from the work.
newscracker 8y ago
I for one am glad that at least some employees of companies like Google and Microsoft are taking ethical stances for the greater good. A job cannot be seen as just something that provides some personal satisfaction and puts food on the table. There are lines that, when crossed, have larger implications for a large population and how we as humankind want the world to be. Where there's more clarity on certain topics, taking a strong stance is the right thing to do!

233 points by rumcajz 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

> “Our current engagement with ICE is focused on moving legacy infrastructure such as mail, calendar, messaging and document management to the cloud using Azure.” I don’t understand why this makes it any better. I’m sure there’s a lot of “messaging and document management” needed to run those detainment centers. And besides, what’s going to happen in the future when they do ask to use Cognitive Services in their mission? “Sorry, you only get O365?”

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jadedhacker 8y ago
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 international standing.
- netsharc 8y ago
  Smells like IBM supplying tabulating machines to the Nazi government...
- Ntrails 8y ago
  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.
  - mschuster91 8y ago
    > Why on earth would you want to prosecute the supermarket where ICE buys loo roll? The builders merchant who sold them fence posts? In mafiya/organized crime, (serial) murder cases it's common to prosecute knowing supporters as "aiding in criminal activities". The supermarket cashier selling loo rolls to the ICE may not be a "knowing supporter", but the fence post seller certainly is. As for the people involved: there won't be justice, not as long as the US has nukes and refuses any international control.
  - eesmith 8y ago
    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 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_action .
- jgaa 8y ago
  > Child concentration camps run a lot smoother on Office 365, now on Azure! They should add crying children as a ring-tone in Skype!
- dangcansmyd 8y ago
  The political elites are using your emotions to get power. Here: see this fake photo https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/8sdb23/telemundo_busted_for_staging_fake_caged_kids_scene/ https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/8sdb23/telemund...
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  This is an utterly ridiculous statement. ICE buys their envelopes from Office Depot (example), they buy cell phones from ATT (example) - is Office Depot supposed to physically stop ICE agents from entering their stores and paying for office supplies? Is ATT supposed to refund ICE their money and immediately cancel all their phone service. The rhetoric is really getting ahead of the reality here...
setquk 8y ago
This sounds like the standard Microsoft marketoids. When asked about privacy and telemetry or anything critical the answer is always for a question that wasn’t asked followed by some template brand reinforcement followed by a metric ton of blog posts about improving insignificant things that aren’t related. No one at MSFT will answer a question straight ever.

retox 8y ago

The media sure are doing a number on these useful idiots.

noobermin 8y ago

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17351353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17351353

factsaresacred 8y ago

> I think that what we’re seeing right now with ICE is deeply immoral. It’s a violation of human rights on all kinds of levels. Treating criminals as criminals happens every day in every country and comes with the same consequences - children are separated from their parents. Right now there are tens of thousands of broken black homes as one or two parents are in prison - where's the outrage for them and what about their human rights and their families? This moral panic, fanned by the media, truly reflects an inability for critical thought. Illegal aliens ignore US law, knowing full well that their acts are illegal and have consequences. Go to a port of entry or embassy like all other immigrants. It's that simple.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
zasz 8y ago
These people are asylum seekers. What they are doing is literally not illegal. According to USCIS, asylum seekers must be physically present in the US to apply: To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum status regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status. https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum/obtaining-asylum-united-states https://www.uscis.gov/humanitarian/refugees-asylum/asylum/ob... These people are being punished for following the law. Additionally, there is no need to detain parents separately from children, and prior to the Trump administration, while deportations of asylum seekers did happen, families were not split up. > Right now there are tens of thousands of broken black homes as one or two parents are in prison - where's the outrage for them and what about their human rights and their families? Nice of you to pretend to care. Can I refer you to your closest Black Lives Matter chapter?
- macspoofing 8y ago
  The legal way to claim asylum is to do so from official points of entry.
  - 8y ago

everdev 8y ago

As I get older, it's becoming clear how intertwined our morality is with our politics. And how that bleeds into business, sports, religion, etc. It's nice to think of aspects of life that should be free from politics, but in reality that seems hard to achieve.

mehrdadn 8y ago
Is it only becoming more clear or are they actually becoming more intertwined too?
- adjkant 8y ago
  I think both as tech becomes more ubiquitous, but I think the clarity is coming from a lag in perception because of the exact sentiment of "keep politics out of tech". I think a lot of programmers, particularly ones from a generation older than the average tech worker today, got into the field for partially the reason of that separation. It's honestly a great way to live a fulfilling life without having to address the bigger problems in the world personally. That type of ignorance is no longer possible in tech for the most part, but the desire for it still is there for some, in all generations.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    > It's honestly a great way to live a fulfilling life without having to address the bigger problems in the world personally. I thought it's a great way to actually address the bigger problems in the world personally. Because most political involvement is precisely the opposite of effective helping. Politics is arguing that climate change is a communist/leftist/whatever invention. Tech is launching a satellite letting us quantify the actual impact. Politics is talking that education is important (except it must be the right education). Tech is giving people access to it (all of it) for free. Politics is driven by conflicting ideologies, and mostly detached from reality. Tech culture used to stick to the real world. Dilution of that is what people complain when they lament tech mixing with politics. (Yes, I'm probably older than average tech worker.)

macspoofing 8y ago

>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?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gameswithgo 8y ago
trump/sessions specifically mandated this policy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  How is this policy changed from when Obama was in office again? The fakenews that started all this was a few photos from 2014. Russia didn’t stick, yelling about guns didn’t stick, now that Trump wants the wall funded it’s going to be an assault on immigration. Right or wrong, good policy or bad, if “Trump” is coming out of your mouth about this and Clinton, Bush and Obama aren’t... you’re being played.
  - refoundglory 8y ago
    > Immigrant families are being separated primarily because the Trump administration in April began to prosecute as many border-crossing offenses as possible. This “zero-tolerance policy” applies to all adults, regardless of whether they cross alone or with their children. > The Justice Department can’t prosecute children along with their parents, so the natural result of the zero-tolerance policy has been a sharp rise in family separations. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/06/19/the-facts-about-trumps-policy-of-separating-families-at-the-border/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/06/... Stop spending so much effort trying to sound clever and put it towards actually understanding what you're talking about.

jhanschoo 8y ago

It would be nice if the recent instances of employee pressure in Google and Microsoft are early signs of software workers organizing.

jadedhacker 8y ago
It's a sign of nascent change that springs from the grassroots. The only way we'll know for sure is if organizers appear and begin to succeed. In the context of the child separation policy, some of my colleagues asked what can be done, just giving money didn't seem to be enough. I mentioned a general strike, and they didn't react like it was a crazy idea though unlikely to take hold since this openly fascist policy only affects non-white foreigners. Maybe things are changing though. Spring forth cadres of the revolution! Your people need your leadership.
oh_sigh 8y ago
How would employees at Google or Microsoft benefit from unionizing?
- blind_boy_grunt 8y ago
  The same way any other unionized employees do: higher wages, better benefits, collective bargaining, serious representation in the corporate hierarchy, better job security.
  - briandear 8y ago
    And Google employees don’t already that? What better benefits could a Google possibly want? How much higher could their salaries go?
    - dagw 8y ago
      What better benefits could a Google possibly want? More vacation time, more reasonable working hours, a more transparent process for promotions and raises, better paternity/maternity polices, a seat on the board and more say into how the company is run. There is a lot more to collective bargaining than salaries.

mlamat 8y ago

Yes, because selling software to border enforcement agencies is like IBM selling tabulating machines to Nazis, right?

jgaa 8y ago

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. Someone actually complained to the Free Software Foundation about this clause, and they concluded, at that time, that it was permissible. In years to follow I received many emails from universities, schools, hospitals, research facilities - with requests to use the software. In most cases I granted them permission. But by doing it this way, I could sleep well at night - knowing that my software could not - legally - be used to separate children from parents, or for any other evil purpose by any governments around the globe. ---- War Software series Copyright (C) 1996 - 2018 by Jarle (jgaa) Aase (www.jgaa.com) This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation version 2 of the License - WITH THE FOLLOWING RESTRICTIONS: * GOVERNMENTS, GOVERNMENTAL AGENCIES OR COMMERCIAL COMPANIES OWNED 50% OR MORE BY THE GOVERNMENT ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE THE SOFTWARE OR SORCE CODE FOR ANY PURPOSE. THIS RESTRICTION ALSO APPLIES FOR PROGRAMS DERIVED FROM THE SOURCE CODE, OR PROGRAMS/ SOURCE CODE THAT USE SPECIAL TECHNICS/ALOGRITHMS INVENTED IN THIS SOFTWARE. * THE FULL SOURCE CODE IS WITHELD FROM A PUBLIC RELEASE UNTIL THE LINUX VERSION IS RELEASED. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

adrr 8y ago
Curious how that is enforced as a copyright clause. I grasp how GPL and other copyleft licenses work when copies are distributed but can't see how a usage restriction can be applied unless the party is distributing the software.
- jgaa 8y ago
  It is very difficult to enforce any clause in any user agreement (or even in law) - as bad people will just ignore them. My clause was a statement: Don't use my software - I did not make it for you. The Microsoft employees wish to put restrictions in commercial contracts is interesting - and also scary. There are so many interest groups, and so many agendas, and so many views on whats right and whats wrong - that things could get really messed up.

ggg9990 8y ago

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 to the police, don't ask everyone to become a member of the police.

madaxe_again 8y ago
This cuts both ways, and a precedent has already been set, recently, with the wedding cake debacle. If a business can refuse service due to soneone’s gender or sexual orientation (I.e. it conflicts with the business owner’s sense of morality), why should a business not be able to refuse because they morally object to their client using their product or services to harm human beings? Honestly, I don’t see the distinction. If one is legal then the other must be. I take your point that this could end in a situation where all businesses end up being discriminatory in one way or another, but it’s then up to the market to reward or punish businesses for their stance. If you don’t like Microsoft selling Azure to human rights abusers, don’t buy their stock, don’t buy their products. If you don’t like that a bakery didn’t sell a cake to a gay couple, don’t buy their cakes. Yes, it can be argued that we will end up back with “no blacks no dogs no Irish”, and if we do that’s a damning indictment of the times - but it can also be argued that large corporations have substantial power to influence policy, which they somewhat have a track record of using for Not Good. It would be nice to see it being used for good. I don’t think it’s asking businesses to be police, rather to act as moral entities rather than purely economic ones. I mean - corporations are people, too (corporate personhood, emergent intelligence), and unless we want an entirely mechanistic and amoral future (think Cloud Atlas and kin), we need to allow businesses to be moral arbiters. Is it a good idea? I don’t know, but it can it really be worse than selling zyklon b knowingly for genocide as Testa did? https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jun/04/gay-cake-ruling-supreme-court-same-sex-wedding-colorado-baker-decision-latest https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jun/04/gay-cake-ruling-... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesch_%26_Stabenow https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesch_%26_Stabenow

briandear 8y ago

Weird, employees had nothing to say in 2014 when these images were published: http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/06/18/photos-obama-used-same-so-called-cages-to-detain-child-border-crossers/ http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/06/18/photos-ob... Kids were being separated then and being housed in the exact same facilities being used now. Interestingly, this story “breaks” the exact same week the FBI inspector general’s report was released. I am not judging the wrongness or rightness of what is and has happened in terms of illegal immigrants, however, a thinking person ought to be very skeptical about how this story catches fire at exactly the same time a significant piece of news happens: the inspector general’s damning report of the FBI. Were Microsoft employees sleeping when reports of these sorts of situations where being reported in 2014? Or was it more acceptable then because it was a different president?

cr1895 8y ago
>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/2014/06/03/us/politics/new-us-effort-to-aid-unaccompanied-child-migrants.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/us/politics/new-us-effort... https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/us/us-sets-up-crisis-shelter-as-children-flow-across-border-alone.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/17/us/us-sets-up-crisis-shel... >Were Microsoft employees sleeping when reports of these sorts of situations where being reported in 2014? Or was it more acceptable then because it was a different president? The key issue here which is different from what you suggest is the same in 2014 is that the Trump administration separates children from their parents. The Obama administration, rightly or wrongly, detained unaccompanied minors. The Trump administration is detaining children who had their parents with them, and in cases deporting parents without their children. Surely you see this as a different situation??
- dawnerd 8y ago
  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.

ThbTs4wbXC9Qjv 8y ago

Fire every single one of those Microsoft employees. People in ICE protect me, mine, and our way of life with their lives every day of the week. I'm not going to flippantly say fuck those people because the politics of the day are making a mockery of a law that was duly imposed and enforced by both parties spanning multiple administrations because it's the fashionable political protest fad of the day. Protest the leadership, not the in-the-trenches folk, the retail workers, or the on-the-ground law enforcement officers for what the people we elected decided to enact as law. I stand proudly by those who risk their lives for my safety and security against those who break our laws. I will never support housing children with adults who we don't know 100% are their parents. Anything else would be disgusting, reprehensible, and vile beyond measure.

refoundglory 8y ago
Lies. Willful lies. Absolutely everybody knows that the way these immigrants are handled changed THIS YEAR. There is no law mandating this horror. There is no concern that these children are not with their own parents (because we already knew about that possibility, and worked to identify it without wholesale kidnapping!) There is only the desire to hurt families and children in order to scare other families and children - and a whole lot of lying to pretend that's not the entire purpose.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  >no laws https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/06/15-56434.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/07/06/1... >mandating this horror Yes, instead when the parents are arrested for breaking our laws, the children should also be placed in jail. Hey, if we have such horrors, maybe that would seem like a deterrent to illegal border crossing? IDK. I think it’s pretty funny that some people want to die on this hill while talking about how wonderful other countries are like Canada who has sticker immigration laws. But whatever, I know the people most “outraged” about this don’t actually care about Mexican children.
  - refoundglory 8y ago

cm2187 8y ago

The problem is that "doing evil" is in the eyes of the beholder. To some it is performing a gay wedding. Are we supporting a world where it is ok to refuse to sell a cake because it would be used in a gay wedding? Is it a good thing that the major cloud providers and OS makers enforce a democrat agenda on their clients? I think this is undesirable and dangerous. Already there are many calls for social medias to step in to police the political debate and suppress comments that are deemed to carry fake news. It is only too obvious how such a responsability can be abused (and if human nature and history teaches us anything, will be abused).

Certhas 8y ago
That last part is just the slippery slope fallacy though. There are many cases where you are not allowed to lie, and knowingly helping someone lie is also a criminal offence.
- cm2187 8y ago
  Was Trump's water sport in Moscow story fake news? It has been widely used by CNN. As far as I know it as never been proven. Political debates are riddled with half truth, exaggerations, and carefully selected statistics. It is a slippery slope. It's not as binary as a computer program where it is either correct or not correct.
  - bkor 8y ago
    The fallacy is about doing nothing because one action might eventually lead to a bad action being taken. The solution is to still take the action (e.g. not working together), while being careful not to immediately go on a witch hunt for any deemed wrong. The response from Microsoft management is good I think. They mention it's just about email, calendar, etc. There's nothing special in providing that. The Google case was quite different.
    - cm2187 8y ago
      The US constitution is built on the idea that if a power is given it will be abused, and it is this fundamental distrust of any power given and the builtin counterpowers that have made its success over the long run. It is not a fallacy, it should be the first thing anyone should consider when establishing a new authority.

techterrier 8y ago

Don't panic, I'm sure Peter Theil can pick up the slack if Microsoft cancel.

huffmsa 8y ago

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.

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
Haven’t seen anyone non-ironically use M$FT in like 20 years. It on the same fringe scale as wiring “First!” on a comment section.
- joeframbach 8y ago
  By all means they should keep typing the "$" so I can more quickly skip over their post as someone who hasn't changed their worldview since the 90s, and someone who is susceptible to memetic bandwagonning.
  - mindslight 8y ago
    Yeah after two decades and the adoption of Unicode, everyone knows the contemporary problem is Fac€book.
  - huffmsa 8y ago
    Have you used Azure? They're the same company, just a new product line.

rumcajz 8y ago

Statement from Satya Nadella: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-views-us-immigration-policy-satya-nadella/?published=t https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/my-views-us-immigration-polic...

RickJWagner 8y ago

Yet another reason to choose Open Source. There will be other political skirmishes. How to decide what to take a stand on? What if time reveals you made a mistake (i.e. NOW supporting Bill Clinton)? People are too easily manipulated.

jobigoud 8y ago
> Yet another reason to choose Open Source. I'm an open source fan but I fail to see your point. Open source software can be used by anyone, including people you don't agree with. You can suddenly find yourself helping bad people just by maintaining or developing your open source software. I have had it happen with one of my project, where people used it (and are probably still using it) for activities I disagree with. The only thing you can do is not interact with them, but they are still benefiting from the work.

newscracker 8y ago

I for one am glad that at least some employees of companies like Google and Microsoft are taking ethical stances for the greater good. A job cannot be seen as just something that provides some personal satisfaction and puts food on the table. There are lines that, when crossed, have larger implications for a large population and how we as humankind want the world to be. Where there's more clarity on certain topics, taking a strong stance is the right thing to do!