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> Should everybody start building additional backdoors in their software that shuts it down if it detects some sort of "bad" software is being created, or possi

> Should everybody start building additional backdoors in their software that shuts it down if it detects some sort of "bad" software is being created, or possibly hook it up to a Twitter feed and shut down if people are saying bad things about the software operator? No, I think changing license terms to "won't be used by a company which separates families or violates international human rights laws," and not renewing the contract is fine enough. > Github emphasized that they don't know what is being done with the on-premises, firewalled software they sold to ICE. You don't have to know what ICE is doing with your software to know what they're doing more generally. > What about the guy delivering pizza to ICE headquarters -- is he cancelled too? He doesn't know if the "must separate the children at the border" team or the "let's arrest the leaders of this slave trafficking ring" is eating the pizza. "Cancelling" isn't a real thing, not distinct from "public opinion," anyway. If people want to direct ire to pizza delivery employees they can, but they're not, so I don't know why you're making this comparison. > At least to me, some of the other protests in regards to ICE have been even more obviously incoherent, like the demand for Wayfair to stop selling clean beds for detained people to sleep in. Any endeavor with lots of actors won't be entirely coherent, unified, or consistent. Some people think that Wayfair making profits on selling beds for prisons isn't some great altruism on Wayfair's part, and ICE would have a harder time building prisons if there weren't so many people eager to supply them; I don't know how much I'm on board with that as an effective protest, but I can at least understand it.

forgottenpass 7y ago
>No, I think changing license terms to "won't be used by a company which separates families So, Child Protective Services shouldn't be allowed to license GitHub either? Edit: I know this isn't what you meant. But such obvious clarity issues are a sign that there are many more subtle issues that limit articulation of your position and prevent engaging in a productive conversation over the internet.
- throwaway8592 7y ago
  You're making an excellent point that I think people are misunderstanding, unfortunately: Let's say github's goal was to define license terms such that ICE is banned, but not other legitimate companies that do a lot of good for the world. It would be great if solving this was as easy as saying "you can only use this if you never aim to separate children from their families", but it's not, because such a term would also require you to boycott Child Protective Services -- which can and does save children victims from horribly abusive parents and other terrible circumstances. I've personally known people who were repeatedly raped by a family member throughout their early childhood. This is incredibly, devastatingly evil. It DOES happen, and if after acknowledging this, you seriously think there is still NO circumstance in which a child should be separated from their family -- then you are a horrible human being. But I don't think any of the downvoters think this, so I am genuinely curious: Why do you really think such a simple, un-nuanced license term would work without harmful side-effects? Note: You can't just say "we'll enforce the license terms subjectively". Selective enforcement defeats the whole point of adding it into your terms of service or licensing terms -- because then, you might as well just go back to ad-hoc boycotting as per the personal ethics of your corporation's senior leadership. Aside from that, you do have to precisely define what you mean -- precisely which scenarios are or are not tolerable to you, etc.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    > NO circumstance in which a child should be separated from their family In fact, the reason ICE separates adults from children in the first place is to fight human trafficking and child abuse: they used to keep the children with their accompanying adults (who aren’t guaranteed to be their parents, which seems to be overlooked in these arguments), but they found that the children were being assaulted by the primary adult population, so they started creating child-only facilities to combat this.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      Asserting that ICE made that finding and stopped detaining children with parents together based on it is false. ICE didn't even make the decision to stop family detention, the US District Court for the Central District of California in 2015 (in a decision appealed to and upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2016), applying rules from the 1997 Flores settlement, prohibited extended detention of children with adults (and ICE continues to operate family detention facilities within the limits of that court order.) This did force separation in detention when extended, but this was actively mitigated for the remaining part of Obama’s term, IIRC, by ICE not detaining adults or their children for illegal entry alone when that would result in separation of parents from their children (they didn't stop immigration proceedings against them, just didn't detain them during the process, unless there were additional reasons.)
koolba 7y ago
> No, I think changing license terms to "won't be used by a company which separates families or violates international human rights laws," and not renewing the contract is fine enough. Good thing for ICE they can still use all FOSS. > You don't have to know what ICE is doing with your software to know what they're doing more generally. Yes, they're enforcing the laws currently on the books. Those laws were created by our elected officials. The elected officials were selected by us, the people. In fact, if we want those laws changed we can elect new officials or compel our existing ones to make the changes we'd like to see. There's plenty of people that disagree with our current immigration laws, our drug laws, our tax laws, our gun laws, our marriage laws, our healthcare laws, and just about any other part of our system. But if we as a society do not have a unified acceptance for the rule of law then things get ugly. Fast. I'm convinced this whole "shaming" and "canceling" thing has become the public action method of choice not because the ideas being proposed are popular (they're not), but because they see bullying corporations and their potential customers as easier than trying to convince the public on the inherent value of their ideas. They're just loud voices in for another rude awakening after the public makes their picks next year behind the ballot curtain.

forgottenpass 7y ago

>No, I think changing license terms to "won't be used by a company which separates families So, Child Protective Services shouldn't be allowed to license GitHub either? Edit: I know this isn't what you meant. But such obvious clarity issues are a sign that there are many more subtle issues that limit articulation of your position and prevent engaging in a productive conversation over the internet.

throwaway8592 7y ago
You're making an excellent point that I think people are misunderstanding, unfortunately: Let's say github's goal was to define license terms such that ICE is banned, but not other legitimate companies that do a lot of good for the world. It would be great if solving this was as easy as saying "you can only use this if you never aim to separate children from their families", but it's not, because such a term would also require you to boycott Child Protective Services -- which can and does save children victims from horribly abusive parents and other terrible circumstances. I've personally known people who were repeatedly raped by a family member throughout their early childhood. This is incredibly, devastatingly evil. It DOES happen, and if after acknowledging this, you seriously think there is still NO circumstance in which a child should be separated from their family -- then you are a horrible human being. But I don't think any of the downvoters think this, so I am genuinely curious: Why do you really think such a simple, un-nuanced license term would work without harmful side-effects? Note: You can't just say "we'll enforce the license terms subjectively". Selective enforcement defeats the whole point of adding it into your terms of service or licensing terms -- because then, you might as well just go back to ad-hoc boycotting as per the personal ethics of your corporation's senior leadership. Aside from that, you do have to precisely define what you mean -- precisely which scenarios are or are not tolerable to you, etc.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > NO circumstance in which a child should be separated from their family In fact, the reason ICE separates adults from children in the first place is to fight human trafficking and child abuse: they used to keep the children with their accompanying adults (who aren’t guaranteed to be their parents, which seems to be overlooked in these arguments), but they found that the children were being assaulted by the primary adult population, so they started creating child-only facilities to combat this.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    Asserting that ICE made that finding and stopped detaining children with parents together based on it is false. ICE didn't even make the decision to stop family detention, the US District Court for the Central District of California in 2015 (in a decision appealed to and upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2016), applying rules from the 1997 Flores settlement, prohibited extended detention of children with adults (and ICE continues to operate family detention facilities within the limits of that court order.) This did force separation in detention when extended, but this was actively mitigated for the remaining part of Obama’s term, IIRC, by ICE not detaining adults or their children for illegal entry alone when that would result in separation of parents from their children (they didn't stop immigration proceedings against them, just didn't detain them during the process, unless there were additional reasons.)

koolba 7y ago

> No, I think changing license terms to "won't be used by a company which separates families or violates international human rights laws," and not renewing the contract is fine enough. Good thing for ICE they can still use all FOSS. > You don't have to know what ICE is doing with your software to know what they're doing more generally. Yes, they're enforcing the laws currently on the books. Those laws were created by our elected officials. The elected officials were selected by us, the people. In fact, if we want those laws changed we can elect new officials or compel our existing ones to make the changes we'd like to see. There's plenty of people that disagree with our current immigration laws, our drug laws, our tax laws, our gun laws, our marriage laws, our healthcare laws, and just about any other part of our system. But if we as a society do not have a unified acceptance for the rule of law then things get ugly. Fast. I'm convinced this whole "shaming" and "canceling" thing has become the public action method of choice not because the ideas being proposed are popular (they're not), but because they see bullying corporations and their potential customers as easier than trying to convince the public on the inherent value of their ideas. They're just loud voices in for another rude awakening after the public makes their picks next year behind the ballot curtain.