30 ms·

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 frien

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 private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time. We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings. But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. The employees are putting their employer in a "damned if they do, damned if they don't" situation. EDIT: Just to clarify, I love the vision of a world where executives don't take actions their workers will protest. I think that in order to get there, the protests need to be reasonable, and I think this one isn't. EDIT DISCLAIMER: I own a small amount of MSFT stock, which was not on my mind as I wrote this. I use GitHub's free service and have no other relationship I can think of with MSFT or GitHub.

fennecfoxen 6y ago
> It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time. Using Microsoft as your canonical code repository is already a meaningful risk to your business. It's nice that more companies are recognizing this. They're building nice new features with their ecosystem, too, in traditional Microsoft embrace-extend style.
- rattray 6y ago
  Right, storing your code anywhere presents risk (including self-hosted on a FOSS stack). With GitHub/MSFT, that risk includes "they decide they don't like you anymore" amongst others. How high is that risk? You'll think it's a lot higher if GitHub were to kick off ICE. (disclaimer: I hold a small amount of MSFT stock, though this was not on my mind when I wrote my original post - thanks for the reminder).
  - aparsons 6y ago
    Microsoft isn’t kicking off ICE. They’ve backed our government at every opportunity, including pentagon contracts. Fixing democracy should be done democratically, it’s not the job of tech companies - and Nadella understands that.
- aparsons 6y ago
  Can’t go one thread about Github without the M$FT FUD
toomuchtodo 6y ago
(Edit: Removed “people are lazy”, poor choice of words) People feel despair, hence pushing on Github instead of the political process. I’m all for unconventional leverage, but Microsoft is a trillion dollar org and has shareholders; this isn’t some VC funded dual class share startup where the founder has a blank check to do whatever they want. Edit: Can’t give up on the political process, that’s where the change happens. Continue to apply pressure, your opponents eventually give up or die out.
- ricefield 6y ago
  I think it's probably more that people have lost trust in the political proces and are pushing on private companies as a last resort to effect change.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- untog 6y ago
  Attributing this to laziness is absolutely wrong, IMO. The political process and system is deeply broken and people realise that they cannot make their voices heard through it. So they find alternatives.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Corrected.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  You've got this backwards. What is happening here is the real political process - people congregating and trying to achieve their political goals through organizations they can actually influence. Organizing to convince your employer, or your local government, or your school board or whatever organization you can to push things in some direction is the political process. Sure, voting is one aspect of it, but it is by no means the be-all, end-all of politics and democracy.
ravenstine 6y ago
If only people cared this much when tech companies contract with or kowtow to arms of openly racist authoritarian governments abroad.
jobeirne 6y ago
> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. Um, think you've got this backwards. Private entities shouldn't have to take on anyone they don't want as customers (for whatever reason - do you have to justify who you do or don't want in your livingroom?), but publicly-funded institutions shouldn't be able to deny service on political grounds.
- nahtnam 6y ago
  What about anti-discrimnation laws? Where do you stand on the issue with the baker refusing to bake a cake for the gay couple?
  - nvahalik 6y ago
    Would also love to hear the answer to this question. You can’t have it both ways.
    - barry-cotter 6y ago
      Of course you can. One rule for me another for you because I think these two things are different is easily understood by two year olds. Lawyers are perfectly capable of coming up with justifications for anything they like and if the judges feel sympathetic the power of the state will enforce it.
  - Klinky 6y ago
    Sexuality is getting closer and closer to being a fully-protected class, so they are going to have to suck it up, just like the bakers who didn't want to serve black people decades ago. They can deny service to anyone, so long as it does not run afoul of discrimination laws. ICE is not a protected class.
  - PascLeRasc 6y ago
    No one is born an ICE employee.
empath75 6y ago
Replace ICE with "the SS" and see how your comment reads. I was working on a DHS contract and quit the second I found out they were putting children into cages. I'm under no obligation to work at a company that contributes in even a tiny way to an atrocity. A company I work for is free to take the contract, and I'm free to tell them I don't want to work for them any more because of it.
- nxpnsv 6y ago
  There are no excuses for ICE behavior, but they clearly are very different from the SS.
  - empath75 6y ago
    Let's say you're, say, IBM in the 1920s. At what point does the SS become an organization with which you refuse to do business? They didn't start off running concentration camps, after all.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      If you’re referring to the Nazi movement in general, probably the point where they openly campaign against the concept of liberal democracy or use street violence (roughing up opposing groups, smashing windows, attacking/commandeering government facilities) as a means of social protest. Those are all pretty big warning signs that were present in the Nazis long before they seized power let alone built concentration camps.
      - empath75 6y ago
        No I'm referring to the German law enforcement agency that eventually ran the death camps. At what point in their journey toward the gas chambers do you say enough is enough. I would suggest that separating families and putting children in cages is far enough. Trump repeatedly asked his followers to rough up protestors 4 years ago.
mchanson 6y ago
Civility has already broken down because of the US government’s actions. Schools and other parts of the government are ending their contracts with police. People all over the country and looking hard at their actions and the actions of those companies or other entities they associate with. When the government is acting this badly the social contract gets weaker and begins to fall apart. This is just a reaction to those larger forces. Until those larger problems are addressed and the government starts acting more civilized there is no reason to expect or hope that business as usual will continue.
- drocer88 6y ago
  Like they it did in 1968. Which gave us Nixon and Reagan.
  - jmeister 6y ago
    Both sides are so convinced of their moral superiority that they just can’t empathize with the other or anticipate their reaction. God save this country
- paiute 6y ago
  The U.S. Government does not have police contracts with schools. Police are state, county, or local. The last few weeks have made it clear to me very few people understand our system of gov.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    The state, county, and local govs are a part of the US government. The supremacy clause sees to that.
    - zentiggr 6y ago
      "Part of" certainly does not mean "controlled by". Powers are generally enumerated or reserved to the states. Plus and minus lots of interpretive scotus precedents.
syshum 6y ago
>> 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 defensive and further divides the nation ensuring no reform can happen at all Today it seems if you believe in anything other than fully open unrestricted borders then you are considered to be a racist authoritarian from mid 1940's Germany
- dagnabbit 6y ago
  > Today it seems if you believe in anything other than fully open unrestricted borders then you are considered to be a racist authoritarian from mid 1940's Germany It only seems that way to thin-skinned white nationalists who cry and whine whenever somebody doesn't support their attempts to change the fundamental nature of America. These whiny white nationalists are so self-entitled that they portray themselves as horrific victims just because the policies (which they have been actively implementing) get some bad press. Not only do they want to implement horrible policies, they also demand that we pretend to love those policies. Thank you for so clearly identifying yourself as a whiny, thin-skinned, snowflake of a white nationalist.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  If you are in favor (or in the process) of putting large groups of people who have not directly harmed anyone in concentration camps, separating them from their families, keeping children in cages etc, THEN you are considered a racist authoritarian almost akin to mid 1940's Germany.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    What alternative proposals do you have for dealing with people who've unlawfully crossed the border? If your answer is "let them live freely in the US", I think it's fair to characterize that as a a call for open borders.
cm2187 6y ago
There is also a contradiction in calling for more economic equality for minorities in the US and picking on ICE. Illegal immigration applies a downward pressure on wages of low skill workers, which is precisely where minorities are over-represented in the US.
- dec0dedab0de 6y ago
  It is possible to be against illegal immigration, and also against the tactics used by ICE.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  People are not necessarily picking on the theoretical role of Ice. They are against the practice of what ICE does.
- jlokier 6y ago
  Your own contradiction is much more substantial! Immigration enforcement is literally the use of force to maintain a larger economic inequality than the downward pressure you referred to. Not in some subtle way. Enforcing politically decided inequality is literally the purpose of ICE. It makes people uncomfortable to talk of it in those terms, but when you get down to it, a lot of people want to see enforced inequality, and vote for it. They couch in terms like "downward pressure" to abstract things away from the people's lived experience, to make it palatable to make one group of people worse off so that another group of people can be better off. The economics abstraction has the added bonus that we avoid mentionining the lived reality: the perpetual fear, lack of humanity and so forth that come with, say, splitting up families, and preventing them from having any reasonable avenue for leaving an ordinary life. (I've known too many immigrants who cannot find a way to solve the bureaucracy problem, and cannot even determine their legal status, or in some cases if they did try to find out they risk being split from their own immediate family, so perpetual fear and avoidance of authority is their only realistic option for living.)
  - thisiszilff 6y ago
    The charitable interpretation of immigration enforcement is that it ensures a nation does not get overwhelmed by people entering the nation -- in terms of its economy, bureaucracy, etc. I can see that argument that enforcing immigration maintains the economic inequality between individuals in the US and, for example, individuals in Guatemala, but controlled immigration ensures that a nation is capable of growing and supporting the immigrants that come in in the first place. After-all, immigrants are coming to a given country because of perceived advantages of that country, if too many immigrants come at a single time, those advantages may disappear.
codezero 6y ago
I think it's great that employees can direct this kind of business decision. It's also unfortunate (I am assuming) that the employees have much less of a stake collectively than other shareholders. There's a good chance they would make more informed decisions if they were to fail or be successful based on those decisions. For what it's worth, I think the employees would still make these demands, it would just be nice to be able to show that it was also the right business decision.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  Why does it matter if it's the right business decision? Don't moral considerations have precedence over business considerations? It should be expected of a company to take a profit hit if it is the only way to uphold a moral standard. Regular people do it all the time, why should corporations be held to lower standards?
  - codezero 6y ago
    That's a fair point, but it's often hard to find a single agreed upon moral compass at an entire company. Also, I would bet that a review of this from a business point of view might make a moral stance moot. If that's the case, it seems like an easier way to avoid a minefield.
staticassertion 6y ago
Microsoft already banned the police from using Rekognition. I think if the bar is "don't kill minorities" people are mostly going to be OK with you cutting the contract.
- poxrud 6y ago
  Rekognition is Amazon, not Microsoft.
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    Whatever Microsoft's thing was then. Or maybe it was only Amazon. The point stands.
- downvoteme1 6y ago
  Also the ban is for one year. Amazon’s plan is to suspend selling while the public opinion is against it. Once this issue is forgotten, they will begin selling Rekognition again to the government .
- manigandham 6y ago
  I'm a minority who is tired of people using that term without any distinction. Please be more specific because "minorities" are not being randomly killed. We’re doing just fine.
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    Don't kill anyone en masse.
quadrifoliate 6y ago
> What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. They have a problem with their employer, and are being heard in the court of public opinion. Why is that "a bummer"? I don't have a particular opinion on whether or not what they are doing is an effective way to accomplish their aims. But workers speaking out for any reason, ranging from unethical wage suppression to insufficient toilet breaks to disagreement with company policy, should always be cause for rejoicing. Employers in the US hold a wildly disparate amount of power (with health insurance being tied to employment, and no social safety net) – so employees that speak out tend to help tilt that balance a very tiny bit back to the side of the employee.
- rattray 6y ago
  Yeah, that's a good question. I think that's why this case upsets me. I want to live in a world where, as another commenter put it, executives will think twice before taking actions that they know their employees won't like. Because they should know that employees have power, and a voice, and must be listened to. In this case, there's no way the executives can sanely take the requested action. It'd be terribly damaging to their business. (I may be wrong about this, but it's what I would think if I were an executive). So now if I'm an executive, I have to roll my eyes at the protesting employees. They lose credibility. I'll know that next time I do something they ask for, they'll just ask me for something I can't do. That's what bums be out.
  - ironmagma 6y ago
    To suggest that Github “can’t” end this contract is crazy talk. If a huge chunk of the company won’t do it, they must end the project.
- dnissley 6y ago
  > They have a problem with their employer, and are being heard in the court of public opinion. Why is that "a bummer"? The court of public opinion doesn't have a good track record, for one. It's decisions are often based on fashion more than any kind of ethical principles. A classic exploration of this phenomenon is contained in the novel The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.
ChristianBundy 6y ago
> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It really isn't. Private institutions are under no obligation to collaborate with public agencies unless explicitly required by the Defense Production Act[0]. Please remember that the government is meant to serve us, not the other way around. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
- newman8r 6y ago
  I don't think OP meant it's lunacy because of any legal obligations private companies have to a federal organization, but rather due to the message it would send to current and future customers.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    I think that message could be extremely productive, if refusing a government contract means not assisting questionable or immoral or even unsupported actions by _any_ agency.
    - newman8r 6y ago
      True - I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with it. It will send a good message to some people and a bad one to others. To other government agencies, they may see github as a liability and end up leaving github altogether - I think that's the 'lunacy' part from a business perspective. Corporations know there's always a chance that they'll get an internet pitchfork mob going after them for some (justified or unjustified) reason, and the last thing they want is for their cloud providers to pile on and further add to the fire.
  - ChristianBundy 6y ago
    > the message it would send to current and future customers What exactly is that message? Maybe: "If you make your money by separating families, putting kids in cages, and deporting asylum-seekers to places where they're in danger, then we don't want your money." Do you see anything wrong with that message?
cyphar 6y ago
My problem with this argument is that it (if applied uniformly) means that you couldn't hold IBM culpable for their role in the Holocaust. After all, "all they did" was help create a computerised census system for the democratically elected German government[1]. In reality, their computerisation of the census allowed the Nazis to far more efficiently catalogue and track Jewish people throughout the Third Reich. And before anyone invokes Godwin's Law, ICE has been recently discovered to have literally poisoned detainees by using toxic cleaning chemicals in close proximity to detainees without giving them any protection or sufficient ventilation[2]. But even if you think it is unreasonable or overblown to call ICE nazis or fascists, I still question the premise that companies should not be held morally responsible for the people they knowingly and willingly do business with. If GitHub was selling software to known terrorists, you'd better believe that the American government (and hopefully most people) wouldn't see it as being fair game. I agree that the lasting way to stop the abuses by ICE is through legislative and administrative changes, but I disagree with the argument that "refusing to sell software to ICE won't stop them from committing abuses, so I'll just sell them software anyway" is ethically justified. Now, GitHub is obviously free to do whatever they like but the public should also be free to point this out whenever they try to take the moral high ground. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust [2]: https://thecrimereport.org/2020/06/11/ice-spraying-disinfectant-on-ca-detainees-day-and-night-report/ https://thecrimereport.org/2020/06/11/ice-spraying-disinfect...
- google234123 6y ago
  Calling ICE nazis is idiotic.
  - shuntress 6y ago
    Not too long ago the company where I worked was having a similar debate concerning services provided (through an intermediary) to ICE. One particular facet in the discussion that stuck with me more than the rest was a comment by a co-worker who was visiting from the Berlin office. They talked briefly about small monuments on the street by their home marking the spots where people were arrested and taken to concentration camps as their time and place of death. They pointed out that in many cases those dates are in the mid 1930s. Up to 10 years before the discovery and liberation of the death camps. Calling ICE nazis (while still hopefully hyperbole) is not necessarily an unfounded comparison.
coffeemaniac 6y ago
> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time. Why is this lunacy? If government entities suddenly are under the impression that they'll have a difficult time finding business partners if they're consistently caught doing human rights violations.. seems like a win-win. If anything it would attract negative attention for the next company willing to do business with them. > We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings. We're doing that too. There's no reason only one form of action should be followed. > But I can't see how this helps improve immigration It helps by making ICE expend their resources on finding new businesses to provide hosting services they need, or if they can't find any, rolling their own. I see that some commenters are suggesting that github should use its position to influence ICE and maybe that's contributing to some confusion. This was never about improving ICE -- the goal is to cripple and dismantle them.
newacct583 6y ago
> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. In a working society, maybe. In a properly functioning government it's the job of the executive branch to find some kind of compromise and operate the government for the benefit of and according to the priorities of a reasonable approximation of all the citizens. But that's not possible with ICE. Right now there's a large fraction of society that supports inhumane mass deportation, human rights disaster camps across the border, family separation policies (though that got rolled back, thankfully), no-knock armed police raids for visa violations etc.... And there's another large fraction of society, including the Github workers, who find that hateful and immoral. And those folks have no ability to affect policy absent waiting to vote again. Their desires and needs simply aren't being heard. In previous administrations, that kind of hyper-partisan policymaking by the executive branch simply wouldn't have happened. Either because it's bad politics or because of some sense of order on the part of the policymakers. But it's not true now. The root cause, basically, is that one political party in the US decided to make an "enemy" out of a population (hispanic immigrants) in order to gin up votes from people that don't like them. And the resulting skew in civic priorities has made a big mess. This is how you get civil unrest, which we're seeing right now in all sorts of contexts. But the mess isn't the fault of the protestors or the github folks, really. You can't run a country according to the parochial needs of your half of the electorate and tell everyone else to fuck off. They start flipping tables.
seph-reed 6y ago
Private agencies are the only field in which we have any real democratic say. This is the part of Capitalism that is good, when we can vote with our dollars. IMO, if it wasn't for anti-competition lobbyists and government contracts, it would be much much easier to get private companies to take a stand every once in a while.
tresfaim 6y ago
Why can't you see this helping? Can you not see the rally that is happening in the corporate world in favor of the BLM movement? Even if corporations are posturing this stance with no real action at the moment, if bigger entities make real actions like this, it will catch on, and then it will trickle down to smaller businesses, and it will seep into lobbying circles. This has leaderships around the world forced to make visible, impactful actions. Fear of disruption keeps the status quo in place.
- wolco 6y ago
  Your movement hit at a bad time. The corporate world has to grip with a few critical issues around staying in business, shifting to remote and it will increasely feel a pressure to move manifacturing onshore. I would focua on what changes you can make with police forces before the second covid wave hits and pushes your issue to remember when status.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Arguably if it wasn't for the weakness of corporate world right now this never would have happened. Indeed, the average American is much too busy with work in order to achieve this level of political engagement.
badRNG 6y ago
> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. Most of the comments here seem to indicate that what was said, and proposed to be done, is political, and politics are bad. This seems to rest on the assumption that one, institutions like ICE are politically neutral, and/or two, simply doing business with a political organization is necessarily "apolitical." It also relies on the assumption that anything that can be identified as political is off limits to businesses, and that many businesses are capable of avoiding being "political" altogether. Businesses can be largely nonpartisan, but they almost certainly cannot avoid "politics." It is very difficult to be consistently "neutral" on issues like racial justice and equal opportunities for LGBTQ folks. Is hiring a trans woman "political?" Is simply doing business with a political campaign entirely apolitical? When we look to issues of the past, is/was supporting the Civil Rights Movement political? It certainly seems like a totally different type of politics than the kind where you take a partisan stance on economic policy. IBM rightfully faced backlash for doing business with government institutions in the 20th century that were clearly not neutral on the issue of racial justice. The IBM example isn't to compare that situation to the current, but to demonstrate that you cannot justify an apolitical position in all contexts, and that "apolitical" positions may not be quite as neutral as it appears on the surface (hopefully that avoids a Godwin's Law violation.) Similarly, while to a lesser degree, ICE as it exists today can clearly be identified as an agency carrying out a specific political agenda that has a negative effect on racial justice. If doing business with an institution furthers that organizations' goals, and those goals are not neutral on the issue of racial justice, it certainly can be argued that your continued business with that institution furthers that organizations' goals. To argue otherwise puts one into a position where it seems they'd have to defend IBM in the aforementioned example for logical consistency.
jrochkind1 6y ago
So not to go all Godwin, but take an extreme example... Do you think a company in 1930s Germany should have ethically refused to provide software that was used in concentration camps? [In fact, there was a bit of "IT" then, used for such, but it was provided by IBM. But to make the analogy closer, let's imagine a hypothetically Germany company]. ("Companies" don't do anything by themselves, so I guess the question is if the decision-makers in such a company should refuse to sell software to the German government for such purposes, and if the employees should try to pressure the decision-makers to). If we agree that in that case the ethical choice is to refuse to supply the software, and that it would in fact be unethical to sell software for such a purpose... Then we already agree that there is some case where a company should refuse to provide services for 'political' reasons, even to a government agency of the country it's located in. So it's no longer a question of if a company should ever be "expected"to do this -- but if they should in this case, if this particular scenario is such an example. People can disagree on that, can think that obviously this is unlike the Nazi example, that this example does not rise to that level. I'm not trying to insist that this is definitely a "Nazi-like" example. But once we agree there is at least one such case, it's not a categorical dispute about whether business decisions should be "politisized" ever -- it's a debate about the particular ethics of the specific situation we (or github) finds themselves in, if this example is one that requires us to ethically refuse cooperation or not. Very particularly. I think that is a fine debate to have. I think the debate about whether a company should ever do this sort of thing is not so much, because really we should all be able agree there are some lines that should not be crossed there, there are some cases where, yes, a company should be expected to refuse service to it's own government, once we examine the historical examples that are obviously beyond the lines.
- Wohlf 6y ago
  I think your argument is a better fit for the Chinese government which is currently running concentration camps for Uyghurs.
  - jrochkind1 6y ago
    I think you are misunderstanding my argument. My argument is you (and github employees) should feel free to raise that about the Chinese Government vis a vis the Uyghurs too. If we agree that there are any circumstances where a company is ethically required to refuse selling it's software to a national government, then we can look at the particulars of any specific instance and decide if we think that's such a case, but we don't need to argue about whether it's appropraite to "to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity," becuase we've all agreed that there are at least some circumstances where it is. What is in fact inappropriate is to argue that a company should never be expected to deny service to a government, no matter what they do.
claudeganon 6y ago
> We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings. Whenever people make appeals like this, I wonder where it is exactly they think the political power to do so comes from. Historically, organized labor, like what’s happening at Github, is the what drives pressure for these kinds of changes and funds politicians and campaigns that implement them. If you want a more immediate example, look at what is happening across the country right now with how cities are rapidly implementing changes to police in response to protests. If you actually want these changes, this seems exactly the kind of stuff to be doing.
LeanderK 6y ago
I sometimes wonder why the world is in such a pity state. A lot of improvements seem obvious, but nothing gets done while a lot of those things are not really opposed by anybody. Why can multi-national corporations essentially exploit people in poorer parts of the world? Why can authoritarian regimes run freely and profit from exploiting people or attack democratic institutions? I think this line of thinking (whether applied to corporations or people) is a reason. It can be applied very, very broadly and essentially result in doing nothing if a corporation/country/whatever doesn't not hold up to your ethical standard and while formally complaining about some violation. The company doesn't care and you can feel better. There's some truth in "actions speak louder than words". There's a point where some kind of real action is required to have an impact. And it will more often than not result in a situation that's financially worse. One can't usually follow ethical standards and get the maximum profit at the same time. It's obvious and one should calculate with it. The freedom to choose also implies responsibility to choose. I am not totally idealistic, some things would result in economic suicide and some would not really help the cause. But one can weigh them and I am not convinced that Github runs a huge risk by denying ICE service. Although I have to admit that I am not sure what ICE is doing wrong. I am not an American. But I really don't like this style of reasoning where the negative financial consequence is just accepted as a reason without really questioning whether it's justified. Amazon already banned the police from using Rekognition, so it can't be total lunacy.
- gerbal 6y ago
  > I have to admit that I am not sure what ICE is doing wrong ICE is pretty bad at following US law and pretty good at being cruel to everyone in their path - ICE routinely detains and deports citizens and legal residents (guess their skin color) [1] - ICE routinely abuses those placed in their care and doesn't punish known abusers [2] [3] [4] [7] - ICE is happy to hurt its law enforcement practices to round up more immigrants [5] - under Obama ICE was actively ignoring court orders [6] this is much worse under Trump - ICE asylum officers (i.e. lawyers and experts) have reported extensive cruel and illegal practices [8] [1] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180427-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180... [2] https://theintercept.com/2018/10/11/adelanto-ice-detention-center-abuse/ https://theintercept.com/2018/10/11/adelanto-ice-detention-c... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/us/sexual-assault-ice-detention-survivor-stories.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/us/sexual-assault-ice-det... [4] https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/immigration/2020/05/28/370649/in-federal-suit-mexican-woman-says-she-and-two-others-were-raped-by-houston-immigration-officers-before-deportation/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/im... [5] https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-hsi-letter-kirstjen-nielsen-criminal-civil-deportation-zero-tolerance/ https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-hsi-letter-kirstjen-nielse... [6] https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-patrol-abuses/border-patrol-was-monstrous-under-obama-imagine https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-p... [7] https://www.aclusandiego.org/cbp-child-abuse-foia/ https://www.aclusandiego.org/cbp-child-abuse-foia/ [8] https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-11-15/asylum-officers-revolt-against-trump-policies-they-say-are-immoral-illegal https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-11-15/asylum-off...
xenocyon 6y ago
> to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. I'm having trouble understanding the linchpin of your argument. Government agencies don't have any inherent right to your business and you are free to deny them service for reasons political or otherwise.
mc32 6y ago
To me one of the issues is if companies have to toe political lines, then every new change of administration potentially means disruption. The alternative is the government doing more things in-house which pushes up costs. So in the end this is posturing (aka signaling). Can Boeing see a conflict of interest via a vis a military conflict and say, no to the DoD because they like some baddie the USG might tangle with? Now in reality this wouldn’t happen because of USG buying power... but put that aside.
mwfunk 6y ago
No private company is obligated to accept a contract from a federal agency. To expect them to do so would be the inverse of the supposed freedoms we supposedly value in America. Specifically the first and third amendments to the Bill of Rights, but that's just scratching the surface of how un-American that would be. Worst case, the government can set up its own infrastructure, and that probably wouldn't be a bad thing anyway. Some people talk about privatization of government resources as if it's an inherently good thing that saves taxpayer money, but if anything the last 40 years has shown the opposite, especially WRT to the likes of Blackwater and private prisons. In many cases privatization is more expensive and simply serves to put public money in private hands without oversight to reward corruption. Also it's misleading to refer to it as a "political reason". There are two different things people mean by the term "political". One is through the lens of party tribalism. Like, if a restaurant owner put up a big sign out front that said "I only serve registered Democrats, the rest of you can GTFO." That's about the shittiest and most indefensible form of "bringing politics into it" that I could possibly think of. Probably wouldn't be illegal but obviously I wouldn't think too highly of the restaurant owner and I would hope he quickly went out of business because everyone (left and right alike) would think he's a douchebag. That's one meaning of "political". The other meaning is simply, "reacting to current events", independently of tribalism or political parties. If someone is actually acting based on moral convictions rather than party loyalty or tribalism, that's very different. I realize that an anti-ICE POV and pro-immigrant POV is strongly correlated with Democrats and the opposite is strongly correlated with Republicans, but if we start casting every single moral conviction or political belief in terms of party loyalties then we have freaking lost as a nation. Party-based tribalism is always bad, full stop, but people acting on moral convictions are as good as the coherency of their moral convictions. Like, if the US government started rounding up folks by ethnicity and putting them in camps based on obviously racist motivations, like they did to Japanese-Americans in WW2, and it was based on bills passed by Democratic politicians, and the Republicans, bless their hearts, decided to fight tooth and nail against it because Democrats, I would honestly hope that all businesses, regardless of their owner's or employee's political leanings, would ignore the party politics aspect of it and only make decisions based on moral convictions. The parties fight each other all the time but we can't fall into the trap of thinking that political parties are anything other than an unfortunate reality of our system of government. Many of their conflicts are fights they pick with each other to rally their base, whereas if they were actually interested in responsible governance they would try to find common ground and try to negotiate something that actually helps the country. Some people just have a tribal mentality though. They can't formulate thoughts on any issue through any lens except that of party politics. They think of themselves as "this type of person, not that type of person", and their first cut at bucketizing the population is lumping them in with one party or another. That's not democracy, that's about the stupidest freaking tribalism imaginable. Keep in mind that it wasn't until 1994 (or 1996?) that "bipartisan" and "compromise" became dirty words in political coverage, specifically to the Republican Party thanks to Newt Gingrich, but to a lesser degree to the Democrats as well as they circled the wagons in response. It's only been the last 26 years that parties themselves have become more important to some Americans than America itself, or Americans as a whole. Besides, what possible negative consequence could GitHub suffer from this? Besides losing the ICE contract? Does anyone seriously think that other government agencies or companies would be so butthurt about GitHub's position on ICE, that they wouldn't want to do business with them? That only makes sense through the lens of the two political parties defining the totality of what it means to be an American, and if that's where people are at, America deserves to crash and burn because it's lost whatever soul it may have once had that elevated it. George Washington's farewell address was on this very topic. He thought the poison pill of the Constitution was that it set up a system whereby people would naturally form voting blocs, and before too long voting blocs would coalesce into two diametrically opposed political parties, and then the system (and America) is screwed. Which is exactly what happened. But it doesn't have to be that way. But the election process itself would have to be reformed into a less antiquated, non-FPTP-based system.
matwood 6y ago
You touch on an interesting point on the continuing amassing of power around corporations. ICE was created by people who were voted on by the populace. A corporation refusing to work with a legal entity really shows just how much power corporations now have. Github refuses to work with ICE today and hypothetically tomorrow will only host code for Democrats? I'm certainly no fan of ICE, but I'm also not sure I like ceding even more control to corporations. Perhaps I'm naive in thinking we can still fix the US through voting.
- shuntress 6y ago
  >Github refuses to work with ICE today and hypothetically tomorrow will only host code for Democrats? I don't believe that political organisations are considered a protected class so yes, GitHub could decide to only host code for Democrats. Your point seems to be "This is a slippery slope. Where do we draw the line?" I think it is entirely reasonable that there _should_ be a line. To take your example to the disturbing extreme, consider this: "Github refuses to work with ICE today and hypothetically tomorrow will refuse to build crematoria in extermination camps?" There must be a line _somewhere_. Finding the best place to draw that line is a major challenge that requires significant and likely fraught discussion but it is something that must be done.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > hypothetically tomorrow will only host code for Democrats I can imagine a more disturbing (possible) hypothetical: the activists are successful, and Github terminates it's ICE contract. Nobody else will host their code. ICE still has source code that needs to be hosted, so they hire more developers to maintain their own internal source-code repository. Those developers are subsequently blackballed from future employment opportunities due to their past association with ICE.
  - iron0013 6y ago
    Why is that disturbing? Corporations deciding not to hire developers who have worked for oppressive governments seems perfectly reasonable.
  - 6y ago
fit2rule 6y ago
>_federal agency_ ... political reasons Federal agencies only exist due to political expediencies. If the public no longer wish for the policies to be enforced, why keep the agency? Such is democracy.
rayiner 6y ago
> I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, What does the second point have to do with the first point?
truthwhisperer 6y ago
Very good. Nice one. So if you stand with your principles cancel this contract haha
markdown 6y ago
> could separate them from their code at any time. That's not how Git works.
nodesocket 6y ago
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.
- kennywinker 6y ago
  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 due to the unethical actions of my workplace... i would start looking for another job.
  - LunaSea 6y ago
    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?
    - kennywinker 6y ago
      1. Given that black lives are disproportionately effected by covid (well documented) it seems like it’s more their risk to take than yours to criticize. But whatever the risk created by protesters, the teargas and “crowd dispersal” methods used by police forces will be responsible for way more spread than a bunch of people marching wearing masks. 2. If we had not been devaluing black lives and letting off murdering cops for hundreds of years, we would not be seeing protests in the streets. This was entirely preventable: just dismantle systemic racism, like yesterday. 3. If the majority of github’s employees shared your skewed view of the blm protests, they might apply pressure on their employer, yes.
badrabbit 6y ago
The private sector should actively refuse interactions especially with government! Especially when they serve multiple governments. I don't advocate companies taking social stances on politics, I am all against it. The people should be doing that, companies need to stay out of politics. That said, this isn't mere politics. Actual humans can and are dying including children, the individuals at github/microsoft must excercise their conscious and act accordingly. Same applies to war. This isn't akin to refusing service to democracts or republicans but more like refusing service to organized criminals who also happen to be a government agency. All companies have a right and an obligation to refuse cooperation with a government agency that willfully causes death,torture and imprisonment without due process of innocent civilians. That is not a political stance.
m0zg 6y ago
> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity This is easy to fix: just exclude Microsoft from participation in any federal tenders. Either you do business with all of the federal government, or you don't. It's pretty straightforward. Right now, the situation is pretty absurd: Microsoft will sell dual use tech to China (which, let me remind you, runs concentration camps for Muslims), and to countries which literally throw gay people off the roofs, but US federal law enforcement is somehow not quite good enough to deal with. This is extreme hypocrisy, but it's pretty typical overall. I would encourage Microsoft to be consistent, and sever its business ties with countries where the human rights are not respected at least to the extent they are in the United States.
jlebar 6y ago
> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. I mean, it's also lunacy that the US government would run concentration camps, right? https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/aoc-holocaust-why-migrant-detention-centers-are-concentration-camps-explained.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/aoc-holocaust-why-mi... https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentratio... The issue I take with your argument is, politics in the United States aren't "normal". Maybe they never were "normal". But I think the notion is, this is more than a "political" disagreement over whether the tax rate should be 23% or 25%. We're in the midst of a fundamental moral disagreement about whose lives matter.
sitkack 6y ago
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.
- rattray 6y ago
  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.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    You are wrong, and in no way did I equate velvet fascist statements with being close to Nazi Germany. Saying folks have the freedom to leave their job is ridiculous and only reinforces my point.
    - rattray 6y ago
      Sorry, I meant leave their job for a day (vacation). That was unclear.
      - sitkack 6y ago
        Thanks for the clarification. But the separation you are advocating for is in-human.
lkrubner 6y ago
“an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.” The employees of Github are not an “internet mob”. Your use of that phrase implies a lot about the way you are trying to frame this situation.
kelnos 6y ago
> But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. I think I would rather work for a company where they do the right thing, even if it does cause negative consequences. I understand that you're not convinced that banning ICE from their platform is the right thing, or will even do anything useful around immigration. I don't agree with that point of view, and I expect GH's employees don't either. Ultimately it's up to the company's management to decide who they'd rather to piss off: the US government, or a portion of their own employees.
29athrowaway 6y ago
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 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 active are sedated and some of them, left unsupervised causing them to smash their heads against the floor causing them permanent brain damage.
- rattray 6y ago
  Yeah, I'd be really upset. Angry and disgusted. Thanks for that perspective.
chiefalchemist 6y ago
To your point, where does it end? Will libraries used by many but also Out-of-Favor Entity X also be removed? Who gets to decide? The media? Blaming ICE for immigration policy that have been inept for decades is going to solve what? I understand the concern and the intent. I don't - yet? - see the impact.
diob 6y ago
You say "essentially political reasons". I and others say "humanitarian reasons". I think that's the big disconnect here. You don't think ICE does immense harm (you're even willing to downplay it as "political" to not support them). Regardless of where folks fall politically, I think they should be loathe to support an organization that treats folks so inhumanely. And I think you're missing the point. "We should absolutely be lobbying for hard changes". Jeez, what do you think it is that they're doing? They're lobbying using the power that they have.
madeofpalk 6y ago
> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. Are you saying that private entities should be forced to provide services to federal agencies?
prepend 6y ago
I work in an organization where people prefer “on prem” solutions that they have complete control over. Unless there’s a legal injunction or law, I can’t imagine how much of a pain this is going to be to argue.
siruncledrew 6y ago
Is this more ammunition for Amazon to use in the JEDI contract battle?
nextaccountic 6y ago
> 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-recognition-police-law-enforcement-pledge-regulation https://www.theverge.com/21288053/microsoft-facial-recogniti...
- rattray 6y ago
  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.
manigandham 6y ago
The United States is very welcoming to immigrants. Probably the best in the world at it. For some reason, people fail to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.
dehrmann 6y ago
> It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time. How's that Jedi contract looking now?
rmc 6y ago
> I can't see how this [denying ICE access to Github service] helps improve immigration … great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time You've proven your point. Paying customers would be afraid of doing things ICE is (in)famous for, lest they are “separated from their code”. i.e. Denying ICE means people will act nicer in general!

fennecfoxen 6y ago

> It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time. Using Microsoft as your canonical code repository is already a meaningful risk to your business. It's nice that more companies are recognizing this. They're building nice new features with their ecosystem, too, in traditional Microsoft embrace-extend style.

rattray 6y ago
Right, storing your code anywhere presents risk (including self-hosted on a FOSS stack). With GitHub/MSFT, that risk includes "they decide they don't like you anymore" amongst others. How high is that risk? You'll think it's a lot higher if GitHub were to kick off ICE. (disclaimer: I hold a small amount of MSFT stock, though this was not on my mind when I wrote my original post - thanks for the reminder).
- aparsons 6y ago
  Microsoft isn’t kicking off ICE. They’ve backed our government at every opportunity, including pentagon contracts. Fixing democracy should be done democratically, it’s not the job of tech companies - and Nadella understands that.
aparsons 6y ago
Can’t go one thread about Github without the M$FT FUD

toomuchtodo 6y ago

(Edit: Removed “people are lazy”, poor choice of words) People feel despair, hence pushing on Github instead of the political process. I’m all for unconventional leverage, but Microsoft is a trillion dollar org and has shareholders; this isn’t some VC funded dual class share startup where the founder has a blank check to do whatever they want. Edit: Can’t give up on the political process, that’s where the change happens. Continue to apply pressure, your opponents eventually give up or die out.

ricefield 6y ago
I think it's probably more that people have lost trust in the political proces and are pushing on private companies as a last resort to effect change.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
untog 6y ago
Attributing this to laziness is absolutely wrong, IMO. The political process and system is deeply broken and people realise that they cannot make their voices heard through it. So they find alternatives.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Corrected.
tsimionescu 6y ago
You've got this backwards. What is happening here is the real political process - people congregating and trying to achieve their political goals through organizations they can actually influence. Organizing to convince your employer, or your local government, or your school board or whatever organization you can to push things in some direction is the political process. Sure, voting is one aspect of it, but it is by no means the be-all, end-all of politics and democracy.

ravenstine 6y ago

If only people cared this much when tech companies contract with or kowtow to arms of openly racist authoritarian governments abroad.

jobeirne 6y ago

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. Um, think you've got this backwards. Private entities shouldn't have to take on anyone they don't want as customers (for whatever reason - do you have to justify who you do or don't want in your livingroom?), but publicly-funded institutions shouldn't be able to deny service on political grounds.

nahtnam 6y ago
What about anti-discrimnation laws? Where do you stand on the issue with the baker refusing to bake a cake for the gay couple?
- nvahalik 6y ago
  Would also love to hear the answer to this question. You can’t have it both ways.
  - barry-cotter 6y ago
    Of course you can. One rule for me another for you because I think these two things are different is easily understood by two year olds. Lawyers are perfectly capable of coming up with justifications for anything they like and if the judges feel sympathetic the power of the state will enforce it.
- Klinky 6y ago
  Sexuality is getting closer and closer to being a fully-protected class, so they are going to have to suck it up, just like the bakers who didn't want to serve black people decades ago. They can deny service to anyone, so long as it does not run afoul of discrimination laws. ICE is not a protected class.
- PascLeRasc 6y ago
  No one is born an ICE employee.

empath75 6y ago

Replace ICE with "the SS" and see how your comment reads. I was working on a DHS contract and quit the second I found out they were putting children into cages. I'm under no obligation to work at a company that contributes in even a tiny way to an atrocity. A company I work for is free to take the contract, and I'm free to tell them I don't want to work for them any more because of it.

nxpnsv 6y ago
There are no excuses for ICE behavior, but they clearly are very different from the SS.
- empath75 6y ago
  Let's say you're, say, IBM in the 1920s. At what point does the SS become an organization with which you refuse to do business? They didn't start off running concentration camps, after all.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    If you’re referring to the Nazi movement in general, probably the point where they openly campaign against the concept of liberal democracy or use street violence (roughing up opposing groups, smashing windows, attacking/commandeering government facilities) as a means of social protest. Those are all pretty big warning signs that were present in the Nazis long before they seized power let alone built concentration camps.
    - empath75 6y ago
      No I'm referring to the German law enforcement agency that eventually ran the death camps. At what point in their journey toward the gas chambers do you say enough is enough. I would suggest that separating families and putting children in cages is far enough. Trump repeatedly asked his followers to rough up protestors 4 years ago.

mchanson 6y ago

Civility has already broken down because of the US government’s actions. Schools and other parts of the government are ending their contracts with police. People all over the country and looking hard at their actions and the actions of those companies or other entities they associate with. When the government is acting this badly the social contract gets weaker and begins to fall apart. This is just a reaction to those larger forces. Until those larger problems are addressed and the government starts acting more civilized there is no reason to expect or hope that business as usual will continue.

drocer88 6y ago
Like they it did in 1968. Which gave us Nixon and Reagan.
- jmeister 6y ago
  Both sides are so convinced of their moral superiority that they just can’t empathize with the other or anticipate their reaction. God save this country
paiute 6y ago
The U.S. Government does not have police contracts with schools. Police are state, county, or local. The last few weeks have made it clear to me very few people understand our system of gov.
- monocasa 6y ago
  The state, county, and local govs are a part of the US government. The supremacy clause sees to that.
  - zentiggr 6y ago
    "Part of" certainly does not mean "controlled by". Powers are generally enumerated or reserved to the states. Plus and minus lots of interpretive scotus precedents.

syshum 6y ago

>> 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 defensive and further divides the nation ensuring no reform can happen at all Today it seems if you believe in anything other than fully open unrestricted borders then you are considered to be a racist authoritarian from mid 1940's Germany

dagnabbit 6y ago
> Today it seems if you believe in anything other than fully open unrestricted borders then you are considered to be a racist authoritarian from mid 1940's Germany It only seems that way to thin-skinned white nationalists who cry and whine whenever somebody doesn't support their attempts to change the fundamental nature of America. These whiny white nationalists are so self-entitled that they portray themselves as horrific victims just because the policies (which they have been actively implementing) get some bad press. Not only do they want to implement horrible policies, they also demand that we pretend to love those policies. Thank you for so clearly identifying yourself as a whiny, thin-skinned, snowflake of a white nationalist.
tsimionescu 6y ago
If you are in favor (or in the process) of putting large groups of people who have not directly harmed anyone in concentration camps, separating them from their families, keeping children in cages etc, THEN you are considered a racist authoritarian almost akin to mid 1940's Germany.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  What alternative proposals do you have for dealing with people who've unlawfully crossed the border? If your answer is "let them live freely in the US", I think it's fair to characterize that as a a call for open borders.

cm2187 6y ago

There is also a contradiction in calling for more economic equality for minorities in the US and picking on ICE. Illegal immigration applies a downward pressure on wages of low skill workers, which is precisely where minorities are over-represented in the US.

dec0dedab0de 6y ago
It is possible to be against illegal immigration, and also against the tactics used by ICE.
tsimionescu 6y ago
People are not necessarily picking on the theoretical role of Ice. They are against the practice of what ICE does.
jlokier 6y ago
Your own contradiction is much more substantial! Immigration enforcement is literally the use of force to maintain a larger economic inequality than the downward pressure you referred to. Not in some subtle way. Enforcing politically decided inequality is literally the purpose of ICE. It makes people uncomfortable to talk of it in those terms, but when you get down to it, a lot of people want to see enforced inequality, and vote for it. They couch in terms like "downward pressure" to abstract things away from the people's lived experience, to make it palatable to make one group of people worse off so that another group of people can be better off. The economics abstraction has the added bonus that we avoid mentionining the lived reality: the perpetual fear, lack of humanity and so forth that come with, say, splitting up families, and preventing them from having any reasonable avenue for leaving an ordinary life. (I've known too many immigrants who cannot find a way to solve the bureaucracy problem, and cannot even determine their legal status, or in some cases if they did try to find out they risk being split from their own immediate family, so perpetual fear and avoidance of authority is their only realistic option for living.)
- thisiszilff 6y ago
  The charitable interpretation of immigration enforcement is that it ensures a nation does not get overwhelmed by people entering the nation -- in terms of its economy, bureaucracy, etc. I can see that argument that enforcing immigration maintains the economic inequality between individuals in the US and, for example, individuals in Guatemala, but controlled immigration ensures that a nation is capable of growing and supporting the immigrants that come in in the first place. After-all, immigrants are coming to a given country because of perceived advantages of that country, if too many immigrants come at a single time, those advantages may disappear.

codezero 6y ago

I think it's great that employees can direct this kind of business decision. It's also unfortunate (I am assuming) that the employees have much less of a stake collectively than other shareholders. There's a good chance they would make more informed decisions if they were to fail or be successful based on those decisions. For what it's worth, I think the employees would still make these demands, it would just be nice to be able to show that it was also the right business decision.

tsimionescu 6y ago
Why does it matter if it's the right business decision? Don't moral considerations have precedence over business considerations? It should be expected of a company to take a profit hit if it is the only way to uphold a moral standard. Regular people do it all the time, why should corporations be held to lower standards?
- codezero 6y ago
  That's a fair point, but it's often hard to find a single agreed upon moral compass at an entire company. Also, I would bet that a review of this from a business point of view might make a moral stance moot. If that's the case, it seems like an easier way to avoid a minefield.

staticassertion 6y ago

Microsoft already banned the police from using Rekognition. I think if the bar is "don't kill minorities" people are mostly going to be OK with you cutting the contract.

poxrud 6y ago
Rekognition is Amazon, not Microsoft.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  Whatever Microsoft's thing was then. Or maybe it was only Amazon. The point stands.
downvoteme1 6y ago
Also the ban is for one year. Amazon’s plan is to suspend selling while the public opinion is against it. Once this issue is forgotten, they will begin selling Rekognition again to the government .
manigandham 6y ago
I'm a minority who is tired of people using that term without any distinction. Please be more specific because "minorities" are not being randomly killed. We’re doing just fine.
- staticassertion 6y ago
  Don't kill anyone en masse.

quadrifoliate 6y ago

> What a bummer that workers are publicly demanding this, and (presumably) seeking press attention on it. They have a problem with their employer, and are being heard in the court of public opinion. Why is that "a bummer"? I don't have a particular opinion on whether or not what they are doing is an effective way to accomplish their aims. But workers speaking out for any reason, ranging from unethical wage suppression to insufficient toilet breaks to disagreement with company policy, should always be cause for rejoicing. Employers in the US hold a wildly disparate amount of power (with health insurance being tied to employment, and no social safety net) – so employees that speak out tend to help tilt that balance a very tiny bit back to the side of the employee.

rattray 6y ago
Yeah, that's a good question. I think that's why this case upsets me. I want to live in a world where, as another commenter put it, executives will think twice before taking actions that they know their employees won't like. Because they should know that employees have power, and a voice, and must be listened to. In this case, there's no way the executives can sanely take the requested action. It'd be terribly damaging to their business. (I may be wrong about this, but it's what I would think if I were an executive). So now if I'm an executive, I have to roll my eyes at the protesting employees. They lose credibility. I'll know that next time I do something they ask for, they'll just ask me for something I can't do. That's what bums be out.
- ironmagma 6y ago
  To suggest that Github “can’t” end this contract is crazy talk. If a huge chunk of the company won’t do it, they must end the project.
dnissley 6y ago
> They have a problem with their employer, and are being heard in the court of public opinion. Why is that "a bummer"? The court of public opinion doesn't have a good track record, for one. It's decisions are often based on fashion more than any kind of ethical principles. A classic exploration of this phenomenon is contained in the novel The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe.

ChristianBundy 6y ago

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It really isn't. Private institutions are under no obligation to collaborate with public agencies unless explicitly required by the Defense Production Act[0]. Please remember that the government is meant to serve us, not the other way around. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950

newman8r 6y ago
I don't think OP meant it's lunacy because of any legal obligations private companies have to a federal organization, but rather due to the message it would send to current and future customers.
- zentiggr 6y ago
  I think that message could be extremely productive, if refusing a government contract means not assisting questionable or immoral or even unsupported actions by _any_ agency.
  - newman8r 6y ago
    True - I'm not necessarily agreeing or disagreeing with it. It will send a good message to some people and a bad one to others. To other government agencies, they may see github as a liability and end up leaving github altogether - I think that's the 'lunacy' part from a business perspective. Corporations know there's always a chance that they'll get an internet pitchfork mob going after them for some (justified or unjustified) reason, and the last thing they want is for their cloud providers to pile on and further add to the fire.
- ChristianBundy 6y ago
  > the message it would send to current and future customers What exactly is that message? Maybe: "If you make your money by separating families, putting kids in cages, and deporting asylum-seekers to places where they're in danger, then we don't want your money." Do you see anything wrong with that message?

cyphar 6y ago

My problem with this argument is that it (if applied uniformly) means that you couldn't hold IBM culpable for their role in the Holocaust. After all, "all they did" was help create a computerised census system for the democratically elected German government[1]. In reality, their computerisation of the census allowed the Nazis to far more efficiently catalogue and track Jewish people throughout the Third Reich. And before anyone invokes Godwin's Law, ICE has been recently discovered to have literally poisoned detainees by using toxic cleaning chemicals in close proximity to detainees without giving them any protection or sufficient ventilation[2]. But even if you think it is unreasonable or overblown to call ICE nazis or fascists, I still question the premise that companies should not be held morally responsible for the people they knowingly and willingly do business with. If GitHub was selling software to known terrorists, you'd better believe that the American government (and hopefully most people) wouldn't see it as being fair game. I agree that the lasting way to stop the abuses by ICE is through legislative and administrative changes, but I disagree with the argument that "refusing to sell software to ICE won't stop them from committing abuses, so I'll just sell them software anyway" is ethically justified. Now, GitHub is obviously free to do whatever they like but the public should also be free to point this out whenever they try to take the moral high ground. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust [2]: https://thecrimereport.org/2020/06/11/ice-spraying-disinfectant-on-ca-detainees-day-and-night-report/ https://thecrimereport.org/2020/06/11/ice-spraying-disinfect...

google234123 6y ago
Calling ICE nazis is idiotic.
- shuntress 6y ago
  Not too long ago the company where I worked was having a similar debate concerning services provided (through an intermediary) to ICE. One particular facet in the discussion that stuck with me more than the rest was a comment by a co-worker who was visiting from the Berlin office. They talked briefly about small monuments on the street by their home marking the spots where people were arrested and taken to concentration camps as their time and place of death. They pointed out that in many cases those dates are in the mid 1930s. Up to 10 years before the discovery and liberation of the death camps. Calling ICE nazis (while still hopefully hyperbole) is not necessarily an unfounded comparison.

coffeemaniac 6y ago

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. It'd attract extreme negative attention from the rest of the government, and great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time. Why is this lunacy? If government entities suddenly are under the impression that they'll have a difficult time finding business partners if they're consistently caught doing human rights violations.. seems like a win-win. If anything it would attract negative attention for the next company willing to do business with them. > We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings. We're doing that too. There's no reason only one form of action should be followed. > But I can't see how this helps improve immigration It helps by making ICE expend their resources on finding new businesses to provide hosting services they need, or if they can't find any, rolling their own. I see that some commenters are suggesting that github should use its position to influence ICE and maybe that's contributing to some confusion. This was never about improving ICE -- the goal is to cripple and dismantle them.

newacct583 6y ago

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. In a working society, maybe. In a properly functioning government it's the job of the executive branch to find some kind of compromise and operate the government for the benefit of and according to the priorities of a reasonable approximation of all the citizens. But that's not possible with ICE. Right now there's a large fraction of society that supports inhumane mass deportation, human rights disaster camps across the border, family separation policies (though that got rolled back, thankfully), no-knock armed police raids for visa violations etc.... And there's another large fraction of society, including the Github workers, who find that hateful and immoral. And those folks have no ability to affect policy absent waiting to vote again. Their desires and needs simply aren't being heard. In previous administrations, that kind of hyper-partisan policymaking by the executive branch simply wouldn't have happened. Either because it's bad politics or because of some sense of order on the part of the policymakers. But it's not true now. The root cause, basically, is that one political party in the US decided to make an "enemy" out of a population (hispanic immigrants) in order to gin up votes from people that don't like them. And the resulting skew in civic priorities has made a big mess. This is how you get civil unrest, which we're seeing right now in all sorts of contexts. But the mess isn't the fault of the protestors or the github folks, really. You can't run a country according to the parochial needs of your half of the electorate and tell everyone else to fuck off. They start flipping tables.

seph-reed 6y ago

Private agencies are the only field in which we have any real democratic say. This is the part of Capitalism that is good, when we can vote with our dollars. IMO, if it wasn't for anti-competition lobbyists and government contracts, it would be much much easier to get private companies to take a stand every once in a while.

tresfaim 6y ago

Why can't you see this helping? Can you not see the rally that is happening in the corporate world in favor of the BLM movement? Even if corporations are posturing this stance with no real action at the moment, if bigger entities make real actions like this, it will catch on, and then it will trickle down to smaller businesses, and it will seep into lobbying circles. This has leaderships around the world forced to make visible, impactful actions. Fear of disruption keeps the status quo in place.

wolco 6y ago
Your movement hit at a bad time. The corporate world has to grip with a few critical issues around staying in business, shifting to remote and it will increasely feel a pressure to move manifacturing onshore. I would focua on what changes you can make with police forces before the second covid wave hits and pushes your issue to remember when status.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Arguably if it wasn't for the weakness of corporate world right now this never would have happened. Indeed, the average American is much too busy with work in order to achieve this level of political engagement.

badRNG 6y ago

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. Most of the comments here seem to indicate that what was said, and proposed to be done, is political, and politics are bad. This seems to rest on the assumption that one, institutions like ICE are politically neutral, and/or two, simply doing business with a political organization is necessarily "apolitical." It also relies on the assumption that anything that can be identified as political is off limits to businesses, and that many businesses are capable of avoiding being "political" altogether. Businesses can be largely nonpartisan, but they almost certainly cannot avoid "politics." It is very difficult to be consistently "neutral" on issues like racial justice and equal opportunities for LGBTQ folks. Is hiring a trans woman "political?" Is simply doing business with a political campaign entirely apolitical? When we look to issues of the past, is/was supporting the Civil Rights Movement political? It certainly seems like a totally different type of politics than the kind where you take a partisan stance on economic policy. IBM rightfully faced backlash for doing business with government institutions in the 20th century that were clearly not neutral on the issue of racial justice. The IBM example isn't to compare that situation to the current, but to demonstrate that you cannot justify an apolitical position in all contexts, and that "apolitical" positions may not be quite as neutral as it appears on the surface (hopefully that avoids a Godwin's Law violation.) Similarly, while to a lesser degree, ICE as it exists today can clearly be identified as an agency carrying out a specific political agenda that has a negative effect on racial justice. If doing business with an institution furthers that organizations' goals, and those goals are not neutral on the issue of racial justice, it certainly can be argued that your continued business with that institution furthers that organizations' goals. To argue otherwise puts one into a position where it seems they'd have to defend IBM in the aforementioned example for logical consistency.

jrochkind1 6y ago

So not to go all Godwin, but take an extreme example... Do you think a company in 1930s Germany should have ethically refused to provide software that was used in concentration camps? [In fact, there was a bit of "IT" then, used for such, but it was provided by IBM. But to make the analogy closer, let's imagine a hypothetically Germany company]. ("Companies" don't do anything by themselves, so I guess the question is if the decision-makers in such a company should refuse to sell software to the German government for such purposes, and if the employees should try to pressure the decision-makers to). If we agree that in that case the ethical choice is to refuse to supply the software, and that it would in fact be unethical to sell software for such a purpose... Then we already agree that there is some case where a company should refuse to provide services for 'political' reasons, even to a government agency of the country it's located in. So it's no longer a question of if a company should ever be "expected"to do this -- but if they should in this case, if this particular scenario is such an example. People can disagree on that, can think that obviously this is unlike the Nazi example, that this example does not rise to that level. I'm not trying to insist that this is definitely a "Nazi-like" example. But once we agree there is at least one such case, it's not a categorical dispute about whether business decisions should be "politisized" ever -- it's a debate about the particular ethics of the specific situation we (or github) finds themselves in, if this example is one that requires us to ethically refuse cooperation or not. Very particularly. I think that is a fine debate to have. I think the debate about whether a company should ever do this sort of thing is not so much, because really we should all be able agree there are some lines that should not be crossed there, there are some cases where, yes, a company should be expected to refuse service to it's own government, once we examine the historical examples that are obviously beyond the lines.

Wohlf 6y ago
I think your argument is a better fit for the Chinese government which is currently running concentration camps for Uyghurs.
- jrochkind1 6y ago
  I think you are misunderstanding my argument. My argument is you (and github employees) should feel free to raise that about the Chinese Government vis a vis the Uyghurs too. If we agree that there are any circumstances where a company is ethically required to refuse selling it's software to a national government, then we can look at the particulars of any specific instance and decide if we think that's such a case, but we don't need to argue about whether it's appropraite to "to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity," becuase we've all agreed that there are at least some circumstances where it is. What is in fact inappropriate is to argue that a company should never be expected to deny service to a government, no matter what they do.

claudeganon 6y ago

> We should absolutely be lobbying hard for changes to immigration law, the restrictions placed on ICE, and justice for their wrongdoings. Whenever people make appeals like this, I wonder where it is exactly they think the political power to do so comes from. Historically, organized labor, like what’s happening at Github, is the what drives pressure for these kinds of changes and funds politicians and campaigns that implement them. If you want a more immediate example, look at what is happening across the country right now with how cities are rapidly implementing changes to police in response to protests. If you actually want these changes, this seems exactly the kind of stuff to be doing.

LeanderK 6y ago

I sometimes wonder why the world is in such a pity state. A lot of improvements seem obvious, but nothing gets done while a lot of those things are not really opposed by anybody. Why can multi-national corporations essentially exploit people in poorer parts of the world? Why can authoritarian regimes run freely and profit from exploiting people or attack democratic institutions? I think this line of thinking (whether applied to corporations or people) is a reason. It can be applied very, very broadly and essentially result in doing nothing if a corporation/country/whatever doesn't not hold up to your ethical standard and while formally complaining about some violation. The company doesn't care and you can feel better. There's some truth in "actions speak louder than words". There's a point where some kind of real action is required to have an impact. And it will more often than not result in a situation that's financially worse. One can't usually follow ethical standards and get the maximum profit at the same time. It's obvious and one should calculate with it. The freedom to choose also implies responsibility to choose. I am not totally idealistic, some things would result in economic suicide and some would not really help the cause. But one can weigh them and I am not convinced that Github runs a huge risk by denying ICE service. Although I have to admit that I am not sure what ICE is doing wrong. I am not an American. But I really don't like this style of reasoning where the negative financial consequence is just accepted as a reason without really questioning whether it's justified. Amazon already banned the police from using Rekognition, so it can't be total lunacy.

gerbal 6y ago
> I have to admit that I am not sure what ICE is doing wrong ICE is pretty bad at following US law and pretty good at being cruel to everyone in their path - ICE routinely detains and deports citizens and legal residents (guess their skin color) [1] - ICE routinely abuses those placed in their care and doesn't punish known abusers [2] [3] [4] [7] - ICE is happy to hurt its law enforcement practices to round up more immigrants [5] - under Obama ICE was actively ignoring court orders [6] this is much worse under Trump - ICE asylum officers (i.e. lawyers and experts) have reported extensive cruel and illegal practices [8] [1] https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180427-htmlstory.html https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180... [2] https://theintercept.com/2018/10/11/adelanto-ice-detention-center-abuse/ https://theintercept.com/2018/10/11/adelanto-ice-detention-c... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/us/sexual-assault-ice-detention-survivor-stories.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/17/us/sexual-assault-ice-det... [4] https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/immigration/2020/05/28/370649/in-federal-suit-mexican-woman-says-she-and-two-others-were-raped-by-houston-immigration-officers-before-deportation/ https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/im... [5] https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-hsi-letter-kirstjen-nielsen-criminal-civil-deportation-zero-tolerance/ https://www.texasobserver.org/ice-hsi-letter-kirstjen-nielse... [6] https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-patrol-abuses/border-patrol-was-monstrous-under-obama-imagine https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border-p... [7] https://www.aclusandiego.org/cbp-child-abuse-foia/ https://www.aclusandiego.org/cbp-child-abuse-foia/ [8] https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-11-15/asylum-officers-revolt-against-trump-policies-they-say-are-immoral-illegal https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-11-15/asylum-off...

xenocyon 6y ago

> to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. I'm having trouble understanding the linchpin of your argument. Government agencies don't have any inherent right to your business and you are free to deny them service for reasons political or otherwise.

mc32 6y ago

To me one of the issues is if companies have to toe political lines, then every new change of administration potentially means disruption. The alternative is the government doing more things in-house which pushes up costs. So in the end this is posturing (aka signaling). Can Boeing see a conflict of interest via a vis a military conflict and say, no to the DoD because they like some baddie the USG might tangle with? Now in reality this wouldn’t happen because of USG buying power... but put that aside.

mwfunk 6y ago

No private company is obligated to accept a contract from a federal agency. To expect them to do so would be the inverse of the supposed freedoms we supposedly value in America. Specifically the first and third amendments to the Bill of Rights, but that's just scratching the surface of how un-American that would be. Worst case, the government can set up its own infrastructure, and that probably wouldn't be a bad thing anyway. Some people talk about privatization of government resources as if it's an inherently good thing that saves taxpayer money, but if anything the last 40 years has shown the opposite, especially WRT to the likes of Blackwater and private prisons. In many cases privatization is more expensive and simply serves to put public money in private hands without oversight to reward corruption. Also it's misleading to refer to it as a "political reason". There are two different things people mean by the term "political". One is through the lens of party tribalism. Like, if a restaurant owner put up a big sign out front that said "I only serve registered Democrats, the rest of you can GTFO." That's about the shittiest and most indefensible form of "bringing politics into it" that I could possibly think of. Probably wouldn't be illegal but obviously I wouldn't think too highly of the restaurant owner and I would hope he quickly went out of business because everyone (left and right alike) would think he's a douchebag. That's one meaning of "political". The other meaning is simply, "reacting to current events", independently of tribalism or political parties. If someone is actually acting based on moral convictions rather than party loyalty or tribalism, that's very different. I realize that an anti-ICE POV and pro-immigrant POV is strongly correlated with Democrats and the opposite is strongly correlated with Republicans, but if we start casting every single moral conviction or political belief in terms of party loyalties then we have freaking lost as a nation. Party-based tribalism is always bad, full stop, but people acting on moral convictions are as good as the coherency of their moral convictions. Like, if the US government started rounding up folks by ethnicity and putting them in camps based on obviously racist motivations, like they did to Japanese-Americans in WW2, and it was based on bills passed by Democratic politicians, and the Republicans, bless their hearts, decided to fight tooth and nail against it because Democrats, I would honestly hope that all businesses, regardless of their owner's or employee's political leanings, would ignore the party politics aspect of it and only make decisions based on moral convictions. The parties fight each other all the time but we can't fall into the trap of thinking that political parties are anything other than an unfortunate reality of our system of government. Many of their conflicts are fights they pick with each other to rally their base, whereas if they were actually interested in responsible governance they would try to find common ground and try to negotiate something that actually helps the country. Some people just have a tribal mentality though. They can't formulate thoughts on any issue through any lens except that of party politics. They think of themselves as "this type of person, not that type of person", and their first cut at bucketizing the population is lumping them in with one party or another. That's not democracy, that's about the stupidest freaking tribalism imaginable. Keep in mind that it wasn't until 1994 (or 1996?) that "bipartisan" and "compromise" became dirty words in political coverage, specifically to the Republican Party thanks to Newt Gingrich, but to a lesser degree to the Democrats as well as they circled the wagons in response. It's only been the last 26 years that parties themselves have become more important to some Americans than America itself, or Americans as a whole. Besides, what possible negative consequence could GitHub suffer from this? Besides losing the ICE contract? Does anyone seriously think that other government agencies or companies would be so butthurt about GitHub's position on ICE, that they wouldn't want to do business with them? That only makes sense through the lens of the two political parties defining the totality of what it means to be an American, and if that's where people are at, America deserves to crash and burn because it's lost whatever soul it may have once had that elevated it. George Washington's farewell address was on this very topic. He thought the poison pill of the Constitution was that it set up a system whereby people would naturally form voting blocs, and before too long voting blocs would coalesce into two diametrically opposed political parties, and then the system (and America) is screwed. Which is exactly what happened. But it doesn't have to be that way. But the election process itself would have to be reformed into a less antiquated, non-FPTP-based system.

matwood 6y ago

You touch on an interesting point on the continuing amassing of power around corporations. ICE was created by people who were voted on by the populace. A corporation refusing to work with a legal entity really shows just how much power corporations now have. Github refuses to work with ICE today and hypothetically tomorrow will only host code for Democrats? I'm certainly no fan of ICE, but I'm also not sure I like ceding even more control to corporations. Perhaps I'm naive in thinking we can still fix the US through voting.

shuntress 6y ago
>Github refuses to work with ICE today and hypothetically tomorrow will only host code for Democrats? I don't believe that political organisations are considered a protected class so yes, GitHub could decide to only host code for Democrats. Your point seems to be "This is a slippery slope. Where do we draw the line?" I think it is entirely reasonable that there _should_ be a line. To take your example to the disturbing extreme, consider this: "Github refuses to work with ICE today and hypothetically tomorrow will refuse to build crematoria in extermination camps?" There must be a line _somewhere_. Finding the best place to draw that line is a major challenge that requires significant and likely fraught discussion but it is something that must be done.
commandlinefan 6y ago
> hypothetically tomorrow will only host code for Democrats I can imagine a more disturbing (possible) hypothetical: the activists are successful, and Github terminates it's ICE contract. Nobody else will host their code. ICE still has source code that needs to be hosted, so they hire more developers to maintain their own internal source-code repository. Those developers are subsequently blackballed from future employment opportunities due to their past association with ICE.
- iron0013 6y ago
  Why is that disturbing? Corporations deciding not to hire developers who have worked for oppressive governments seems perfectly reasonable.
- 6y ago

fit2rule 6y ago

>_federal agency_ ... political reasons Federal agencies only exist due to political expediencies. If the public no longer wish for the policies to be enforced, why keep the agency? Such is democracy.

rayiner 6y ago

> I'm no fan of ICE – a very large percentage of my friends in the US are immigrants, What does the second point have to do with the first point?

truthwhisperer 6y ago

Very good. Nice one. So if you stand with your principles cancel this contract haha

markdown 6y ago

> could separate them from their code at any time. That's not how Git works.

nodesocket 6y ago

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.

kennywinker 6y ago
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 due to the unethical actions of my workplace... i would start looking for another job.
- LunaSea 6y ago
  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?
  - kennywinker 6y ago
    1. Given that black lives are disproportionately effected by covid (well documented) it seems like it’s more their risk to take than yours to criticize. But whatever the risk created by protesters, the teargas and “crowd dispersal” methods used by police forces will be responsible for way more spread than a bunch of people marching wearing masks. 2. If we had not been devaluing black lives and letting off murdering cops for hundreds of years, we would not be seeing protests in the streets. This was entirely preventable: just dismantle systemic racism, like yesterday. 3. If the majority of github’s employees shared your skewed view of the blm protests, they might apply pressure on their employer, yes.

badrabbit 6y ago

The private sector should actively refuse interactions especially with government! Especially when they serve multiple governments. I don't advocate companies taking social stances on politics, I am all against it. The people should be doing that, companies need to stay out of politics. That said, this isn't mere politics. Actual humans can and are dying including children, the individuals at github/microsoft must excercise their conscious and act accordingly. Same applies to war. This isn't akin to refusing service to democracts or republicans but more like refusing service to organized criminals who also happen to be a government agency. All companies have a right and an obligation to refuse cooperation with a government agency that willfully causes death,torture and imprisonment without due process of innocent civilians. That is not a political stance.

m0zg 6y ago

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity This is easy to fix: just exclude Microsoft from participation in any federal tenders. Either you do business with all of the federal government, or you don't. It's pretty straightforward. Right now, the situation is pretty absurd: Microsoft will sell dual use tech to China (which, let me remind you, runs concentration camps for Muslims), and to countries which literally throw gay people off the roofs, but US federal law enforcement is somehow not quite good enough to deal with. This is extreme hypocrisy, but it's pretty typical overall. I would encourage Microsoft to be consistent, and sever its business ties with countries where the human rights are not respected at least to the extent they are in the United States.

jlebar 6y ago

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. I mean, it's also lunacy that the US government would run concentration camps, right? https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/aoc-holocaust-why-migrant-detention-centers-are-concentration-camps-explained.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/aoc-holocaust-why-mi... https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentration-camps-southern-border-migrant-detention-facilities-trump/ https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentratio... The issue I take with your argument is, politics in the United States aren't "normal". Maybe they never were "normal". But I think the notion is, this is more than a "political" disagreement over whether the tax rate should be 23% or 25%. We're in the midst of a fundamental moral disagreement about whose lives matter.

sitkack 6y ago

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.

rattray 6y ago
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.
- sitkack 6y ago
  You are wrong, and in no way did I equate velvet fascist statements with being close to Nazi Germany. Saying folks have the freedom to leave their job is ridiculous and only reinforces my point.
  - rattray 6y ago
    Sorry, I meant leave their job for a day (vacation). That was unclear.
    - sitkack 6y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. But the separation you are advocating for is in-human.

lkrubner 6y ago

“an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time.” The employees of Github are not an “internet mob”. Your use of that phrase implies a lot about the way you are trying to frame this situation.

kelnos 6y ago

> But I can't see how this helps improve immigration, and it certainly seems likely to cause a lot of negative consequences for GitHub. I think I would rather work for a company where they do the right thing, even if it does cause negative consequences. I understand that you're not convinced that banning ICE from their platform is the right thing, or will even do anything useful around immigration. I don't agree with that point of view, and I expect GH's employees don't either. Ultimately it's up to the company's management to decide who they'd rather to piss off: the US government, or a portion of their own employees.

29athrowaway 6y ago

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 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 active are sedated and some of them, left unsupervised causing them to smash their heads against the floor causing them permanent brain damage.

rattray 6y ago
Yeah, I'd be really upset. Angry and disgusted. Thanks for that perspective.

chiefalchemist 6y ago

To your point, where does it end? Will libraries used by many but also Out-of-Favor Entity X also be removed? Who gets to decide? The media? Blaming ICE for immigration policy that have been inept for decades is going to solve what? I understand the concern and the intent. I don't - yet? - see the impact.

diob 6y ago

You say "essentially political reasons". I and others say "humanitarian reasons". I think that's the big disconnect here. You don't think ICE does immense harm (you're even willing to downplay it as "political" to not support them). Regardless of where folks fall politically, I think they should be loathe to support an organization that treats folks so inhumanely. And I think you're missing the point. "We should absolutely be lobbying for hard changes". Jeez, what do you think it is that they're doing? They're lobbying using the power that they have.

madeofpalk 6y ago

> But to expect that a _federal agency_ will be denied service from a private entity, especially for essentially political reasons, is lunacy. Are you saying that private entities should be forced to provide services to federal agencies?

prepend 6y ago

I work in an organization where people prefer “on prem” solutions that they have complete control over. Unless there’s a legal injunction or law, I can’t imagine how much of a pain this is going to be to argue.

siruncledrew 6y ago

Is this more ammunition for Amazon to use in the JEDI contract battle?

nextaccountic 6y ago

> 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-recognition-police-law-enforcement-pledge-regulation https://www.theverge.com/21288053/microsoft-facial-recogniti...

rattray 6y ago
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.

manigandham 6y ago

The United States is very welcoming to immigrants. Probably the best in the world at it. For some reason, people fail to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration.

dehrmann 6y ago

rmc 6y ago

> I can't see how this [denying ICE access to Github service] helps improve immigration … great fear from all paying customers that an internet mob could separate them from their code at any time You've proven your point. Paying customers would be afraid of doing things ICE is (in)famous for, lest they are “separated from their code”. i.e. Denying ICE means people will act nicer in general!