6 ms·
ICE Offers Up to $280M to Immigrant-Tracking 'Bounty Hunter' Firms
- Y-bar 11mo agoSo, the Henneicke Column returns…
- Terr_ 11mo agoTIL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henneicke_Column https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henneicke_Column > a group of Dutch Nazi collaborators [...] in Amsterdam, during the Nazi Germany occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. [...] The bounty paid to Henneicke Column members for each captured Jew was 7.50 guilders (equivalent to about US $4.75). Adjusting for inflation that's ~$91, if any had a profit motive rather than an ideological one, perhaps they supplemented it by looting from victims...
- morkalork 11mo agoEasy to say that now but during war and times of rationing, there are many desperate people..
- Terr_ 11mo agoWhile the occupation was certainly affecting civilians, these events were 1943, before the famine at end of 1944. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944%E2%80%931945 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_famine_of_1944%E2%80%931...
- cinntaile 11mo agoThese people are deported out of the country and not slowly murdered in a concentration camp, which is a massive difference.
- giraffe_lady 11mo agoThe institution the henneicke column was under was the "center for jewish emigration" btw.
- halfmatthalfcat 11mo agoWhat do you think is happening to the people who are deported? Maybe not murdered explicitly but they're definitely not having the red carpet rolled out in whatever country they land in. The US is looking for any suitor country to take "illegals" and don't care what happens after, be it for bad or worse, rarely "better".
- Larrikin 11mo agoThere are people from and not from El Salvador that are being sent to a concentration camp there. We don't know what is happening to people being sent to other random countries.
- xdennis 11mo ago[flagged]
- actionfromafar 11mo agoWhat little we do know, is that it can't be good. Sudan...
- rfrey 11mo agoOutsourcing is the American Way.
- Terr_ 11mo agoYou mean... just like the Nazis did in 1939-1942? Their immoral-mass-murder really ramped up when they couldn't achieve their desired rate/expense of the immoral-mass-incarceration and immoral-mass-exiling they were already doing. Even if your statement was correct--it isn't, ask the victims in CECOT--it isn't reassuring or exculpatory: "Don't worry guys, we may have spent 11 months speed-running years of the Nazi trajectory, but don't worry, we're stopping at only this much of the cruelty. I promise, for realsies this time. Double pinky-swear."
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- visioninmyblood 11mo agoWow that is crazy may be YC next funded company will be on this. But there are so many ethical considereations here. Tracking immigrant means they will track citizens as well. We need to see how these companies are moderated
- throwawaygmbno 11mo agoIf we make it to another election, it will be good to track the people who take up this offer
- decremental 11mo ago[dead]
- tecleandor 11mo agoYou mean, the ethical considerations are about tracking citizens only?
- dontlaugh 11mo agoSame as IBM’s ethical considerations when selling to the Nazis. This isn’t new behaviour.
- visioninmyblood 11mo agoNo I mean I am an immigrant I am already tracked more than a citizen. We have accepted that fact. But the tracking is done with government portal. But asking third party sources to keep a tab on immigrant can go bad very quickly both for immigrants and citizens. I think it is worse for citizens.
- herbst 11mo agoI am an immigrant in a very rich and beautiful country (hint, not America) and they don't track me specifically or make my life more miserable. Consider what you do with your life and if this is what you actually want.
- daheza 11mo agoI wonder what position Apple will take on this. You can't trace ICE agents (IceBlock app) But will ICE be able to track immigrants using whatever Apps are created here? Scary times we live in. Stay safe everyone.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- an0malous 11mo agoThis will be flagged off the front page within 30 minutes
- hypeatei 11mo agoAlong with the "both sides!!" and the "we're just enforcing immigration law" commenters showing up.
- zzzeek 11mo agoi dont see why, hacker news is loaded with enthusiastic young entrepreneurs and I posted this thinking some brilliant protege of Peter Thiel would be inspired to "disrupt" the "surveilling and abducting people" industry with the promise of a $280M reward....
- belorn 11mo agoPeople will flag articles when they don't feel safe to participate in the discussion, especially if they hold views that appears to be dissenting. An open and thriving environment for discussion is one that welcomes people of different views and opinions. A strong indicator of an article that get flagged, and which also trigger the flame war detection on the site, is a bunch of comments that are either grayed out or flagged. The one will feed the other into a death spiral for the article.
- an0malous 11mo agoThat doesn't make sense. People feel that certain topics aren't safe to discuss, so they flag the posts on that topic so that no one can discuss them? I think it's way more likely they're censoring topics because the posts that get flagged are usually criticism about AI, MAGA, or Zionism.
- an0malous 11mo ago29 minutes later and it is #37 with 86 points, off the front page
- layer8 11mo ago
- nine_zeros 11mo agoAmerica is a third world thug state where people are being targeted just because...they showed up on a computer system.
- rkuska 11mo agoYour comment reminded me of "Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Blaise Bailey Finnegan III": > Like I said, America's a third world country as it is and... and we're just basically in a hopeless situation as it stands https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP8XBJc2p_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP8XBJc2p_g I keep GY!BE playing on repeat for the past several months.
- tiahura 11mo agoIt seems like tracking down 10M+ people would cost more than $280M.
- actionfromafar 11mo ago"in favor of a no-cap program" combined with coming huge budget increases will adress that I'm sure. Hunting people for commission is back in vogue. Now flag this article, it's about the intersection of society and technology.
- fanatic2pope 11mo ago> Contractors may now earn up to $281.25 million individually and are guaranteed an initial task order worth at least $7.5 million. The rates are per contractor.
- throwaway1389z 11mo agoThis whole program is a variation of "The Process is the punishment". Regardless of what your opinion of immigration is, this is all just politicking and power-grabbing. Under that light, you will see that it is M$280 for fear mongering more than actual deportation efforts.
- actionfromafar 11mo agoNot just! This will create a whole concentration camp construction industry downstream of the arrests. The logistics are just impossible unless you build massive camps.
- throwaway1389z 11mo agoNot going to happen, even if purely for the economic reasons. Unless the Captain is willing to gamble the whole enterprise.
- Terr_ 11mo agoI think you've got it backwards: The current administration--and its 2016-2020 predecessor--have demonstrated they are exactly the type of "captain" that wrecks ships trying to play chicken with an incoming lighthouse. Republicans already passed a budget giving ICE a crazy amount of taxpayer dollars, a subset of that being $45 billion-with-a-B directly earmarked for the creation of new "detention centers". If "economic reasons" were gonna stop them, it would have already happened. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-bill-ice-detention-funding-b2782918.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
- givemeethekeys 11mo agoThere's even a bounty to report your neighbors.
- jdlshore 11mo agoThere is not. Please don’t share cynical fantasies here. If you want to make a comparison to Nazi Germany, just make the comparison.
- givemeethekeys 11mo agoOh, I didn't think about that. If a private firm can make money from catching bad guys, then why wouldn't the same private firm pay rewards to people who make their job easier? Many of the detention facilities where we keep illegal immigrants are privately run. Many of our politicians own shares in those private companies. Shareholders don't like it when their investments don't appreciate.
- stackghost 11mo agoToo often on this site you see the opinion "keep politics out of it" expressed. But there are going to be software engineers working at these surveillance and tracking firms, probably some on this site. Just like there are people here getting paid to work on Facebook or Instagram despite knowing deep down (even if they're in denial) that those products are profoundly harmful to society at large and young people in particular. Technology is only becoming more intertwined with daily life, not less. When does the software industry develop scruples?
- surgical_fire 11mo agoI hate this stance. Demand scruples from the common man while the billionaire overlords who are actually the major beneficiaries are off the hook.
- RicoElectrico 11mo agoSWEs are everything but common people, they're a good paying profession still.
- pxc 11mo agoOnly semi-professional. There's no legal barrier to entry or licensing, no guild structure— no bar association, no medical board, no engineer licensing board, etc. It's privileged, high-wage work, but it's not a profession in the strict sense. Professions have some kind of organization that tries to impose standards of discipline and ethics.
- surgical_fire 11mo agoFun. I get to be painted as upper class, without any of the benefits.
- stackghost 11mo agoBillionaires are already above the law because common people are too scared/comfortable to eat the rich.
- 11mo ago
- collinmcnulty 11mo agoI am reminded of Eisenhower's Chance for Peace Speech: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_for_Peace_speech
- baiac 11mo agoEisenhower launched Operation Wetback, so you can tell what he actually thought about this.
- bcrosby95 11mo agoYeah, people aren't cartoon super heroes or super villains. People are messy. People are nuanced. You can't summarize them in a 1,000 word article much less a 10 word title.
- defrost 11mo agoHell of a name for an operation launched to appease a request by the Mexican Government to return labourers to Mexico. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback If I'm reading that correctly the US wanted the labour, and the Mexican Government wanted the US to enforce stricter control: Pressure from Mexican agribusiness owners to return laborers from the United States to Mexico prompted increased action by the Mexican government. The labor problems caused crops to rot in Mexican fields because so many laborers had crossed into the U.S. Meanwhile, American agriculture, which was also transitioning to large-scale farms and agribusinesses, continued to recruit illegal Mexican laborers to fulfill its expanding labor requirements. It would seem that Eisenhower wanted cheap Mexican labour and the Dual US/Mexico programs that provided it - the enforcement to cap the numbers was a condition imposed by Mexico to keep the agricultural labour agreements in place.
- munk-a 11mo agoThis an excellent example of a program that'll print money for fraudsters while also supporting a policy with arbitrary and cruel quotas. Oh how far we've wandered from that old promise of "small government".
- biff1 11mo agoI remember some similar threads. They seem to be utilitarian.
- theturtle 11mo ago[dead]
- periodjet 11mo agoThe story that is being spun and maintained by news entertainment outlets like Wired is quite impressive. Even more impressive is how effective it is to pull small sleight-of-hand moves, like referring to these processes as “immigrant-tracking”, as if the federal government is somehow at war with immigrants. One really has to admire the raw narrative-building chutzpah of these outlets.