4 ms·
The US gov (including ICE) uses all of Microsoft Office for coordination and planning: email, spreadsheets, powerpoint, document generation, etc. Would you say
by jonnybgood 9mo ago
The US gov (including ICE) uses all of Microsoft Office for coordination and planning: email, spreadsheets, powerpoint, document generation, etc. Would you say Microsoft employees have blood on their hands too? If not, what makes Microsoft different?
- miniBill 9mo agoThe same difference between a kitchen knife and an AK 47
- Feldwaffel 9mo ago[flagged]
- benrutter 9mo agoFrom the article for context: > Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address So essentially, the relevant app here is custom built in order to help ICE raids. That's substantially different from generic office tech where ICE happen to be one of millions of users.
- Amezarak 9mo agoYou're going to have to explain to me why it's a bad thing or immoral for the government to be aware of where immigrants who legally need to be deported live.
- tremon 9mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
- Amezarak 9mo agoThat’s not an answer. Please explain why it’s a bad thing that Palantir had produced an application that shows ICE agents the probable addresses of people they’re supposed to deport along with information about them. If the answer is “I don’t believe in immigration law and the government should not enforce it regardless of what people vote for”, that’s a completely acceptable answer.
- tremon 9mo agoI wasn't answering you. I was calling out the vicious sleight of hand where you reduce what ICE is doing to the innocently-sounding "immigrants who legally need to be deported".
- Amezarak 9mo agoThat’s what they’re doing, once you peer through the mad filter of propaganda that’s popular in some small circles.
- mlsu 9mo agoBecause these systems are not only used on illegal immigrants. To give you a very clear example: a US citizen was murdered without any due process a few days ago by ICE. Because surveilling people -- PEOPLE, not citizens -- without probable cause is a violation of the US constitution? It is a bad thing because it leads to innocent people being brutalized, it's a violation of the constitution, it's very clearly the primary tool of an increasingly authoritarian government?
- Amezarak 9mo ago“Due process” is not a magic incantation. This is emotional, moralizing rhetoric that doesn’t persuade anyone. People who insert themselves into operations involving the state’s actors who have a monopoly on violence are risking their lives and legal jurisprudence has upheld the state’s actions to stop them by whatever means necessary in similar cases many, many times. And it’s obvious things could not operate in any other way. The state cannot give you a free pass to stop the operation of law enforcement and they definitely can’t give you a free pass to run over the agents of the state. “Due process” does not factor in to live situations that have a risk of death or injury. (It also doesn’t mean a court case. People talk about it in this thread as though the administrative orders issued by immigration judges aren’t due process.) I don’t have a problem if people want to acknowledge this and risk their lives knowingly in protest of whatever they don’t like, but it’s absurd to pretend that’s not what you’re doing. I don’t think that’s what’s happening though when Good’s girlfriend asked why they were using real bullets. The state having your address is also not surveillance in any meaningful sense. edit: I'm ratelimited so I can't reply to the reply: no, he didn't answer. These people did get due process. So it's about something else. ICE is being used for its legally authorized purpose, which yes, includes removing people who illegally hinder them.
- benrutter 9mo agoYou were arguing that the use of Microsoft office vs the bespoke Palantir app were equivelent, and I'm simply pointing out that they are very different. I'm a stranger on the internet, if you don't already think that the USA's immigration raids and camps are a bad thing, I'm probably not going to be the one to convince you otherwise. There's a lot of good journalism and commentary on the topic, so if you want to have your mind changed, do a web search and read from people much smarter and more knowledgable than me.
- greycol 9mo agoIBM made custom software and hardware to process Jews that legally needed to be in camps. I'm sure that was equally not a 'bad thing' or 'immoral'.
- chinathrow 9mo agoWhataboutism, much?
- vimda 9mo agoOffice can be used for things that aren't objectively evil?
- small_scombrus 9mo agoAll things done with office must be evil by association. (Except clippy, he's just a guy)
- amunozo 9mo agoMaybe, but Office is evil itself.
- biophysboy 9mo agoTaking your argument in good faith: I think selling a tool with a narrow use case tailor-made for ICE is categorically different.
- Zetaphor 9mo agoConsidering that Microsoft is also providing services to the Israeli government with the explicit intent of storing and cataloging all of the phone calls made by Palestinian citizens so that they can be analyzed by AI for potential bombing targets...yes I would say Microsoft also has blood on their hands. I wouldn't be surprised to learn they have deep partnerships with Palantir for compute services.
- derelicta 9mo agoYes, absolutely. These are criminal scum, on par with pedos. Just look at how they are helping a people getting wiped out from their own territory in the Middle East.
- alexashka 9mo ago[flagged]
- creatonez 9mo agoMicrosoft is a modern IBM holocaust tabulation machine. Yes, many of the people who work for Microsoft should be prosecuted and put in prison for war crimes, with varying degrees of culpability. There are people in MS who knowing negotiated deals that aided and abetted war crimes, and those who wrote morally repugnant military surveillance software that was used to automate mass murder in the Gaza holocaust.