[jonnybgood]

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?

[benrutter]

From 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]

You'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.

[benrutter]

You 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.

[tremon]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

[Amezarak]

That’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.

[mlsu]

Because 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]

“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.

[tremon]

I 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]

That’s what they’re doing, once you peer through the mad filter of propaganda that’s popular in some small circles.

[unethical_ban]

I'll engage.

First: I do not believe immigration laws should be enforced in their entirety vis-a-vis mass deportation. Decades of flawed immigration laws, flawed employment laws and flawed enforcement have led to the current situation where millions of people are in this country undocumented, who are otherwise law-abiding, decent people who contribute to their communities and love the US. The rhetoric about immigrants being a drain on society are flawed at best, and hatefully wrong and bad faith at worst.

Second: If we want to get a handle on immigration volume and change the system so fewer people are undocumented, the correct response logistically and morally is to create a path to legal status (not citizenship) for those currently here, who have been here for a long time, who have families and who have not committed violent crime.

Third: If someone wanted to maximize the effectiveness of immigration enforcement resources for the purpose of safety using deportation, they would still be doing targeting of violent offenders. They clearly are not. Stephen Miller wants all undocumented people out of this country because he is a white supremacist. When "moderating forces" in the administration tried to push back on raids at farms and factories, Miller angrily protested and got Trump to change his mind back to indiscriminate mass deportation.

Third, pt 2: If Republicans were serious about measured but effective reforms to reduce immigration, they would have accepted the 2024 legislative package that capped asylum volume and vastly increased border patrol and border judiciary resources to expedite cases and get people back out of the country in a fraction of the time the current system requires. Instead, they wanted to win the 2024 election with immigration as a wedge issue, and they want to pursue a maximalist position of fear and mass removal.

Fourth: The US federal government is a semi-democracy. We have a single-choice, no-runoff election system in most of the country that forces an extremist-friendly two party system, and the presidential election is further removed from popular choice by the electoral college. The president is the least "democratic" elected position in the nation. I do not think most people support the extent of the violence and maximalism of the administration.

Fifth: The surveillance technology being adopted by the government is not being used solely on undocumented citizens.

Finally: If I were in charge and wanted to take a stance on immigration, I would do largely what was in the 2024 bill, I would set up a work visa program for industries that heavily utilize undocumented labor, and I would target recent arrivals and criminals for deportation - not all undocumented residents.

---

TLDR: We're arresting and deporting veterans, PhD students critical of US policy, and people who have lived here for decades as part of the "American Dream" who have done no harm to our country. What is being done is not in the name of safety nor does it even indirectly improve the lives of Americans. Surveillance and tracking tools are being deployed against all citizens. In the broader context of the behavior and statements of Miller/Trump/Vance et al, this is part of a multi-pronged attack on democracy and the freedom of citizens from government intrusion.

Edit: and all of this debate is without the context of an administration that has declared itself above the law domestically and internationally, that has invaded a country for oil and is currently preparing to invade a treaty member of our strongest military alliance to steal their natural resources. So if the parent wonders why some people are hostile at debating this, it's because to debate the point at all is to ignore obvious truths.

[NickC25]

>The rhetoric about immigrants being a drain on society are flawed at best, and hatefully wrong and bad faith at worst.

Ironically all the big wealthy GOP donors all hire illegal laborers to clean their homes and mow their lawns, and to maintain the golf courses at clubs they belong to. But we can't actually have the conversation about illegal immigration get to the root causes of why immigrants are actually here, now can we?

> Stephen Miller wants all undocumented people out of this country because he is a white supremacist.

Another point of irony - most of the ardent white nationalists from the heartland of America would be aghast to learn that Miller is a rich Jew from Southern California whose grandparents were immigrants. For a lot of them, Jews are explicitly NOT white nor are they American.

> If Republicans were serious about measured but effective reforms to reduce immigration, they would have accepted the 2024 legislative package that capped asylum volume and vastly increased border patrol and border judiciary resources to expedite cases and get people back out of the country in a fraction of the time the current system requires.

Or, even earlier, they could have backed e-Verify as federal minimum standard for all employment as far back as the 1980s. But no, let's not go after the businesses hiring illegal laborers.

[greycol]

IBM 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'.

[biophysboy]

Taking your argument in good faith: I think selling a tool with a narrow use case tailor-made for ICE is categorically different.

[miniBill]

The same difference between a kitchen knife and an AK 47

[Zetaphor]

Considering 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.

[vimda]

Office can be used for things that aren't objectively evil?

[small_scombrus]

All things done with office must be evil by association.

(Except clippy, he's just a guy)

[amunozo]

Maybe, but Office is evil itself.

[creatonez]

Microsoft 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.

[derelicta]

Yes, 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.

[chinathrow]

Whataboutism, much?