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BinaryIdiot on June 18, 2018 | hide | past | favorite


The argument over the semantics of the word cage is a pretty shitty distraction. I mean, can they leave? Are they not incarcerated? Incommunicato? Isn't that an extreme form of imprisonment? If not extreme it certainly seems pretty deranged. It is a trivial matter what the walls are or are not made from. Your attention is needed elsewhere.

And there's nothing wrong with trying to influence the behavior of the company you work for. If the company I worked for did something similarly disagreeable I'd feel like a pretty shitty person if I ignored it. .. but for a paycheck.

I'd say it's commendable so far but "Up in Arms" .. we'll see. If this is a valid angle of rejecting the behavior of your government then it's as good as any.


Even though this sounds like an incredible minority of employees at moment based on the article, this along with all the other flak the big tech companies are getting could potentially impact legislation on how much power they have and even push towards tougher privacy laws in the US.

Google had their pains when their Pentagon contract was met with opposition and here is a recent ACLU petition against Amazon for using facial recognition with the government.

https://action.aclu.org/petition/amazon-stop-selling-surveil...


It is important to remember the lessons of the past here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust#Summary

> Data generated by means of counting and alphabetization equipment supplied by IBM through its German and other national subsidiaries was instrumental in the efforts of the German government to concentrate and ultimately destroy ethnic Jewish populations across Europe.[22] Black reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM's punchcard technology.[23] In his book, Black charges that "without IBM's machinery, continuing upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether located on-site or off-site, Hitler's camps could have never managed the numbers they did."[24]

Given how many players there are in the IaaS/PaaS space, it's inevitable that ICE will inevitably find a contractor willing to support them. But those at the organizations with the most robust and advanced cloud offerings can slow down this process, and thus have a moral obligation to demonstrate to their employers the hidden cost of enabling unethical regimes.


What is ICE doing that is bad with regards to using facial recognition technology. If a person is block from immigration because of past history why not have tools to make it easier to turn them down. It certainly does have the issue of the Holocaust.

why not have vendors we know we can take to the task of due diligence? Our bordering countries have more stringent immigration policies but we don't see the gnashing of teeth when we try to move towards similar strategies. With regards to the child separation issue that was even being done by the prior administration but never received as much headlines. At end of April there were 10k children separated but held in protective care, in 2013 it was 25k. We have this influx because the wrong message is communicated into foreign countries. This means all the dangers of passing through Mexico which doesn't want them either and don't even think of going to Canada


I’ve been contemplating using Azure, but this would be a dealbreaker for me.


I assume you mean this is leading with your feelings and voting with your wallet type of behavior, and not an economic or technical decision?

I'm curious if in fact you reviewed other cloud offerings such as AWS and GCE and determined that Azure was the best fit, and if so, on which metrics?


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The US government is separating children from their parents over trivial affairs in what constitutes a gross violation of human rights.

Don't trivialize the issue.


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Please stop breaking the guidelines or we'll ban the account.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


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Let's not go ahead use 'Retarded' as a pejorative word. There are more constructive adjectives to use to get your message across.


Then you are arguing that the law that is currently in effect, and which was voted and upheld with Democrat's help, is a "gross violation of human rights."

Maybe you should also petition and push for help on the Democrat side instead of just pointing the finger across the isle.


How do we know they're the parents if they're not documented? How do we know they're not human traffickers?

FWIW when I was 12 my dad drove me across the Canadian border to visit some family, and the Canadian police couldn't verify he wasn't some random kidnapper, so they detained and separated us for hours while they tried to contact my mom (this was before cell phones). A ton of hassle to verify that my dad was who he said he was, but ultimately it was for my own safety. I don't really see the difference, except in the case of the ICE detainees, the parents are also criminals for crossing the border illegally. (Aren't criminals in our own country separated from their children when they're arrested?)

Sure downvote me because it hurts your feelings but logically you're wrong.


How do I know you exist?


My understanding is that if a family crosses the border illegally the children are separated from the parents. If instead they stop and the border and request entry then the families get to stay together. It is motivated in part because the US gov got sued for keeping the families together and in part to discourage illegal border crossing by families.

1) Do we disagree on the facts of the matter?

2) Why does entering the US illegally count as a trivial affair?

Looks like I cannot reply anymore in this thread. Thanks to alasdair_ and sp332 for civil replies that provide facts to support their views.


> My understanding is that if a family crosses the border illegally the children are separated from the parents. If instead they stop and the border and request entry then the families get to stay together.

This is not the case. Even a family that arrives together and requests asylum will be split up. See (for example) https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/05/us/guatemalan-immigrant-famil...

"After the rest of the family took their chances by presenting themselves to US immigration authorities, the possibility of forced separation became reality. The 20-year-old son was sent to a detention center in San Diego. Maria and her three youngest children were shipped to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas -- about 70 miles southwest of San Antonio."

"The two youngest members of the Villatoro family are now at a detention center in New York state while their mom remains detained in Texas."

>1) Do we disagree on the facts of the matter?

Yes. Your understanding doesn't seem to match the current policy or well-documented effects of said policy.

>2) Why does entering the US illegally count as a trivial affair?

It's not trivial. The issue is that a four year old child can't meaningfully be held to have committed a crime and so should not be incarcerated.

Normally a child will be sent to some kind of foster care if they cannot be with their parents, not taken from their parent and held in a chainlink cage.


Looking at the article in depth I was able to find this quote

> Fluharty questions the grounds for the separation of Maria and her children. She said her client walked up to the border and turned herself in to immigration authorities, which contradicts ICE's claim that she was arrested after crossing the border illegally.

This is also complicated by the fact that Maria falsely claimed US citizenship and thus is barred from entering the US for life.

Do you have a case of someone not barred from entering the US for life has their children separated from them?


Entering a country illegally doesn't deny you of basic human rights, unless you're the sort of bigot who wants to disregard the huge amount of jurisdprudence in that matter and who feels it's morally right.


Point of fact, committing an illegal active in the US is grounds for having your children taken away. Committing an illegal activity is not grounds for deprivation of food, water, or shelter.

When you make the assertion that "Entering a country illegally doesn't deny you of basic human rights" are you contending that the families should be kept together or that a different basic right is being denied?


You're arguing that separating families for a misdemeanor with nothing else outstanding is morally valid.


It's a misdemeanor immigration offense, according to the ACLU & CNN's legal analyst.


How many other misdemeanors result in people's kids being summarily taken away?


Entering the country illegally is a misdemeanor. Do you also think people's kids should be taken away for shoplifting a Twix from a gas station store?


Entering the US illegally (the first time) is a misdemeanor, which is a pretty small thing, so previously that wasn't considered a good enough reason to separate families. They were mostly referred to civil deportation proceedings instead of being criminally charged. Entering the US to apply for asylum isn't illegal, but it seems at least some have been charged and their children taken anyway. e.g. https://twitter.com/PeterWelch/status/1008443579876958208


>It's also hard to take it seriously when it actually suggests the US government is keeping children in "cages" and then links to some radical left wing blog as proof.

...You're aware this is actually happening, right? Here's BBC on the matter: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44518942


A detention facility is not a "cage" and no self-respecting reporter would call it that.

EDIT

To those insisting on calling this a cage, I hope you realize that every jail in the world looks like this. These people (not children in the picture) are under arrest for illegal immigration. They are going to be detained somewhere.


You do know that CBP themselves have said that they are cages.

The CBP is uncomfortable with reporters using the term "cages" but have stated that it is not an inaccurate description. -CBS morning news.


There's literally a cage in the picture.


This picture is of children, in a cage, isolated from their parents: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/ceci-ne...


>To those insisting on calling this a cage, I hope you realize that every jail in the world looks like this. These people (not children in the picture) are under arrest for illegal immigration. They are going to be detained somewhere.

I linked above to a photograph for you showing young children (not adults) kept in the same cages.

Even if you don't care about the adults, young children are blameless. In every other type of case like this, when an adult commits a crime and their child is with them, the child is placed in temporary foster care until more suitable accommodations can be found. They don't get taken from their parents and stuck in a metal cage for weeks on end.


They're literally keeping people locked in chain link fence boxes.

The only reason to call it something else would be to pretend it's not a cage.

I take it you haven't seen the video footage of these places yet?


would it be more, or less of a cage if they used sheetrock for the walls?

personally i think i'd prefer the cheap fencing material, as it would allow for better ventilation.


But they separate the children from the adults and then put a bunch of children in a room together. It's really not the material the room is made of that's being objected to.


Four walls and a ceiling of chain-linked fence is to most people the definition of a cage.


It's a cage. In the picture.

Use your eyes.


>It's also hard to take it seriously when it actually suggests the US government is keeping children in "cages" and then links to some radical left wing blog as proof.

Here is a recent photograph of children in chainlink cages from The Atlantic:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/06/ceci-ne...


This is a cage: https://www.google.com/search?q=cage

What the photograph in The Atlantic shows is a large room, not a cage.


a photo related to this news item shows up on that link for me (in the preview card things at top). perhaps ironic.


124,000 employees at MS and 'several' are upset and two are considering leaving.


You misread.

"Several" employees spoke to Gizmodo, and of those, two are considering leaving. However, the several individuals are reporting that many employees are expressing dissent.


"Local man consider switching jobs."

Thought I'd only see that article on the Onion but here we are.


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You calling others retarded and saying their arguments are stupid is hardly 'rational arguments'


The account Daishman2 was created by a serial troll, which is now banned, not Daishiman.


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At the least, this isn't off-topic: the internal rebellion from Google about Project Maven was only a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17064776


lol, thought Google's Java Coders were rebelling against the Maven build tool in favour of Gradle for a second there...


https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2018/05/16/jedi-ha...

I think this makes Amazon the default winner of the large Pentagon cloud contract. Both Google and Microsoft have shown that they have employees who leak and cause issues for the government.

The Fortune 500 is made up of a lot of very large companies that have at least a division involved in Department of Defense contracts, or in oil, or in sugary foods, or some other endeavor that someone inside Google or Microsoft might find offensive. I am sure they are watching this drama with interest and have no intention of getting dragged through the mud due to rogue employees.

I hope everybody is happy with AWS continued domination of the cloud business.


When a company reaches the point where they are helping to build concentration camps, that's probably the time for their employees to seriously question what the fuck they are doing.


So is Bill Gates really a humanitarian and a supporter of human rights? We'll find out now.

You can take all that spiel* about Data Privacy being a Human Right and toss it out the window as well, Microsoft.

*https://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/103709739/...




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