"GitHub CEO Nat Friedman wrote in an internal letter on Tuesday that the company plans to renew a contract worth $200,000 with ICE to license its GitHub Enterprise Server — an amount that Friedman called 'not financially material' for the company."
#ShirinGhaffary, 2019
https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/9/20906605/github-ice-contract-immigration-ice-dan-friedman
(1/3)
This reminds me of IBM supplying the Nazis with admin systems that helped them murder millions of people. Am I the only one?
@strypey it is exactly that. This is something Peter Theil and the tech-based oligarchs have had in motion for a LONG time: https://www.vcinfodocs.com/
@TomJoaD503
Is vcinfodocs.com your work? Love the intro page and the concept, but the site isn't showing me any links in a Firefox-based mobile browser. Possibly because of the dependencies on gstatic.com and squarespace.com. FYI a static site like this could be deployed from @Codeberg, as we do with fediverse.party and although I can't speak for them, I imagine they'd be pleased to host it given the content.
@strypey @TomJoaD503 @Codeberg I get a double-line menu, top left on mobile firefox
@jonathanharker
> I get a double-line menu
I saw that but it wasn't opening for me. Weirdly it is now. My Android is very old and race condition bugs are increasingly a thing.
"... Friedman said he strongly disagrees with the Trump administration’s 'terrible' immigration policies. But, ultimately, he said, the company will continue to provide the agency with software because it doesn’t believe it should 'unplug technology services' when government customers use them to do things the company objects to."
#ShirinGhaffary, 2019
https://www.
vox.com/recode/2019/10/9/20906605/github-ice-contract-immigration-ice-dan-friedman
(2/3)
Usually I would agree, I don't want tech companies withdrawing services as a way of coercing governments into changing their policy. But this is a rule of thumb, not an iron law. There are exceptions.
Like if a rogue agency is deporting citizens in violation of due process, and now murdering them on the streets;
... that's an exceptional situation. Refusing to supply tech services to support such activity is just common sense really.
(3/3)
@strypey
Leveraging such contracts to actively sabotage anything ICE-related sounds more reasonable to me at this point. It is not going to happen though.
@nicoco
> It is not going to happen though
I'm not sure how this kind of fatalism is helpful. I recommend reading this as a corrective;
@strypey
Do you think github/microsoft will actively sabotage ICE? I'm all for optimism, but I don't believe much about giant corps being our way to salvation. :)
I have just glimpsed through your link, I bookmarked it for later read, it looks interesting.
@nicoco
> Do you think github/microsoft will actively sabotage ICE?
Corporations do whatever they believe to be best for their bottom line. If those campaigning for the withdrawl of GH services from ICE can make the potential cost of not doing it seem higher than the cost of doing it, then they will. It's not a given, but it's certainly possible.
