Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by on Tuesday December 13 2016, @06:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the choose-to-recuse dept.

Caesar's wife must be above suspicion, but Trump's transition team and ultimately cabinet, seems rife with conflicts of ignorance. The Intercept reports that:

Palantir Technologies, the data mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel, will likely assist the Trump Administration in its efforts to track and collect intelligence on immigrants, according to a review of public records by The Intercept. Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has paid Palantir tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses.

I guess this is what happens when you elect a businessman to political office: they run it like a business.

Working closely with a President-elect who has pledged to dramatically expand ICE, Thiel's varied connections to the immigration agency place him in a position to potentially benefit financially from a deportation campaign that carries highly personal stakes for millions of Americans.

They always say: you have nothing to worry about, if you have nothing to hide.

Palantir, which is backed by the CIA's venture capital arm, did not respond to a request for comment regarding its ICE contracts and concerns over potential conflicts of interest. Peter Thiel spokesperson Jeremiah Hall declined to comment on a list of emailed queries, including a question asking whether Thiel has yet signed the Trump transition ethics agreement.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday December 14 2016, @11:10AM

    by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday December 14 2016, @11:10AM (#441229) Journal

    End of discussion.

    Sorry, you don't get to call that.

    The specific law cited to grant citizenship to anyone born on our soil was never meant to make citizens of illegal aliens. It was meant to ...

    So you're saying that the wording of the law is irrelevant, only the intent behind it is what counts? If that's the case, why bother writing down laws at all? Yes, even the precise legal wording of a law or contract can often be bent by a clever lawyer, but I can tell you it's a hell of a lot less flexible than the nebulous "intent" of some politician who died a hundred years ago. Also, consider how many laws are passed with one "intent" but sold to the public under another. Drug prohibition laws in particular come to mind as interesting: What was the "intent" behind marijuana prohibition? Was it to protect the Christian Moral Values of America? Was it to protect the tobacco and cotton industries? Was it to feed the prison industry? Was it to provide a blunt instrument for the state to wield against those pesky blacks and hippies? Was it to keep the negroes from getting high and raping white women? Which of those intents should a prosecutor be trying to argue when he's got yet another stoner kid in the dock?

    A day in court in RunawayLand would be an interesting day indeed.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 14 2016, @12:01PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 14 2016, @12:01PM (#441237) Journal

    Section 1

    All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,

    Any person who has a foreign embassy to represent him in court, is not "subject to the jurisdiction thereof". Mexico interferes in our judicial system routinely, protecting the "rights" of it's citizens. Dual citizenship be damned - he is either a citizen of the US or he is not. Like I said, end of discussion.

    • (Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday December 14 2016, @12:21PM

      by GreatAuntAnesthesia (3275) on Wednesday December 14 2016, @12:21PM (#441245) Journal

      If it's so cut and dried, why is it even up for discussion? Apparently there are some courts that think differently to you.

      "subject to the jurisdiction thereof".

      IANAL but I would read that as "anyone within the jurisdiction of the United States" - ie, anyone on US soil. If I, as a UK citizen, flew to the US tomorrow and went on a crime spree, I would expect to be tried[1] by the US courts, not by UK courts, because the crimes were committed within the geographical jurisdiction of the US legal system.

      [1] This is all hypothetical, of course. I'm far too clever to get caught ;-)

      Like I said, end of discussion.

      Keep trying, maybe next time it will stick.