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Several sites are reporting, without reference to IBM's activities 70 years ago, that Microsoft's contact with ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is drawing fire online. The Computer Business Review includes a quote from Microsoft now missing from their press release:
"ICE's decision to accelerate IT modernization using Azure Government will help them innovate faster while reducing the burden of legacy IT. The agency is currently implementing transformative technologies for homeland security and public safety, and we're proud to support this work with our mission-critical cloud," he wrote.
KUOW radio writes on their web site that Microsoft is facing outrage their for blog post touting ICE contract:
As outrage grew online, a Microsoft employee quietly removed mention of ICE from the January press release this morning. Social media users noticed that, too. The company has since restored the press release's original language, and called its removal a "mistake."
After a little bit of conference swag gets handed out and a few advertising contracts^W^Wscholarships get handed out, this will all blow over and be forgotten.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday June 20 2018, @06:36AM (4 children)
What's new is they are now choosing to file criminal charges against the asylum seekers! Not only in cases where they have a reason to suspect lack of honesty or sincerity (which, again, would just be continuing normal policy,) no the order went down to charge every single person, mechanically, without discretion.
And of course once they slap the cuffs on the parents and haul them away for daring to come and apply for asylum, the children are now 'unaccompanied' and must be seized as well.
This is not required, and it has no connection I can see to anything that you wrote.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by slinches on Wednesday June 20 2018, @02:54PM (3 children)
Is this happening to asylum seekers who legally apply at a port of entry? If so, that's a very different story, but I don't believe I've heard anything to indicate that.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 20 2018, @03:31PM (1 child)
Yes! It's literally the reason people are in an uproar. You might want to find better resources if you haven't heard anything about that yet.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Wednesday June 20 2018, @04:53PM
Please point me to a reference for that. All of the cases I've heard of are for illegal border crossings (i.e. not at a port of entry)
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday June 21 2018, @01:47AM
If you go to an official port of entry, go straight up to the first officer you see, and tell him you want to apply for asylum, then you should be allowed to apply for asylum and not be arrested still.
However any deviation from that, for any reason whatsoever, is to result in criminal charges. Many people fail to comply perfectly with such procedures every day, in many cases this may be technically illegal, but it's still not normal for charges to result when it's an innocent mistake and there was no criminal intent. Apparently we have no more innocent mistakes, we've simply resolved that they don't exist, and so we shall no longer see them. This is extremely bad policy.
On top of that, there are numerous reports that what happens when people actually follow the correct procedure, they're simply told no, go away, or waved off with a 'try tomorrow.' If true, this is a problem on more than one level - systematic disregard for the law inside the executive branch, and creating a moral hazard for legitimate asylum seekers who might well respond to such tactics by using another crossing, when they would not otherwise have broken any laws.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?