Re:GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract
by mc32 on Thursday October 31, 2019 @04:07PM
(#21413139)
So ultimately we’re societies built on laws. Sometimes we have embargoes. We don’t allow sales to Iran or Cuba, but we allow sales to China and Russia and a bunch of others. Most companies stay neutral and don’t take a stance. Walmart and Amazon don’t check you or me for our good citizen creds before selling goods to us. We could be ex felons for all they care. Unless the gov says don’t sell something to X, then we can. It’s a bit of circular reasoning but that’s all we have. We build human institutions to support our human activities.
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Re:GitHub tries to quell employee anger over its ICE contract
by shadowgovt on Thursday October 31, 2019 @04:16PM
(#21413251)
Sure, no disagreement there. But I'll note that those institutions all have the liberty (with the exception of specific legal constraints like Title VII) to refrain from providing service to any of the categories you described. In fact, quite a few companies won't hire ex-felons; there's no law requiring them to do so at the federal level. And a recent Supreme Court case indicated that nothing in the law stops a bakery from refusing to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.
These are sliding scales of "how much do I care about the metadata on my customers," and most companies find it optimal to set the scales nearly to zero to maximize revenue. That's not a universal truism.