[liberationtech] ICE Uses Open Source to Violate Human Rights.

[Rand Strauss]

Pet peeve:  Numbers without Context

>  2018 $3.076 billion dollars on DHS Custody Operations

about 4% of the budget

I couldn’t find Custody numbers before 2018 numbers...
2012 $60 
2013 $61
2014 $60
2015 $64
2016 $66
2017 $67
2018 $74  $3.0 - about 4.1% of the budget
2019 $74  $3.5 - 4.7%
2020 $92  $3.7 - 4.0% (clever way to reduce "costs"…)

Numbers are from the "budgets in brief" for the years 2014, 17 and 20,
on:  https://www.dhs.gov/dhs-budget <https://www.dhs.gov/dhs-budget>

Also, 40,000 people detained is about 1.7% of the number incarcerated in the US,
about 2.3 million (2016), about 1% of the population…   (snide comment elided)

200 deaths/year for 40k people seems to be about twice the death rate of state prisons.
(https://www.bjs.gov/content/dcrp/tables/dcst07spt3.pdf <https://www.bjs.gov/content/dcrp/tables/dcst07spt3.pdf>
says for all state prisoners, it was about 250/100k people 2001-2007)
It might just be the poor medical care that makes the difference...

Note that 40,000 people per year at $3B is $75/k per person.
The average annual cost of incarceration is $20k-$40k.
(Maybe the lousy medical care is more expensive?)
-r

> On Jan 30, 2020, at 7:29 AM, Yosem Companys <yosem at techlantis.com> wrote:
> 
> On any given day, 40,000 people are detained by ICE in unsafe and unsanitary conditions with substandard medical care and sporadic, if any, access to legal counsel.
> 
> These conditions have led directly to nearly two hundred detainee deaths at the hands of ICE.
> 
> And if the human costs are not enough to persuade you, consider the financial ones. In 2018, taxpayers spent $3.076 billion dollars on DHS Custody Operations. A budget four times greater than the Department of Education's English Language Acquisition programs.
> 
> In addition to the cruelty of ICE and the financial costs to taxpayers, ICE is the public face of the United States’ ever-expanding domestic surveillance apparatus. How? Through lucrative contracts with privately held technology companies like Palantir, Microsoft, and even darling GitHub.
> 
> Are we complicit?
> 
> At present, Palantir has 188 repositories hosted on GitHub, which rely on thousands of open source projects. Every dependency in use by ICE and Palantir contributes to human rights violations. Each dependency is a stone in the wall between reality and the dream of open source as a champion of freedom, liberty and equality.
> 
> What can we do?
> 
> Students across the country are organizing to stop Palantir from recruiting on their campuses. Whistleblowers are risking everything to go public detailing how their companies are complicit. International human rights groups are investigating ICE. And immigrant rights activists are working tirelessly to protect vulnerable people from the evils of the current anti-immigrant policies put in place by the Trump administration (and other administrations before his.)
> 
> It's time for software developers to step up, too.
> 
> So what can you as a developer do?
> 
> You have a tech industry salary. You can probably afford to donate $100 a month to #NoTechForICE causes.
> Support and participate in #NoTechForICE protests and programs.
> Keep your code from being used by ICE by adopting an Ethical Source license.
> If all else fails, pull your public code.
> Tear Down The Wall!
> 
> This is the wall that open source has built for ICE. Every open source dependency listed here (updated nightly) is used in Palantir's software and supports ICE in its systematic human rights violations.
> 
>  <https://links92.mixmaxusercontent.com/5e196044087550002eab97f3/l/NtUXLEpjQaBJGgA0E?messageId=bTHAvSrEN5e6v2AQo&rn=gIUxkI&re=IyZy9mLoNWZ052bpRXYyVmYpxmLzR3cpxGQ0xmI&sc=false>	
> ICE Uses Open Source to Violate Human Rights.
>  <https://links92.mixmaxusercontent.com/5e196044087550002eab97f3/l/lg38jmW45GdtmMhMY?messageId=bTHAvSrEN5e6v2AQo&rn=gIUxkI&re=IyZy9mLoNWZ052bpRXYyVmYpxmLzR3cpxGQ0xmI&sc=false>
> Every open source dependency listed here (updated nightly) is used in Palantir's software and supports ICE in its systematic human rights…
>  <https://links92.mixmaxusercontent.com/5e196044087550002eab97f3/l/0uTKXUuQz5QjKOvwk?messageId=bTHAvSrEN5e6v2AQo&rn=gIUxkI&re=IyZy9mLoNWZ052bpRXYyVmYpxmLzR3cpxGQ0xmI&sc=false>
> ICEBREAKER.DEV
>  <https://links97.mixmaxusercontent.com/5e196044087550002eab97f3/l/TQlkumd7u8MI6Jwk9?messageId=bTHAvSrEN5e6v2AQo&rn=gIUxkI&re=IyZy9mLoNWZ052bpRXYyVmYpxmLzR3cpxGQ0xmI&sc=false>	 <https://mixmax.com/r/5e196044087550002eab97f3?ref=Website%20preview>
> 
> -- 
> Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt <https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt>. Unsubscribe, change to digest mode, or change password by emailing lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org <mailto:lt-owner at lists.liberationtech.org>.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ghserv.net/pipermail/lt/attachments/20200130/a0147838/attachment.html>