https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

Accountability literally means "being forced to give an account of your decisions", i.e. explain the reasons behind why you made the choices you did. The idea is that when you have a public forum of people with common values, merely being forced to explain yourself will activate mechanisms of shame, guilt, and conformism that keep people inline. Otherwise you'll face the judgment of your peers.

This mechanism breaks down when your peers don't hold common values. If nobody agrees on what right and wrong are, you just find different peers until somebody thinks that what you're doing is right. Or you just don't care and figure solipsism vs. the status quo is just a matter of degree.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

There's no "custody", these people aren't being afforded the Constitutional, legal, or human rights. This is internment by militarised fascist gangs.

"Officer", ha. These are people given a gun and told to go out and brutalise others. There not performing an office of state, they're far outside the law. All, it seems, to try and force those who support democracy to step out of line so Trump/Vance and their handlers can have more people killed and claim civil war is getting in the way of having elections.

Incidentally, I was reading about the Lincoln County War recently and realized it was a microcosm for all the kinds of corruption that we see on display nationwide today. The rings controlled commerce and any upstarts were facing brutally low chances for success and would be snuffed out if they became a threat.

1: https://xcancel.com/ProjectLincoln/status/191249066980685851...

Border patrol specifically is wildly different, looking for people who are suspected of being subject to their jurisdiction without a specific indictment, detaining with in practice, if not in law, a much lower standard of suspicion than applies usually, and then generally having those detained subject to process that is almost entirely within executive branch “courts” with consequences as severe as criminal process but much lower protections than criminal process (where literal toddlers defend themselves in “court" against government lawyers.)

The current “immigration” crackdown, while ICE (which historically has worked more like a regular federal law enforcement agency despite its detainees often flowing into the executive immigration system and not the criminal justice system) has been the public face of it is effectively applying the Border Patrol culture/approach far more broadly (which is also why, in frustration with the “inadequate” results so far ICE middle leadership is being purged and replaced with Border Patrol personnel.)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnUO0Plcpbo

The road to hell wasn't paved in a day.

Hands on the ground don't read the laws, they only bring people before the person who actually knows them.

So no, ICE goons will do the basic thing -- check how white the person is, if not white enough, ask for documents, if documents are not convincing enough to them, snatch the person and let the more nuanced decisions to be made by those who can read.

Now if the person above them isn't agreeing with interpretation of the law that was used to issue those documents, it's sitting in the jail waiting for a judge time.

Better yet -- whisk her out of the country and then claim that she no longer has standing to sue.

and where exactly did those white men in 1600s VA come from? right, you're an immigrant, you should be detained. the 1600s detail is just smoke. the only key thing you said was white. everything after that is just fluff for telling the story.

This comes off to me as a more refined "Yes of course, what did you expect you naive person ?" type of comment you often find online (somewhat common among radical leftists)

Maybe commenter agrees with you that the point is to empower a national police to subjugate the populace (This opinion does not raise any of my eyebrows) but do you think this is going to reach people who don't already think that ? To put any doubt in their minds ? I understand the anger the current situation is causing and I am guilty of breaking the hn guidelines a few times myself but I am also convinced of the need to actually explain what you think are the actual problems from the ground up rather than just casting your own conclusions onto people, no matter how obvious they seem to you

So I did think they did a good job with their comment

Otherwise, you have a 'king' issuing general warrants which allow federal agents to search and seize anyone they want in the course of their investigations based on 'feels'. What makes it even worse is some court said racial profiling is sufficient reason to conduct a Terry stop to determine if the person is engaged in (civil) criminal activity and lets law enforcement demand they show their papers or be scanned by some dodgy app.

An ICE officer can't just detain somebody for having an accent or whatever, but if they have probable cause to think the person may not be a citizen then they have a substantial amount of leverage to affirm that. Probable cause has been tested somewhat rigorously in the courts and really means probable cause and not the knee-jerk obvious abuses like 'he's brown!'

[1] - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1304

Seems to the rest of world that this is very much what America is now.

Meanwhile last week I was in LA for a family thing and caught some TV ads playing there. That dog-killing gnome woman was on TV saying something like "We will hunt you down and deport you, there is no hiding, leave now". Initially I thought I was watching some comedy skit, but no it was an official US government advert.

Whether I'm in Montana or in LA vastly changes my perception of what's considered ok in America today.

Do you just throw up your hands “i guess there is nothing we can do”?

What I find entertaining as a non-US citizen is how border enforcement is table stakes in every other country I’ve lived in (5 so far). Even the left doesn’t question it, it’s a basic function of a government.

Even the less developed countries have relatively straightforward enforcement. You produce proof you’re there legally or you’re put on the next flight home.

Since I lived in the US people keep asking me why some Americans don’t want border security. I don’t have a good answer.

If the U.S. wanted to have a national ID system with rules, a defined scope, and redress procedures when things went wrong, and established it in the open, following a democratic process, I would be much happier.

The system we are getting instead has all the downsides of centralisation, with none of the upsides.

States prefer having the power to issue ID cards and all of the control that grants them, they do not want to give up those powers, and politically the states have enough political and legal power to keep it this way.

Don’t make the mistake of presuming that this the result of a flawed cooperative system. It isn’t — it’s adversarial.

Just look at how long states fought to stop Real ID legislation.

I see you, Wintermute, I see you.

It's the official status of green card holders.

(second result was Lawful Permanent Resident; make of that what you will)

This may be statistically true, but it's probably not very good advice. You might equally end up deported, now that they are running everyone through every database looking for things that might make you technically deportable that would never have come up under previous administrations:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g78nj7701o

You used to be able to get bailed while stuff got sorted out. That has changed. Now they keep you locked up for months, not days. How long are you prepared to hold out before agreeing to be deported despite being in the right? Racial profiling is certainly happening, but anyone can find themselves in this situation if the wrong database pings when they walk through an airport, and once you have been dropped into immigration detention, relying on your ethnicity to get you out is not a sure thing.

They've certainly been held in custody, though.

Unfortunately, lots of people are going to arrive at a first-hand understanding of the oft-repeated systems adage: "the purpose of a system is what it does."

For now, until they move on to persecuting political adversaries.

It’s no different than a US citizen having an arrest warrant but then showing the cop a final disposition from the court showing the charges were dismissed.

Whats next? It’s certainly not the cop just walking away.

You detain the person until the discrepancy can be resolved.

Are some innocent people going to be held in custody? Yes, in both cases. But until a better approach can be found (other than just ignoring it), it’s how it works.

Unfortunately USCIS doesn’t know anything about this (as it was all handled by the department of state), and presumably thinks I’m an alien who abandoned their status.

A lot of Americans have the impression that SCOTUS keeps deciding in the administration's favor, but this is not true.

SCOTUS is saying: "We're not going to hear this case right now, but we likely will in the future. In the meantime, we are going to overturn the lower court who did actually hear the case and allow the administration to continue its actions. No, we will not explain we think the lower court got wrong."

Increasingly these SCOTUS orders totally unexplained which is a blatant violation of their judicial obligations, and they are frequently unsigned by the majority (conservative) Justices. Presumably because they don't want their names written on papers that they know will be understood by future generations to be totally indefensible.

SCOTUS has proven itself functionally incapable of fulfilling its Constitutional duties and has proven that we need a lot more Justices. If you don't have the time to hear the cases we need you to hear, then the court needs to be scaled up and we can pick random panels to hear different cases.

Nothing to do with policy disagreements (how would any American even know if they had a policy disagreement with an unexplained, unsigned SCOTUS order?) – we just need courts that can decide on things that are important to our country.

The supreme court over the years has watered down constitutional protections against government enforcement upon individuals massively because doing so was necessary to empower the government to enforce speeding tickets, financial regulation, environmental regulation, chase bootleggers, etc, etc, with it's power only constrained in practice by political optics.

So now here we are, in a situation where the government is doing what it always does, levying what's essentially a criminal punishment (incarceration in this case, typically fines historically) in a case where allegedly no crime has been committed, and then give the accused only kangaroo court administrative process because it's not a crime, but now it's doing it at scale, flagrantly, loudly and against the political will of some of the locations it's doing it in.

There are a lot of bricks in this road to hell and someone somewhere was issuing a warning as each one was laid. Should have listened.

This is a problem from your government, by your government, that you voted for - one way or another. Pretending this problem is originating from anywhere else except the political choices you're making as a nation is denying reality.

This is in fact one of the most distressing parts of the situation. Most people conceive of getting off the couch to vote in the midterm as the absolute height of their potential power to stop this. Phone banking for some blue dog in the midterm isng going to cut it in this situation.

Meanwhile the "opposition" has decided to lay low rather than risk their (checks notes) low 30% approval rating by taking a stand on anything (except funding genocide) for most of this year. Every institution is being steamrolled, gutted, corrupted, and weaponized faster than we can keep track, and folks are trying to make themselves believe if we just vote hard enough this will all end in 2-4 years like it was a bad dream rather than an ongoing play-by-play descent into fascism.

The scary thing is that there is.. you should look up "sovereign immunity". The government has complete immunity, except where and how the law permits it to be held accountable. And while we have a constitution, defending those rights through the courts requires legislation to permit it. For the most part, federal law permits lawsuits against states that violate the constitution, but have permitted far less accountability for federal actions that violate the constitution.

For example, Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act only permits individuals to sue state and local governments for rights violations. It can't be used to sue the federal government.

There's many court cases, dating back decades, tossing out cases against the federal government for rights violations. Look how SCOTUS has limited the precedent set by Bivens over the years, basically neutering it entirely.

Their budget right now is larger than the Marine Corps and a lot of their members are looking at unemployment or prison time if the democrats get back into control of the government. Think about what they are likely to do during the mid terms if they are told to monitor election sites. They are a gang of dangerously brutal violent thugs operating with complete impunity.

The immunity is only from state prosecution and only for acts taken required as part of their official duties, but it does exist.

States ought to do that aynway, then instigate cop-on-cop violence. Ask Putin or Xi for help.

First of all, it's misleading in its categorization: "half of people who voted in the last election" is not the same as "half of all eligible voters".

Second of all, a lot of the people who voted for Trump do not meaningfully "want fascism". Some do—no question about that! And, unfortunately, some who didn't before have rationalized themselves into wanting it now in order to self-justify their decision to vote for him.

But many of them are low-information voters who genuinely do not understand what is going on, and fall into one (or more) of a few categories:

- People who have always voted Republican, because their parents always voted Republican, and that's just The Way Things Are.

- People who have been brainwashed by constant propaganda from Fox News over the past 30 years telling them that Democrats are Evil.

- People who have poor to no civics education, have seen their economic situation slide slowly downward over the last few decades (or fall off a cliff, eg in 2008), and have heard the various Republican candidates telling them, over and over, "Just vote for us! We will solve all your problems. You don't have to worry about how!" (or "...by punishing the evil Others who are the cause of every ill in this country", depending on how racist they're already primed to be)

None of that requires "wanting fascism". And I can tell you, from personal experience, that there are still people out there—left, right, and center—who genuinely do not know what is going on. They don't watch the news. They just try to get by. They have no idea that ICE is abducting citizens off the streets, that Trump has shattered the executive branch institutions that actually run this country, or that the Supreme Court has said that Trump can do whatever the hell he likes.

If you want to be able to fix a problem, you have to understand it in all its nuance, and just dismissing tens of millions of people as "eh, they all wanted fascism; guess there's no possible way to reach them, then" is the wrong problem definition.

For the record: Apparently they helped the original Nazis. One link of many: https://time.com/archive/6931688/ibm-haunted-by-nazi-era-act...

> IBM, according to Black’s book and the lawsuit, was responsible for punch card technology used by Nazi demographers in the years leading up to World War II — and eventually by the SS, which was charged with rounding up Europe’s Jews. Although it has long been known that IBM’s German arm, which was taken over by the Nazis, had cooperated with the regime — and, indeed, was in a consortium of companies making payments to survivors and victims’ families — Black says that the American parent was fully aware of the use to which the technology was put. And after the Germans surrendered, Black says, IBM’s U.S. office was quick to collect profits made during the war by the subsidiary, called Dehomag.

> The punch cards and counting machines, says Black, were provided to Hitler’s government as early as 1933, and were probably used in the Nazis’ first official census that year. The technology came in handy again in 1939 when the government conducted another census, this time with the explicit goal of identifying and locating German Jews — and finally, Black alleges, in tracking records at Nazi concentration camps.

> It’s this specificity of purpose, says William Seltzer, an expert in demographic statistics at Fordham University, that provides the most damning evidence. “Microsoft is not responsible for every spreadsheet made with Excel,” Seltzer told TIME.com. “But if someone is doing custom designing of a database, they have to know what’s going on. With these punch cards, Dehomag had to design a card for every piece of new information that the government wanted.”

You are choosing a daddy(or rather 50%+1 best case is choosing a daddy for you) ignoring the technicalities for each so-called democratic-block country (sometimes it's a committee, sometimes the committee chooses a daddy, sometimes they choose the most voted daddy even if only by a minority, etc.).

We could discuss the benefits of more direct participation in politics but I don't think that framing changes the essence of the question as it stands.

Some don't trust the committee, others don't trust the strong man, others don't trust the 50%+1, others don't trust the 50%-1. None of them being able to trust anyone else is the core issue.

I am not saying you are, but many people who talk about individualism and autonomy are.

It is ridiculously inconsistent.