I really don’t understand how so many people can support this admin. It’s not that I ideologically disagree with them, but they are so corrupt that they appear incompetent. They actually aren’t incompetent, they just don’t care about what is important to almost everyone else. If you, for example, don’t care about public safety or accountability it turns out you can make a lot of money.
The federal government and the executive branch has a well specified set of responsibilities to the people of this country, and they are massively failing at just about every metric. So yes, they are truly incompetent.
I’ll save you a click: yes, of course it was a no bid contract. And:
> The procurement did not require the system to clear FedRAMP, the government’s security review for cloud systems handling sensitive data, before deployment. It described no independent audit, congressional notification or outside review of how the system would be used.
I don’t know how the US charts a path back from all this. There are going to be so many breaches to fix.
There is no path back. Even if the next administration overturns ICE and its activities and dissolves all contracts related to them, there is no reason to think the US govt will not keep using any and all technologies or services obtained in the name of security, regardless of party, even if they have to do so with deep secrecy.
Torn between anger at all the incompetent chucklefucks getting rich off taxpayer money and gratitude at them bestowing these contracts on useless sycophants instead of competent organizations..
>I don’t know how the US charts a path back from all this.
There isn't one. And the sooner we all come to terms with that, the better off we and posterity will be. The constitutional government of the United States failed long before January 20th, 2025. Chasing sunk costs on this scale as futile, even if the alternatives are terrifying.
In my opinion, the best, just, course forward is a Constitutional Convention that dissolves the United States Government and replaces it with nothing. Let the states and territories govern themselves as they choose, and work out needed compacts and agreements going forward.
Boggles my mind you'd even imagine a positive scenario here. Let the states choose? This is not only how we kept slavery going by letting states drive, but it also caused a civic war when we had no federal coordination.
Nay, we must reform and reclaim a just federal government. Letting states drive themselves will turn the country into extreme violence.
The current US administration is already on the multiple-decades level of cleanup, and looking at the political group nominally tasked with doing said cleanup, the more likely answer would seem to be "never".
Technically you could already win contracts without all those things, there are like a thousand loopholes. FedRAMP in particular only really covers cloud hosting, there are other DoD standards you have to follow for more specific systems. And if the agency isn't DoD, I don't think they apply anyway.
If we had a software building code that applied to digital infrastructure in general, the way building codes apply to buildings in general, and electrical codes apply to electrical installation in general, this wouldn't be an issue, because you'd need your shit together to make any software product. But nobody seems to mind companies making shit products and leaking all our data.
I thought Altman's worldcoin was angling for this when they had people take photos of their eyeballs.... getting into the gov't contracting side of things.... surprises me some no-name company got it.
> The award describes the purchase as covering iris biometric recognition technology and access to a biometric information system "to allow ICE agents to quickly authenticate the identity of subjects during field operations."
Note that absent reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime, law enforcement in the US cannot legally forcibly identify people.
This is federal shock troops (masked and unidentified, at that) gearing up for mass scale human rights violations. They are already flying facial recognition drones at extremely low altitudes over sidewalks in downtown LA and other places.
> Note that absent reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime, law enforcement in the US cannot legally forcibly identify people.
Could you cite a source for this?
If a law enforcement officer personally recognizes someone's face, I don't believe that it's illegal for them to know who the person is.
If a law enforcement officer turns to their non-cop buddy and asks "do you know this person?" and their buddy says "yeah that's Joe", I don't believe it's illegal for them to identify the person that way.
If a law enforcement officer picks up a phone and describes the person's face to their non-cop buddy and the buddy says "that sounds like Joe's face you're describing", I don't believe it's illegal for them to identify the person that way.
You can see where this is going, right? At what point does it become illegal to look up a person's face in a store of the-way-faces-look? Where does that become the "forcible identification" you're talking about?
Generally speaking, people expose their faces in public, and so those exposed faces can be remembered, photographed, and recalled without the person's consent or any warrant. This is legal in the USA - there is no expectation of privacy in a public space, and the police don't have to give you any more privacy than a private citizen would. They just cannot search you - and looking at your face, and potentially recognizing it, is not a search.
This is their global headquarters.
Yes, that appears to be the whole thing.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/488+State+Rd+%231,+Plymout...
I really don’t understand how so many people can support this admin. It’s not that I ideologically disagree with them, but they are so corrupt that they appear incompetent. They actually aren’t incompetent, they just don’t care about what is important to almost everyone else. If you, for example, don’t care about public safety or accountability it turns out you can make a lot of money.
The federal government and the executive branch has a well specified set of responsibilities to the people of this country, and they are massively failing at just about every metric. So yes, they are truly incompetent.
They aren't interested in those responsibilities, just enriching themselves and attacking their enemies.
I’ll save you a click: yes, of course it was a no bid contract. And:
> The procurement did not require the system to clear FedRAMP, the government’s security review for cloud systems handling sensitive data, before deployment. It described no independent audit, congressional notification or outside review of how the system would be used.
I don’t know how the US charts a path back from all this. There are going to be so many breaches to fix.
How do we know there's any plan to accomplish this, and that this isn't just funneling $25M to a family member?
There is no path back. Even if the next administration overturns ICE and its activities and dissolves all contracts related to them, there is no reason to think the US govt will not keep using any and all technologies or services obtained in the name of security, regardless of party, even if they have to do so with deep secrecy.
Torn between anger at all the incompetent chucklefucks getting rich off taxpayer money and gratitude at them bestowing these contracts on useless sycophants instead of competent organizations..
I have a strong suspicion the rationale for how they select providers on will turn out to be kickbacks and self-dealing.
>I don’t know how the US charts a path back from all this.
There isn't one. And the sooner we all come to terms with that, the better off we and posterity will be. The constitutional government of the United States failed long before January 20th, 2025. Chasing sunk costs on this scale as futile, even if the alternatives are terrifying.
In my opinion, the best, just, course forward is a Constitutional Convention that dissolves the United States Government and replaces it with nothing. Let the states and territories govern themselves as they choose, and work out needed compacts and agreements going forward.
Boggles my mind you'd even imagine a positive scenario here. Let the states choose? This is not only how we kept slavery going by letting states drive, but it also caused a civic war when we had no federal coordination.
Nay, we must reform and reclaim a just federal government. Letting states drive themselves will turn the country into extreme violence.
The current US administration is already on the multiple-decades level of cleanup, and looking at the political group nominally tasked with doing said cleanup, the more likely answer would seem to be "never".
Technically you could already win contracts without all those things, there are like a thousand loopholes. FedRAMP in particular only really covers cloud hosting, there are other DoD standards you have to follow for more specific systems. And if the agency isn't DoD, I don't think they apply anyway.
If we had a software building code that applied to digital infrastructure in general, the way building codes apply to buildings in general, and electrical codes apply to electrical installation in general, this wouldn't be an issue, because you'd need your shit together to make any software product. But nobody seems to mind companies making shit products and leaking all our data.
it’s over
So the police state has upgraded from papers to eyeballs
I thought Altman's worldcoin was angling for this when they had people take photos of their eyeballs.... getting into the gov't contracting side of things.... surprises me some no-name company got it.
> The award describes the purchase as covering iris biometric recognition technology and access to a biometric information system "to allow ICE agents to quickly authenticate the identity of subjects during field operations."
Note that absent reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime, law enforcement in the US cannot legally forcibly identify people.
This is federal shock troops (masked and unidentified, at that) gearing up for mass scale human rights violations. They are already flying facial recognition drones at extremely low altitudes over sidewalks in downtown LA and other places.
> Note that absent reasonable articulable suspicion of a crime, law enforcement in the US cannot legally forcibly identify people.
Could you cite a source for this?
If a law enforcement officer personally recognizes someone's face, I don't believe that it's illegal for them to know who the person is.
If a law enforcement officer turns to their non-cop buddy and asks "do you know this person?" and their buddy says "yeah that's Joe", I don't believe it's illegal for them to identify the person that way.
If a law enforcement officer picks up a phone and describes the person's face to their non-cop buddy and the buddy says "that sounds like Joe's face you're describing", I don't believe it's illegal for them to identify the person that way.
You can see where this is going, right? At what point does it become illegal to look up a person's face in a store of the-way-faces-look? Where does that become the "forcible identification" you're talking about?
Generally speaking, people expose their faces in public, and so those exposed faces can be remembered, photographed, and recalled without the person's consent or any warrant. This is legal in the USA - there is no expectation of privacy in a public space, and the police don't have to give you any more privacy than a private citizen would. They just cannot search you - and looking at your face, and potentially recognizing it, is not a search.
Ryan Ballard strikes again.