404 Media is publishing a version of the user guide for ELITE, which lets ICE bring up dossiers on individual people and provides a “confidence score” of their address.

The tool lets ICE populate a map with potential deportation targets, bring up dossiers on each person, and view an address “confidence score” based on data sourced from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and other government agencies. This is according to a user guide for ELITE 404 Media obtained.

404 Media is now publishing a version of that user guide so people can read it for themselves.

  • gkak.laₛ@lemmy.zipEnglish
    151·
    16 hours ago

    I’m always baffled when I read news about unethical things that a piece of software does; I can’t comprehend how software engineers, people who probably have the ability to do critical and structured thinking, program such software and feel ok with it - they can’t just plead ignorance and say they’re just doing their assigned tasks or sth, they actively make the decision to participate in this.

    The managers, I think it makes more sense: they may be evil about coming up with these decisions, but may not have much exposure to the product to understand the consequences of how it works so they just get money and handle they contracts etc.

    But the people who write the logic, they’re the ones who are sitting down days at a time focusing on their task to think how to design the algorithms, from killing people, to simply tracking people online and exploit a user’s behavior, data about their personal life and relationships etc

    “Hmm yes if a user seems to spend much on microtransactions in games, we could maybe lure them to an online casino! Lets now work on the algorithm that recommends betting games based on their online behavior. Oh did they lose their job recently? They now have more free time to sink into our platform! We may be able to lure them with games that have small bets 🤔 I’m so good at my job I might get a raise now!”

    And I guess now with vibe coding this can only get worse 😕

    • tomiant@piefed.socialEnglish
      241·
      16 hours ago

      First of all, money. Second of all, they might agree with the purpose. Third of all, it might attract people who think it’s cool to work on surveillance tech and feel like spies. Fourth, it might be compartmentalized so that you don’t work specifically on the “whole app”, only parts of it, that are then fit together modularly…

      • village604@adultswim.fanEnglish
        1·
        13 hours ago

        The fourth point really doesn’t track because you kinda need to know enough information about the whole to develop a module.

        • tomiant@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          13 hours ago

          Depends on scope and parameters.

          My point is that I can ask you to develop a certain type of cog within specific tolerances that work with a certain subset of other parts in an obscure system, and you wouldn’t know if you were helping build a car or a doomsday machine.

    • MagicShel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      15 hours ago

      It’s probably written by contractors who live in countries with far worse human rights and privacy violations.