Comment by somenameforme
21 days ago
ICE is a law enforcement agency and so intentionally seeking to obstruct an investigation is indeed a crime. Impairing the access to data opens the door to fraud and other charges. And the manual linked goes above and beyond these relatively 'soft' crimes and into things like arson. Betting your life, and career, on these sort of things testament to how radicalized some have become.
How is this obstruction? Unless it's part of a proper investigation, they are just another private individual. You are free to do or not engage in business contracts with them, and any data given true or false or data not gievn can hardly be a criminal matter as its not an investigation and simply a business dealing between two parties.
A company is absolutely free to choose whether or not to do business with them, but an employee acting to try to undermine them as a customer or their relationship with the business is what would open the door to all these sort of laws and consequences, especially when that relationship is precisely in the furtherance of a law enforcement purposes, and the interference was motivated by an effort to impair that enforcement.
Stuff like actively expressing opposition to taking them on as a customer, trying to persuade management to do otherwise, and so on would all be perfectly kosher. But the stuff the top post in this thread alludes to, let alone what it links to, is how you end up in prison for a very long time after the 'I didn't know it was illegal' defense fails.
An employees actions would be a matter of judgment between the company leadership and themsleves, I don't understand how it's a criminal matter. To the outside entity it's a business contract, to the company it's an internal matter if and how to deal with any specific activities of the employee.
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The other side of this is, if you don't obstruct, you will eventually have to be the guy saying "I was just following orders" [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders
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I mean why not, if they are just taking on a blanket software or data proposal, its no different than say a local government contracting the construction of some accounting software. At most they could claim failure of contract, I don't see how it should be a criminal matter if non functional or bad outcome was delivered.
That's the point, it's not an investigation in the first place so how can you "obstruct" an investigation. It's just a business deal. Unless you believe special rules apply for business deals with them that make perfectly normal things crimes.