Hello, and welcome back. In this week’s Techscape: the cost of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting, the emotional shutdown of Skype, and a new documentary on immigration and surveillance.
Elon Musk’s cost savings will be very expensive for the US
On Saturday, Elon Musk took aim at his next target in the federal government: the technology division of the General Services Administration (GSA), which the Guardian was among the first to report.
The GSA, according to its website, “manages federal property and provides contracting options for government agencies”. Its tech division was known as 18F – and was made up of some 90 employees, many of them software engineers dedicated to streamlining the federal bureaucracy (a task that doesn’t sound too far off what Musk has claimed he’s trying to do with Doge).
You may not know about 18F, but have likely heard of its most famous product: free tax-filing software. The sub-agency created IRS Direct File, a program that aimed to resolve one of the most frustrating and relatable examples of the excesses of bureaucracy: having to fork over cash to be able to give the government money.
Still, Musk wasn’t a fan. He tweeted a few weeks ago that he had “deleted” IRS Direct File, though it remained available up until now. The fate of the software is not clear. Because of Musk’s work with Doge, more people in the US are now likely to spend money that they would not have had to spend before he arrived in Washington. His efficiency efforts will personally cost American taxpayers.
It’s just one of myriad ways that Americans will end up footing a bill for Musk’s so-called cost-saving.
My colleague Michael Sainato reports:
Donald Trump’s administration could rack up a “monumental” bill and is breaking the law by firing government workers on spurious grounds, according to a top labor lawyer.
Officials have cited “poor performance” when terminating thousands of federal workers. In many cases it’s not true, according to employees embroiled in the blitz, many of whom are now seeking legal advice.
Suzanne Summerlin, a labor attorney, summed things up: “These firings they’re conducting without following the law will result in hundreds of thousands of former federal employees being owed back pay, plus interest, plus benefits, plus attorney fees,” she said. “When the bill comes it will be monumental.”
It’s a deja vu in Muskworld. After Musk acquired Twitter and fired the majority of its employees and its entire executive slate, he let both groups claim their severance in court if they so pleased. They sued.
Bloomberg reports that Musk has lost all his battles over severance with former Twitter employees so far: “Four ex-Twitter workers have prevailed in a recent series of closed-door arbitration proceedings over claims they were illegally denied severance, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News.
“Shannon Liss-Riordan, a lawyer representing former employees in arbitrations, wrote in the memo that the 20 cases she’s won so far have cost the company at least twice the amount of contested severance pay because the awards have also included interest, arbitration expenses and legal fees. She’s representing more than 2,000 former employees in legal fights against Musk.”
More on Musk …
‘I’m selling the Nazi mobile’: Tesla owners offload cars after Elon Musk’s fascist-style salutes
Trump cabinet flunkies hail wannabe Caesar and Elon, his oligarch pal
Share your memories of Skype
Microsoft announced on Friday that it would shutter Skype. Around for more than 20 years, the product was once so ubiquitous and original that its name became a genericized verb for calling someone via video.
More than most pieces of technology, Skype evoked emotion. It was a piece of culture as well as technology. There were few other recognizable programs for video calling, an action for which an everyday person in a certain era would only use Skype. Movies created knockoff Skype interfaces when characters video chatted each other to abstract the setting from a distinct time or used the product itself, as did Past Lives, released two years ago, which used the Skype ringtone to evoke the year 2012. With either approach, the viewer would say the people on screen were skyping.
It is likely you have more memories tied specifically to Skype than to your headphones, for example. There are many versions of audio delivery; there was, for a time, only one Skype.
We’d like you to share them with us for a story. Where were you when you made your first video call? Can you remember the best Skype call you ever had, and the worst? What feelings does the boop-beep-boop of the Skype ringtone elicit? Who do you think of when you think of a video call in 2012, and why? Did your relationship subsist on Skype when you lived far apart?
Reply to this email and recount your memories of Skype to us. One reader has already sent us a song they composed based on the ringtone. We hope to share it with you soon.
A new documentary investigates the business of surveillance
My colleague Johana Bhuiyan writes on a new film about US immigration and the wide network of surveillance enforcement agencies have created in response:
The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has spread chaos, confusion and fear across the country since his inauguration. But many of the tools and tactics the administration is using have been used by every administration since at least 2004.
A new timely documentary shot over the course of the first Trump administration, called Borderland: The Line Within, brings some clarity to the ways the “border industrial complex” was being weaponized in Trump’s first term as president and how it affected asylum seekers and immigrants working in the system. Specifically, the documentary, directed by Pamela Yates and Paco de Onis of Skylight Pictures, follows the journey of immigrants turned activists Kaxh Mura’l and Gabriella Castañeda.
Mura’l is an Indigenous Maya who left Guatemala, where he was an environmental land defender, and Castaneda is a mother who lost her Daca status during the Covid pandemic. When Mura’l was released after months of detention, he was obligated to wear an ankle monitor operated by a private company called BI Inc, which the Guardian has reported on extensively. He said even though he was no longer detained, he was still not free.
The documentary focused on the companies and corporations profiting from the surveillance of immigrants in the US. A group of data scientists, who worked at Columbia at the time, looked at the many billions of dollars awarded to corporations by the Department of Homeland Security, whether for privately run detention centers or the ankle monitor system. The film got across a point we try to make in much of our reporting: There is an entire industry vying for extremely lucrative contracts to enable the US government to track, detain and deport immigrants. Just this week, the largest private contractor for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it is planning for a surveillance boom as Trump’s migrant crackdown continues.
In a Q&A with the Guardian staff, Yates said she believes the cruelty of the system is part of the point because it creates an environment of fear that might discourage immigrants from fighting for their rights. “People who are undocumented in the US have that fear inside of themselves … that they can be captured and deported,” Yates said. “And I think the cruelty amps that fear up.”
The wider TechScape
US national security director condemns UK request for Apple data ‘backdoor’
UK watchdog to investigate TikTok and Reddit over use of children’s data
Trump administration retreats in fight against Russian cyber threats
Apple shareholders vote against ending DEI program amid Trump crackdown
‘I want him to be prepared’: why parents are teaching their gen Alpha kids to use AI
Ghost hunting, pornography and interactive art: the weird afterlife of Xbox Kinect
