> The pledge acknowledges that abusable databases exist. It doesn't ask that people leave companies that maintain those databases. What it demands is that signa

> The pledge acknowledges that abusable databases exist. It doesn't ask that people leave companies that maintain those databases. What it demands is that signatories commit to resist abuse, and, ultimately, to sever ties with employers that abuse those databases. In practice, developers work on those databases in Google and Facebook. They'll be "ok" because they don't know they are abused. Other engineers in those companies will work on giving the government access to it (as Snowden documented), and they too will not see any abuse so they are ok. The government gets that information and does what it wants with it. It might be abusing it right now. (There have been many deportations under Obama, for example, with little uproar; it's possible tech databases helped in those.) The pledge is toothless. To be actually effective, it should have called on people to not work at Google and Facebook.