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Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims
- juicerp 10y agoWhat a joke. As if Google, FB, and Palatir don't have us all in a NSA or CIA database. I'm sure the government has no data on any of us and all of Eric Schmidt's trips to Obama's white house were just for tea.
- kevinburke 10y ago> As if Google, FB, and Palantir don't have us all in a NSA or CIA database. They don't.
- 1ris 10y agoCambridge Analytica claims to have profiles of 230 million americans. If you substract babies and people over 70 that's about everybody. And Cambridge Analytica is a shack compared to all the others.
- Glyptodon 10y agoIf any of them work for Facebook (et al.) I'm sure it will be quite a laugh.
- eplanit 10y agoSo, http://neveragain.tech/ http://neveragain.tech/ will become a database of tech workers who pledged to never build a database of Muslims.
- wjossey 10y agoIt's a lovely gesture, and an important sign of solidarity; however, it'a merely that, just a gesture. I hope that SV and the tech industry leverages its wealth and technical legal capabilities to fight these sorts of actions in court, unlike their responses to privacy intrusions by the federal government, British intelligence, and other foreign groups.
- kevinburke 10y agoOver 1000 people, some of them very prominent, have pledged to quit their jobs if they are asked to do unethical things. How is that "merely a gesture"?
- jerf 10y agoHave they destroyed any of this data yet? As much fun as it may be to pretend this is a Trump problem, it's a Silicon Valley problem. It's Silicon Valley waking up and realizing that it's all fun and games until someone you don't like gets the data that they have already painstakingly collected, polished, and devoted billions of dollars to processing and extracting features of interest. The existence of people you don't like and the fact that some of them will be someday be in positions of power isn't news, it's a constant fact of life. I find it a bit disgusting that this is what finally crossed the line when the line should have been considered crossed a long time ago, but I'll take what I can. Now, what has anyone done about the excessive collection of data, beyond virtue signaling that they don't like Trump? We don't need virtue signaling. We need actions. One of the signs that action has actually been taken would be that some of these companies are going to make less money. If that doesn't happen, this is hot air, so much "it's OK when we do it, but not those guys over there, no way! Now don't you feel better that we said that? BTW, here's a popup that offers you the choice of either giving us everything you have on your phone or being unable to use cell phones. (It's choice.)"
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- kevinburke 10y ago
- milge 10y agoSadly, there will always be tech workers willing to do this for the right price. As I get older, I'm starting to wonder if not following my "tech morals" would've brought more success.
- olalonde 10y agoI'm playing the devil's advocate here but there are also a lot of tech workers who do not regard building such a database as unethical. A common fallacy on HN is to assume people who hold differing views necessarily do so egoistically, which is sometimes true but not always.
- zodPod 10y agoYeah it's entirely possible that there are a small percentage of tech workers who would fully support this type of move. I too have noticed HN users seem to just assume everyone shares their views.
- tptacek 10y agoI think we generally assume that the people who sign the pledge (and many others) share our views. I don't know how much more we need to litigate than that.
- zigzigzag 10y agoThat's not "HN users", that's a trait that has cropped up repeatedly in 2016: surely that's the lesson of the year, a widespread groupthink that "surely most people are like us and are disgusted by $THING" and then meltdowns when it turns out not to be true. What makes you think it'd be a small percentage? I didn't notice the NSA having trouble attracting very bright staff, apparently it's the opposite: they were able to get their pick of the best despite uncompetitive salaries. And the NSA has spent years taking part in targeted assassination programs of innocent people who weren't in US jurisdiction, had no charges levied against them and never had any sort of trial. They were just drone striked.
- zeroxfe 10y ago
- madiga 10y agoRussia will do it. They did everything else to make Trump happen.
- MrLeap 10y ago`everything else` really? To quote a friend: If Russia brought down this election, it's because it was a house of cards to begin with.
- civilian 10y agoI'm a libertarian, I had no dog in this race, but I LOVE how salty liberals have gotten. Welcome to my last twenty years of frustration with the political process :) https://twitter.com/KyleKulinski/status/808914332625014784 https://twitter.com/KyleKulinski/status/808914332625014784
- nilved 10y agoThis already exists. Nice PR, though.
- zdean 10y agoDo we not have enough databases built already with enough data points to effect this?
- h4nkoslo 10y agoYou don't even need a "database", the naming patterns are very distinctive.
- 1ris 10y agoIt's a ridiculous and naive view of the world. Of course it already exists. For example on facebook. For example in the mosques. Everybody was warned, everybody could have seen this coming. But most people didn't give a fuck. Welcome is post privacy. I didn't need have to be that way. We can still turn this into post-post-privacy. But only if we face what we have already done.
- r3bl 10y agoWell, to be honest, the title is highly misleading. Sure, they pledged to refuse to participate in the creation of such database, but that's just one of the things stated in the full pledge. I would emphasize more on the following parts of the pledge: * to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data. * to implement security and privacy best practices, in particular, for end-to-end encryption to be the default wherever possible. * If we cannot stop these practices, we will exercise our rights and responsibilities to speak out publicly and engage in responsible whistleblowing without endangering users.
- drakonandor 10y ago> * to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data. We already have this, as the foreigners Trump is referring to have to get US Travel Visas. Obviously we know their country of origin. Anyone paying attention at all knows Trump's current plan is keeping a close eye on all visitors and immigrants (allowed in) from countries with large anti-western terrorism contributions - which happens to of course coincide with some Islamic-majority countries. The whole article and 'pledge' is anti-Trump fluff.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- esrauch 10y agoThat's his current plan, but some of his previous positions were a bit more draconian / extreme. I think the pledge implies level of drawing a clear line in the sand before it it ever comes to it.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tn13 10y agoIt is one thing to say that publicly but real test with be when NSA will come with all their weapons. May be NSA can say give me all your data and we will do something like s/mohammad/target/g. The bigotry and utter disrespect for the privacy and freedom of own citizens is the larger problem that is not just Tech industry's issue here.
- marchenko 10y agoThis database essentially already exists as part of Facebook and another companies producing social graph data, and in the nodes and interstices of networked communications.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 10y agoThe authors of the pledge understand that, which is why it's written the way it is.
- return0 10y agoHaven't they already been doing it for > decade? Oh they just want to shield from competition. nice one
- atom-morgan 10y agoTech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims yet people willingly add their names to a public Github repo as a LGBTQIA or POC in tech.
- fixermark 10y agoSure, but there's a world of difference between volunteering your name to a public statement (knowing that it's public) and having your data harvested without your consent for purposes actively opposed to your own.
- nightski 10y agoWhat makes it "your" data? Because it contains information about you? If I observe something about you, do you own that observation?
- golergka 10y agoIf you observe something about me, then I made a decision to trust this information to you. I may or may not have been acting under assumption that this information will stay between us. If you observed me doing something in public, then I volunteered this information to be public (BTW, that's why I'm all for public surveillance and CCTV). If I told you something in private and asked to keep it private then you obviously broke my trust.
- exolymph 10y agoDo you not see how these two things are different?
- lhnz 10y agoI think you can be reasonably certain that they are able to see the difference in intention. However, can such a database be misused? Yes. And, that's probably their point. (I agree that it's an edge-lordy comment that seems like it's intended to annoy. But the reason it can annoy people is that there is an element of truth to it.)
- ris 10y agoIt might be more fun (and possibly more effective) to just build a highly dysfunctional one. (I inevitably invite anyone with a beef against certain database technologies to suggest some possibilities)
- sharkweek 10y agoWe could collectively all change our religion on FB to Muslim
- whatshisface 10y agoThen you'd have a registry of Muslims (religion set before event) and dissenters.
- fixermark 10y agoGiven that these databases already exist, that would be the practical solution. It's not enough to just vow not to build them; the databases that exist would need to be data-jammed. If everyone is Muslim, then no-one is.
- golergka 10y agoIt's going to a government contract, so you can count on it already.
- plussed_reader 10y agoTrump workers snigger at the sentiment.
- jsf666 10y agoCan someone explain to me why a religion made by a pedophile-barbarian is somehow tolerated and even defended against "islamophobia" (is e.g. a gay guy phobic for being scared of muslims that given power would throw him from a building or persecute him in some other way at least)? Their whole ideology (as it basically governs every aspect of life) is crude, vile, barbaric and dangerous. The animosity towards them is well grounded, anyone saying otherwise should read their "holy" scriptures and just analyze how they behave when having majority (muslim countries)
- exolymph 10y agoHave you read the Old Testament? Christianity has plenty of barbarism in it.
- kukx 10y agoIt's called Old because there's a New Testament, which overrides the Old where applicable. And Jesus was a peace-loving man.
- joosters 10y agoSo the New Testament is like Bible version 2.0 then? Did they publish an errata to help us work around bugs in v1.0 ?
- woofyman 10y agoPlease tell that to the homophobic Christians who selectively quote Leviticus.
- vixen99 10y agoWhy do you say selectively? Presumably you don't mean that homosexuality is quietly applauded in some sections they prefer not to quote. It isn't. (But so what!)
- cookiecaper 10y ago
- exabrial 10y agoUnfortunately, with firearms registration and no-fly lists, Muslim registries are part of the slope we've set precedent for. A citizen should _never_ have to register with the government to exercise a freedom explicitly granted in the constitution.
- this-dang-guy 10y agoI'd argue "A citizen should _never_ have to register with the government" should really be the entire statement. Things like aid and whatnot should really be isolated and broken off to prevent mass collection dbs.
- xupybd 10y agoDoesn't every birth have to be registered with the government?
- this-dang-guy 10y agoFor "social security" benefits. Yes. And look how that's turned out. It's deemed proof of citizenship (and a vital document) despite being just a poor quality piece of paper. The data is misused in just about every way. From colleges using it as a student id number to people committing crimes with it.
- jdmichal 10y agoIf someone is using a SSN as proof of citizenship, they are blatantly wrong. SSNs can and are issued to aliens. https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10096.pdf https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10096.pdf USCIS lists as common proofs of citizenship: US birth certificate, US passport, certificate of citizenship, or naturalization certificate. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/A4en.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/A4...
- maxerickson 10y ago
- probably_wrong 10y agoOf course they won't. Any tech worker worth hiring would write a general people database, and define 'muslim' as a query parameter. (With apologies to Nathaniel Borenstein. Also, it's true)
- kevinburke 10y agoAre you arguing the 1000 people who've signed the petition are not worth hiring?
- dimino 10y agoNo he's making a tongue-in-cheek comment about implementation and how one might sign this and also functionally implement it, because it's a little vague.
- bwreilly 10y agoFor everyone dismissing this as "too late" and "this data already exists" should consider that this appears to be addressed in the pledge. > to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data. > Responsibly destroy high-risk data sets and backups
- protomyth 10y agoGood luck getting Facebook or the US Census to do that. This is a useless gesture that means very little. I guess some people get to feel better about themselves. The first step would be some reforms in consumer protection laws dealing with privacy and information sharing. Just watch how much certain SV firms spend to opposed those changes.
- drakonandor 10y agoand, you know, the US Tourist / Student / Work Visa system..
- tptacek 10y agoWeak argument. Do better. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189009
- protomyth 10y agoOk, so they quit. What does that do to Facebook or the US government? Not much. If they really want to change things, then you have to enter politics as a group. Ask a Union where it gets its power. This pledge is not a factor in US politics. There is a reason that the US has to have laws to prevent union busting and those specific circumstances are the same for these type of pledges. The difference is the people pledging have no such protection. I can point to a long history of groups entering politics affecting change, can you do the same with a pledge to quit?
- tptacek 10y ago
- up_so_floating 10y agoLike the archival of climate data, the gesture changes nothing and the coverage sensationalist. I archived Holocaust evidence, the Doctor Seuss anthology, and my grandmother's spaghetti recipe. And I pledge to never assassinate kittens or puppies. Why? Because Trump...
- Raed667 10y agoI just went on Facebook and created an Ad [0] that targets only people "interested in Islam" and living the US, it took 30 seconds. [0] http://i.imgur.com/NOrGA2N.png http://i.imgur.com/NOrGA2N.png --- Edit: Direct link
- MaxfordAndSons 10y agoInterest in Islam ≠ being a Muslim. I'm interested in Islam and not a Muslim. In fact I'd say most Trump supporters, hell most Americans of any political/religious persuasion even, have some amount of interest in Islam. I'm being somewhat facetious, but also not entirely - the point being that I don't think these consumer profiles could easily be converted into Muslim registries. But it's also all pretty moot - if Trump's anti-muslim policies are implemented, I highly doubt the CBP et al will need resources beyond what the US intelligence community already possesses.
- Raed667 10y agoI understand your point. This was just a quick example to show that the data is there. I'm not saying that the FBI is going to start a campaign of Facebook ads. Facebook data is there, and it could be mined in more advanced ways to extract a database of its Muslim users. This data can extend beyond the "religion" entry in a profile, to analyze posts on religious holidays, vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, images shared, etc..
- MaxfordAndSons 10y agoFair points. I still find it hard to imagine they would use fuzzy profiling from social media though - if they want to cast a wide net like that, they could just use country of origin - which is (one of) Trump's stated position(s), to shut down/more heavily regulate immigration from particular countries, rather than trying to go on a case by case basis. And they would avoid the bad PR that would come out of people getting to act on this pledge and other things like it.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
- marchenko 10y agoThe book IBM and the Holocaust[0] gives an interesting historical perspective on the misuse of databases and database technology. One fascinating point with modern echoes is how often sensitive information (such as having Jewish ancestry) was simply volunteered to officials such as census-takers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
- homero 10y agoLike they can't pay off a script kiddy to do it
- edblarney 10y agoWhat about a database of people from countries with high propensity for radicalization, for example Tunisia, or Somalia? Paradox: Tunisia is perhaps the most progressive of all the M/E Muslim countries, and yet they are the #1 M/E country in terms of Jihadis. They are overwhelmingly the greatest per/capita Jihadi producers in the world. By far. Tunisia is very small. Networks are very small. 95% chance that a young male Tunisian knows someone off to fight Jihad. This is very significant. Somalia - is a stateless war-zone, people coming from their are massively over-represented in other kinds of crimes. Wherever there is a 'new' Somalian community, the crime (drugs and related) offenses are off the charts with over-representation. In Toronto - a big slice of the 'violent murder' pie is committed by Somalis - and they are near 0% of the actual population. Some social workers have observed that they simply have absolutely no respect for authority - it's meaningless to many of them. There is an overrepresentation among Somalis in terms of 'domestic' (i.e. host nation) violence, that's possibly 'terror' related. Those are both good examples because it shows you how young men from completely different places, are radicalized for completely different reasons, and are associated with completely different kinds of violent people - and their nationality (read: culture) is definitely a correlating (or even predictive factor). It's a moot point anyhow. The FBI has a database. You're probably in it. There's a tag on your file that might indicate the likelihood you'll be radicalized. We have to be really quite careful of this kind of stuff, frankly, I'm more concerned about the 'populist anti-muslim sentiment' that might arise, as opposed to any kind of actual 'database' of muslims. Anyhow - it's all moot. There will be no DB of Muslims.
- avtar 10y agoCould you please provide links to official Toronto murder statistics that back up your claim?
- nickff 10y agoProbably not the previous poster's source, but seemingly reliable articles agree: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-so-many-somali-canadians-who-go-west-end-up-dead/article4365992/?page=all http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-so-many-som... http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/somali-canadian-s-death-sparks-call-to-end-gun-violence-solve-cases-1.3511708 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/somali-canadian-s-dea...
- _Codemonkeyism 10y agoDoctors adhere to the Hippocratic Oath. Nevertheless doctors worked in concentration camps, were experimenting on humans, work as executioners currently in the US, work and worked in torture chambers, sell their patients to big pharma for Rolex watches and on and on and on. This pledge may be a statement but is practically worth nothing.
- kevinburke 10y agoPeople take cues and behave based on the norms and behavior of those around them. If I know and like person X, and they exhibit unethical behavior Y, I may conclude that Y can't be that bad because I know X and they are not bad. On the flip side if leaders in my industry or community are declaring "it's unacceptable to participate in this behavior and I will resign rather than be complicit in it" it's more likely that I'll take an ethical stance. Here are 1000+ people taking a public pledge to quit their jobs if they're asked to do unethical things. That might inspire others who are waffling, or faced with an unethical decision, to find a similar backbone.
- _Codemonkeyism 10y agoThe problem is that you only need say 10 people or less out of one million to make it happen. I respect people giving that pledge, would give it myself, but the practical impact is 0. Each day I walk by a large Bayer building who bought Monsanto who do ethical questionable things. Still each day hundreds of people enter that building. There is never a shortage of people who will do whatever they are questioned to do if only they can feed their family. There will always be someone who builds that Muslim database. There is always someone who can rationalize their doings.
- kevinburke 10y agoI think you are underestimating the number of people who need to comply to enable human rights abuses on a large scale.
- cmondude 10y ago
- Animats 10y agoThere's definitely going to be a database of visa overstayers. The plan to match entries and exits from the US is coming back. It's not like that should be hard.
- btbuilder 10y agoThere has been a database of visa overstayers for a very long time. Today it is based on flight records, it used to be done via paper forms (I-94(W)) [1] What is being talked about (and has been for years) is biometric identity confirmation of the visitor leaving the country. I remember seeing the kiosks at the airport at one point years ago. [1] https://www.cbp.gov/travel/international-visitors/i-94-instructions/i94-rollout https://www.cbp.gov/travel/international-visitors/i-94-instr...
- vegabook 10y agoCan we build a database of the programmers idiotic enough to believe such a pledge will actually make an iota of difference? A thicko / navel-gazingly hubristic persons database. Gees laudable goal but even contemplating that such a goal might be attainable, is a total eye-roller.
- civilian 10y agoHopelessIdealistsDB :3 I almost joined a startup with four hopeless idealists. And then I realized that they weren't really interested in making money (so that we can all retire early and send our kids to nice schools), they were chasing a windmill. It would've been great for all us to not waste our time interviewing & vetting each other.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoIt doesn't matter how many companies say "no" because Palantir will be right there in Palo Alto saying "yes".
- rayiner 10y agoThey already have. It's called Google.
- tptacek 10y agoRayiner, do you think the people who wrote this aren't aware of that?
- cookiecaper 10y agoPost flagged as fake news. The only people talking about a database of Muslims are the ones trying to be outraged over something they fabricated out of whole cloth.
- interstitial 10y agoIndeed, self-righteousness ruins everything. Nothing short-circuits critical thinking like a religion.
- eropple 10y agoThis is incorrect. And given your history, you know better. Quoth: > "But that's something your White House would like to implement?" the reporter presses. > "Oh I would certainly implement that. Absolutely." Trump answers. > But Trump continues to talk about the logistics of implementing such a database at length. > "But for Muslims specifically, how do you actually get them registered in a database?" the reporter asks. Trump responds: "It would be just good management. What you have to do is good management procedures and we can do that." > He also responds to a question about going to mosques to "sign these people up." "Different places, you sign them up at different, but it’s all about management, our country has no management," Trump says. I feel that we have made a misstep by giving you and your fellow ideological adherents the bat of "fake news" to wield against us in turn, because you are very loud and can use it to continue creating doubt about the real world, but, unfortunately, that was not up to me. But primary sources are easy: I listen to what the guy says, and I react accordingly. And I will neither work on such a project nor work for any client who does. You don't have to act similarly, but you do have to not lie about it. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-muslim-registry/story?id=43639946 http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-muslim-registry/story?i...
- cookiecaper 10y agoYou're quoting the dialogue without the preceding context. ABC News openly admits that Trump misunderstood their question, which was yelled to him as he was departing a loud rally. They quote the explanation offered by the Trump campaign spokesman that clarifies the matter: >"The national registry of foreign visitors from countries with high terrorism activity that was in place during the Bush and Obama Administrations gave intelligence and law enforcement communities additional tools to keep our country safe the President-elect will release his own vetting policies after he is sworn in." (This is all from the source you linked.) Trump assumed this was the subject of the discussion, since, as ABC News itself notes, he was unable to hear the reporter's full question. It's a program that existed under Bush and Obama until 2011, when Obama presumably terminated it so he could use it as a talking point in the re-election campaign (setting up another "Republicans are racist [because they want to be careful before admitting people from countries that are terrorism hotspots]" dig). Trump's advisors feel the security benefits of this program, which has nothing to do with religion, justify its reinstatement. There is no constitutional issue presented by cataloging aliens that are present in the country by their country of origin; in fact, it's a necessary thing to enforce any immigration policy at all. Trump said nothing about going to mosques to sign people up. When the reporter suggested this, Trump said "you sign them up at different [places]"; one who wanted to give Trump the benefit of the doubt could even interpret this comment as explicitly disavowing the concept that mosques should be canvassed (as in "Should we go to mosques to make sure the Muslims [who should be signed up but aren't, not because they're Muslim, but because they're aliens from a high terror risk country] get signed up?" / "No, different places."). Trump is certainly a master at the authentic-sounding subtly ambiguous statement. I'm sure that skill is very useful in both sales and politics. Finally, I would suggest that you refrain from spuriously accusing others of lying, thereby generating unnecessary hostility.
- alva 10y agoFacebook are happy to provide a database of black people [0] to advertisers. People don't choose their race, but they can choose their religion. Arguably, allowing one over the other is supremely unfair. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/22/facebooks-ethnic-affinity-advertising-concerns-racial-profiling https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/mar/22/facebooks...
- kevinburke 10y agoThat may be distasteful but there is a wide, wide gap between letting advertisers target ads to groups based on ethnicity, and sending datasets of people with a certain ethnicity/religion to advertisers or to the government. The pledge is mostly focused on the latter.
- 1ris 10y agoAs if governments would take no as a answer. If the data is there it's accessible.
- kevinburke 10y agoIn fact, they do. The USG was unsuccessful in compelling Apple to provide a "golden key" to decrypt the San Bernardino iPhone, and the USG went along with that. People can refuse and the government can choose to try to send executives to jail, or issue fines, but that comes with bad PR and companies can and do fight those as well.
- unabridged 10y agoToo late. There are only 7 billion people. If you don't think every major intelligence service (and a few large companies) has built a database of every person's vital statistics you are naive. If I was the US government I would be in the process of building a full world family tree using DNA collected from battlefields and attacks. I would want to know when an attacker's cousin is entering a certain country.
- caseysoftware 10y agoThe ignorance here is stunning. Every background check system is a database. If it includes religion, it's a query without being a "database of Muslims." It works much the same (not as accurate) if you have country of origin instead.
- sheraz 10y agoThis initiative is cynical and gross. Here's why I would say that: Originally posted in a thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13169587 Do you really need to have sent a pull request to remind you to not do things that make you feel morally bankrupt? That you signed it leads me to conclude that you have actually bought into the "Trump is a Nazi" rhetoric. I'll explain: 1. Neveragain.tech - the name itself is a well known reference among Jews, "Never Again", in reference to the Holocaust [1]. The creators do this in a cheap effort to position themselves as/with the aggrieved in a "new Holocaust" narrative. 2. Furthering on this thinly-veiled narrative of "new Holocaust" they make more references to past mass deportations and genocides -- grouping them as if they are similar items in a basket. They are not. They are unique events in history, each with their own unique political, social, and other dynamics. Yet more intellectual dishonesty. 3. The document is written as if there is something new in the coming administration versus the previous ones. You want to stop collecting information on race? Then end the census. Abolish the IRS. End the FBI national crime database. You see, this is not a pledge against anything new. It applies as much to Obama, Bush, or any administration going back in time. Last point -- my point of view is neither cynical or gross. This pledge is cynical and gross. It is cynical and gross to use genocide and the memory of the Holocaust to build a narrative of doom and gloom around the incoming administration. It is cynical and gross to paint only negative outcomes as a result of stepped up enforcement of immigration and counter-terrorism law. As always, the answers are somewhere in the middle. [1] - http://english.stackexchange.com/a/39173 http://english.stackexchange.com/a/39173
- darawk 10y agoA database of Muslims is not a special kind of database...You can use any old off the shelf DB software for this. I'm not sure what the point of this pledge is.
- JustSomeNobody 10y agoCan we pledge never to allow backdoor access for the NSA, et al?
- ChuckMcM 10y agoThat is an interesting headline, when I read it I immediately thought the coda would be, "... but advertising networks offer to share theirs." There is absolutely technology already out there that, without your voluntary participation, puts you into arbitrarily precise boxes. One need only look at the targeting options on a Facebook ad to realize just how deep that data goes. Adtech companies have invested billions in ways, legal, sketchy, and sometimes downright illegal to put together databases on everyone who ever connects with the Internet in any way on any platform. They do that because being able to target ads accurately makes them more money.
- idlewords 10y agoThat's not really true. Look at the ads that are targeted at you, and you'll see that adtech data is really quite inaccurate. Ad companies collect the data so they can make impressive promises to investors and clients, or just tick a box in a spreadsheet somewhere. Anyone in the industry will tell you that they are bad at using it, and bad at vetting it. Ad company data is nothing like what you could get from Google or Facebook.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoOk. Try this experiment at home. Create a fictitious business and sign up for a Facebook advertising account. Now call your assigned sales rep and say "Hi, our business sells Halal meats for the Muslim community, what parameters should I be using to target my ads to people who would be looking for that?"
- soufron 10y agoWell you don't need that many of them to do it.
- soufron 10y agoThat's exactly the reason why databases of people including their religious opinions are forbidden under EU Law. And it has been that way in France and in Germany since 1978.
- gdelfino01 10y agoI lived in Germany. They asked my religion and made me pay religion tax (Kirchensteuer). So they already have such a database.
- germanier 10y agoThey don't ask for your religion. They ask if you are member in one of a few religious communities. You may say that this is nitpicking but it's really not. They don't care about beliefs but just perform a service for those communities that asked them to do it. That tax is best to be thought of a membership fee that happens to be collected by the state. If a religious community does not want to participate in that scheme they can. Plenty don't use that service.
- louprado 10y agoAll it takes is one developer to dissent and to crowd source the entire data collection effort. The contributors get a promise that they will be compensated at a future date when the government agrees to buy the database. This would be an easy App to write and with good ML you can scrub out bad data and identify malicious contributors. It took me 30 seconds to come up with that idea and until this very moment, I always thought of crowd-sourcing as a beautiful part of modern society. By mid-2017 I'll likely be a full-blown nihilist. edit: ++sadness
- jugbee 10y agoGuys, i know article is about not building a muslim database and all, but what about the outlook chats bypassed by nsa?
- kevinburke 10y agoI'm distressed at the amount of fatalism and hopelessness in this thread. Every professional has agency and the ability to act ethically. They can choose to stand up for people's rights or not; the best guess is that these ethics will be tested by the next administration. Large scale human rights violations require the complicity of a lot of people who may be uncertain about how to act in the face of moral ambiguity, and a public pledge to not be complicit can help a lot. People are making a public pledge. Other people who haven't signed the pledge might read it and get encouraged by it, or see a name on there of someone they look up to, and decide that everything isn't hopeless, or decide to act ethically in the face of questionable decisions.
- entee 10y agoI signed, I'm a fan. If in spite of all this, it or something like it does get created, I think a complimentary strategy would be to overwhelm the database and make it useless. For example, if there was a public registry, everyone should register, making swamping the intended signal with noise. Make it impossible to use the thing. I hope we never get to that stage.
- ori_b 10y agoHow many are willing to get arrested over this? How many CEOs are willing to get their company shut down over this? I suspect that this is largely posturing, and when push comes to shove people will comply.
- idlewords 10y ago1200 people are willing to quit over this. Let's start there.
- zigzigzag 10y agoNo. 1200 people said they might (it isn't binding) but only if the conditions of the pledge are violated. The pledge is written in such a way that almost anything could be deemed as not violating it, if the signer wanted that. This is the direct equivalent of "I'll move to Canada if Foo gets elected". Move-to-Canada declarations are actually much tighter than this pledge as they tend to be triggered by simple, undeniable conditions. But how many people who publicly proclaimed they'd do it actually do? The solution to "the administration wants to build a database of Muslims" is not to sign worthless pledges. It's to enter politics and put the argument to conservative voters that they're wrong and should change their mind.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- siegecraft 10y agoOh, now suddenly they have a conscience? Where was this when they were building the machines of surveillance capital?
- 45hher6h 10y agoSee "religion": https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/user/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/use...
- 45hher6h 10y agoSee "religion": https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/user/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/use...
- tptacek 10y agoI'm glad this is getting attention, but I urgently need to correct their headline. What tech workers pledged to do: 1. Not to participate in the creation of these kinds of databases. 2. To use every lawful method available to them to stop the misuse of these databases where they exist. 3. To sever their connections with their employers if efforts to prevent misuse at those employers fails. Lots of people are reacting to this by saying "the databases already exist". The people who wrote this pledge are aware of that. This is not a "petition" to convince Google and Facebook to stop building databases. It's not a petition at all. It doesn't demand that companies do anything. It's not up to the companies; it's up to the employees who sign. That's the point of a pledge.
- awqrre 10y agoHundreds of tech worker said they would not do it, but I'm sure that they could find just as many that would do it. A database is pretty simple to build anyways...
- tptacek 10y agoIt's over 1200 now. But could you find 1200 tech workers to take the other side? Yes, I think you could. 1200 is a tiny number relative to the number of engineers who agree with the pledge, and just haven't seen it yet. I think you're crazy if you think the profession as a whole is anything close to 50/50 on these issues. The American people aren't close to 50/50 on them: they oppose both mass deportation and Muslim registries by wide margins. The numbers get even starker when you restrict them to people with the educational backgrounds of Silicon Valley engineers.
- lizthedeveloper 10y agoThe comments on this thread make me super sad
- wdr1 10y agoGiven FISA Courts & NSA wiretapping, I'm not sure the government would necessarily need their cooperation.