7 ms·

IBM’s Technology Powered the Holocaust

65 points by tobr 7y ago

swarnie_ 7y ago
Ok you had me up until this part. > It’s not difficult to see the relevance of this episode today. Should Microsoft-owned GitHub provide software to ICE for possible use in the agency’s state-sanctioned persecution of immigrants and asylum seekers? Comparing the mechanised murder of 6 million people to the processing of criminals is a bit of a stretch.
- empath75 7y ago
  Hitler didn’t start off killing 6 million people and by the time he got to that point, it was already too late to do anything about it. The time to put your foot down is well short of that. I don’t know where it is, but I think the stage where you’re kidnapping babies or putting them into cages is a reasonable place to do it.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- anoncake 7y ago
  In both cases the question is if a company should assist in something unethical. The scale is very different but the principle is the same. The question is hypothetical anyway. Markets select for profitability, not ethics.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  They are not criminals. Immigration law has always been a civil matter. For reasons. Enabling evil is a bad thing, whether the evil is to murder N million people or to separate children from their parents. Why is this hard to understand? Technology doesn't care that you have no intention to kill millions of people, or that you do.
- olliej 7y ago
  You realize that the victims of the holocaust were criminals, as defined by German law. At the end of WW2 lgbt people “liberated” from the concentration camps were immediately jailed for being LGBT, using evidence from the gestapo. Aiding Jews, Romani, jehovahs witnesses, lgbt, communists, dissidents, etc also made you a criminal. Also, I’m fairly sure immigration law doesn’t carry the death penalty, yet there are kids dying and being abused in the ICE concentration camps. Here’s a simple counterpoint to ICE: what would the outcry be if Mexico starts imprisoning and separating American overstayers in Mexico? What would happen if Mexico then “lost track of” the children from those families? Would you still be arguing it was not criminal?
  - poiuyt098 7y ago
    The Jews did not willingly pile into the camps. They didn't send their children across dangerous terrain with coyotes and birth-control pills. They didn't have the option to go back at any time they wanted. The grotesque analogies just polarize everyone more.
    - olliej 7y ago
      The detained immigrants didn’t choose to be piled into camps. The hyperbole of all the immigrants arrested dashing through dangerous coyotes is nonsense. Many of the “illegal” immigrants were born in the US. Many don’t speak Spanish. But sure, concentrating them in prisons and separating children from their parents isn’t about punishing them for being Mexican. Don’t come out claiming I’m advancing a polarizing description of what happens with a claim that the victims of a deliberately racist camp system have chosen this.
      - codycraven 7y ago
        I'm sorry, what? Anyone born in the US is a citizen, not an immigrant. Their parents may be citizens or immigrants (legal or otherwise). Section 1 of the 14th amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. If you're saying law enforcement agencies are depriving US citizens of liberty without due process I'm sure every news agency in the country would love to run stories with your evidence.
not_a_cop75 7y ago
Generally the true winners in the war are the ones that supply both sides. Numerous companies did this - some I surmise, with the blessing of the US government!
- not_a_cop75 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...
xwowsersx 7y ago
Wow, what a ludicrous jump at the end there. Whatever complaints you may have about ICE, there is no analogy between the mass extermination of 6M people by the Nazis and what is happening at the border.
- Majromax 7y ago
  > Whatever complaints you may have about ICE, there is no analogy I disagree. The analogy may or may not be very good, but there is an analogy that deserves to be treated on its merits. The Holocaust was evil and horrible, but the lesson we sought to take from it wasn't that it was a singular evil that could never happen again. Instead, it was about the banality of evil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem), that great evils are often the product of thousands of small steps that individually seem innocuous or trivial compared to what came before. One point being made by the article is that providers of technology -- then IBM, but here github and the like -- carry a moral responsibility for the likely uses of that technology. If that point is correct and IBM is stained by its initial provision of card sorting machines to the Reich (well before the regime began mass killings), then Microsoft et al might carry the stain of crimes that haven't happened yet.
  - xwowsersx 7y ago
    I agree with the idea that "great evils are often the product of thousands of small steps that individually seem innocuous or trivial". What I take issue with is these sort of insidious analogies (which, no surprise, tend to be analogies to Hitler or the Holocaust) where none exists except in the most circuitous of ways. Of course we need to be vigilant and, yes, the Holocaust stands out in our collective memory as the best proof of that. However, there is a vast difference between people going to the border of their own volition (put aside the question whether they are doing so under tremendous duress and exigent circumstances) vs the Jews during the Holocaust who could do basically _nothing_ to escape persecution. Immigrants could avoid whatever treatment they are receiving at the border by not going to the border altogether or going by other means. What exactly could the Jews during the Holocaust do? Nothing. None of this is to say there aren't legitimate criticisms related to what's happening at the border. But drawing an analogy, however loose it is, just weakens the argument and serves to seriously understate what happened during the Holocaust.
cafard 7y ago
The favored light rapid-fire cannon of WW II were manufactured to designs by neutrals, Sweden and Switzerland, licensed to manufacturers of both Allied and Axis powers. Did Oerlikon power the Holocaust, the liberation of Europe, the Greater Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, some or none of the above?
- rasz 7y ago
  Did Oerlikon CEO receive Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star? https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=26634 https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=26634
tibbydudeza 7y ago
IBM was the biggest seller of computers to the Apartheid regime in South Africa which helped them to implement the system ... the infamous "dompas" being one of them.
simonblack 7y ago
The Holocaust wasn't IBM's fault. It was the fault of the rubber-stamp ink manufacturers, the fault of the railway wagon manufacturers, the barbed-wire manufacturers, and so on. The title is as misleading as the slogan 'Guns kill People.' In truth, the Nazis did the Holocaust. Whatever those things the Nazis may have used, the makers of those things were irrelevant.

65 points by tobr 7y ago

Ok you had me up until this part. > It’s not difficult to see the relevance of this episode today. Should Microsoft-owned GitHub provide software to ICE for possible use in the agency’s state-sanctioned persecution of immigrants and asylum seekers? Comparing the mechanised murder of 6 million people to the processing of criminals is a bit of a stretch.

empath75 7y ago
Hitler didn’t start off killing 6 million people and by the time he got to that point, it was already too late to do anything about it. The time to put your foot down is well short of that. I don’t know where it is, but I think the stage where you’re kidnapping babies or putting them into cages is a reasonable place to do it.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
anoncake 7y ago
In both cases the question is if a company should assist in something unethical. The scale is very different but the principle is the same. The question is hypothetical anyway. Markets select for profitability, not ethics.
ncmncm 7y ago
They are not criminals. Immigration law has always been a civil matter. For reasons. Enabling evil is a bad thing, whether the evil is to murder N million people or to separate children from their parents. Why is this hard to understand? Technology doesn't care that you have no intention to kill millions of people, or that you do.
olliej 7y ago
You realize that the victims of the holocaust were criminals, as defined by German law. At the end of WW2 lgbt people “liberated” from the concentration camps were immediately jailed for being LGBT, using evidence from the gestapo. Aiding Jews, Romani, jehovahs witnesses, lgbt, communists, dissidents, etc also made you a criminal. Also, I’m fairly sure immigration law doesn’t carry the death penalty, yet there are kids dying and being abused in the ICE concentration camps. Here’s a simple counterpoint to ICE: what would the outcry be if Mexico starts imprisoning and separating American overstayers in Mexico? What would happen if Mexico then “lost track of” the children from those families? Would you still be arguing it was not criminal?
- poiuyt098 7y ago
  The Jews did not willingly pile into the camps. They didn't send their children across dangerous terrain with coyotes and birth-control pills. They didn't have the option to go back at any time they wanted. The grotesque analogies just polarize everyone more.
  - olliej 7y ago
    The detained immigrants didn’t choose to be piled into camps. The hyperbole of all the immigrants arrested dashing through dangerous coyotes is nonsense. Many of the “illegal” immigrants were born in the US. Many don’t speak Spanish. But sure, concentrating them in prisons and separating children from their parents isn’t about punishing them for being Mexican. Don’t come out claiming I’m advancing a polarizing description of what happens with a claim that the victims of a deliberately racist camp system have chosen this.
    - codycraven 7y ago
      I'm sorry, what? Anyone born in the US is a citizen, not an immigrant. Their parents may be citizens or immigrants (legal or otherwise). Section 1 of the 14th amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. If you're saying law enforcement agencies are depriving US citizens of liberty without due process I'm sure every news agency in the country would love to run stories with your evidence.

not_a_cop75 7y ago

Generally the true winners in the war are the ones that supply both sides. Numerous companies did this - some I surmise, with the blessing of the US government!

not_a_cop75 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_...

xwowsersx 7y ago

Wow, what a ludicrous jump at the end there. Whatever complaints you may have about ICE, there is no analogy between the mass extermination of 6M people by the Nazis and what is happening at the border.

Majromax 7y ago
> Whatever complaints you may have about ICE, there is no analogy I disagree. The analogy may or may not be very good, but there is an analogy that deserves to be treated on its merits. The Holocaust was evil and horrible, but the lesson we sought to take from it wasn't that it was a singular evil that could never happen again. Instead, it was about the banality of evil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem), that great evils are often the product of thousands of small steps that individually seem innocuous or trivial compared to what came before. One point being made by the article is that providers of technology -- then IBM, but here github and the like -- carry a moral responsibility for the likely uses of that technology. If that point is correct and IBM is stained by its initial provision of card sorting machines to the Reich (well before the regime began mass killings), then Microsoft et al might carry the stain of crimes that haven't happened yet.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  I agree with the idea that "great evils are often the product of thousands of small steps that individually seem innocuous or trivial". What I take issue with is these sort of insidious analogies (which, no surprise, tend to be analogies to Hitler or the Holocaust) where none exists except in the most circuitous of ways. Of course we need to be vigilant and, yes, the Holocaust stands out in our collective memory as the best proof of that. However, there is a vast difference between people going to the border of their own volition (put aside the question whether they are doing so under tremendous duress and exigent circumstances) vs the Jews during the Holocaust who could do basically _nothing_ to escape persecution. Immigrants could avoid whatever treatment they are receiving at the border by not going to the border altogether or going by other means. What exactly could the Jews during the Holocaust do? Nothing. None of this is to say there aren't legitimate criticisms related to what's happening at the border. But drawing an analogy, however loose it is, just weakens the argument and serves to seriously understate what happened during the Holocaust.

cafard 7y ago

The favored light rapid-fire cannon of WW II were manufactured to designs by neutrals, Sweden and Switzerland, licensed to manufacturers of both Allied and Axis powers. Did Oerlikon power the Holocaust, the liberation of Europe, the Greater Southeast Asia Co-Prosperity sphere, some or none of the above?

rasz 7y ago
Did Oerlikon CEO receive Merit Cross of the German Eagle with Star? https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=26634 https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=26634

tibbydudeza 7y ago

IBM was the biggest seller of computers to the Apartheid regime in South Africa which helped them to implement the system ... the infamous "dompas" being one of them.

simonblack 7y ago

The Holocaust wasn't IBM's fault. It was the fault of the rubber-stamp ink manufacturers, the fault of the railway wagon manufacturers, the barbed-wire manufacturers, and so on. The title is as misleading as the slogan 'Guns kill People.' In truth, the Nazis did the Holocaust. Whatever those things the Nazis may have used, the makers of those things were irrelevant.