9 ms·

EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid

108 points by wickedshimmy 12y ago

jessaustin 12y ago
There might be some network equipment vendors nervously observing this case. They probably haven't done anything as awful as building a bespoke apparatus of apartheid, and arguably they've done nothing technically different than Room 641A. However, there are probably some dissidents who would make convincing plaintiff's witnesses, were they ever to get out of the dungeons and into an American courtroom.
- higherpurpose 12y ago
  Cisco is probably feeling pretty nervous about this. Some may say "but why does this matter now? It's all in the past." The problem is I think we're going to see many more such cases in the next couple of decades (at least). There are already companies that knowingly help governments spy on their citizens and help them catch dissidents or even kill journalists (think the self-driving cars of the future or cars that have remote controls). History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. It's important to punish the people responsible in helping totalitarian leaders (even within "democratic" countries). Maybe such a case will prevent say Intel from installing a backdoor in their chips in the future, or giving certain governments their future SGX keys to secure applications. Also, IBM already got off with helping the Nazis. If they would've been punished for helping the Nazi, maybe they would've thought twice about helping with the Apartheid. EDIT: Apparently punishing companies that helped in the Holocaust and the Apartheid isn't popular on HN.
  - sroerick 12y ago
    I am really not sure why you are being downvoted. You expressed your opinion eloquently, and well within the rules of good discourse. Downvoters, you should reply to this post explaining what you find wrong with it, rather than simply downvoting in silence.
  - rfrank 12y ago
    > Cisco is probably feeling pretty nervous about this. Or the folks at Palantir and comparable companies that help enable mass surveillance of populations.
  - yellowapple 12y ago
    For what it's worth, I upvoted despite my disagreement about IBM being supposedly complicit in South African institutionalized racism (I don't think the EFF's case here is particularly convincing as presented in the article, though the case regarding Nazi collaboration might be different), since I think your comment does in fact contribute positively to the discussion and doesn't deserve to be downvoted at all, let alone as heavily as it seems to be.
  - gnoway 12y ago
    The only thing wrong with this comment (IMO) is the assertion that companies help governments kill journalists. I'm not asserting they don't, but I don't consider it common knowledge that they do, i.e. please provide a source. I upvoted.
    - yellowapple 12y ago
      I think that commenter is referring to military drones (and the manufacturers thereof), though I'm not sure about the journalists being killed.
  - hindsightbias 12y ago
    > spy on their citizens Mass surveillance has only become possible via scale-out solutions. The NSA isn't running HP-UX, Solaris, AIX or Windows to track your metadata - they're running Linux. What responsibilities do distro of scale-out solution contributors hold? Are they immune while scale-up platform execs and developers should be swinging in the Hague? What happens when Google maps are used in a war zone by ISIL? Or twitter search engines are used to target protestors? We're dropping bombs today on people via targeting from the their android phones.
- zingar 12y ago
  I'm not saying you intended this, but to be clear to anyone else: there are no apartheid "dungeons" remaining, the system was dismantled 20 years ago. The obstacle to victims making their way to the US is the innocuous but still effective lack of funds to do so (now we can ask ourselves whether voices silenced by poverty are less deserving of justice than voices silenced by violence).
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Yeah I don't blame any network equipment for apartheid. Rather, I'm thinking of MITM equipment like Iran used to leverage their DigiNotar attack. I'm not aware of particular people that were taken into custody as a result, but it seems likely that those people exist.
bhouston 12y ago
This is pretty sweet. Given that corporations are people these days, I guess they can be charged with knowingly facilitating war crimes?
- stonogo 12y ago
  Which war?
  - tilt_error 12y ago
    Good question! Without the Hollerith card machines, Hollocaust would have been impossible to perform at that massive scale that eventually became evident. Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR) that sold the equipment to Germany at the time, later changed name to International Business Machines. Apartheid was awful too.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  One does not even need jurisdiction in order to try someone for war crimes. The Kuala Lampur War Crimes Commission tried and convicted George W. Bush and Tony Blair for "crimes against peace" in 2011 under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Their sentence was to be entered into a register of war criminals to be published worldwide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala_Lumpur_War_Crimes_Commission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala_Lumpur_War_Crimes_Commiss...
  - GauntletWizard 12y ago
    I hereby accuse Hackernews user vinceguidry of war crimes for the publishing of propaganda. His trial will be held in one paragraphs time. In light over overwhelming evidence that vinceguidry has published news that is fallacious and quite frankly silly (The idea that GWB and Tony Blair are being held accountable for War Crimes because some self-appointed group of people in some backwards state can hold a war crimes tribunal and publish a document), I find him guilty. His sentence is execution, disembowelment, being kicked off the internet, and being tickled with many soft feathers. News of his sentence will be published to a registry of war criminals located here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9029804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9029804
taltman1 12y ago
For those who might want a fuller description of IBM's active facilitation of these kinds of crimes, you should read Edwin Black's book, "IBM and the Holocaust". Those tattoo's on Holocaust victim's arms? They were serial numbers directly tied to IBM punchcards designed by IBM for the Third Reich. It gives context to former NSA chief Michael Hayden's comment, "We kill people with metadata".
- ddod 12y ago
  To clarify, the scenario isn't that the Nazis just picked up existing technology-- They had to have direct dealings with IBM for the scope and implementation of the process, which was largely involved with sorting census data to figure out who the Jews and other targeted ethnicities were, shipping them to various concentration camps, and determining where and how to "exhaust" these resources. Just imagine being one of the programmers tasked with that. The book details how Thomas Watson was directly involved in all this, and when the US made Nazi dealings illegal, he handed over direct control of his Nazi business to local branches instead of halting the relationship. After the war, those local branches all rejoined greater IBM. It's kind of crazy to see how IBM has avoided scrutiny and continues to celebrate Watson through their naming conventions.
- Zaheer 12y ago
  Quite ironic that now IBM has a role in the occupation of Palestine [1]. IBM is sometimes mentioned in the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). http://www.cjpmo.org/DisplayDocument.aspx?DocumentID=1081 http://www.cjpmo.org/DisplayDocument.aspx?DocumentID=1081
  - yellowapple 12y ago
    I don't think it's ironic at all, at least when looking at the bigger picture. The trend in IBM's dealings is not a propensity to go after customers with poor human rights track records, but to go after customers that will make them a lot of money. Governments - like those of Germany and South Africa - are a big target of IBM's sales, whether they're literally genocidal maniacs or poster-children of world peace.
- 12y ago
pmalynin 12y ago
Okay, while we're at it let's sue Intel for providing a platform to enable digital crimes, CERN for developing a copyright circumvention mechanism, oh and how about we sue Maybach for proving engines for the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf.E and therefore enabling Hitler to start a World War. This is just ridiculous, nobody holds the developers of Little Boy responsible, instead we should hold the people and governments who exploited the inventions. Note, I'm not rationalizing or supporting any of the negative effects of such activities, merely trying to look at this issue through a different perspective.
- betenoire 12y ago
  If you build a tool _for explicit illegal purposes_, ... well that's not really the same as building tools that can be used for illegal purposes, is it?
  - pmalynin 12y ago
    What's legal today might be illegal tomorrow. And even the question of legality is hugely dependent on location.
    - Karunamon 12y ago
      Apartheid has been illegal the whole time.
      - sroerick 12y ago
        Well, not in South Africa.
      - pmalynin 12y ago
        Once again, depends on who you ask. By international laws (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) it has been illegal starting 19481[1]. USA, however, still struggled with racial segregation until the 1960s and until then wasn't really illegal in the States. In South Africa, it probably wasn't illegal either as the government made the law themselves. [1]Or 1976
greyfox 12y ago
They ought to hold IBM responsible for Facilitating the Holocaust as well... http://fluff.info/blog/ibm/ibm10000.jpg http://fluff.info/blog/ibm/ibm10000.jpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMgZ6515_EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMgZ6515_EQ
fiatmoney 12y ago
Be careful; "facilitating a human rights violation" is very, very close to the rationale that France et al use to penalize entities like Twitter for "facilitating hate speech". The UN in particular is an incredibly illiberal organization, and their definition of a "human rights violation" encompasses a hell of a lot.
foxhill 12y ago
i'm sorry but this is utterly ridiculous. IBM is a company, an entity. it is made of people, but it is not a person (although americans might try to disagree..). it is a paper-clip maximiser, only instead of paperclips, it's cash. it does not have morals, it does not have a conscience, irrelevant of the fact that the people that make it up do. to blame a company for doing exactly what it was made to do is madness. if IBM didn't do it, another company would have done it. IBM could have failed, in fact, as a result. or at least, they might not be in the position they are now. you may be tempted to argue that, morally, IBM should have not agreed to take part, regardless of the effect on the company. you wouldn't be entirely wrong. but a company does not have morals. not having morals is what allows them to make such vast amounts of profits. when health insurance companies fight to the death (sometimes literally) to avoid paying out claims, where is this moral outrage? or when BP do literally whatever they want to environment, where does the outrage dissipate to after the media gets bored of talking about it? we can not expect companies to be moral agents. we can not expect them to value human life over cash. to punish an entity with no conscience makes no sense. it would be akin to shouting at the wind for blowing, or kicking a hatstand for falling over. the best we can hope to do is stop companies from engaging in "immoral" behaviour (whatever that means - they change over time) whilst they are committing it. otherwise, lets start legal action with hugo boss for constructing nazi uniforms. or VW (literally, the "peoples car") for working with nazi germany.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  While I'm not sure I agree with your overall thesis (a company is made up of people at the end of the day), I do feel there is a point to be made here: Is the IBM of today the IBM of 20-40 years ago? A person is not controlled by different beings at different times of their life, a corporation is. The legal brief, from a quick skim, appear to reference actions taken in the 70's and 80's. Is the IBM of today the same one that existed in the 70's? The same people running it and making the same decisions? If the answer is no, I'm not sure what significance this lawsuit holds, other than a symbolic "sticking it to the corporations" one. The only people being punished in such a case are those that had nothing to do with the original wrongdoing.
  - 12y ago
fit2rule 12y ago
I think the writing on the wall is this: we're all in some database, somewhere, which can be used to exterminate us from the face of the planet. Someone gets into power, they don't like those 'upstart hackers' .. well then, HN seems like a pretty good resource for who goes up against the wall, then ..
- sroerick 12y ago
  I wrote an outline for a short story that begins with the drone extermination of all dissident hackers.
  - fit2rule 12y ago
    Sounds interesting and to be frank .. not at all far-fetched.
vince_refiti 12y ago
TIL, "In fact, the famous five and six-digit number tattooed on the arms of Auschwitz inmates began as a punch card system identification number."
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Yup. I learned this today too. And I'm Polish, which has the benefit of being taught a lot about Nazi concentration camps (especially Auschwitz) in school. Somehow I never heard of IBM's involvement before.
lthornberry 12y ago
For anyone interested in this story, or in the politics of biometric identification more broadly, you should get your hands on a copy of Keith Breckenridge's new book, The Biometric State, which is a history of the South African government's efforts to create a biometric identification system to help enforce racial legislation. Breckenridge argues that these efforts mostly failed, but set the stage for the post-apartheid use of biometrics to facilitate South Africa's social grant payments system (many, many poor South Africans live on government cash payments, mostly old age pensions or child grants). He further argues that the technology developed in South Africa is now being exported elsewhere in the developing world, where similar grant systems are used to justify increasingly intensive population registration and surveillance programs.
yellowapple 12y ago
I'm sorry, but I'm failing to see how IBM actively facilitated anything other than being able to more effectively process information on citizens - something that most modern countries either already have or very strongly desire. the national identification system was highly customized, requiring close collaboration with the South African government; So are most IBM products on a large scale. This is no different from how IBM typically treats all of its high-paying customers, including large-scale enterprises and - you guessed it - governments. Now granted, IBM probably shouldn't have been doing business with the South Africans in the first place, customizations or no. However, IBM wanting to create a customized system for the specific needs of a major customer is not out-of-the-ordinary by any means, nor is it any reason to be up-in-arms. racial classification was a primary identifying characteristic; Racial classification is a significant identifying characteristic in virtually all citizen databases, censuses, etc. You'd be hard-pressed to find a country whose census doesn't at least mention race or ethnicity. I will, however, concede that incorporating race in the identification number itself - as the South Africans did - is highly suspect, but it's not stated whether or not IBM was the one that actually implemented that aspect of the identification system in question. and the equipment was leased. What does this have to do with anything? The EFF article is trying to claim that - by the mere merit of IBM having helped South Africa develop a citizen identification system - it's complicit in human rights violations. Guess what? There exists a staggeringly-large quantity of countries with citizen identification systems[0]. It would be one thing if IBM designed the system specifically for the purpose of discriminating against blacks, but this article hasn't really made a convincing argument of that (namely, it hasn't provided any real proof that enabling apartheid was indeed IBM's goal). As far as I can tell, IBM was simply helping South Africa develop the same sort of system that most other countries either already had or would soon have. In other words, IBM's involvement was to implement a general-purpose product which was then subsequently abused by the South African government. I will admit that the implementation of a race code in the identification numbers themselves is suspect, and perhaps that's what the EFF is going after (if IBM was indeed involved in that particular element of South African citizen ID numbers; the article doesn't really go into detail on that). It's also suspect that IBM proceeded with this (according to the EFF, at least) after having been disallowed from doing so by the U.S. government, and that IBM was secretive about it. However, the act of creating an identification system - on its own - does not seem as if it can be classified as "directly facilitating" anything, let alone racism. The EFF would have a better case if they focused on those individual elements rather than trying to claim that the ID system in its entirety was designed to facilitate that institutionalized racism. This is all not to mention that IBM actually has a very positive track record for eschewing racial discrimination in its hiring decisions and workplace environments[1]; creating something specifically to oppress a particular racial demographic is quite a bit out-of-character for them. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identification_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identification_number [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM#Work_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM#Work_environment

108 points by wickedshimmy 12y ago

There might be some network equipment vendors nervously observing this case. They probably haven't done anything as awful as building a bespoke apparatus of apartheid, and arguably they've done nothing technically different than Room 641A. However, there are probably some dissidents who would make convincing plaintiff's witnesses, were they ever to get out of the dungeons and into an American courtroom.

higherpurpose 12y ago
Cisco is probably feeling pretty nervous about this. Some may say "but why does this matter now? It's all in the past." The problem is I think we're going to see many more such cases in the next couple of decades (at least). There are already companies that knowingly help governments spy on their citizens and help them catch dissidents or even kill journalists (think the self-driving cars of the future or cars that have remote controls). History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. It's important to punish the people responsible in helping totalitarian leaders (even within "democratic" countries). Maybe such a case will prevent say Intel from installing a backdoor in their chips in the future, or giving certain governments their future SGX keys to secure applications. Also, IBM already got off with helping the Nazis. If they would've been punished for helping the Nazi, maybe they would've thought twice about helping with the Apartheid. EDIT: Apparently punishing companies that helped in the Holocaust and the Apartheid isn't popular on HN.
- sroerick 12y ago
  I am really not sure why you are being downvoted. You expressed your opinion eloquently, and well within the rules of good discourse. Downvoters, you should reply to this post explaining what you find wrong with it, rather than simply downvoting in silence.
- rfrank 12y ago
  > Cisco is probably feeling pretty nervous about this. Or the folks at Palantir and comparable companies that help enable mass surveillance of populations.
- yellowapple 12y ago
  For what it's worth, I upvoted despite my disagreement about IBM being supposedly complicit in South African institutionalized racism (I don't think the EFF's case here is particularly convincing as presented in the article, though the case regarding Nazi collaboration might be different), since I think your comment does in fact contribute positively to the discussion and doesn't deserve to be downvoted at all, let alone as heavily as it seems to be.
- gnoway 12y ago
  The only thing wrong with this comment (IMO) is the assertion that companies help governments kill journalists. I'm not asserting they don't, but I don't consider it common knowledge that they do, i.e. please provide a source. I upvoted.
  - yellowapple 12y ago
    I think that commenter is referring to military drones (and the manufacturers thereof), though I'm not sure about the journalists being killed.
- hindsightbias 12y ago
  > spy on their citizens Mass surveillance has only become possible via scale-out solutions. The NSA isn't running HP-UX, Solaris, AIX or Windows to track your metadata - they're running Linux. What responsibilities do distro of scale-out solution contributors hold? Are they immune while scale-up platform execs and developers should be swinging in the Hague? What happens when Google maps are used in a war zone by ISIL? Or twitter search engines are used to target protestors? We're dropping bombs today on people via targeting from the their android phones.
zingar 12y ago
I'm not saying you intended this, but to be clear to anyone else: there are no apartheid "dungeons" remaining, the system was dismantled 20 years ago. The obstacle to victims making their way to the US is the innocuous but still effective lack of funds to do so (now we can ask ourselves whether voices silenced by poverty are less deserving of justice than voices silenced by violence).
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Yeah I don't blame any network equipment for apartheid. Rather, I'm thinking of MITM equipment like Iran used to leverage their DigiNotar attack. I'm not aware of particular people that were taken into custody as a result, but it seems likely that those people exist.

bhouston 12y ago

This is pretty sweet. Given that corporations are people these days, I guess they can be charged with knowingly facilitating war crimes?

stonogo 12y ago
Which war?
- tilt_error 12y ago
  Good question! Without the Hollerith card machines, Hollocaust would have been impossible to perform at that massive scale that eventually became evident. Computing Tabulating Recording Company (CTR) that sold the equipment to Germany at the time, later changed name to International Business Machines. Apartheid was awful too.
vinceguidry 12y ago
One does not even need jurisdiction in order to try someone for war crimes. The Kuala Lampur War Crimes Commission tried and convicted George W. Bush and Tony Blair for "crimes against peace" in 2011 under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Their sentence was to be entered into a register of war criminals to be published worldwide. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala_Lumpur_War_Crimes_Commission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala_Lumpur_War_Crimes_Commiss...
- GauntletWizard 12y ago
  I hereby accuse Hackernews user vinceguidry of war crimes for the publishing of propaganda. His trial will be held in one paragraphs time. In light over overwhelming evidence that vinceguidry has published news that is fallacious and quite frankly silly (The idea that GWB and Tony Blair are being held accountable for War Crimes because some self-appointed group of people in some backwards state can hold a war crimes tribunal and publish a document), I find him guilty. His sentence is execution, disembowelment, being kicked off the internet, and being tickled with many soft feathers. News of his sentence will be published to a registry of war criminals located here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9029804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9029804

taltman1 12y ago

For those who might want a fuller description of IBM's active facilitation of these kinds of crimes, you should read Edwin Black's book, "IBM and the Holocaust". Those tattoo's on Holocaust victim's arms? They were serial numbers directly tied to IBM punchcards designed by IBM for the Third Reich. It gives context to former NSA chief Michael Hayden's comment, "We kill people with metadata".

ddod 12y ago
To clarify, the scenario isn't that the Nazis just picked up existing technology-- They had to have direct dealings with IBM for the scope and implementation of the process, which was largely involved with sorting census data to figure out who the Jews and other targeted ethnicities were, shipping them to various concentration camps, and determining where and how to "exhaust" these resources. Just imagine being one of the programmers tasked with that. The book details how Thomas Watson was directly involved in all this, and when the US made Nazi dealings illegal, he handed over direct control of his Nazi business to local branches instead of halting the relationship. After the war, those local branches all rejoined greater IBM. It's kind of crazy to see how IBM has avoided scrutiny and continues to celebrate Watson through their naming conventions.
Zaheer 12y ago
Quite ironic that now IBM has a role in the occupation of Palestine [1]. IBM is sometimes mentioned in the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions). http://www.cjpmo.org/DisplayDocument.aspx?DocumentID=1081 http://www.cjpmo.org/DisplayDocument.aspx?DocumentID=1081
- yellowapple 12y ago
  I don't think it's ironic at all, at least when looking at the bigger picture. The trend in IBM's dealings is not a propensity to go after customers with poor human rights track records, but to go after customers that will make them a lot of money. Governments - like those of Germany and South Africa - are a big target of IBM's sales, whether they're literally genocidal maniacs or poster-children of world peace.
12y ago

pmalynin 12y ago

Okay, while we're at it let's sue Intel for providing a platform to enable digital crimes, CERN for developing a copyright circumvention mechanism, oh and how about we sue Maybach for proving engines for the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf.E and therefore enabling Hitler to start a World War. This is just ridiculous, nobody holds the developers of Little Boy responsible, instead we should hold the people and governments who exploited the inventions. Note, I'm not rationalizing or supporting any of the negative effects of such activities, merely trying to look at this issue through a different perspective.

betenoire 12y ago
If you build a tool _for explicit illegal purposes_, ... well that's not really the same as building tools that can be used for illegal purposes, is it?
- pmalynin 12y ago
  What's legal today might be illegal tomorrow. And even the question of legality is hugely dependent on location.
  - Karunamon 12y ago
    Apartheid has been illegal the whole time.
    - sroerick 12y ago
      Well, not in South Africa.
    - pmalynin 12y ago
      Once again, depends on who you ask. By international laws (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) it has been illegal starting 19481[1]. USA, however, still struggled with racial segregation until the 1960s and until then wasn't really illegal in the States. In South Africa, it probably wasn't illegal either as the government made the law themselves. [1]Or 1976

greyfox 12y ago

They ought to hold IBM responsible for Facilitating the Holocaust as well... http://fluff.info/blog/ibm/ibm10000.jpg http://fluff.info/blog/ibm/ibm10000.jpg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMgZ6515_EQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMgZ6515_EQ

fiatmoney 12y ago

Be careful; "facilitating a human rights violation" is very, very close to the rationale that France et al use to penalize entities like Twitter for "facilitating hate speech". The UN in particular is an incredibly illiberal organization, and their definition of a "human rights violation" encompasses a hell of a lot.

foxhill 12y ago

i'm sorry but this is utterly ridiculous. IBM is a company, an entity. it is made of people, but it is not a person (although americans might try to disagree..). it is a paper-clip maximiser, only instead of paperclips, it's cash. it does not have morals, it does not have a conscience, irrelevant of the fact that the people that make it up do. to blame a company for doing exactly what it was made to do is madness. if IBM didn't do it, another company would have done it. IBM could have failed, in fact, as a result. or at least, they might not be in the position they are now. you may be tempted to argue that, morally, IBM should have not agreed to take part, regardless of the effect on the company. you wouldn't be entirely wrong. but a company does not have morals. not having morals is what allows them to make such vast amounts of profits. when health insurance companies fight to the death (sometimes literally) to avoid paying out claims, where is this moral outrage? or when BP do literally whatever they want to environment, where does the outrage dissipate to after the media gets bored of talking about it? we can not expect companies to be moral agents. we can not expect them to value human life over cash. to punish an entity with no conscience makes no sense. it would be akin to shouting at the wind for blowing, or kicking a hatstand for falling over. the best we can hope to do is stop companies from engaging in "immoral" behaviour (whatever that means - they change over time) whilst they are committing it. otherwise, lets start legal action with hugo boss for constructing nazi uniforms. or VW (literally, the "peoples car") for working with nazi germany.

Karunamon 12y ago
While I'm not sure I agree with your overall thesis (a company is made up of people at the end of the day), I do feel there is a point to be made here: Is the IBM of today the IBM of 20-40 years ago? A person is not controlled by different beings at different times of their life, a corporation is. The legal brief, from a quick skim, appear to reference actions taken in the 70's and 80's. Is the IBM of today the same one that existed in the 70's? The same people running it and making the same decisions? If the answer is no, I'm not sure what significance this lawsuit holds, other than a symbolic "sticking it to the corporations" one. The only people being punished in such a case are those that had nothing to do with the original wrongdoing.
- 12y ago

fit2rule 12y ago

I think the writing on the wall is this: we're all in some database, somewhere, which can be used to exterminate us from the face of the planet. Someone gets into power, they don't like those 'upstart hackers' .. well then, HN seems like a pretty good resource for who goes up against the wall, then ..

sroerick 12y ago
I wrote an outline for a short story that begins with the drone extermination of all dissident hackers.
- fit2rule 12y ago
  Sounds interesting and to be frank .. not at all far-fetched.

vince_refiti 12y ago

TIL, "In fact, the famous five and six-digit number tattooed on the arms of Auschwitz inmates began as a punch card system identification number."

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Yup. I learned this today too. And I'm Polish, which has the benefit of being taught a lot about Nazi concentration camps (especially Auschwitz) in school. Somehow I never heard of IBM's involvement before.

lthornberry 12y ago

For anyone interested in this story, or in the politics of biometric identification more broadly, you should get your hands on a copy of Keith Breckenridge's new book, The Biometric State, which is a history of the South African government's efforts to create a biometric identification system to help enforce racial legislation. Breckenridge argues that these efforts mostly failed, but set the stage for the post-apartheid use of biometrics to facilitate South Africa's social grant payments system (many, many poor South Africans live on government cash payments, mostly old age pensions or child grants). He further argues that the technology developed in South Africa is now being exported elsewhere in the developing world, where similar grant systems are used to justify increasingly intensive population registration and surveillance programs.

yellowapple 12y ago

I'm sorry, but I'm failing to see how IBM actively facilitated anything other than being able to more effectively process information on citizens - something that most modern countries either already have or very strongly desire. the national identification system was highly customized, requiring close collaboration with the South African government; So are most IBM products on a large scale. This is no different from how IBM typically treats all of its high-paying customers, including large-scale enterprises and - you guessed it - governments. Now granted, IBM probably shouldn't have been doing business with the South Africans in the first place, customizations or no. However, IBM wanting to create a customized system for the specific needs of a major customer is not out-of-the-ordinary by any means, nor is it any reason to be up-in-arms. racial classification was a primary identifying characteristic; Racial classification is a significant identifying characteristic in virtually all citizen databases, censuses, etc. You'd be hard-pressed to find a country whose census doesn't at least mention race or ethnicity. I will, however, concede that incorporating race in the identification number itself - as the South Africans did - is highly suspect, but it's not stated whether or not IBM was the one that actually implemented that aspect of the identification system in question. and the equipment was leased. What does this have to do with anything? The EFF article is trying to claim that - by the mere merit of IBM having helped South Africa develop a citizen identification system - it's complicit in human rights violations. Guess what? There exists a staggeringly-large quantity of countries with citizen identification systems[0]. It would be one thing if IBM designed the system specifically for the purpose of discriminating against blacks, but this article hasn't really made a convincing argument of that (namely, it hasn't provided any real proof that enabling apartheid was indeed IBM's goal). As far as I can tell, IBM was simply helping South Africa develop the same sort of system that most other countries either already had or would soon have. In other words, IBM's involvement was to implement a general-purpose product which was then subsequently abused by the South African government. I will admit that the implementation of a race code in the identification numbers themselves is suspect, and perhaps that's what the EFF is going after (if IBM was indeed involved in that particular element of South African citizen ID numbers; the article doesn't really go into detail on that). It's also suspect that IBM proceeded with this (according to the EFF, at least) after having been disallowed from doing so by the U.S. government, and that IBM was secretive about it. However, the act of creating an identification system - on its own - does not seem as if it can be classified as "directly facilitating" anything, let alone racism. The EFF would have a better case if they focused on those individual elements rather than trying to claim that the ID system in its entirety was designed to facilitate that institutionalized racism. This is all not to mention that IBM actually has a very positive track record for eschewing racial discrimination in its hiring decisions and workplace environments[1]; creating something specifically to oppress a particular racial demographic is quite a bit out-of-character for them. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identification_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identification_number [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM#Work_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM#Work_environment