Slashdot Mirror

Yeah? You would pretty much never get a job in a large corp with an attitude like that. Why on earth do you think Microsoft are any worse than say IBM for example? It's business, that's my point. "Moral justification" is an entirely new realm in business - frankly, people just want to get paid. It's not actual war.

Despite fears of Godwin, census data has been responsible for the deaths of millions of Europeans. It even has IBM involved in the story. They made $M of dollars leasing the Hollerith machines and Hollerith cards to their European subsidiaries.

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

The Juden were marked before the Nazis marched into many of the European countries thanks to IBM's census, and they knew the pattern.

The story of France's census data is particularly illuminating as the guy there (I forget his name without re-reading the book) did a good job of non-collaboration and delay.

Thomas J. Watson., IBM's President, didn't receive the "Eagle with Star" in 1937 for nothing !

Hell, they can even help the trains run on time.

If there's one thing IBM is not associated with, it's communism.

Maybe not. But what about National Socialism?

Read http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

IBM provided to Germany basically a Google search on the population to find out who lived where and did what and who was a jew or had jewish blood.

Remember, IBM leased and maintained punchcard systems to that were used to run the holocaust. (Granted, I'm typing this post on an IBM-branded Thinkpad with an IBM-branded keyboard.)

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/ - a book about how IBM helped Nazis data-mine Jews. People went up in smoke and IBM took the profits.

Blah blah IBM blah blah Germany blah blah Godwin's Law.

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

It is every moral persons duty to try to help the non-free. That includes not aiding the regimes that repress their people.

And before this discussion degenerates into WWII analogies, remember that Google is just a damn search engine and what's being repressed are just frigging web pages. No human is being abused or tortured by Google's actions.

An analogy to the cooperation of IBM and the National Socialist party is quite apt.

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

IBM was certainly not doing any abuse or torturing themselves. They were "simply" providing services to a repressive regime. And just so we don't lose track of what China is doing, check these links:

http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl/search/web/falun %252Bgong%252Btorture/1/-/1/-/-/-/1//417/top/1

IBM sells to China.... Only 70 years ago they were selling to Nazis to track people for "processing". http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

Remember that charming comparison:

Reichssicherheitshauptamt, the main division of the Nazi SS translates out as Reich (Homeland) Sicherheit (Security) Huptampt (Department).

And IBM does have a history with those fine people.

The question is whether they remain driven by immediate profit over human rights or whether they're so ashamed of their past that they'll now do anything they can to distance themselves from such organizations.

Here is one site that talks more in detail about it. link

Wrong. Dead wrong. Godwin's Law does not apply to a factual reference.

So now we have the people that we put into office trying to step on the rights of companies like Google to succeed in business. We voted in people who have betrayed our trust. Instead of applauding these successful companies for their large profits and the wealth they bring to our country, they instead trample their right to profit in the name of some illusory moral concerns. If we, as a nation, had any balls we'd be voting these bufoons out of office before they start taking our guns away and throwing us in gulags.

If we restrict ourselves to U.S. corporations, then we can recall the handsome profits Ford and ITT made in Nazi Germany, even when the war was going on. Or we can recall the role of IBM supplying their Hollerith technology to aid the holocaust. More recently, we can look at the role of corporations like ITT (again!) and Anaconda copper in pushing for the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, or United Fruit in Guatemala, etc.

War and dictatorship provide excellent opportunities for corporate profit. Just ask the board of Bechtel or Halliburton.

The only time this comes up is when the press/politicians talk about China or Cuba or Iran, etc. Hell, the same politicians who get on their high horse about prisoners in China used as slaves advocate exactly the same stuff here for American prisoners.

Where ever someone is being locked up, killed or tortured, someone else is making a profit. Take a look at the U.S. prison system if you don't believe me.

How is obeying the laws of China when trying to do business in China "doing evil"?

Are you fucking shitting me?

Because those *laws* are evil. Because the entire system of government by which those laws are emplaced and enforced is evil!

But I'm also opposed to telling the Chinese government what to do, or advocating that Google break the country's laws just because the prevailing opinion in the US and most of the rest of the world is that the laws are wrong

What a gigantic fucking strawman. And aside from being a strawman, it's a thoroughly reprehensible standpoint to take.

First, nobody here is suggesting "telling the Chinese government what to do," or advocate that Google break Chinese law. What is being suggested is that engaging in censorship of this nature is evil, that Good should not engage in it, and that if Google has a choice between doing business with China and censoring, and *not* doing business with China and not censoring (and they do, in fact, have this choice), then Google should pick the latter option. That's why what you just said was a gigantic strawman.

Second of all, *what possible reason could exist* for you to be opposed to *telling* (not threatening, not extorting, but merely *telling*!) the Chinese government that they're a bunch of fascist thugs and that if they want to join the rest of the world in open trade they should do so on a basis of a human rights record that does not resemble that of the Spanish Inquisition. How in the *fucking world* could you have a problem with that? You actually have a problem with telling a bunch of fascists that they're a bunch of fascists, and that people deserve better than to be born into and then to live and die under an oppressive government that at every turn denies them open access to information and the most fundamental of human rights? My God!

How would you feel if a company came to do business in your country without following the rules?

If "the rules" included my getting hauled off to jail for researching the political concept of "democracy," I'd probably be pretty okay with it.

Hey, how would *you* feel if your government wanted to round you up into death camps? How would *you* feel about the foreign company your government contracted into helping it?

A listed company has an obligation to maximise value to their shareholders. However, some of that value must surely be moral value and not just $$$$. If you make money out of a company that exploits people, then you are just exploiting those people yourself.

I wonder if IBM said the same thing about working with Nazi Germany. Despite China's oppressive human rights record, you'd have to be a moron to equate the two countries. But there are clearly special ethical perils to supplying information technology solutions to repressive regimes.

when you're an international business you have to deal with the local laws of the country you do business in.

Or live up to your Don't Be Evil motto by deciding not to do business there. I'm not sure where to draw that line, but there are clear cases where that decision should have been automatic.

My point is simply that I hardly think anyone has the right to spawn three kids, get a mortgage, saddle themselves with debt, purchase two cars, and then complain that they have to act contrary to their moral beliefs to pay for it all. That sounds to me as if the moral beliefs didn't actually exist in the first place.

But, yes, comparing this specific event to the Holocaust is pretty extreme. Although the computer industry doesn't have an entirely flawless record ... http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

For info on how IBM aided the Nazi's check out:

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

They have much to be proud of!

IBM indeed had an enormous contribution to the Holocaust through its Hollerith tabulating machines. Author Edwin Black makes a damning case against IBM in his book "IBM and the Holocaust". During the WW2 era, IBM existed by and for providing Nazi Germany with the technology required by the logistical nightmare that was the "Final Solution".

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

That said . . . Thank you, IBM for every thing else.

Don't forget On Demand Computing invented in 1942 to automate persecution of the Jews. http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

given their work on the Holocaust. See also here and here.

Actually, IBM should be highly responsive on this issue-- they don't have the best track record on eugenics and technology.

Ummm.. In world war 2 IBM designed and sold technology to the nazis:

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.

Yeah, sure, IBM not evil...

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

I'm sick of the excuses:

- We're just following Chinese law
- If we don't comply, are the Chinese people better off without Yahoo/Google/Cisco/MS?

Haven't we learnt a thing?

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

I don't expect US corporations to impose US laws on foreign soil, but perhaps we can at least expect them to respect a basic set of human rights standards.

It's not acceptable that these US based coporations become collaborators in the persecution of dissidents in another country. It's not acceptable for them to concede to ridiculous demands of filtering workds like "Freedom" or "Taiwan". It's not acceptable at all.

If these corporations want to ignore these basic human rights standards, let them go and base their HQ in China instead. They're not doing anybody any favors by helping repress the Chinese people.

We were told that more trade and more interaction with China would bring greater freedom. We were lied to.

...IBM are a major shareholder in Applied Digital Solutions.

Applied Digital Solutions make the Verichip, an implanted microchip.

IBM made computers to execute people in the Holocaust.

in WW2 and the Holocaust:
The google search
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
http://www.geocities.com/theawakeningnews/Big_Brot her-IBM_Auschwitz.html
And a Wikipedia section about it.

Breaking the copyright on creative works is a very serious crime. Grokster need to be held to account.

Now if this had been a less serious crime.... For example:
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

I think this kind of thing allready affects people in other countries.

A long time ago IBM helped the Nazi's in Germany.

If anyone follows the real ongoing turmoil in the Middle East this should bother them as well

Corporations have no laws. Individuals do. This is a fact. If you as an individual commit an offense illegal in the United States, and you return, you can be charged.

If you own a huge company and have claws long enough to reach around the world apparently there is no law. This confuses me, but makes enough sense to be indicative of just what kind of world we live in.

Maybe it's a little too early to don the tinfoil hats... but this isn't the first time IBM has helped a foriegn power to keep track of it's population.

Apparently you can't put parens around a URL: http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

Obviously I don't have too many fears about national geographic, but it's better to know about IBM's past, even if they won't own up to it. BTW, the book is great, I recommend the audio version, the author has an endearing lisp :).

IBM was never really evil, and even if you disagree, surely they were never remotely near the level of hatred Microsoft has attained.

Was that supposed to be a joke? Microsoft has NEVER done anything even REMOTELY as evil as what IBM did. If you think otherwise you must be insane, but please feel free to prove me wrong.

Yes, American machines were used by many people [http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com] during WWII.

It comes from IBM having sold computers to the Nazis prior to WWII. The Nazis then used the computers to index everyone in the country into one giant "database", if you could call something that primitive a database. The Nazis then used the info to make it easier for them to round up Jews, Homosexuals, Blacks, Jehovas Witnesses, Gypsies and others and send them off to the concentration camps. Or, in the case of Blacks, to castration. (Male blacks were castrated, not put to death during WWII.)

More info here: http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

Let We Forget

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.

Though, to my mind, the story is as much about being aware of the uses of personal information and how the climate for that use can change *very* quickly.

Let's put an "e)" there with a painful reminder of how IBM is a corporation and therefore, by default, not to be trusted.

IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries -- all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.

no dork I've ever met didn't like IBM

You should try some of us history dorks.

<quote

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.

</quote

The book is a treatise on why we should be concerned with electronic privacy and data retention. You might trust your current government but who's going to be reading *your* census forms in 50 years.

IBM backs Lunix like it backed the Nazis in the 1930s. Coincidence ? I think not !

Both crowds are ideological extremist, the only difference being that the Nazis were from the extreme right will the GNU/Hippies are from the extreme left. Let's get rid of these extremists before it's too late !

A very good comparison. The Nazis used IBM punchcards to identify 'undesirable' sections of the populations. Perhaps one of the first data mining operations.

And it needn't even be a malign organisation that performs the data collection. Loathe him or despise him, David Blunkett isn't a fascist dictator - but what guarantee do we have that we won't have one in the future? All of that data which people hand over will be sitting there ready for misuse.

Have you read 'IBM and the Holocaust', (Edwin Black, ISBN: 0316857718), which discusses just this point? The Netherlands automated all of its census system using IBM punchcards before the war. All done in the best interests of the people, to improve social provision and so on.

As soon as the Nazis came to power in 1940, all they needed to do was run the punchcards again - this time with a slightly different question.

And out popped all the names of the Jews. In short, 75% of Dutch Jews were murdered by the Nazis thanks to an extensive automated ID system. In France, which had similar levels of integration, but no automation, 'only' 25% were killed.

It's a terrifying, but brilliant read.

Best wishes,
Mike.

IBM provided tracking technology to the Nazis. They basically provided the information infrastructre that made the holocaust so efficient. See this

> IBM still has a policy of never smearing a competitor as far as I am aware... ;)

lol, you make them sound so fluffy

IBM's founder spent time in prison for his string arm dealings in the cash register business (smashing up stuff, dumping, threatening).

He was awarded Nazi Germany's highest honour for a foriegner for leasing Holleriths and programmers to the Third Riech (they didn't run 10million+ slave workers with pencil & paper).

The story is an interesting read. Especially with regard to personal data & the unseen hand.

I wonder what a happened in this lawsuit.

-FL

The book the original poster refers to is painstakingly researched and basically correct. Not only did IBM supply machines to the Nazis, profit from it, and do everything they could to keep the German subsidiary (and its profits) under control, but Watson himself was quite an admirer of Hitler and praised him endlessly during the thirties. Not that he was unique in this regard among American businessman, but it is something that must be considered when the man is being venerated as some kind of computing icon.

They sure beat the IBM of old : computerizing the Final Solution for a certain German with a silly moustache.

You didn't think 10 million Jews were processed with pencil and paper did ya?