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Of 8 Tech Companies, Only Twitter Says It Would Refuse To Help Build Muslim Registry For Trump (theintercept.com)

On the campaign trail last year, President-elect Donald Trump said he would consider requiring Muslim-Americans to register with a government database. While he has back-stepped on a number of campaign promises after being elected president, Trump and his transition team have recently resurfaced the idea to create a national Muslim registry. In response, The Intercept contacted nine of the "most prominent" technology companies in the United States "to ask if they would sell their services to help create a national Muslim registry." Twitter was the only company that responded with "No." The Intercept reports: Even on a purely hypothetical basis, such a project would provide American technology companies an easy line to draw in the sand -- pushing back against any effort to track individuals purely (or essentially) on the basis of their religious beliefs doesn't take much in the way of courage or conviction, even by the thin standards of corporate America. We'd also be remiss in assuming no company would ever tie itself to such a nakedly evil undertaking: IBM famously helped Nazi Germany computerize the Holocaust. (IBM has downplayed its logistical role in the Holocaust, claiming in a 2001 statement that "most [relevant] documents were destroyed or lost during the war.") With all this in mind, we contacted nine different American firms in the business of technology, broadly defined, with the following question: "Would [name of company], if solicited by the Trump administration, sell any goods, services, information, or consulting of any kind to help facilitate the creation of a national Muslim registry, a project which has been floated tentatively by the president-elect's transition team?" After two weeks of calls and emails, only three companies provided an answer, and only one said it would not participate in such a project. A complete tally is below.

Facebook: No answer. Twitter: "No," and a link to this blog post, which states as company policy a prohibition against the use, by outside developers, of "Twitter data for surveillance purposes. Period." Microsoft: "We're not going to talk about hypotheticals at this point," and a link to a company blog post that states that "we're committed to promoting not just diversity among all the men and women who work here, but [...] inclusive culture" and that "it will remain important for those in government and the tech sector to continue to work together to strike a balance that protects privacy and public safety in what remains a dangerous time." Google: No answer. Apple: No answer. IBM: No answer. Booz Allen Hamilton: Declined to comment. SRA International: No answer.

7 of 588 comments (clear)

  1. Bad Headline by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    They were also the only one to give *any* answer.

    1. Re:Bad Headline by flopsquad · · Score: 4, Informative
      Hell, I don't even have to go outside of my own post history to find the rebuttal.

      GS: "Are you unequivocally now ruling out a database on all Muslims?" Trump: "No, not at all"

      That was the final word on Trump's proposal to create a database to track all Muslims, which he had tried to backtrack to just "refugees". I'm not sure if it came before or after his idea that mosques need to be placed under surveillance.

      I can update that statement with some better dates. The instances I can find of Trump talking about tracking Muslims ("Ooops! What I said about Muslims wasn't about Muslims, but refugees, mainly Muslim ones, or not, except wink wink it's about Muslims!") occurred in (at least) November 2015. The instances I can find of Trump talking about surveilling mosques occurred in (at least) November 2015 and June 2016. The instances I can find of Trump saying he wanted to ban all Muslims from entering the country occurred in (at least) December 2015.

      I'd put in all the extra work to meticulously link all this stuff, where Donny is saying it, on video, but I assume you haven't been living under a rock for the last 18 months, and thus already know about it and have somehow rationalized it all away. Maybe the Lamestream Media had an evil Trump stunt double who was saying all that crazy bullshit on video? Or it was secretly Hillary in orangeface and a bad wig?

      Of course, we've all taken Trump too literally, which I learned just this week from the Lewmeister. Maybe trashing minorities of every stripe and giving the middle finger to women (which he bragged about doing in a grossly literal way) was just pleasant banter and he doesn't remember saying it. Or maybe he remembers saying it, but he didn't mean it because that's just how us Americans all talk around the dinner table and in the bar and in the locker room, "You know, Norm, there oughta be a way to track all those damn terr'ist moslems. Maybe like a number or something they have to wear all the time so we can know who the bad guys are."

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      Nothing posted to /. has ever been legal advice, including this.
  2. Bullshit article by allo · · Score: 1, Informative

    Ask 8 companies a suggestive question with the intend to either dissect their answer to find anything speaking against them or pointing at the answer later trying to accuse them of not fully staying to it. Companies either have no time to put up with your bullshit or do not want to have an answer people may mistake as binding in the media and do not answer. Then post "7 our of 8 companies do to refuse to do it". Nope. 7 out of 8 companies refused to contribute to your shitty article.

  3. Re: Those who something, something by Calydor · · Score: 2, Informative

    Based on how I understand the teachings of Islam, being muslim excludes you from being anything else. It is their job, their purpose, to spread Islam and the Sharia law to every corner of the globe. Do you want America to remain the culture it is today? Islam - and by extension (an unknown sized subset of) muslims - does not.

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    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
  4. Trump on extreme vetting by unixisc · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, he never did. His original proposal was a blanket ban on all Muslim immigration, which is not unconstitutional. That then ultimately morphed into extreme vetting, where nobody who hates the country would be allowed in. (It's another thing that we can't throw out the Jeremiah Wrights, Louis Farrakhans, Keith Ellisons and Bill Ayres' out of the country: that would be unconstitutional, b'cos unfortunately, they are already citizens.)

    And I don't see how any of these 'tech' companies can make any such lists. It's not difficult to open fake identities on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and all other social media sites. I have only one Facebook account, which is not under my actual name, and has no actual personal information. Such a thing would have to be done by the DHS, but again, since religion is not one of the questions that anyone gets asked, it would have to be introduced.

    I do think there is a way of achieving something close. Current immigration application forms ask people whether they are, or have ever been members of the Nazi party, blah blah blah. Change that to questions like whether they support Shariah law and spreading it to non-Muslim countries like the US, whether they support honor killings, et al. It's true that nobody who does will honestly answer it, but here's the rub: if any immigrant does say no to the above questions and then go on to do anything to the contrary, it would be grounds for instant deportation. The beauty of it is that it doesn't even ask if one is Muslim, so if someone is a foreign Noam Chomsky trying to get in, and after getting in, publishes stuff in support of Hamas or al Qaeda, that will be instant grounds for deportation. Once we have SCOTUS filled w/ originalists, instead of hacks like Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

  5. Re:No he didn't by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 2, Informative

    Please stop spreading fake news.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMbpSg8b_dg - hey, there is still the possibility this was edited and there is actually something missing between the talk about Muslims and "the registry" that would be managed good. Burt why would "these people" that would be "managed good" in this registry be signed up at Mosques, if they are not Muslims? Hey, maybe he wants to register people protesting at Mosques because he later wants to take away their guns.

    You heard it here first: Donald Trump is against the Second Amendment. Or did you ever see him packing heat?

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    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  6. Re:Those who something, something by BlueStrat · · Score: 3, Informative

    PS. When exactly did you realise you were a fascist?

    When exactly did you realize you have no intelligent or cognizant refutation and so chose to fall back on juvenile name-calling? Way to keep it classy, AmiMoJo!

    And we do keep tabs on domestic gang members in places like Chicago and L.A. where gang violence is a problem. Police keep extensive records including photographic records of gang member's tatoos. Can we not demand at least this much scrutiny of people from regions known for terrorism asking to enter the US and who have no background data to speak of with which to vet them against?

    Seeing as how one of the Federal Government's main duties is to secure national borders and screen those entering and all that, it seems like asking them to do that in a competent and effective way would be the farthest thing from 'controversial'.

    Strat

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    Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.