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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.

9 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 Chaos+Incarnate · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The requirements are right there in the question: would you support creating a database to track people of a given religion? There's no tweak to the requirements that could make that a palatable task.

      --
      Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
    2. Re:Bad Headline by flopsquad · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      This, exactly. Look, Trump's Muslim tracking plan (and most everything else about Trump) is batshit crazy and not-even-trying-to-hide-it evil.

      BUT the fact that most huge companies don't wring their hands over responding to every question posed to them by random strangers is... common sense and completely unsurprising?

      I could just as easily send a flurry of questionnaires to the mail room of every Forbes 50 company asking whether they support genocide and puppy punting. Get one of them to write back "No, we think that's awful" and all of a sudden "Only 1 of 50 Top Companies is Opposed to Genocide and Puppy Punting."

      It's not even "gotcha" journalism--no one was gotten. MS said $formResponseToDiversityQuestion, and Twitter said "No." Everyone else didn't feel obligated to give these folks an answer.

      --
      Nothing posted to /. has ever been legal advice, including this.
    3. Re: Bad Headline by Wuhao · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This isn't shit journalism because it puts Trump in a bad light. It's shit journalism because it asks a loaded question, and attempts to make a story out of the landslide-majority of polled companies that didn't take the bait. It fits into a broader narrative in which Trump represents the second coming of Hitler, and everyone who does not unconditionally reject him is a neo-nazi.

      For decades, we were warned about the dangers of increasing media consolidation. And since the rise of online journalism, we've been warned that this new model does not support the kind of journalistic integrity we came to expect in our news. A decade ago, Fox News showed us that facts and integrity are not necessary to win viewers. Now the major outlets are controlled by a handful of entities, and they do not practice journalism as we once understood it. Those entities are in turn controlled by the ultra-wealthy. The ultra-wealthy have political agendas based on their wishes and needs. Because they live very different lives from everyone else, their agendas are unlikely to match the wishes and needs of the broader population. So the institution we relied upon to inform us in our democratic decision making is now in the business of pushing agendas that are unlikely to match the wishes and needs of the broader population.

      That's scary.

  2. Re: Those who something, something by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Whether that out-group is Muslims or traditional Americans is up for debate.

    Would be hard to debate it without knowing what a traditional American is. For example, does being a Muslim rule you out from also being a traditional American? Does being an atheist? Does race or ethnicity come into it? Or are there just particular traditiona you have to observe? And is it every one on the list of traditions or just 7 out of 10 or so?

  3. Re:No More Muslims by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Funny

    We're fighting back. Fuck you SJWs and leftards, we're gonna build the wall and camps.

    Last time you guys tried that, SJWs and leftards kicked your ass all the way back to the bunker, Adolf.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  4. Re: Those who something, something by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    In every way, your statement is equally correct with Christianity and Christian substituted for Islam and Muslim.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

  5. Alternative headline. by jgullstr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Out of 8 tech companies, not one says it would help build Muslim registry for Trump.

  6. Re:Trump on extreme vetting by lgw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And I don't see how any of these 'tech' companies can make any such lists.

    Oh, you're wrong there. Google and Facebook both know every Muslim who's been online in the US (to some imperfect but high degree of precision and accuracy). They already have the "Muslim registry", not to mention, Christian, Jewish, atheist, etc registry. It's their core business.

    I spent an hour once chatting with one of Google's professional racists. His job was racial discrimination*: analyze every "signal" from your browsing habits, search history, gmail, etc to determine your race. No different for religion, income, etc. They were quite good at it. Of course, Google has no intent for this more nefarious than targeted advertisement. But the database exists, and it's a US company.

    *discrimination - n. The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.