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from the preventing-the-mistakes-of-the-past dept.
Two weeks ago, twitter was the only company willing to publicly commit to not aiding the government in building a database of muslims or any other religious minority. At the time, many criticized the Intercept for a click-baity, misleading headline.
But the public shaming had an effect and now more companies have come forward to vow non-cooperation in repeating one of America's biggest mistakes - when the census bureau provided the names of Japanese to be rounded up for internment camps.
One company notably missing from the list is Oracle which owns the big-data profiling company BlueKai and whose CEO recently joined the president elect's transition team. Also absent is IBM, a company with a history of aiding the German government with their execution of the Holocaust.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @06:56AM
> It's just to satisfy muslims and liberals in this country, and numerous muslims abroad.
Because only muslims and liberals care about the constitution, american values and american exceptionalism.
> The ultimate tool is eminent domain.
The ultimate tool is publicity. Going on the record opposing this means they will have the social credit necessary to be taken seriously if they complain about the government strong arming them. It also means that if they acquiesce, their employees will have legitimate cover to be whistleblowers.
It would an error to dismiss this as meaningless. Saying nothing would be meaningless. This puts their position on the record. Not just as a statement to the incoming administration but as a form of social signaling to other corporations telling them to get on the bandwagon too.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @07:21AM
This is just a bunch of tech companies opposing something Trump has already discarded or will rework into No-Fly 3.11 for Death Squads with no opposition from these same companies.
Wake me up when these companies refuse to do any kind of work for NSA, DHS, CIA, FBI, DNI.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 19 2016, @11:29AM
These companies are completely fine doing that level of spying on *ALL* Americans, so of course they don't need to *ADD* a registry of Muslims. They just have a registry of Americans, and you can sort by religion or disclosed ethnic background. So if you either listed your religion as Muslim on the last census, or claimed yourself under 'Middle Eastern' for ethnic background, they already have you sorted out with no more than a select statement against an sql database somewhere.
The problem with big data is people have access to it. And as a result of that, the wrong people have access to it.
The right people... well I am not sure they exist or will exist.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday December 19 2016, @04:14PM
aiding the government in building a database
Careful reading between the lines, the DB is already built and/or these guys did not get the contract.
Its meaningless social signalling. For people who are into that, I guess these companies are now cooler.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 19 2016, @07:48PM
Well, it's not meaningless, but it's less impressive that it appears to be on the face. Much less.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.