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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: 3, Insightful) by SixGunMojo on Monday December 19 2016, @01:33PM
I'm not sure about the others but Facebook and Google already have this. It may not be called a "Muslim registry" but I'm pretty sure that in the thousands of data points about $PersonX there is one called something like "religious affiliation". Lord knows with their targeted advertising they would try not to offend anybody for any reason that could easily be avoided. One good TLA hack and boom, there it is, fait accompli.
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Tuesday December 20 2016, @01:06PM
They sell advertising based on ethnic tendencies; there are a few articles about it. Ars Technica did some investigative journalism, I believe, and ended testing their theory that one can quite openly discriminate in a way that those discriminated against would never notice.
What they did was put out an ad for an apartment available for rent, and exluded various minorities from the advertising based on Facebook's data on everyone. This then allowed for the ad to only be shown to people identified as not in the groups excluded on the ad criteria form for target audiences.
Note that identifing as a particular ethniticity doesn't automatically enroll you in that ethnic group--Facebook takes that and all the data you get them and they infer from your connected 'friends', and place you or take you out of categories for their special business reasons.
The Ars journalist then was able to confirm that indeed, only the target demographics were shown the ad--he had co-workers and friends check to see if they received it, and for the most part, the ad worked as intended.
(Ars then reported this to Facebook; it is not known how widespread such selective, or perhaps exclusive, such advertisements were at the time, but it was clear it was a feature for a while now.)
As a result, Facebook likely doesn't need to create a new column in their spreadsheet and call it Muslim and sort on it.
Note that the promises are to "not hand over data to the government to build a database". Yes, that is nice but it means nothing, though.
You all may recall that the telecom industry now houses the records of what the government was hosting themselves after getting it from the telecoms; they need merely to ask softly while carrying the big stick of I'm the Government. They also pay for this, so the stick dangles a carrot from it.
It seems reasonable to believe that if someone can place an ad to exclude an apartment from certain types of Others, then no one is going to build anything. It's already built. They just don't call it for what it is; instead it probably has some sort of fancy business-speak for EthnoMarketing Cross-Functional Engagement, which would fit nicely with the desire to identify people who already willingly gave up this information (or had friends and family do it for them) in exchange for money.
Why build it twice when you can get good PR out of this and say you won't build a specific one for Muslims? They can repeat this for any particular group, ethnic or income or spirtial beliefs (or lack of them), etc.
Census reports rely on self-identification; these social services and databases rely on inadvertant self-incrimination and the social associations one builds. It's much more reliable to not depend on direct honesty of the intended victim; it is very hard to lie all the time on the internet if communicating. Even the grocery store value cards sell your preferences to Facebook and other companies; what you do off-line follows you on-line.
No one needs to make a new database to put you in it; they just need to search the existing one.