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Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

latimes.com

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Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but there's a world of difference between volunteering your name to a public statement (knowing that it's public) and having your data harvested without your consent for purposes actively opposed to your own.

What makes it "your" data? Because it contains information about you? If I observe something about you, do you own that observation?

If you observe something about me, then I made a decision to trust this information to you. I may or may not have been acting under assumption that this information will stay between us. If you observed me doing something in public, then I volunteered this information to be public (BTW, that's why I'm all for public surveillance and CCTV). If I told you something in private and asked to keep it private then you obviously broke my trust.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#152
post #17

It might be more fun (and possibly more effective) to just build a highly dysfunctional one. (I inevitably invite anyone with a beef against certain database technologies to suggest some possibilities)

It's going to a government contract, so you can count on it already.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#153
post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over 1000 people, some of them very prominent, have pledged to quit their jobs if they are asked to do unethical things. How is that "merely a gesture"?

Have they destroyed any of this data yet? As much fun as it may be to pretend this is a Trump problem, it's a Silicon Valley problem. It's Silicon Valley waking up and realizing that it's all fun and games until someone you don't like gets the data that they have already painstakingly collected, polished, and devoted billions of dollars to processing and extracting features of interest. The existence of people you do…

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Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#154
post #8

It's a ridiculous and naive view of the world. Of course it already exists. For example on facebook. For example in the mosques. Everybody was warned, everybody could have seen this coming. But most people didn't give a fuck. Welcome is post privacy. I didn't need have to be that way. We can still turn this into post-post-privacy. But only if we face what we have already done.

Right, The database already exists and it is called facebook. It can identify you by information you provide, by people you have relationships with, by your conversations, and by the largest database of photos of the world, many of which contain faces and are automatically tagged by the camera with a location and a time.

Bought firearms with a background check? Thanks, now they know to send in SWAT instead of regular uniforms. You carry your tracking device with you at all times and keep it charged every night right? You've helpfully identified yourself as a subversive by encrypting your communications right? All your finances, communications, and your ability to navigate depends on government controlled networks and institutions right?

- All network connected software is surveillance software

- The reason for creating information is irrelevant to how it is used

- Technology is being used activly by rulers for surveillance, repression, and assassination

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#155
post #107
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please provide links to official Toronto murder statistics that back up your claim?

It would be illegal to collect that data. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2015/08/17/a-thorny-history... >Fantino, then head of 31 Division, told North York’s committee on community, race and ethnic relations that, while blacks made up 6 per cent of the Jane-Finch population, they accounted for 82 per cent of robberies and muggings, 55 per cent of purse-snatchings and 51 per cent of drug offences in the previous yea…

There are some legal and political difficulties around the topic.

But the Police are very aware of who is up to what.

Cops in Toronto work with various groups all day, every day, they know what is going on. They know when it's 'Asian gang' vs. 'Bikers' vs. 'Somalis' vs. 'Mafia' etc..

Somalis have formed an ad-hoc kind of organized crime syndicate, maybe somewhat similar to the Sicilian folks, but with totally different attitude towards violence, different operating methods. I don't think they control a lot of turf directly, but they coordinate across the country.

These things are evident even to many local residents. My folks live (lived) in Woodbridge, Ontario, which is the Italian area of Toronto, the cafe I used to go to was obviously a hangout and probably money laundering front for the Mafia. Networks are small you only have to know a few people and you get the notion pretty quick. I never felt afraid. Nor would if I were in in a similar situation owned by an Asian gang. But Somalis - I wouldn't go near a place like that.

Different cultures = different behaviour. That's actually what 'diversity' is :)

Finally ... I'm ashamed to say my 'source' on much of this is a 'distant relative', who is currently in jail, and 'very close' to organized crime.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#156
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting argument. How could that work for things like driving, where you need to prove competency before you are legally allowed to do something?

Because driving on public roads has never been a right in the US. It has always been a privilege that you are granted.

That's not really accurate. Freedom of assembly is interpreted pretty generously. It's fine to disqualify on not knowing how to drive safely, but any other unrelated qualifier would be struck down as unconstitutional.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#157
I'm distressed at the amount of fatalism and hopelessness in this thread. Every professional has agency and the ability to act ethically. They can choose to stand up for people's rights or not; the best guess is that these ethics will be tested by the next administration. Large scale human rights violations require the complicity of a lot of people who may be uncertain about how to act in the face of moral ambiguity, and a public pledge to not be complicit can help a lot.

People are making a public pledge. Other people who haven't signed the pledge might read it and get encouraged by it, or see a name on there of someone they look up to, and decide that everything isn't hopeless, or decide to act ethically in the face of questionable decisions.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#158

Doctors adhere to the Hippocratic Oath. Nevertheless doctors worked in concentration camps, were experimenting on humans, work as executioners currently in the US, work and worked in torture chambers, sell their patients to big pharma for Rolex watches and on and on and on. This pledge may be a statement but is practically worth nothing.

> work as executioners currently in the US [citation needed]

Although I'm a fan of 'Google it yourself' here is the first result from Google

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_of_medical_profe...

I'm sure with a little effort you can find better ones should you be interested in that topic.

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#159
post #35

I just went on Facebook and created an Ad [0] that targets only people "interested in Islam" and living the US, it took 30 seconds. [0] http://i.imgur.com/NOrGA2N.png --- Edit: Direct link

Interest in Islam ≠ being a Muslim. I'm interested in Islam and not a Muslim. In fact I'd say most Trump supporters, hell most Americans of any political/religious persuasion even, have some amount of interest in Islam. I'm being somewhat facetious, but also not entirely - the point being that I don't think these consumer profiles could easily be converted into Muslim registries. But it's also all pretty moot - if Tr…

I understand your point. This was just a quick example to show that the data is there. I'm not saying that the FBI is going to start a campaign of Facebook ads.

Facebook data is there, and it could be mined in more advanced ways to extract a database of its Muslim users. This data can extend beyond the "religion" entry in a profile, to analyze posts on religious holidays, vocabulary and idiomatic expressions, images shared, etc..

Re: Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

#160
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read the Old Testament? Christianity has plenty of barbarism in it.

It's called Old because there's a New Testament, which overrides the Old where applicable. And Jesus was a peace-loving man.

Jesus insisted that he came not to destroy the law, but fulfill it. He assured his followers that not one jot or tittle of the law would pass away because of him.

The Old Testament remains part of the Christian canon and continues to be revered as scripture by all Christian sects that I know of. Dismissing it as "Jesus undid all of it" is disingenuous.

The Quran and the Bible cover a great deal of the same material. Christ is a major figure in the Quran as well and is known as Isa. The principles taught by this character and the narratives surrounding him remain very similar in both accounts.

Islam is not an existential threat to the United States or the Christian world. We know this because we had peaceful relations across the Muslim world until the mid-late 1970s, 200 years into the United States's existence.

It's certainly possible that some people insist their interpretation of Islamic works mandates that they kill all non-Muslims. Similar interpretations could be made of Christian scriptures (and indeed, the Book of Joshua thoroughly documents many occasions when Israel raided cities, including occasions wherein they were instructed to kill any living person -- man, woman, or child -- that inhabited it). Nothing Jesus taught would preclude such actions by Christians today. Jesus even said that he came not to send peace, but a sword.

The important thing here is not to pretend a) that Christians are fundamentally invulnerable to the same interpretations or impulses, because we know from history that they are not; and b) that Islam is an existential threat in total based on the malicious practices or interpretations of some of its prominent sects, because we also know from history that it is not.

To the extent that it exists, the Muslim world's conflict with the West is based not on intractable doctrinal conflicts, but social and political changes that occurred in both regions/cultures over the course of the 20th century. Here's a few:

* The importance of petroleum to the West caused us to become very sensitive to the existing political powers in the Middle East

* We deposed a not-entirely-hostile democratically-elected head of state and set up a puppet government in Iran to protect our petroleum interests, which was overthrown by religious extremists.

* Muslims felt threatened by the creation of Israel

* Muslims observed the sexual revolution in the United States and really did not want that to come and disrupt their traditions

* The Sauds used the power they accumulated after the fall of the Ottoman Empire to promote a restrictive interpretation of Islam that served to entrench their dynastic monarchy, unifying religious and political authority, as is typical in dictatorships

... and so on. There's actually a lot of interesting political events that have gone into the current climate. It can't be boiled down to the simplistic and obviously false conclusion that "Islam and Christianity can't co-exist", as a) they're derived from the same traditions, such that their holy books recount many of the same narratives with only minor variations; and b) they've successfully co-existed for 1400 years, the overwhelming majority of which were not spent in conflict, and many of which were spent in cooperation and trade.

Please do not fall victim to the people trying to bait people of differing religious backgrounds against each other. That is not how peace is achieved. We need to understand each other, not belittle the others' traditions.

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