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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

#201

Post by geofft »

interstitial wrote: post #134
geofft wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only person here I see here who's virtue-signaling is Trump, by making statements that are widely acknowledged to be just for show and not serious promises.

Another one-way function? Only people I declare "other" and bad can be guilty of virtue-signaling. Hard to keep up.

> Only people I declare "other" and bad can be guilty of virtue-signaling.

???

My definition of "virtue signaling" is the practice of loudly proclaiming that you believe X because of the benefit to your reputation from people seeing you proclaim X and not because you particularly care about believing X (and maybe you don't), a "they love to stand and pray in the street corners" thing.

I find it hard to believe that people in this pledge are using it to enhance their social status; there are a lot of people in the pledge, and coverage tends to focus on aggregate behavior (e.g., how many people from Facebook have signed), not individuals. Only one signer is quoted in this article, at the very bottom. And I think the people signing are genuine in their beliefs.

Meanwhile, quoting the comment above: "Trumps pre-election stuff was BS, nothing will be done." It's BS that people wanted to hear, and it got him elected to the most powerful office in the world. It is, quite literally, stuff he proclaimed because it enhanced his social status that he didn't actually care about intrinsically.

I'm not sure what this has to do with people being other or bad (unless you think that virtue signaling makes someone other and bad, but I didn't say anything like that).

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

#202

Post by dmritard96 »

exabrial wrote: post #58
dmritard96 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

equating the purchase of a shotgun to having an ethnic or religious identity is a sad statement.

Why? Both are guaranteed in the Constitution. Picking parts and playing favorites is what has lead us to the current state of affairs.

"Picking parts and playing favorites is what has lead us to the current state of affairs."

Citation Needed

Should we not require drivers licenses or car registration?

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

#203

Post by throwanem »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #158
haldean wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I've never been quite sure that the ethical question here is as firmly settled as the organizations cited first in that article consider it to be.

Is it ethical to refuse to participate in lethal injection, knowing that the result will be an execution instead performed by electric chair, or gas chamber, or hanging, or firing squad? Each of these methods is employed as an alternative to lethal injection by at least one US state, and I don't think any of them can reasonably be considered equally humane.

Is it ethical to refuse participation knowing that the likely outcome is replacement of lethal injection with a less humane method of execution, as The Atlantic suggests [1] may already be underway?

The gas chamber and the electric chair, in particular, amount to death by torture. Is it ethical to consign someone to such a fate in order to keep one's own hands clean?

[1] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/gas-cham...

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

#206

Post by tptacek »

I'm glad this is getting attention, but I urgently need to correct their headline.

What tech workers pledged to do:

1. Not to participate in the creation of these kinds of databases.

2. To use every lawful method available to them to stop the misuse of these databases where they exist.

3. To sever their connections with their employers if efforts to prevent misuse at those employers fails.

Lots of people are reacting to this by saying "the databases already exist". The people who wrote this pledge are aware of that.

This is not a "petition" to convince Google and Facebook to stop building databases. It's not a petition at all. It doesn't demand that companies do anything. It's not up to the companies; it's up to the employees who sign. That's the point of a pledge.

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

#208

Post by tptacek »

wjossey wrote: post #2

It's a lovely gesture, and an important sign of solidarity; however, it'a merely that, just a gesture. I hope that SV and the tech industry leverages its wealth and technical legal capabilities to fight these sorts of actions in court, unlike their responses to privacy intrusions by the federal government, British intelligence, and other foreign groups.

I object to the idea that this is a gesture. These are people pledging their reputations to quit their jobs if their employers don't prevent the data they collect from being abused. It's not just possible but likely that people will quit jobs in the next couple years because of this.

The objection that the pledge doesn't solve the problem is easy to make because it's true: the pledge alone won't solve anything. But make no mistake: this isn't a petition. Whether 10 people or 1,000,000 people sign a petition, the effort fails if the target ignores it. But a single person can sign a pledge and, in honoring their commitment, do something significant in support of their cause. It's not up to the employers; it's about the workers.

I think this kind of bottom-up effort is both promising and overdue. More people should consider signing. What's the threshold we'd need to reach in our profession for a pledge like this to meaningfully impact decisionmaking? I think it's much less than 51%.

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

#209

Post by maxerickson »

jdmichal wrote: post #189
this-dang-guy wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For "social security" benefits. Yes. And look how that's turned out. It's deemed proof of citizenship (and a vital document) despite being just a poor quality piece of paper. The data is misused in just about every way. From colleges using it as a student id number to people committing crimes with it.

If someone is using a SSN as proof of citizenship, they are blatantly wrong. SSNs can and are issued to aliens. https://www.ssa.gov/pubs/EN-05-10096.pdf USCIS lists as common proofs of citizenship: US birth certificate, US passport, certificate of citizenship, or naturalization certificate. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/USCIS/Resources/A4...

I imagine they are thinking of it being a list C document:

https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/acceptable-documents

(an unrestricted SSN is proof of eligibility to work in the US)

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

#210

Post by tptacek »

jerf wrote: post #109
kevinburke wrote: post #77

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…

You find it a bit disgusting that people have pledged to quit their jobs in support of a cause? Are you sure you don't need to recalibrate your definition of "disgusting"?
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