Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech workers pledge to never build a database of Muslims

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 326 posts

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

#241

Post by 1ris »

coldtea wrote: post #36
1ris wrote: 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.

> Everybody was warned, everybody could have seen this coming. There has been nothing coming. Trumps pre-election stuff was BS, nothing will be done. Check back in 4 years. Besides government agencies obviously already have detailed profiles of such things, going far beyond the religion of a subject.

I'm talking about what is happening right now. If you find yourself in a situation where you regret data having this deeply, you shouldn't have collected them in first place.

The second statement is true, but unrelated. It's like saying you are fine because others are worse.

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

#242

Post by edblarney »

maxerickson wrote: post #231
edblarney wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 differe…

Why do the police explain all this stuff to your 'distant relative'? Or rather, do you also know what the police think from some source other than your 'distant relative'? Or is the 'distant relative' the only source you have? (I'm not sure what noun to use for your source there so I have stuck to matching your usage, my repeatedly using the quotes isn't sarcastic or anything like that)

The police did not 'explain' this to my distant relative, rather, people in organized crime know a lot about criminality and police. And no, it wasn't he that explained to me how cops keep a tab, so much. I meet RCMP every once and a while. Moreover, I was well aware of how 'the case' went against my distant relative from the RCMP's perspective, it was all rather well laid out.

Organized crime is very well understood by law enforcement.

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

#243

Post by edblarney »

WildUtah wrote: post #191
edblarney wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's de-facto a M/E country. The North African countries are Arabic, Muslim, and are geopolitically part of the Arabic sphere of influence which is de-facto the same thing as middle east. 'North Africa' I find to be not descriptive. The best term would be 'Maghreb' - but nobody knows what that means. M/E is an appropriate geopolitical designation.

If you don't say Maghreb when you mean Maghreb, how are people ever going to learn what Maghreb means?

It's not a word used in the Anglo-sphere and likely never will be.

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

#244

Post by protomyth »

tptacek wrote: post #218
protomyth wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck getting Facebook or the US Census to do that. This is a useless gesture that means very little. I guess some people get to feel better about themselves. The first step would be some reforms in consumer protection laws dealing with privacy and information sharing. Just watch how much certain SV firms spend to opposed those changes.

Weak argument. Do better. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13189009

Ok, so they quit. What does that do to Facebook or the US government? Not much.

If they really want to change things, then you have to enter politics as a group. Ask a Union where it gets its power. This pledge is not a factor in US politics. There is a reason that the US has to have laws to prevent union busting and those specific circumstances are the same for these type of pledges. The difference is the people pledging have no such protection. I can point to a long history of groups entering politics affecting change, can you do the same with a pledge to quit?

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

#245

Post by edblarney »

gopalv wrote: post #192
Raed667 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Tunisian I would like to add a comment: 1- Yes, there is a number of Tunisians that went to Syria. As you have said per/capita it is a large number. There are around 10 Million Tunisians and from 3000 to 8000 fighting in Syria (depending on the source). 2- This is due to several factors: Post-revolution politics, poverty, mistrust in the state institutions and the police, and -most importantly- a previous govern…

> 4- If this "database" checks for first and second degree connections, then the entire country would be flagged. And some people would like that - which is sort of the problem with Xenophobia-with-added-statistics. The trouble with using statistics to discriminate is that it gives people some sort of plausible deniability which they can offload into opaque computer programs ("Did my race give me a higher interest ra…

You can point out the risks in the problem, but you cannot deny the problem.

FYI - the US and every country on the planet discriminates against every other nation by way of visas.

Why do you think Americans can travel to Canada without a visa and Venezuelans and Turks cannot?

Do you think Canada is just going to up and allow Turks to come to Canada without paperwork? No. Why? Because it's Turkey. Very different place than America.

By 'xenophobia' do you actually mean to say 'diversity'? :)

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

#246

Post by 1ris »

kevinburke wrote: post #225
juicerp wrote: post #76

What a joke. As if Google, FB, and Palatir don't have us all in a NSA or CIA database. I'm sure the government has no data on any of us and all of Eric Schmidt's trips to Obama's white house were just for tea.

> As if Google, FB, and Palantir don't have us all in a NSA or CIA database. They don't.

Cambridge Analytica claims to have profiles of 230 million americans. If you substract babies and people over 70 that's about everybody. And Cambridge Analytica is a shack compared to all the others.

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

#247

Post by zouhair »

edblarney wrote: post #161
zouhair wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tunisia is not in the Middle-East.

It's de-facto a M/E country. The North African countries are Arabic, Muslim, and are geopolitically part of the Arabic sphere of influence which is de-facto the same thing as middle east. 'North Africa' I find to be not descriptive. The best term would be 'Maghreb' - but nobody knows what that means. M/E is an appropriate geopolitical designation.

No it is not. At all. Tunisia has much common things with Italy than with Oman.

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

#248

Post by maxerickson »

edblarney wrote: post #242
maxerickson wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do the police explain all this stuff to your 'distant relative'? Or rather, do you also know what the police think from some source other than your 'distant relative'? Or is the 'distant relative' the only source you have? (I'm not sure what noun to use for your source there so I have stuck to matching your usage, my repeatedly using the quotes isn't sarcastic or anything like that)

The police did not 'explain' this to my distant relative, rather, people in organized crime know a lot about criminality and police. And no, it wasn't he that explained to me how cops keep a tab, so much. I meet RCMP every once and a while. Moreover, I was well aware of how 'the case' went against my distant relative from the RCMP's perspective, it was all rather well laid out. Organized crime is very well understood…

Does the organized crime in Toronto have some sort of heroic devotion to statistics?

If not, it seems we are discussing a third hand anecdote.

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

#249

Post by 1ris »

idlewords wrote: post #239
1ris wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it does, because I did. I tell people not to use facebook. That's not enough, but everything less is in vain. No technical solutions for political problems my ass. If politics is unfixable (witch was foreseeable) a technical defence was necessary. It was in plain sight what was going to be possible. Any people where talking about post privacy like it was good thing because they failed to acknowledge this. The fi…

So your contribution is telling people not to use Facebook? Thank you for your service.

And teach them to use tor. As said, that's not enough. But nothing can safe a fool, so it's important people don't have to reley too much on other and take at least the basic precaution themselfs. If you have any better (as in working better) ideas I'm open to suggestion. But I'm sceptical.

What did you do? And how did it work? I guess for me it did work out somewhat well.

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

#250

Post by 1ris »

r3bl wrote: post #23
1ris wrote: 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.

Well, to be honest, the title is highly misleading. Sure, they pledged to refuse to participate in the creation of such database, but that's just one of the things stated in the full pledge. I would emphasize more on the following parts of the pledge: * to scale back existing datasets with unnecessary racial, ethnic, and national origin data. * to implement security and privacy best practices, in particular, for end-…

That's all nice, but do they believe they can "scale" back? Like how? If facebook drops the table it won't be gone from all the scrapers and law enforcment and intelligence tools.
Post reply on HN