For anyone interested in this story, or in the politics of biometric identification more broadly, you should get your hands on a copy of Keith Breckenridge's new book, The Biometric State, which is a history of the South African government's efforts to create a biometric identification system to help enforce racial legislation. Breckenridge argues that these efforts mostly failed, but set the stage for the post-apartheid use of biometrics to facilitate South Africa's social grant payments system (many, many poor South Africans live on government cash payments, mostly old age pensions or child grants). He further argues that the technology developed in South Africa is now being exported elsewhere in the developing world, where similar grant systems are used to justify increasingly intensive population registration and surveillance programs.
EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
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Re: EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
#42TIL, "In fact, the famous five and six-digit number tattooed on the arms of Auschwitz inmates began as a punch card system identification number."
Yup. I learned this today too. And I'm Polish, which has the benefit of being taught a lot about Nazi concentration camps (especially Auschwitz) in school. Somehow I never heard of IBM's involvement before.
Re: EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, by your logic, if evidence surfaces after 30 years that solves an open murder case, we shouldn't prosecute the suspect, because they've changed a lot in that time?
a person is a single conscious entity. there is no change in 30 years. a company will have almost entirely changed in 30 years - the son should not have to pay for the sins of the father, etc.
Then they shouldn't retain the patents, copyrights, cash, or any of the other assets. If corporations want the benefits of immortality, they need to accept the drawbacks.
Re: EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
#44i'm sorry but this is utterly ridiculous. IBM is a company, an entity. it is made of people, but it is not a person (although americans might try to disagree..). it is a paper-clip maximiser, only instead of paperclips, it's cash. it does not have morals, it does not have a conscience, irrelevant of the fact that the people that make it up do. to blame a company for doing exactly what it was made to do is madness. if…
I hesitate to upvote you. I agree with like half of what you wrote, but the other half (especially conclusion) I find very wrong.
Corporations indeed work as you described, but strong enough back pressure on social and legal level changes the profitability landscape, and thus corporations will optimize in a way that is less harmful. You're right comparing them to artificial intelligences (i.e. very strong optimization processes) - they don't share humanity's goals, nor they should be expected to. But what we can do is force their goals to align with ours as much as possible.
Re: EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
i don't like it. in fact i think it's the most abhorrent practise we do as humans. > The point of a corporation is to allocate resources more efficiently than could be done by legal individuals. noise. tell me - which is more "efficient" (i.e profitable), avoiding paying out insurance claims over insignificant inaccuracies, or caring about the family of 5 with a household income of $30,000, who's dad broke his arm wh…
I'm telling you the economic justification for a corporation. I don't like it either, but denying economies of scale as a reality of our world is silly. I would be fine with abolishing arms manufacturers. Have you stopped using Google yet? Because they are the Lockheed Martin of the 21st century. I agree with you that corporations are psychopathic. But to suggest that fact abdicates us from all responsibility of tryi…
> I would be fine with abolishing arms manufacturers.
why though? it's people that fire the guns. there will always be someone out there with a sharper stick. i mean this is literally where the term "arms race" comes from..!
> Have you stopped using Google yet? Because they are the Lockheed Martin of the 21st century.
do google do bad things? yes. but comparing them to Lockheed Martin? either you vastly underestimate the terrible things that company has done, or you really dislike google..! (or i'm woefully ignorant of google's inhumane actions)
> I agree with you that corporations are psychopathic.
no, they are not psychopathic. psychopathy implies that idea of empathy existed to begin with.
> But to suggest that fact abdicates us from all responsibility of trying to return agency to the individual is foolish.
no, absolutely not. the problem is in the formulation of the system. there is an incentive to break the rules (more reward). because there is an incentive, some individuals will attempt to break the rules. and corporations almost always get away with it.
replace corporations with gangs, and you have the problem with the war on drugs in a nutshell.
> We have the power to say no.
and yet, unfortunately, we exercise the power of apathy almost exclusively. all of our personal data on facebook is sold to advertisers, sold to whoever wants to buy it. we could just not use facebook.
> Recognizing the evil that is conducted isn't cowardly.
oh i whole heartedly recognise it.
> But refusing to do anything because "That's just the way things are" is.
that is entirely not what i'm saying. i'm saying we need to stop immoral behaviour when it is happening. we can't define morals in law, and the law is the only thing corporations understand. we can't change laws and retroactively apply them.
Re: EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
#46i'm sorry but this is utterly ridiculous. IBM is a company, an entity. it is made of people, but it is not a person (although americans might try to disagree..). it is a paper-clip maximiser, only instead of paperclips, it's cash. it does not have morals, it does not have a conscience, irrelevant of the fact that the people that make it up do. to blame a company for doing exactly what it was made to do is madness. if…
While I'm not sure I agree with your overall thesis (a company is made up of people at the end of the day), I do feel there is a point to be made here: Is the IBM of today the IBM of 20-40 years ago? A person is not controlled by different beings at different times of their life, a corporation is. The legal brief, from a quick skim, appear to reference actions taken in the 70's and 80's. Is the IBM of today the same…
It still has the assets gained and the shareholders bear the risk of the business.
You'll be telling me next countries should stop paying war reparations because none of the combatants are still alive!
Re: EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
#47Okay, while we're at it let's sue Intel for providing a platform to enable digital crimes, CERN for developing a copyright circumvention mechanism, oh and how about we sue Maybach for proving engines for the Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger Ausf.E and therefore enabling Hitler to start a World War. This is just ridiculous, nobody holds the developers of Little Boy responsible, instead we should hold the people and governmen…
It sounds like you didn't read the article, they dedicated the third paragraph explaining why it isn't the case of simply going after general-purpose technology that could be used.
It sounds like you didn't read the parent comment, then, which pointed out multiple examples of technologies that would also fit the criteria being used to chastise IBM.
IBM creating citizen tracking software - in both the Nazi German and Apartheid South African scenarios - is equivalent to a company building engines for tanks or parts for machine guns. Does the EFF plan on suing every last one of those companies?
And to be honest, building a citizen tracking system does seem pretty general-purpose; what government doesn't want to be able to store and manage information about its citizens in an easy manner? Yes, doing this requires working closely with a particular customer (in this case, it was a government of a country that happened to be infamous for institutionalized racism), but that does not automatically mean that every last action of that customer is condoned by IBM.
Re: EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
#48i'm sorry but this is utterly ridiculous. IBM is a company, an entity. it is made of people, but it is not a person (although americans might try to disagree..). it is a paper-clip maximiser, only instead of paperclips, it's cash. it does not have morals, it does not have a conscience, irrelevant of the fact that the people that make it up do. to blame a company for doing exactly what it was made to do is madness. if…
I hesitate to upvote you. I agree with like half of what you wrote, but the other half (especially conclusion) I find very wrong. Corporations indeed work as you described, but strong enough back pressure on social and legal level changes the profitability landscape, and thus corporations will optimize in a way that is less harmful. You're right comparing them to artificial intelligences (i.e. very strong optimizatio…
> But what we can do is force their goals to align with ours as much as possible.
how can we force an entity the size of large corporations to do what we want? we simply can't. look at the broadband problem in america. or bankers golden parachutes. or any of the immoral actions taken by corporations.
they are too large. once they get large enough, they have power over us, not the other way around.
Re: EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hesitate to upvote you. I agree with like half of what you wrote, but the other half (especially conclusion) I find very wrong. Corporations indeed work as you described, but strong enough back pressure on social and legal level changes the profitability landscape, and thus corporations will optimize in a way that is less harmful. You're right comparing them to artificial intelligences (i.e. very strong optimizatio…
> But what we can do is force their goals to align with ours as much as possible. how can we force an entity the size of large corporations to do what we want? we simply can't. look at the broadband problem in america. or bankers golden parachutes. or any of the immoral actions taken by corporations. they are too large. once they get large enough, they have power over us, not the other way around.
We can by changing legal landscape. Actions of the EFF are part of this exact process.
Not saying it's easy or that we have much chances now. I'm pessimistic about that.
Re: EFF Files Brief in Case to Hold IBM Responsible for Facilitating Apartheid
#50i'm sorry but this is utterly ridiculous. IBM is a company, an entity. it is made of people, but it is not a person (although americans might try to disagree..). it is a paper-clip maximiser, only instead of paperclips, it's cash. it does not have morals, it does not have a conscience, irrelevant of the fact that the people that make it up do. to blame a company for doing exactly what it was made to do is madness. if…
Your comment is, frankly, ignorant and ignores the entire field of business ethics. You ought to read the SEP article[0]. [0] - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-business
ignorant?
tell me, what do you disagree with? why do you disagree with it? what evidence do you have to back up your assertions?
if i am wrong correct me. but to brandish me as ignorant because you don't agree with what i say is just you, spreading dogma.