Of Nine Tech Companies, Only Twitter Says It Would Refuse to Help Build Muslim Registry for Trump

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://theintercept.com/2016/12/02/of-8-tech-companies-only-twitter-says-
it-would-refuse-to-help-build-muslim-registry-for-trump/

EVERY AMERICAN CORPORATION, from the largest conglomerate to the smallest
firm, should ask itself right now: Will we do business with the Trump
administration to further its most extreme, draconian goals? Or will we
resist?

This question is perhaps most important for the country’s tech companies,
which are particularly valuable partners for a budding authoritarian. The
Intercept contacted nine of the most prominent such firms, from Facebook
to Booz Allen Hamilton, to ask if they would sell their services to help
create a national Muslim registry, an idea recently resurfaced by Donald
Trump’s transition team. Only Twitter said no.

Shortly after the election, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty wrote a personal letter
to President-elect Trump in which she offered her congratulations, and
more importantly, the services of her company. The six different areas she
identified as potential business opportunities between a Trump White House
and IBM were all inoffensive and more or less mundane, but showed a
disturbing willingness to sell technology to a man with open interest in
the ways in which technology can be abused: Mosque surveillance, a
“virtual wall” with Mexico, shutting down portions of the internet on
command, and so forth. Trump’s anti-civil liberty agenda, half-baked and
vague as it is, would largely be an engineering project, one that would
almost certainly rely on some help from the private sector. It may be
asking too much to demand that companies that have long contracted with
the federal government stop doing so altogether; indeed, this would
probably cause as much harm and disruption to good public projects as it
would help stop the sinister ones.

But the proposed “Muslim registry,” whether it be a computerized list of
people from two dozen predominately Muslim nations who enter the country
(as revealed in Kris Kobach’s fatuously exposed Homeland Security agenda)
or a list of all Muslims in the U.S., is both morally appalling and
effectively pointless. In November 2015, asked by a reporter if the
country should create “a database or system that tracks Muslims in this
country,” Trump replied, “There should be a lot of systems … beyond
databases. I mean, we should have a lot of systems.” The New York Times
reported that Trump added he “would certainly implement that —
absolutely.” At a rally later that week, he told the crowd, “So the
database — I said yeah, that’s all right, fine.” The next day, George
Stephanopoulos asked Trump, “Are you unequivocally now ruling out a
database on all Muslims?” Trump replied, “No, not at all.” Although Trump
attempted to walk back these comments during the campaign, a registry of
some form is now back on the table, at least as far as Kobach is
concerned.

Even on a purely hypothetical basis, such a project would provide American
technology companies an easy line to draw in the sand — pushing back
against any effort to track individuals purely (or essentially) on the
basis of their religious beliefs doesn’t take much in the way of courage
or conviction, even by the thin standards of corporate America. We’d also
be remiss in assuming no company would ever tie itself to such a nakedly
evil undertaking: IBM famously helped Nazi Germany computerize the
Holocaust. (IBM has downplayed its logistical role in the Holocaust,
claiming in a 2001 statement that “most [relevant] documents were
destroyed or lost during the war.”)

With all this in mind, we contacted nine different American firms in the
business of technology, broadly defined, with the following question:
“Would [name of company], if solicited by the Trump administration, sell
any goods, services, information, or consulting of any kind to help
facilitate the creation of a national Muslim registry, a project which has
been floated tentatively by the president-elect’s transition team?”

After two weeks of calls and emails, only three companies provided an
answer, and only one said it would not participate in such a project. A
complete tally is below.

Facebook: No answer.

Twitter: “No,” and a link to this blog post, which states as company
policy a prohibition against the use, by outside developers, of “Twitter
data for surveillance purposes. Period.”

Microsoft: “We’re not going to talk about hypotheticals at this point,”
and a link to a company blog post that states that “we’re committed to
promoting not just diversity among all the men and women who work here,
but … inclusive culture” and that “it will remain important for those in
government and the tech sector to continue to work together to strike a
balance that protects privacy and public safety in what remains a
dangerous time.”

Google: No answer.

Apple: No answer.

IBM: No answer.

Booz Allen Hamilton: Declined to comment.

SRA International: No answer.

CGI: No answer.

This isn’t to say that the companies that didn’t reply to a request for
comment or declined that request are tacitly endorsing the Trump agenda in
general or a Muslim registry in particular. Still, it’s asking very little
of today’s tech companies to prompt them to go on record as unwilling to
help create a federal list of Muslims — or so one would very much hope.

“Any technology company should resist a government request for assistance
that targets a customer on the basis of race, religion, or national
origin,” said ACLU attorney Ben Wizner when asked about the social and
ethical obligation of these companies to fight, in some capacity, a
project like the Muslim registry.

Should any of the above companies wish to expand their answer (or non-
answer), this post will be updated accordingly.


--
Donald J. Trump, 306 electoral votes to 232, defeated compulsive liar in
denial Hillary Rodham Clinton and put an end to Barack Obama on November
8, 2016. The clown car parade of the democrat party ran out of gas.

ObamaCare is a total 100% failure and no lie that can be put forth by its
supporters can dispute that.

Obama jobs, the result of ObamaCare. 12-15 working hours a week at minimum
wage, no benefits and the primary revenue stream for ObamaCare. It can't
be funded with money people don't have, yet liberals lie about how great
it is.

His Omnipotence Barack Hussein Obama, declared himself "Pooptator" of all
mentally ill homosexuals and crossdressers, while declaring where they
will defecate.

Obama increased total debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the eight
years he has been in office, and sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.

Loretta Fuddy, killed after she "verified" Obama's phony birth
certificate.