6.3 - Good News: Tech-sector workers say they will not help create Muslim database

Good News: Tech-sector workers say they will not help create Muslim database

Okay, next up, we have something we actually can call Good News.

On December 13, more than 100 employees of technology companies including Google, Twitter, and Salesforce published an open letter in which they pledged not to help the coming Donald TheRump administration to build a data registry to track people based on their religion or assist in mass deportations.

The employees, a mix of engineers, designers, and business executives, drew on comparisons to the Holocaust and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II to declare their opposition.

Quoting the letter:

We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies.

We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs. We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable.

The signers also pledge, also among other actions, to work within their organizations to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting - and in the event they discover within their organization illegal or unethical misuse of data, they will engage in "responsible whistleblowing" and resign rather than take part themselves.

By early evening on December 17, the number of signers had grown to over 2100 and was still climbing. And that just makes the Good News even better.