Cii Radio| Ayesha Ismail| 14 December 2016| 14 Rabi ul Awal 1438
More than 200 tech workers from companies such as Alphabet, IBM and Oracle pledged on Tuesday not to help the Donald Trump administration build a proposed database to track people in the US based on their race, religion or national origin.
In an open letter published on Neveragain.tech, the workers criticized the president-elect for comments he made on the campaign trail supporting creation of a registry system to track Muslims in the US. The letter, signed by a mix of engineers, designers and business executives, drew comparisons to the proposal with IBM’s contribution to the massacre of millions of people during the Holocaust.
“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,” the letter reads.
“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 letter comes a day before a handful of tech leaders are scheduled to attend a summit on Wednesday with the president-elect at Trump Tower in Manhattan. While the meeting could help patch up relations between Trump and tech leaders, who mostly backed Hillary Clinton for the presidency, sensitive topics such as net neutrality and immigration are likely to be discussed.
The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Source – cnet.com
