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Comment by legostormtroopr | Hacker News Reader

> We refuse to participate in the creation of databases of identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin.

This would mean I can never work on a system to support a social program that identifies at risk minority children to improve health care initiatives. No one can ever work on a national census again, or demography surveys.

It also highlights the "Americ-centric" view from a lot of tech people. The US government is right out, but despite this pledge talking about their recent Genocides, its perfectly fine to build these systems for Bosnia or Rwanda.

I'm also curious to know to whom anyone can "whistleblow" to now days, especially now that people are trying very hard to paint Wikileaks as a Russian front.

Ultimately, this is too broadly worded and toothless. I'll just stick to "First do no harm".

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That's kind of a wilful misreading of the text. The mention of "targeting individuals" explains the intent of the pledge.

This pledge is US-centric and should be US-centric, because that's the jurisdiction these enormous sets of user data live under.

As far as who people can whistleblow to, there are any number of tech journalists and public figures with a well-earned reputation for integrity.

> identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin.

> to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting.

Those are the only two instance of "target" in the text on http://neveragain.tech/. There is no context on the pledge and that's what they are asking people to sign.

Governments target individuals for a broad number of entirely valid reasons, for healthcare, social services or law enforcement. Some genetic diseases are racial or ethic - if a new genetic disease is discovered, is a national health service obligated to or discouraged from contacting members of that racial group? Scientology is a "religion" that has had a sketchy background, should we make it impossible to build a database to track members?

This is wildly disingenuous. But then with your username, that's about what I'd expect.

That's a pretty silly ad hominem from someone who usually writes interesting and helpful comments.

I'm not above the occasional cheap shot.

To be honest, if I'd read further down the thread first I wouldn't have bothered to say that.

My brother!

I understand it the way GP does. Now, it's possible we are both wrong, but you saying it's "willful" is not helping the discussion.

…ah that fragile ego of the orange site's participants…

> No one can ever work on a national census again, or demography surveys.

Many countries actually put strict restrictions on the data that can be gathered in a national census, for just that reason of fear of being used for repression and division. See: France.

Not that that strategy has been particularly successful in France's case.

The US census also has very strong legal protections, and an institutional culture that will go to the mat for privacy.

Contrast this with Facebook, which collects much more data than the census, and is completely unregulated.

To be clear, I think it's useful to collect racial and religious information in a national census. It's been critical in enforcing civil rights and equal representation.

American institutions around freedom of religion and the right of privacy are key to keeping national censuses forces for good instead of tools for oppression. We should do whatever we can to maintain strong, healthy American institutions that protect freedom of religion.

but despite this pledge talking about their recent Genocides, its perfectly fine to build these systems for Bosnia or Rwanda.

That's obtuse to the point of nonsense. 'Your proposal fails to encompass all imaginable situations and is therefore invalid' is such an obvious fallacy that it moves me to doubt your honesty.

by the way, it wasn't the government of Bosnia that launched a policy of genocidal ethnic cleansing; rather they were the victims of Serbian violence.

The "Never Again" pledge also means you can't work at Google or Facebook, who already have those databases. They know our religion, ethnicity, etc. And as Snowden showed us the US government can and does get that information from them.

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