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Comment by idlewords | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

My brother!

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

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…

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