Banjo CEO steps down after news of past KKK membership
sltrib.com
sltrib.com
This is not the kind of background I would want for an employee (or CEO) of a surveillance company with sensitive and private data about US citizens.
https://onezero.medium.com/ceo-of-surveillance-firm-banjo-on...
> 32 years ago I was a lost, scared, and vulnerable child. I won’t go into detail, but the reasons I left home at such a young age are unfortunately not unique; I suffered abuse in every form. I did terrible things and said despicable and hateful things, including to my own Jewish mother, that today I find indefensibly wrong, and feel extreme remorse for. I have spent most of my adult lifetime working to make amends for this shameful period in my life.
> In my teens, I dropped out of school, lived on the streets, ate out of dumpsters and raised money panhandling. I was desperate and afraid. I was taken in by skinhead gangs and white supremacist organizations. Over the course of a few years, I did many things as part of those groups that I am profoundly ashamed of and sorry about. Eventually, I was able to get myself away from this world while serving in the United States Navy. This turned my life around. While serving my country, I worked with law enforcement agencies in hate group prosecutions and left this world behind.
> Since then, I have tried and failed to completely accept and come to terms with how I, a child of Jewish heritage, became part of such a hateful, racist group. One thing I have done, through therapy and outreach, I have learned to forgive that 15 year old boy who, despite the absence of ideological hate, was lured into a dark and evil world. For all of those I have hurt, and that this revelation will hurt, I’m sorry. No apology will undo what I have done.
> I have worked every day to be a responsible member of society. I’ve built companies, employed hundreds and have worked to treat everyone around me equally. In recent years, I’ve sought to create technologies that stop human suffering and save lives without violating privacy. I know that I will never be able to erase my past but I work hard every day to make up for mistakes. This is something I will never stop doing.
He changed his opinions on a range of subjects. If everybody has to step down from a CEO position because of opinions and affiliations they had 30 years ago we will severely limit leadership options to a more narrow group of people than we should.
I think zeitgeist and thereby society is moving quicker than we realize and thereby we shouldn't hold people accountable for every thought they had for an eternity. We should narrow it maybe down to a maximum of decade or so.
The boom of data recording on individual level is otherwise going to hunt people down into infinity.
Especially around the most controversial topics like sexism, racism and other bigotry people will make mistakes and what we are doing today is likely to be seen as immoral by a majority of the people living next century.
In 1901 a woman was sentenced 30 days to jail because she smoked in public in New York City.
In 1958 the government of Belgium decided to invite 500 people out of a colonial of Africa , to put these people on display next to the chimpanzees.
Today both examples from last century would at least end in a career suicide.
Indeed, he was involved in a terrorist attack against a synagogue, as the getaway driver.
Interpret my comment more in general as a plea for the term we should hold people accountable for what is recorded in our digital memory than a plea for forgiveness of terrorist.
Let's not defeat by analogy here. He was not a guerilla fighter that assassinated people in order to stop an oppressive regime. He was not a run of the mill criminal.
He was part of an operation to kill Jews, because they were Jews, in an attempt to bring upon genocide and misery. This is not a philosophical question; it is a question of experience. In different places of the world, your hear a very good argument that he's the only kind of criminal that deserves the death sentence, possibly the most heinous type of person imaginable.
Being made homeless at 15 isn't your typical teenager experience, either. Omitting the fact that he was recruited at a time where he was exceptionally vulnerable is a substantial change.
Not sure which is worse
I guess I still feel sad that someone that otherwise could be a productive member of society was so horribly misled as a child.
Can you link to a source? I haven't heard this and it substantially changes things. I want to make sure it's true before speaking it but I can't find it.
"But Patton does not mention that, by his own testimony, he continued to socialize with white supremacists while in the Navy. Patton told prosecutors that he gathered with skinheads while stationed in Virginia for training. “I had known some of the Skinheads there from prior rallies in Tennessee and because of not knowing anybody there, I ended up meeting with them and hung out with them for some time,” he said.
Patton received a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury regarding the West End Synagogue shooting while he was still in the Navy, ultimately giving his first testimony in the case in September 1991.
In addition to the shooting, Patton was implicated in at least one other hate crime that occurred during his time in Tennessee. According to an affidavit of probable cause filed by a Nashville-area FBI agent in support of a search for Patton and his residences, Patton allegedly defaced the Greater Bethel AME Church in Nashville, an African American Methodist denomination. By his own grand jury testimony, Patton admitted to spray-painting buildings in the area with “KKK” and swastikas. The affidavit also alleges that Patton also impersonated an FBI agent to uncover spies among the skinheads he associated with."
Why is this concerning? Do you expect people to post their criminal histories on their LinkedIn? Even if said crimes occurred as a minor and the person has spent their whole adult lives as a law abiding person?
I don't find it curious at all as to why he didn't go around announcing his past criminal connections: because it would hamper his career prospects, and because he doesn't want people to portray the actions he took as a homeless teenager as reflecting his character as an adult. This whole thread demonstrates why not highlighting his past history was a wise decision.
Yes, I absolutely expect someone entrusted with enormous responsibility in the criminal justice realm to be upfront and open about their past and be held to a far higher, far more stringent standard. And it doesn't help that his company hasn't been the most morally upright company in recent times either[1].
[0]https://onezero.medium.com/ceo-of-surveillance-firm-banjo-on...
[1]https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bgky/banjo-ai-used-secr...
He refers to associating with these groups in the past tense, in his 1992 testimony (at which time he was 19). As I stated, the evidence corroborates Patton's explanations that these activities were limited to his teenage years.
> “We all have a personal story,” Patton told an audience at the Domopalooza tech conference in Salt Lake City in March 2019. “It’s probably what drives you every day to do what you do. Drives your family life, your work life. It’s no different from me.”
> “I came out of an abusive household,” he told the crowd. “When I was a young kid. And I left. And I was a homeless kid living on the streets, under the underpass of the freeway in Los Angeles, eating out of the dumpster. Never finished high school, belonged to street gangs,” he said. “Was up to no good.”
Doesn't look like "upstanding" is the most accurate word to describe him today if some of those allegations from the vice article are true...
Social justice!
It’s also pointing out that the fundamental choice in what’s acceptable or not is dumb: someone who made a mistake while young and genuinely has tried to build a better life should be welcomed into society, while criminals who continue to promote a criminal and violent lifestyle should not be.
It’s also mocking that people who talk about “social justice” are often deeply racist and unforgiving people — which perhaps could be fairly criticized for tone, but is again not a false dichotomy.
You are creating a false reality where people can only be for "urban" gangsters and against the white CEO. Reality strongly disagrees with this and I suggest you join us on the other side instead of constantly trying to find things to be outraged about.