When asked a year ago on the campaign trail whether he thought the United States should create a database of Muslims in the country, Donald Trump said in an interview with NBC News: Oh, I would certainly implement that — absolutely.
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On Tuesday, hundreds of members of the technology industry weighed in on whether they would help build such a database. The answer? Absolutely not.
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By Wednesday morning some 590 software engineers, designers, business executives and data processing personnel from U.S. firms such as Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Mozilla and Palantir Technologies had signed a pledge 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.
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As part of the pledge, the individuals promised, among other things, to:
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* Refuse to participate in the creation of databases that would allow the government to target individuals based on race, religion or national origin
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* Advocate within their organizations to minimize data collection that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting
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* Responsibly destroy high-risk data sets and backups
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* Resign from their organization if ordered to build such a database
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With the signing of the pledge — reportedly a grassroots initiative led by engineers at Wave and Slack — the tech industry is drawing battle lines, according to Kresta Daly, a civil rights and criminal defense attorney based in Sacramento.
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When employers see that their workers are openly unwilling to cooperate, it makes it difficult for a process like that to move forward, she said.
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It’s unclear whether the incoming government will lean on the tech sector to build such databases, or if it will even make good on its promise to bar Muslims from entering the country.
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In the weeks following Trump’s victory, the president-elect’s team backtracked on his earlier statements, saying that he had never advocated…