Call it a coincidence, but on the very day the Donald is meeting with the heads of a number of tech companies at Trump Tower, the story comes out that an open letter, actually, a pledge, is making the rounds on the Internet stating the people signing the pledge vow to never help the incoming administration create a Muslim Registry.
It’s easy to see why the pledge was started, though. So far this week, among the many crazy things coming out of the Tower, we have learned that some dummy on the Trump transition team sent a memo to the U.S. Energy Department with 74 questions that included wanting to know the names of employees who worked on climate change policies for President Obama.
That story was described as a “witch hunt” by many politicians and many in the news media, but it did raise real fears of people losing their jobs in a sort of “cleansing” of the Energy Department and a way to stamp out any and all remnants of climate change policies.
But interestingly enough, the Trump promise to create a registry of all Muslims in the U.S. has not been spoken of lately, but it is apparently still on Trump’s mind. This is the basis for the open letter to all tech workers across America, and it has been signed by tech workers at Google, Facebook, Twitter, GitHub, Rotary International, Wikimedia Foundation and many, many others, according to USA Today.
The letter draws a comparison to the Holocaust and the internment of Japanese-Americans in the U.S. during WWII. The letter also cites the ethnic cleansing of Tutsi Rwandans and Bosnian Muslims in our lifetimes. The letter is compelling and is signed by a mix of engineers, designers and business executives from a large number of companies.
Neveragain.tech pledge
The letter states: “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. 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.”
A Wave software engineer tells BuzzFeed News, “What’s important to me is that individuals who care about the ethical use of technology can step forward, show how many of us there are, and say that there are lines we will not cross.” I say “Amen” to that.
To read the letter in its entirety, go to neveragain.tech.
