
Tech worker resistance is crucial to preventing human rights abuses in the U.S - sp332
https://blog.valerieaurora.org/2016/12/13/why-tech-worker-resistance-is-crucial-to-preventing-large-scale-human-rights-abuses-in-the-u-s/
======
morgante
We need a code of ethics for software developers, with actual teeth (violating
it means you can't commercially build software any more).

Edit: it's amazing how much the alt-right has infiltrated Hacker News. The
notion that we, as developers, should have a professional obligation to engage
ethically should not be so controversial (yet here I am with negative karma
for proposing it).

To expand on my point:

1\. This is hardly a novel suggestion. Lots of positions have professional
associations with ethics rules. See engineers, doctors, lawyers, librarians,
etc.

2\. This is not a union. Lawyers don't bargain collectively.

3\. Nobody is talking about illegal immigration. The worry here is around
proposals for a database of Muslim-Americans (who are almost all here
legally).

4\. Nobody is coming for your code. Obviously you won't need to enter your
professional PIN to compile code. It just means you'd have to be a member to
work for a major tech company.

~~~
abstractbeliefs
But who decides what's ethical?

I struggle with the same issues here in the UK, where the professional body
for tech, the British Computing Society (BCS) is not just toothless, but in my
eyes, actively harmful (for example, chose to vote _in favour_ of NSA-like
practices at GCHQ - including giving evidence (in the form of an expert
statement) to the government).

I think what is important to realise is that something approximating the
majority of people do actually go against the values typically espoused by the
people who visit HN, not just in the wider public but also within tech. And
even discounting those, how many people are quite happy to just do as told?
How do we work to distill the concept of professional ethics in tech from
these people, and then instill it?

~~~
idlewords
I think a good first step is to learn from groups—doctors, librarians,
lawyers, engineers—who have such a working system of professional ethics in
place.

~~~
slavik81
They define a much more narrow set of ethics. Nobody's losing their
engineering license for designing missiles. You lose your license for sneaking
in last minute changes in without proper review, accidentally causing missiles
to explode in their launch tube.

~~~
morgante
Doctors lose their medical license for deliberately harming people or engaging
in inhumane experimentation.

~~~
slavik81
How many doctors lost their licence over capital punishment?

~~~
morgante
Actually, since 2010 anesthesiologists have refused to participate in capital
punishment. [0]

> In at least one case, the planned execution of Michael Morales, the
> execution warrant was stayed indefinitely due to the objection of the
> contacted physicians to participate.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_of_medical_profe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_of_medical_professionals_in_American_executions)

------
legostormtroopr
> 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".

~~~
idlewords
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.

~~~
legostormtroopr
> 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/](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?

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

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

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not above the occasional cheap shot.

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

------
jtcond13
Sure, force your boss to have the H-1B guy write that SQL query.

Then hop on the Google Bus and try not to think about the ways in which the
tech industry is rotting away American democracy (c.f. "Facebook is
confirmation bias at scale").

~~~
idlewords
The H-1B guy is not going to write the query to get himself deported. Even we
immigrants are smarter than that.

~~~
legostormtroopr
Why would the HB-1 guy be worries about deportation? HB-1 guy has a legal visa
to be in the country.

------
threatofrain
I don't view a decentralised resistance of technology workers as the right
remedy behind this "Never Again" movement.

* It underestimates the amount of diversity which exists within the tech community in terms of political or moral beliefs and attitudes. Just a small fraction of disagreement is enough technical capability to build a lot of things for big entities.

* The AMA or ABA is useful for censuring activities which are obviously noxious to broader society, which helps it manage its standing within society, but I think that is almost the entirety of the motivation and scope of professional ethics. Nevertheless I think there are advantages to organization and I hope for more of it. That being said,

You can't stop a metaphorical database of Muslims at a time when there's
sufficient political support to do so -- and there's plenty at the moment.
There's also enough political support to build illegal mass surveillance
machinery, and then lie to Congress about it. The aggregate of the US is okay
with that, just like how the aggregate of the UK is okay with even more in-
your-face surveillance. Likewise, you cannot stop the documented abuses of
psychiatry when there's all too much political support for it.

* I anecdotally see tech workers as constituting a small % of society, and as too politically diverse and unorganized to do anything interesting. The tech community places too much responsibility on itself without a commensurate degree of reliable power to back it up.

------
brighteyes
It's true all human beings - including software engineers - need to think
about ethics and to avoid participating in human rights abuses. But the "Never
Again" pledge is a simplistic, knee-jerk way to do that.

Refusing to build a database of people based on their ethnicity or religion
sounds like a good idea when you think of the possible abuses it can be used
for. But the US census gathers precisely that information, and (almost) no one
freaks out about it. Google and Facebook already have that information, and
(almost) no one freaks out about it.

The only reason someone is freaking out now is because Trump was elected. Now,
that might make sense - maybe a normally harmless database will be put to
horrible use by him. He has said horrible things. But he's also shown a lot of
what he says isn't intended literally.

We do need to be careful and vigilant. But "Never Again" isn't a good way to
do that.

Another issue is with this kind of thinking:

> But history tells us that, whether you do it humanely or not, this kind of
> large-scale human rights abuse requires huge numbers of people working
> together with the full knowledge that they are committing human rights
> abuses.

No, as Hannah Arendt and many others have shown, large-scale human rights
abuses often do _not_ involve lots of people consciously doing evil. Instead,
they usually think there are good reasons for what they do.

~~~
anigbrowl
_But he 's also shown a lot of what he says isn't intended literally._

I am so sick of this bullshit meme. The price of all the privilege and power
of being President is that you take responsibility for what you say and how
people could interpret it, because your actions have potentially life-changing
consequences for people and so people have a strong interest in knowing
(through your speech) what sort of actions you intend to take. If Trump can't
or won't control his own speech, why should we assume that his actions are
rooted in competence? You're basically saying that the concept of honesty is
irrelevant when it comes to politics, which is an invitation to the worst
sorts of corruption.

It also overlooks two things: one, that it's incredibly disrespectful of
people who are victimized by his casual remarks to say that the anxiety and
fear stimulated from his position of power don't matter and thus (implicitly)
that it's OK to provoke anger and fear in other people - in a word, bullying.
Two, that many of Trump's supporters do take him literally - about building a
wall, or how to treat Muslims, or about it being OK to grab women by the
pussy, and Trump is empowering them while simultaneously disclaiming
responsibility for their actions.

I can't believe I even need to explain what a steaming pile of bullshit that
position is.

 _No, as Hannah Arendt and many others have shown, large-scale human rights
abuses often do not involve lots of people consciously doing evil. Instead,
they usually think there are good reasons for what they do._

You mean like in the opening sentences of your comment?

~~~
brighteyes
The problem is that in fact half the US population interprets Trump the way he
intends. You and I belong to the other half, and we are puzzled by his non-
literalness.

Apparently for the last 8 years the opposite was happening, you and I had a
president that spoke "our language", while the other half of the US kept
misreading him.

I don't know what to do about this except to try to listen to the other side
and understand them the way they intend to be understood.

~~~
anigbrowl
I've been listening to the other side for a good 15 years now and I have a
very good idea of where they're coming from, thanks. And I don't mean
secondary sources like liberal commentary websites or hand-wringing books on
America's changing social fabric, I mean that I read all kinds of right-
leaning sources, from think-tank publications t forums, public and private,
from abstract economic theory to neo-nazi groups. I pay close attention to
everything from what sort of humor they like to their religious and
philosophical justifications for a wide variety of radical views. I have spent
many thousands of hours immersed in conservative thought, which is pretty much
the opposite of being in a filter bubble.

------
clarkmoody
How about we work to make the government small and weak enough that it doesn't
have the capability to commit large-scale human rights abuses?

~~~
krapp
Then you have two problems: large-scale human rights abuses by private
interests, and small-scale human rights abuses by the government.

------
jimmywanger
This article is fairly silly.

> “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.”

National origin - don't you have to declare what country you were born in to
visit/emigrate to the United States? This is trying to legislate intent, which
fails miserably. One thing we've seen is that if the database/tool exists,
it'll be used in ways that nobody had ever thought of before.

> I’m not one of the people who seriously believes that the cost of deporting
> millions of people will deter the Trump administration from doing it (one
> easy way to reduce costs: don’t deport people humanely). But history tells
> us that, whether you do it humanely or not, this kind of large-scale human
> rights abuse

I like how she goes straight from deportation to large-scale human rights
abuse. If you deport illegal immigrants (regardless of national origin or
faith), you're enforcing the law. Period, point blank. To stretch that into
human rights abuse is far-fetched at best.

~~~
tptacek
I am so far batting .750 with my conservative friends trying to convince them
that mass deportation is an issue they should be concerned with. Every one of
them begins by pointing out that "illegal immigration is illegal, full stop".
Here are the issues they're not immediately considering:

* For many Latino immigrants, the wait list for permanent residency is over 20 years long. The wait isn't that long because we want to restrict immigration; we broadly agree that if we drastically reduced the immigrant population in the US, the economy would suffer, because those people are staffing the meat packing plants, cleaning the hotels, working the line at practically every high-end restaurant, harvesting crops, laying bricks, and putting up tile. Rather: the 20 year wait list is simple bureaucratic cruelty: there are loud constituencies who are uneasy about formally allowing people to stay here while being totally content with allowing them to work here undocumented, so long as they're kept second-class.

* That's bad enough, but not dispositive. The real problem is that we've created the expectation that people can work here for years and years without obtaining permanent residency, and so people put down roots _and then have children here_. Children born in America are American citizens, full stop. We are idiosyncratic in having a Constitution that guarantees birthright citizenship, but we do, and we are a nation of laws. To deport undocumented workers with children born here is to put young American citizens in the position of having to choose between losing their parents or their home country. _Pointlessly_. We owe our fellow citizens better.

* A huge number (pretty much everyone agrees it's a plurality) of undocumented workers are undocumented not because they've done something wrong, but because they've somehow fallen off their visa track --- which the law makes incredibly easy to do! We put them on an untenable 20 year legal obstacle course that really requires professional representation to complete. They spend that time working and raising children. Then we punish their children for technicalities, while quietly replacing them with other Latino immigrants.

* The due process concerns about deportation are overwhelming. More than 70% of deportation cases in which the subject is represented by an immigration attorney fail --- the immigrant isn't deported. But the overwhelming majority of deportees aren't represented, because we don't guarantee counsel to people in immigration court. All we give them is a translator. If I sued you on some bogus libel charge for pissing me off on HN, how well do you think you'd do if you were denied a lawyer?

I am ultimately ambivalent about immigration enforcement. I recognize that we
are in many ways more lenient than much of Europe. My objection to the big
dumb wall isn't moral, it's just that it's a big dumb waste of money.

I am not ambivalent about pointlessly tearing up, or, worse, forcibly
relocating families that include American citizens. There are hundreds of
thousands of those. I would absolutely quit a job, refuse investment from a
firm that supported, or sever ties with a client that participated in a mass
deportation program that forced children to choose between their parents and
their country.

~~~
jimmywanger
> there are loud constituencies who are uneasy about formally allowing people
> to stay here while being totally content with allowing them to work here
> undocumented, so long as they're kept second-class.

If you have to get smuggled into a country without papers to live in this
country and work for wages less than people who already live in the country,
you sort of already have the expectation of being second class. Yet, people
still come. It's a choice they make. It's not an easy choice, but still a
choice.

> we are a nation of laws

and then

>To deport undocumented workers with children born here is to put young
American citizens in the position of having to choose between losing their
parents or their home country. Pointlessly.

The law is the point, as you said, we're a nation of laws.

> The due process concerns about deportation are overwhelming.

Due process is only a right guaranteed to citizens. Not quite sure what your
point is.

~~~
pcwalton
> It's a choice they make. It's not an easy choice, but still a choice.

And as for the children who never had a choice to make...?

~~~
jimmywanger
That argument works for really any situation involving children.

Children never had choices to make when born into an alcoholic family, or in a
country in a war torn third world country, and yet they still suffer. That's
just sort of how life is. The children suffer based on the mistakes of their
parents.

We have limited resources, and we have to decide how to partition these
resources.

~~~
pcwalton
So because children suffer injustices, it's fine to spend billions of dollars
of taxpayer money to deliberately cause more injustice? That can't be your
argument.

~~~
jimmywanger
> it's fine to spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money to deliberately
> cause more injustice?

To enforce the law and to prevent these injustices to happen in the future.
How are you causing more injustice? That's sort of like saying "Why spend
money to evict squatters in houses they don't own? They have children, and it
costs money to evict them."

~~~
pcwalton
Childhood arrivals are not squatters!

~~~
jimmywanger
Childhood arrivals are definitely squatters. If they're not born in the states
or citizens. They're here when they shouldn't be here.

Those that were born here are citizens, and get the choice like every other
citizen - move to be with their families, or stay here alone. The fact that
they're children is immaterial.

------
chrismcb
I don't get it. You are saying you don't want to make a database that the US
can abuse(but it is OK for other countries?) but then you concede that the US
probably already has the best database, but, wink-wink, they won't abuse it?

~~~
tptacek
No. The pledge acknowledges that abusable databases exist. It doesn't ask that
people leave companies that maintain those databases. What it demands is that
signatories commit to resist abuse, and, ultimately, to sever ties with
employers that abuse those databases.

The fundamental idea is that if enough people sign, management at tech
companies will have to make decisions to comply with unethical government
orders knowing that the discovery of their compliance (which is inevitable)
might cause significant retention problems.

~~~
brighteyes
> The pledge acknowledges that abusable databases exist. It doesn't ask that
> people leave companies that maintain those databases. What it demands is
> that signatories commit to resist abuse, and, ultimately, to sever ties with
> employers that abuse those databases.

In practice, developers work on those databases in Google and Facebook.
They'll be "ok" because they don't know they are abused. Other engineers in
those companies will work on giving the government access to it (as Snowden
documented), and they too will not see any abuse so they are ok. The
government gets that information and does what it wants with it. It might be
abusing it right now. (There have been many deportations under Obama, for
example, with little uproar; it's possible tech databases helped in those.)

The pledge is toothless. To be actually effective, it should have called on
people to not work at Google and Facebook.

~~~
tptacek
The pledge commits them to resign from Facebook or Google should either comply
with a USG mass deportation program. That's not "toothless".

~~~
brighteyes
As I said, Google/Facebook data may _already_ have been used in Obama's
deportations. No one knows either way. So the pledge can have zero effect.

The real problem is the existence of the databases, and government access to
them. Both of those things are facts right now. The pledge ignores that.

~~~
tptacek
That the pledge doesn't instantaneously solve all problems does not imply that
the pledge is "toothless".

------
stale2002
" target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin."

Ok, but what about a database used to target people who aren't in the country
legally? Is that a human rights abuse? No race, or gender targeting.

------
wcummings
Strongly agree, the lack of ethics in our field is deplorable. If people were
building software for gas chambers HN commenters would find a way to excuse
it.

~~~
adrienne
I've literally seen different HN commenters say some variation on "maybe some
people are just not valuable enough to keep alive" three times _today_.

------
brador
One step closer to a software engineer union. Move faster. It's time.

