undefined | Better HN

0 pointsyellowapple11y ago0 comments

It sounds like you didn't read the parent comment, then, which pointed out multiple examples of technologies that would also fit the criteria being used to chastise IBM.

IBM creating citizen tracking software - in both the Nazi German and Apartheid South African scenarios - is equivalent to a company building engines for tanks or parts for machine guns. Does the EFF plan on suing every last one of those companies?

And to be honest, building a citizen tracking system does seem pretty general-purpose; what government doesn't want to be able to store and manage information about its citizens in an easy manner? Yes, doing this requires working closely with a particular customer (in this case, it was a government of a country that happened to be infamous for institutionalized racism), but that does not automatically mean that every last action of that customer is condoned by IBM.

0 comments

icebraining11y ago

Does the EFF plan on suing every last one of those companies?

The EFF isn't suing anyone. They filled an Amicus Brief on a case started by South African plaintiffs.

And the difference between what IBM did and those hypothetical cases is that there were actually US sanctions that (allegedly) forbid them from making those deals, so what they did was not only immoral but probably illegal.

yellowappleOP11y ago

I agree that IBM should be punished for violating American law. My point is that the focus of the EFF's brief ought to be specific cases where IBM actually did facilitate Apartheid (if they did, in fact, do so). Creating a citizen database (for example) is not immoral, nor is recording race as statistical information, but adding a race identifier to the ID numbers does seem to be, and thus would be a better case. "IBM is bad because it implemented a racial identification code in the second-to-last digit of citizen ID numbers" is a much more convincing case than "IBM is bad because it created a citizen ID numbering system".

HillRat11y ago

(In reply to Icebraining (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9030542))

I think the key here is whether the ATS requires a cause of action to arise in the US in order to enable a claim under ATS (any international-law specialists in the audience?). In the mid-1980s, IBM created a "sanctions-buster," ISM, that was its South African subsidiary under a different flag; activist shareholder efforts to stop sales to ISM in the 1980s were defeated. ISM, in turn, didn't sell directly to the Apartheid state (something that IBM's James C. Reilly used to defend the company's behavior in South Africa), but it did form a joint enterprise with Barlow Rand, which was a major munitions supplier to the South African state.

The problem is that all this was well-known at the time, and no actions were taken against IBM for what was effectively (if not legally, in a technical sense) an evasion of section 304 prohibition (and, perhaps -- not knowing what controls were in place at IBM -- also a more direct violation of 304(b)(1) end-user verification requirements). If the plaintiffs have to argue IBM's violation of US law in order to get to the ATS argument, this could be a very difficult path to take.

scintill7611y ago

> equivalent to a company building engines for tanks or parts for machine guns. Does the EFF plan on suing every last one of those companies?

Well, setting aside everything else, I think it's fair to note that tanks and machine guns are generally out of the EFF's "scope", so it wouldn't be hypocritical per se for them to not act on such situations. I think I understand your point and it's worth discussing, but not specifically in the context of what EFF should or shouldn't do about non-"electronic frontier" issues.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse