Apple,
Google, and Uber have all broken their respective silences on whether they
would participate in helping build a Muslim registry for the incoming Trump
administration, an Apple spokesperson said, “We think people should be treated
the same no matter how they worship, what they look like, who they love. We
haven’t been asked and we would oppose such an effort.”
Earlier
today, a Google spokesperson issued a statement saying, “In relation to the
hypothetical of whether we would ever help build a ‘Muslim registry’ — we
haven’t been asked, of course we wouldn’t do this and we are glad — from all
that we’ve read — that the proposal doesn’t seem to be on the table.”
Meanwhile, Uber responded with a terse “no” in response to a similar inquiry.
“WE ARE GLAD... THAT THE PROPOSAL DOESN’T SEEM TO BE
ON THE TABLE.”
These
are just the latest — but arguably among the most important and high-profile Silicon Valley players to go on record refusing to build a database that could
be used to track and target Muslim Americans. Pressure started mounting last
month when The Intercept began asking tech companies about
the subject and only received a response from Twitter, which said it would
never participate in such a project.
The
situation then heightened this week when a Facebook spokesperson, who had
initially refused to comment on the matter, accidentally emailed. The
email compared any statement regarding the building of a Muslim registry to a
“straw man” argument and suggested Facebook’s PR strategy should be to remain
silent. BuzzFeed published the email, which then forced Facebook to issue a statement saying
it had not been asked, nor would it agree, to helping build a Muslim registry.
Since
Facebook’s embarrassing stumble, a number of other tech companies have gone on
the record disavowing the highly controversial Trump campaign promise.
Microsoft PR head Frank X. Shaw said in a statement given to BuzzFeed,
“We oppose discrimination and we wouldn’t do any work to build a registry of
Muslim Americans.” Both Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Alphabet chief Larry
Page attended a summit with President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday, as
did Apple CEO Tim Cook and Uber CEO Travis Kalanick.
APPLE AND UBER BOTH WENT ON THE RECORD AFTER GOOGLE
SPOKE UP.
Ride-hailing
company Lyft, which like Uber could hypothetically be asked to hand over user
travel data, said today it would refuse to participate with the government if
it were asked for such data or other tools to build a Muslim registry. One
notable exception here has been Oracle, the cloud computing giant that has in
the past counted the National Security Agency as a client. The company declined
to comment when asked about a Muslim registry or whether it still works with
the NSA. In a separate event, Trump yesterday appointed Oracle CEO Safra Catz
to the executive committee of his transition team.
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