Stoic Ethics Post 4

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IBM conducted all business in Germany through its subsidiary, Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft (Dehomag).

Dehomag had strong business relationships in Germany before WWII. IBM was a popular vendor of census solutions, collecting demographic data such as religion along with family relations. This would be one of the first databases capable of solving the Nazi problem of identifying Judaism as a bloodline. However, most of these transactions were seen as optimizations of census taking and many countries made similar arrangements with IBM.

IBM machines were not sold to the Nazis, but leased, this meant that they were maintained on a biweekly schedule. Punch cards were inventoried and kept in constant supply. Continued operations of the Holocaust require continuous material and technical expertise provided by IBM.

Officials in Nazi Germany held IBM in high regard on both a personal level, as well as technical. Many of Dehomag’s upper management were openly devout Nazis. IBM CEO at the time, Thomas Watson, had met with Hitler and visited Germany several times over the years of 1930-1945. The German government also attempted to award Watson a medal for his company’s contributions to economic reforms.

Circumstances seem to suggest that IBM’s New York office. Several sources claim that IBM New York representatives spent protracted amounts of time in Berlin and Geneva performing oversight, suggesting a nontrivial awareness of business in the region. CEO Watson was also in favor of a European school for training additional technicians for machines. While this could have been for any number of benign reasons, it at the very suggests that Watson either hadn’t lost control of IBM operations in Europe, or was unconcerned about it to the point of negligence.

Critics of IBM acknowledge only one statement addressing IBM’s involvement in the holocaust, which states that “IBM and its employees around the world find the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime abhorrent and categorically condemn any actions which aided their unspeakable acts.” On the topic of records, IBM claims that they have complied to the best of their ability, but that full recovery of records of postwar Germany was impossible, saying:

“IBM does not have much information about this period or the operations of Dehomag. Most documents were destroyed or lost during the war. The documents that did exist were placed in the public domain some time ago.”

Most authors note that IBM has refused to cooperate on writings.

While the loss of information in Europe postwar is not a uniquely IBM claim, Edwin Black and a team of researchers were able to collect a more complete record of Dehormag’s relationship with Nazi Germany and IBM’s relationship with Derhomad in the 1930s and 1940s, which was published in IBM and the Holocaust. This suggests that whatever the present states of IBM’s official records, some recovery/updating is possible. This is in direct contradiction to IBM’s claim that “based on everything the company has seen to date, there appear to be no new facts or findings that bear on this important issue and period.”

It can be established that IBM had business ties with Nazi Germany through Dehomag, and maintained maintenance of the machines used in the holocaust. IBM has been reticent on the issue ever since and made little measurable reparation efforts relating to the holocaust, but defenders of IBM point out that this situation is not unique to IBM’s business in Germany (see General Motors) and all rulings have found these companies free of liability for decades.

Stoic ethics takes a clear stance in these issues. Things that are truly good are good in all cases, failing to strive for this represents a deficiency of virtue. IBM’s collections of census data and construction of custom geneology-tracing machines were clearly not good in all cases, as we saw their applications to genocide. This potential for harm is technically damning, but IBM made several other questionable decisions that were certainly not good in all cases.

Evidence suggests that technicians who could have reported on the progress of the Holocaust to IBM were directly at sites central to the Holocaust, including the concentration camps. However, IBM claims ignorance as to the use of their machines. If IBM had information and is now lying, that would be obviously evil, but ignorance does not absolve IBM in this case. If IBM management was truly unaware of the situation in the camps, then they allowed their subsidiary to hide immoral acts committed with IBM equipment under IBM’s name. There’s no way IBM could allow insubordination on such a scale without displaying high levels of negligence (which again would not be virtuous in all cases as we have seen).

Further evidencing IBM’s involvement is the presence of their management in Europe and the acceptance of the special commision for the Hollerherth system. IBM invested clear amounts of mental, physical, and capital efforts towards creating the tools that would later be turned towards the Holocaust and maintained ownership of these tools, apparently without any understanding of how they were used. Such behavior does not seem to display intentions to mitigate negative consequences from these actions, which is of course inconsistent with the directive to do things that are good in all circumstances.

Ethical Analysis on the Implementation of a Muslim Registry

Now nearing the end of a four-year term, President Donald Trump seems to be at the center of the big data—its privacy, accuracy, and use—controversy. Although his reign did not see the implementation of a promised Muslim registry come to fruition, it did see people raising well over 20 million dollars to instantiate a border wall. Additionally, Trump and his campaign have been accused, and for the most part found guilty of, leveraging big data to target specific audiences to win the election, specifically by creating very precise, intimate profiles and targeting consumers. With this kind of xenophobia fueling a huge population, the fear of a massively racist use of big data is very real. At the heart of the controversy lie a few main points, especially pertaining to the idea of building a Muslim registry that would document and go after all Muslims living in, migrating to, or leaving the United States.

The problem starts with data brokers and large privately held data companies aggregating and analyzing huge amounts of personal information to create very private, unique profiles of nearly every US citizen. The key here is that data does not necessarily have to come from one source or be explicitly given to these companies. Once an individual essentially “waves” usage rights in order to use a new app or device, private companies can access and amass that data. This data can then be analyzed and sold to the highest bidder, no matter what that bidder intends to use the data for. While the government is forbidden from profiling its citizens via data as per the Privacy Act of 1974, nothing forbids government institutions from purchasing and using this private data from a privately held company. This lack of legislature regarding large data privacy has left a lot of gray areas in legality of handling big data, and exactly how and what it can be used for. As a result, a Muslim registry really isn’t that unfathomable or difficult to create. In fact, many companies affirmed that something like this would be easy to do—even if it was a bit unethical. In response to this threat of an attack on human rights, some technical professionals are pledging to refuse to cooperate in building discriminatory databases, saying that they will quit their jobs if they are forced to do so in addition to speaking out against the company.

With the case laid out, it is clear that a Muslim registry would be completely and totally unethical. Not only does systematic racism and profiling go against the stoic ethical framework since it creates and nourishes bias and inequalities, but any algorithm or database that attempts this task is guaranteed to have false positives—where the algorithm incorrectly profiles a person—which confirms that the process is biased. In the article by Tanya O’Carroll, she says, “Such databases pose numerous risks of facilitating discrimination against people. But still other problems arise due to the fact that these databases are not perfect.” A system in which failure is an option—not to mention when that failure has detrimental ramifications—is not moral. Additionally, O’Carroll writes, “Data brokers and data analytic companies — like all businesses — have a responsibility to respect human rights, which means making sure they don’t cause or contribute to human rights abuses.” Since data brokers and analysts are private companies, they do have a corporate social responsibility to protect and defend human rights, and to not exploit private data for financial gain. An organization should be bound by a rational and fair code of ethics, devised by not only the investors of a company, but the consumers, and all those who are affecting by the corporation, especially since big data is so unregulated. This is summed up well by Chris Dixon in his article when he says, “Just because it is legal does not make it right.” More legislation and regulation are needed for these big data companies, but companies are also obligated to protect and defend human rights and the privacy of their customers.

The creation of a Muslim registry would be equally immoral if the government created it, perhaps even more so. People’s data should not be used to make discriminatory assumptions, and the government should not be using people’s data to create a Muslim registry. In fact, the government should be taking a firmer stance and introducing much more rigid regulations regarding big data, since its job is to protect the rights and privacy of the citizens it serves, and constitutionally, this is regardless of any religious or ethnic affiliation. Again, the data and the analysis are imperfect, and people are not giving their permission for their data to be aggregated and consumed to advance government discrimination. Often times, the personal data that an individual elects to give up is small and insignificant in itself, but when this bit of explicit information is pooled with enough other pieces over time, it is possible to implicitly comb the data and draw assumptions that create a personal profile (and bias) that can be leveraged by private or government institutions—and could just be plain inaccurate!

Tech professionals, especially who those who work for the large data brokers, are taking a stand, but companies shouldn’t be putting their employees in this position in the first place. If more legislation was passed that specifically outlined how data can be stored, analyzed, and applied, and companies took a stronger stance and owned their corporate social responsibility to their customers and their customer’s privacy, and to society in general, the big data market would pose much less of a threat to human rights and minimize the risk of discriminatory exploitation.

Comparison Interview with the Epicureans

The Stoic viewpoint is primarily against a Muslim registry. Their issue with such a registry would be mainly concerned with its possible use to promote profiling and further biases. Stoics believe that all people have the same capacity for virtue regardless of circumstance and that to achieve virtue we have to help others reach their full virtuous potential. They believe we live virtuously by recognizing the equality of all, encouraging what makes humanity similar instead of divisions like class, race, or religion. Stoics would not support a Muslim registry being used to promote inequalities based on religion or race as they see biases as arising from emotions rather than reason. Additionally, Stoics do not believe in punishing actions or shaming as they are emotional reactions and too focused on outcomes. They would not support the rationality that such a registry would be a response to any previous incidents. Also, Stoics would find issue with the registry having possible false positives or a lack of clear cause for what names made the list, and would want such a list to have clear qualifications and accuracy.

The Epicureans, in contrast to the Stoics’ focus on intent behind an action, focus on the consequences of an action. They believe ethical actions are those that maximize pleasure and minimize pain. They believe that following this course will lead to the greatest future happiness, or the least amount of future anxiety, while the Stoics believe happiness is found through virtuous, rational actions.

I believe the Stoics and Epicureans will differ in opinion on a Muslim registry. While I believe both groups will be against the registry it will be for different reasons. While the Stoics might oppose the registry because they see the reasons for forming the registry to be against virtue and based primarily in emotional response, the Epicureans would oppose the registry for it’s ability to cause more pain than pleasure. The formation of a Muslim registry causes potential unhappiness to those fearing being put on the list, those with anxiety of involvement making the list, and in others who feel strongly about the registry. There isn’t enough happiness caused by the registry to counteract this, as the registry has not yet proven to positively affect national security. It also thus far seems to increase overall anxiety levels with people concerned about data collection and monitoring and the idea of divisions within the nation. While both ethical frameworks negatively view the registry, the Stoics are more focused on the reasoning behind the creation of the registry and the Epicureans are more focused on the consequences of the registry’s existence.

I interviewed an Epicurean (Kendyll Kraus) for their view on the registry and found their ideas to be similar to what I predicted. They found the registry to be unethical, as Epicureans believe that no one should disregard the pleasure of others while seeking their own pleasure. While they saw that the registry would bring whatever private company created and sold the registry happiness (in the form of money) this happiness would only come at the expense of others’ happiness, those negatively affected by the list, and so would not be ethically attained. They also said that as the registry has not proven to have any effectiveness in increasing national security it has not brought significant pleasure. It might have been significant if the registry increased safety, an important form of pleasure, but this has not been the case. These comments were similar to what I predicted the Epicureans would believe with the addition of the Epicureans’ consideration of not impacting the happiness of others in pursuit of your own happiness.

Comparison Interview with the Legalists

As stated above, the Stoics are strongly against a Muslim registry because it opens avenues for increased bias, discrimination and unfair exploitation. Because bias is one of the great threats to humans’ ability to think rationally, and Stoics believe rationally is at the core of all ethical behavior, a Muslim registry does not align with a Stoic’s beliefs.

However, these matters are unimportant to the Legalists. Their priority is to maximize the control that the government has over its citizens, who they, by default, deem untrustworthy. To the typical Legalist, an ethical action is one that promotes the structural soundness of a group. On the Legalist’s introductory blog post, the group states, “It is certain that under a legalistic framework, statewide surveillance would be applauded as a necessary measure to maintain control.” It is was difficult to see how a Legalist would not be an advocate for a Muslim registry, based on these stated beliefs.

I interviewed Aman Mital of the Legalists and found, to no surprise, that my prediction was correct. He confirmed that yes, the implementation of a registry closely aligns with the Legalists’ general core belief that states should closely monitor their citizens behavior to “watch for dangers.” Additionally, states should have the rights to enforce any laws that they please. However, Mital clarified a point that I had not anticipated. He wanted it to be known that, while Legalists generally support the proposal, they would not support it in countries where laws would ban a registry. This, however, is a nonissue in the United States - Mital brings up that Korematsu vs the United States sets a legal precedent for a registry being allowed. Thus, Legalists support a Muslim registry in the United States.

Additionally, during our interview, we discussed a few other points. First, because he claimed that state surveillance should always be increased, I asked Mital if Legalists would support a registry for other religious groups as well. He answered that, given a country has the proper resources to maintain many registries, Legalists would likely be in support. He emphasized this point further, stating, “Total state surveillance prevents chaos.” Wanting to challenge the Legalist’s confident and wavering view, I asked MItal if there was any amount of public disdain for this proposal that would cause Legalists to reconsider their position. After all, US law allows freedom of speech, and widespread disapproval could result in societal chaos. In response to this point, Mital suggested that internment camps could be established to maintain order. According to him, Korematsu vs the United States demonstrated that such camps are acceptable during times of war. It was clear that a change of heart was unlikely.

Going into this interview, I understood that Legalists would be highly likely to support a Muslim registry. While my prediction was correct, I was surprised by my interviewee’s acknowledgement that a Muslim registry would not be acceptable in some cases – for instance, in country’s where such a registry is banned by law. Overall, though, it was clear that Legalist support for a registry is rigid and that their values differ greatly from Stoic values.