I am scared to say what came to mind when I read introduction of Edwin Black's book, IBM and the Holocaust. I asked myself if I knew any other countries that used religion and ancestry in their ID cards. In Israeli Defense Forces-Palestinian Authority ID cards, a person's religion and her mother's maiden name are included with her CV. All Palestinians (and Israelis) over the age of 16 are required to carry their ID card with the at all times and present it to a security officer (soldier, policeman, private security, etc.) whenever he or she demands. At all large checkpoints in the Occupied West Bank now there are computers on which the soldiers check the identity of each Palestinian male who passes through. I have often watched my guy friends' data pop up on the screen, taking a few seconds to load. Under my watchful, pale, American eye, the soldiers hand back my guy friends their green ID cards. When my friend Musa was in college he did his first two years at Bir Zeit University, the West Bank's most prestigeous university, which, using the route designated for West Bank Palestinians was about an hour's commute on a day with no traffic or delays at the checkpoints. He traveled home from college every two weeks, soldiers would routinely beat him at checkpoints. He has no political record. He simply is an Arab-looking Palestinian. He decided to continue his studies of accounting at his hometown university so he wouldn't have to commute through the checkpoints. Currently the Israeli Army maintains 54 permanent checkpoints in the Occupied West Bank, which is about the size of Delaware. The official Israeli reason for the system of keeping track of the movements of what kinds of people and who people is "security."
The technology that I am using to write this is also the child of the punch card. Is my data machine--is my MacBook--a more advanced tool for organizing genocide? Or is it simply a capitalist machine for maximizing profit? Because its principle aim is to maximize profit, productivity, and potential, do data processors (my fingers do not want to type computer because it is a friendly machine that I have grown up with all my life) simply make the slip into "maximizing profit/potential mode" easy? Perhaps in the same way that guns do not kill people; they just make it a lot easier to do so, computers make it a lot easier to target specific groups of people. I hesitate to say "computers," though. Now computers have such diverse functions; I think "data processors" is a better term.
I have to admit that I read this reading that I was not shocked. I was sickened by reading the details but I had been prepared last Wednesday in class when Holly told us about what the reading would be about, and my "red-diaper" upbringing has taught me to know that because of their emense power and virtual unaccountability to any moral body, corporations are capable of unimaginable evil in the name of profit. I was glad to read Edwin Black's introduction and I thank him for doing the research.
With his echo of "Never again," I think that his intent was that the readers and generations learn from history. I hope they do.
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4 comments:
we need to learn from history, but will we? it is scary how much information computers have, by just "googling" one name you can find so much information. it is necessary that we realize how much potential there is for misuse. as technology advances even further we need to learn to limit it, especially in times of war when the potential for wrongdoings is even stronger.
Yes, new technology (particularly nanotechnology) is creating new ID devices, transforming how governments organize populations ("governments organize populations"-- is the banal rhetoric we use actually 'neutral'? Or does it negate lived experience in its attempt at unemotional communication?)
Many other countries currently have National ID cards. The US will have one as of May 2008.
Consider the REAL ID, which is supposed to replace our driver's licenses by May of 2008.
http://epic.org/privacy/id_cards/#realid
It's interesting that this is often touted as "conspiracy theory" stuff, because the bill passed in 2005 and it goes into effect this May.
Of course many most likely feel that the "conspiracy" aspect is not the existence of the IDs, but the fear that those who gather information would organize to harm citizens in any way.
But even without intent to say "round up" groups of people, the ID is already causing big problems with privacy advocates because the ID requires a street address-- no P.O. Boxes allowed. Because retailers will have access to this information, this is a huge risk for police officers and abuse victims-- not to mention the homeless.
The ID has no limitations as to what information it *could* contain, and it is expected that the card will include a thumbscan and/or retina scan in the near future.
--Holly
Laura, I agree with you that we need to learn about technology so that we will not use it for destructive purposes. I suppose that is what this class is about? But would you ever consider that the message IS in the medium, that perhaps the high degree of organization in computers IS dehumanizing in itself, regardless of whether one uses it for genocide or blogging? That those two activities are simply dehumanizing to varrying degrees? Can a technology in itself contain a moral value like "good" or "bad?"
Is it a gun that kills a person or do people kill people?
I think it's pretty hard to argue that technology does anything but exist, I mean, people kill people, guns don't really care one way or the other. And the reverse of all this are the people who thank god for the Holocaust because it indirectly gave way to nuclear power. It's just that human beings as a species want to move forward, regardless of potential complications. Eventually we're going to start cloning people, regardless of who's religion it offends, just like eventually we're going to invent a weapon that can and most likely will destroy everything. I'm not going to, but one could argue that this is entropy, our natural move towards chaos, or like Kurt Vonnegut says, the only thing wrong with people is that they're too smart.
But I think, in terms of where this technology takes us, it's pretty inevitable that 1. these things are going to get invented, be it for benign or malevolent purposes, and 2. that they will be used to further destructive aims. I don't think it's got anything to dow with right or wrong, I think it's just the way things are.
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