There’s a tension in democracy between the citizens and their decision-making power in terms of the greater good, and those they elect to Congress who are directly responsible for the greater good of the nation. There’s a lot of room for discussion and honorable dissension in that tension.<\/p>\n
Still, I jumped when I read this this quote from the CEO of Palantir<\/em> Technologies<\/em><\/strong>, Alex Karp. Palantir supplies software<\/a> used by ICE<\/em><\/strong> (Immigration and Customs Enforcement<\/b>) for managing the process of apprehension of undocumented persons in the United States. As noted here<\/a>, a number of computer technology companies have run into problems when supplying competing software, as employees are uncomfortable with and may even refuse to work on such products.<\/p>\n But Palantir<\/strong><\/em>?<\/p>\n In an interview with Bloomberg News this week, Karp said the government should be responsible for answering difficult questions about how technologies may be used to surveil citizens.<\/p>\n \u201cI do not believe that these questions should be decided in Silicon Valley by a number of engineers at large platform companies,\u201d Karp said in the interview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s interesting how one individual – or perhaps a small team of C-suiters – can make that decision, but a much larger number of engineers should not<\/em>.<\/p>\n Think about that for a moment.<\/p>\n Of course, there are various caveats, such as foreign engineers not having a right to make that decision, and the engineers in question could simply leave their jobs for more morally agreeable jobs. In the latter case, though, I’d dryly observe that a corporation should really be a cooperative venture, and if large numbers of your employees are concerned that your business strategy has run over your moral standards, perhaps you should think about it.<\/p>\n But it really comes down to engineers who are members of a democracy being told to shut up and not have an opinion on a moral issue of the day. It’s one thing to have an opinion and express it forcefully, but to tell others that they should just sit down and work: I think that’s a problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There’s a tension in democracy between the citizens and their decision-making power in terms of the greater good, and those they elect to Congress who are directly responsible for the greater good of the nation. There’s a lot of room for discussion and honorable dissension in that tension. Still, I \u2026 Continue reading