Likewise, when we blame IBM for supplying the Nazis during WWII, we're not decrying the enthusiastic early database workers. They aren't the problem; executives without morals are.
Well, you're not. However:
Black reports that every Nazi concentration camp maintained its own Hollerith-Abteilung (Hollerith Department), assigned with keeping tabs on inmates through use of IBM's punchcard technology.
from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaustsuggest that a good number of these "early database workers" were working directly with Hollerith codes on human flesh and tasked with the identification of Jews, Roma, and other ethnic groups deemed undesirable by the regime, along with military logistics, ghetto statistics, train traffic management, and concentration camp capacity.
You might argue they are no more responsible for concentration camps than concentration camp guards, but these are the people punching holes in cards and filtering them with knitting needles while looking out the window at piles of shoes and gold teeth to tabulate.
workers, especially professionals, have a duty to not do that bad work, and to make sure that that bad work doesnt happen
- "I didn't write it, I just had the idea"
- "I didn't implement it, I just made the prototype"
- "It wasn't my product, I just fixed some bugs with it"
- "I can't track everything in these implementation updates, I just work with what I am given"
- "I didn't collect the data, I just deal with what is in the dataset"