IBM is no stranger to selling stuff to dictators. First it was the Nazis, now it’s the United Arab Emirates.
But even as [facial recognition] technology comes under more scrutiny in the United States, tech giants such as IBM, and China’s Hikvision and Huawei, are marketing biometric surveillance systems in the UAE, where citizens have fewer options to push back. The UAE has used cellphone hacking software to spy on hundreds of dissidents, journalists, and suspected criminals, and has invested heavily in surveillance technology, according to human rights groups and international media reports.
Check It Out: IBM Sells Technology to a Dictatorship…Again
Corporate Ethics is a fantasy. If a company can make money, like Apple does, by positioning themselves as the champion of ethical behavior, user privacy, and environmental stewardship, they will. If a company can make money, as IBM does, by selling technology to run the Holocaust, track dissidents, and abuse people, they will. At the end of the day all publicly traded companies have to make a profit. They have to maximize investor money. There is a dark heart, a black stain, in the soul of all corporations.
the fascist wannabe wit the totalitarian. friends is running our country with the complicity of republicans. This is a normal outcome.