Big Data/Operation Condor

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

The dark side of Big Data goes further back in time.

Although one shouldn't overemphasize the aspect - most victims were not 
murdered in camps -, it must be said that the IBM supported punch card 
system - on which Kubrick's 2001 possibly alludes -  played an important 
role in the Holocaust.

That's what the tattooed numbers were needed for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

 > ... Black also asserts that a "secret deal" was made between 
Heidinger and Watson during the latter's visit to Germany which allowed 
Dehomag commercial powers outside of Germany, enabling the "now 
Nazified" company to "circumvent and supplant" various national 
subsidiaries and licensees by "soliciting and delivering punch card 
solution technology directly to IBM customers in those 
territories."^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust#cite_note-13> 
As a result, Nazi Germany soon became the second most important customer 
of IBM after the lucrative US market, Black 
notes.^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust#cite_note-14> 
The 1933 census, with design help and tabulation services provided by 
IBM through its German subsidiary, proved to be pivotal to the Nazis in 
their efforts to identify, isolate, and ultimately destroy the country's 
Jewish minority. Machine-tabulated census data greatly expanded the 
estimated number of Jews in Germany by identifying individuals with only 
one or a few Jewish ancestors. Previous estimates of 400,000 to 600,000 
were abandoned for a new estimate of 2 million Jews in the nation of 65 
million.
As the Nazi war machine occupied successive nations of Europe, 
capitulation was followed by a census of the population of each 
subjugated nation, with an eye to the identification and isolation of 
Jews and Gypsies. These census operations were intimately intertwined 
with technology and cards supplied by IBM's German and new Polish 
subsidiaries, which were awarded specific sales territories in Poland by 
decision of the New York office following Germany's successful 
Blitzkrieg 
invasion.^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust#cite_note-16> 
Data generated by means of counting and alphabetization equipment 
supplied by IBM through its German and other national subsidiaries was 
instrumental in the efforts of the German government to concentrate and 
ultimately destroy ethnic Jewish populations across Europe, Black 
demonstrates.^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust#cite_note-17> 
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.^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust#cite_note-18> 
In his book, Black charges that "without IBM's machinery, continuing 
upkeep and service, as well as the supply of punch cards, whether 
located on-site or off-site, Hitler's camps could have never managed the 
numbers they 
did."^<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust#cite_note-Black352-19> 
... <


On 29.10.2014 15:32, Thomas Eckhardt wrote:
> Yet another link from the "Nation" with interesting information 
> loosely related to various aspects of BE:
>
> http://www.thenation.com/blog/185017/anti-socialist-origins-big-data
>
> On "computerized intelligence systems, including software" provided to 
> South American dictatorships by the U.S.:
>
> 'The information being handled by this equipment might not have been 
> “big data,” but the idea was the same: to gather real-time 
> intelligence from as many sources as possible, analyze it, act as 
> quickly and in as coordinated a manner as possible, and then store it 
> for future use. These upgrades allowed intelligence agencies, either 
> working in tandem through Condor or individually, to kill or disappear 
> more than 100,000 Latin American citizens and torture maybe an equal 
> number.'
>
> An exaggeration of the importance of the software, I suspect, but 
> interesting nevertheless.
>
> Thomas
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>

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