Big Data/Operation Condor

[alice malice]

Was the use of IBM by Nazis, technically, "Big Data"? I don't think
so, though the term as Wiki notes here, is an all-encompassing one:
"Big data is an all-encompassing term for any collection of data sets
so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using
traditional data processing applications"; it seems a stretch to call
the Nazi use of IBM  big data.

It was Big Science, again from Wiki, here is a definition: "Big
science is a term used by scientists and historians of science to
describe a series of changes in science which occurred in industrial
nations during and after World War II, as scientific progress
increasingly came to rely on large-scale projects usually funded by
national governments or groups of governments", but not, what we call
Big Data.



On Thu, Oct 30, 2014 at 5:58 AM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
> 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." As a result, Nazi Germany soon became the
>> second most important customer of IBM after the lucrative US market, Black
>> notes.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. 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. 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. 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." ... <
>
>
> 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
> -
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>
>
>
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