Tech giants Microsoft and IBM have said they would refuse to help create a registry of Muslim Americans under Donald Trump's presidency. Mr Trump has previously discussed a potential religion-based register during the campaign. Although he has rowed back on his statements, a prospective cabinet member has since been photographed carrying plans for "extreme vetting" and questioning for Muslims. Hundreds of individual workers from Silicon Valley and beyond have also signed a pledge on neveragain.tech to say they would refuse to work on building a religious registry. The day after chief executive Satya Nadella and other technology leaders met with Mr Trump in New York, a Microsoft spokesman told Buzzfeed: "We've been clear about our values. We oppose discrimination and we wouldn't do any work to build a registry of Muslim Americans." And IBM, which employs some 380,000 people,said: "IBM would not work on this hypothetical project. It follows official commitments from Apple, Google, Uber and Facebook. "Our company has long-standing values and a strong track record of opposing discrimination against anyone on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or religion. That perspective has not changed, and never will." Mr Trump faced criticism for allowing his daughter Ivanka and sons Don Jr and Eric to sit in on this week's technology summit, which included Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet's Larry Page, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk as guest, as well as Mr Nadella. "You would think that if he is planning to come out with a solution of turning everything over to his children, that he would separate his children immediately from the transition. But he's not even doing that, so it's hard to see how this fits into any plan he may have for trying to avoid conflicts of interests," Larry Noble, the general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, said. Source: Independent
