Protests from within the technology industry continue as hundreds of employees at Salesforce have requested that the company’s leadership reassess its work with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) following reports that authorities have separated thousands of children from their parents at the U.S–Mexico border.
In a letter addressed to Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s co-founder and CEO, the employees argue that, by providing CBP with a number of its products, the company is potentially abandoning its core values and making employees “complicit in the inhumane treatment of vulnerable people.”
“We are particularly concerned about the use of Service Cloud to manage border activities,” the letter, sent to Benioff on Monday, reads. “Given the inhumane separation of children from their parents currently taking place at the border, we believe that our core value of Equality is at stake and that Salesforce should re-examine our contractual relationship with CBP and speak out against its practices.”Salesforce are obviously not giants like Amazon, Google, or Microsoft, but it may be just as significant that Salesforce employees are following in the ethically conscious footsteps of their colleagues from larger firms. The Silicon Valley ethos of disrupting now, and only worrying about the consequences later (if ever) may be shifting to one where the ethical considerations inherent in these tech companies' practices are one of their employees foremost concerns.
If so, it's a long overdue development. Technology isn't just a collection of devices; it all impacts human beings at some point, and that human impact needs to be factored into the designs. All too often, though, it hasn't been, which is how Uber and Theranos happened. If we're starting to see the kind of sea change that will make the next Theranos less likely, then that can only be a good thing.
Also, the intersection of ethics, politics, and tech? It's not stopping anytime soon.