***** An Open Letter to the CEOs of #Apple and #Google: Would you have supported the Nazis during WWII? *****

Dear Tim and Sundar,

Hi. I'd normally start a letter like this asking how you were doing, but since you're both billionaires who have been palling around with Donald Trump, I think we can dispense with that formality this time.

I've got a question for you guys. I don't really expect an answer, but I feel that it needs to be asked anyway. Here we go ...

"If Apple, Google, and apps had been around during WWII, would you have supported the Nazis, either explicitly or implicitly?"

As you probably know, IBM has been raked over the coals for decades for the technological assistance they provided the Third Reich, helping them tabulate "undesirables" for a "final solution."

Which brings us to you two! Yeah, you knew this was coming. I have to assume that your dramatic decisions to remove apps that helped the public legally determine the location of ICE operations was approved at your level. If not, you're still ultimately responsible, of course.

Word is that DOJ requested Apple to pull the apps, and that Google pulled them proactively without waiting around for a request. These of course were completely legal apps, breaking no laws that I'm aware of. Banning them from your apps stores effectively bans them virtually completely in a practical sense. Sideloading in iOS has always been difficult, and Google has announced upcoming restrictions that would make sideloading much more difficult for Android as well.

The parallels between your decisions regarding those apps and what went on during WWII in Nazi Germany are very troubling indeed. The Nazis legally (under then current laws) rounded up their target populations: Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and a range of other "undesirables", then "disappeared" them with minimal or no due process, whisking them off to concentration camps. This included cripples, mothers, children -- an enormous range. Many were never heard from again. Millions were exterminated.

I don't need to spell out the parallels with what Trump's ICE is now doing -- they're obvious on the daily news. And before you protest that you're not killing anyone by banning those apps, I'd argue that you indeed are very likely contributing to deaths.

The large majority of people being deported via these ICE raids have no criminal record and their only "crime" is being in this country illegally -- sometimes for decades raising families of U.S. citizens. Many are being deported to countries where they face the high likelihood of horrific treatment including torture and death.

I don't really need to go on any further, do I boys? You're both intelligent and informed. You both know exactly what you're doing. So I come back to the original question. If your firms had been around during WWII, would you have supported the Nazis? If not, your apparently enthusiastic embrace of the current administration's fascist behaviors seems inexplicable.

But hey, perhaps you have logical explanations that aren't obvious to those of us in the non-billionaire class. If so, we'd love to hear them!

Sincerely,

L