Podcast: Should Tech Companies Take A Stand Against Family Separation?

On a recent episode of If Then, Slate’s tech podcast, hosts Will Oremus and April Glaser talk about the Trump administration's initial policy of separating migrant families at the border. They discuss the story that dominated this week’s headlines from tech’s perspective, analyzing how tech companies reacted to the congressional and public uproar over Trump's “zero tolerance” immigration policy. They wonder if the tech giants and their CEOs should use their influence and get involved in the shaping of the non-tech policies, such as the treatment of undocumented immigrants. And if they do take a stand, is it mostly to not look bad in the news?

“This isn’t primarily a tech story. It’s primarily a human story and a political story. But it is a tech story in some real and important ways. One of those is that a lot of the biggest tech companies are involved in one way or another in face recognition, surveillance, in some of the tools that are used in immigration policy in various ways to track people at the border and within the country. But there’s also just the issue of how tech companies are responding to the crisis as it unfolds … People are asking the tech companies to take a stand. They’re scrutinizing what tech companies have said along these lines.”

With immigration as a concrete case, Oremus and Glaser show how intertwined tech and politics have become. But this isn't new for those listening to the podcast regularly: in fact, each week the hosts explore tech news through a lens of how it impacts politics and society, covering a full range of relevant and salient themes and topics related to the intersection of technology and policy. As a bonus, this week's podcasts also discusses AT&T–Time Warner merger, but if you're not interested, simply focus on the first 13 minutes of the show.

And if you still want more, listen to Recode Decode podcast on the same topic.