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The Qatar slave helmet. My company built the smart helmet used to track Qatar’s army of abused workers. The claim is GPS and accelerometer where used to track
by hnanon22 4y ago
The Qatar slave helmet.
My company built the smart helmet used to track Qatar’s army of abused workers. The claim is GPS and accelerometer where used to track if a worker stopped moving or fell due to an accident; the geo fencing was supposedly for tracking if they had enough workers in an area for the job.
The reality is the helmets where/are used as mass surveillance tech to ensure workers are continuously active and never leave their assigned areas for petty things like going to the bathroom or finding shade to prevent heat stroke.
- whatwherewhy 4y agoEh... Was it really that hard to guess what they're gonna do with it? How long ago was that? It's not like their abuse of [foreign] workers is anything new.
- hnanon22 4y ago7-8 years ago. I was a lot more naive back then and knew very little about any of the Middle East petro states.
- whatwherewhy 4y ago
- layer8 4y agoThat’s quite condescending.
- whatwherewhy 4y ago
- layer8 4y agocondescending: having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.
- whatwherewhy 4y agoI don't see anything patronizing or showing superiority in what I wrote. I am saying this as a peer, not as a superior. It's kinda weird to expect people not to make mistakes such as this if nobody tells them it's wrong. And it's normal for people to tell other people they do bad stuff if they do.
- layer8 4y agoSo you’re assuming that you know better than them what they’ve done wrong, that you have to tell them, and how they should make up for it. That’s how your tone is coming across.
- whatwherewhy 4y ago> you know better than them what they’ve done wrong Hardly, since I just agreed with what they said. I suggested what IMHO is a good way to make up for it. Nothing else. > that you have to tell them Sure, I have to. I think everyone should say something in cases like this.
- jjulius 4y ago>I don't see anything patronizing or showing superiority in what I wrote. I am saying this as a peer, not as a superior. And you have four different peers who have responded to you suggesting that you are being condescending. Take a step back and ask why - intention and tone are two different things, and if you get the latter wrong then we will misunderstand the former. >It's kinda weird to expect people not to make mistakes such as this if nobody tells them it's wrong. And it's normal for people to tell other people they do bad stuff if they do. Just let 'em be. You're not a hero. They admitted what they did, and why they know it's wrong. You're not doing anything other than going, "Yep, you sure did fuck up."
- jjulius 4y ago>Now they should try to make it right - donating money to people trying to fix the situation is a good way to do that. You're assuming that this individual hasn't already done something to atone (which goes against HN's rule to assume best intentions). That, coupled with a tone that comes off as though you know better than this person, basically round out the definition of "condescending".
- whatwherewhy 4y agoI am not assuming anything. I made a suggestion, nothing else. They're free to do nothing if they feel like they already did enough. You're assuming I'm assuming <...>, which goes against the HN rule to assume best intentions.
- SoftTalker 4y agoDonating money rarely fixes problems. What it does is create organizations that draw their lifeblood from the continued existence of the problem, and continued donations of money.
- devoutsalsa 4y agoIf you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
- whatwherewhy 4y agoWas I supposed to say "great job" to this? Lol.
- smegsicle 4y ago'not saying anything at all' wasn't a rhetorical suggestion
- whatwherewhy 4y agoNah, I'm really not the kind of person that says nothing to this.
- gpvos 4y agoPretty sad that you feel the need to rub salt into a wound.
- whatwherewhy 4y agoNah I don't think that's what I did. As another commenter said maybe that's how it came out (sorry), but not the intention.
- gpvos 4y agoStill seems unnecessarily condescending, but I've been guilty of that often enough that I am not going to hold that against you.
- sshine 4y ago> IMHO it'd be nice if you donated some of your earnings to a human rights focused NGO operating in the area. Is there somehow a difference in impact depending on who does this? Maybe if you chipped in, the Qatar slave workers would be even better off. Or is this just about guilt-tripping strangers for their past? :-)
- whatwherewhy 4y agoMy free funds are currently 100% dedicated to helping Ukraine and will be until Russia falls back to 1991 borders.
- sshine 4y agoSounds like you’ll never have free funds again.
- dorkwood 4y agoSomeone shares an insightful story that others can learn from and your first thought is to shame them, and then without knowing the first thing about them or what else they've done with their life, you tell them the best way to atone for their sins? This thread is such a great opportunity for learning and curiosity and yet you choose to see it only as an opportunity for moral grandstanding, possibly scaring away other people with interesting stories to tell. Why are you on this website?
- TeMPOraL 4y ago> How long ago was that? It's not like their abuse of [foreign] workers is anything new. It's also not like it's common knowledge. Myself I only learned about it couple years ago, here on HN, because of some comment threads that segued into discussions about Qatar construction projects. Point being, without knowing anything about OP, including where are they from, you can't assume they had a chance of knowing this before taking the job, or even learning about it on the job. The world is awash with news stories about everything - often you learn about a huge tragedy only when you chance on a story about it.
- Symbiote 4y agoI expect it to be very common knowledge, but possibly it's only known in Europe, as we are much closer to the Middle East and the football angle is more relevant. Here's several articles from 2017, for example. https://www.theguardian.com/world/qatar?page=19 https://www.theguardian.com/world/qatar?page=19
- TeMPOraL 4y ago> Here's several articles from 2017, for example. That's around the time I learned about it. Notably, this is couple years after the poster worked on their project.
- andrei_says_ 4y agoWhat is the official name of that product?
- throwaway89201 4y agoAlmost certainly WakeCap [1]. [1] https://qstp.org.qa/arab-techpreneur-sets-sights-transforming-infrastructure-sector/ https://qstp.org.qa/arab-techpreneur-sets-sights-transformin...
- blamazon 4y agoThis article lists a few products in that space: https://www.conexpoconagg.com/news/improving-jobsite-productivity-and-safety-with-sma https://www.conexpoconagg.com/news/improving-jobsite-product...
- layer8 4y agoSounds like https://www.wakecap.com/ https://www.wakecap.com/.
- kken 4y agoJust wow... from their FAQ >How do workers benefit from WakeCap? >Workers’ location and activity is identified within the boundaries of a project for the greater good of all involved within the project and to ensure every worker is safe especially when it comes to fall from height detection, ambient temperature extremes, and confined space crowd control, and more. We found that workers responded positively to the technology. >Do you have proof that it works? >WakeCap connected 15+ job sites with 2000+ workers per project...Predominately mega construction projects in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
- jiggawatts 4y agoThe website looks really slick, but seen in the light of this thread it's disturbingly dystopian. First step towards Cybermen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberman "This won't stop you feeling pain, but it will stop you caring about it.".
- cammikebrown 4y agoWow, 2 posts in and we may have a winner already! That’s really, really bad. I have a friend (well, not anymore) who worked for Palantir for a long time and was very proud of it, and I was gonna ask him if he regrets anything, but this is a whole other level.
- hackerting 4y agooh man, that was rough. Your story reminded a group of people who should report here — The "Green QR code" app that Chinese government deploys in the name of COVID to track and surveillance people. I even saw a tiktok (douyin) video that showcase one of the developer, praising how young they are and how handsome they are. The comment section of the video is a different scene entirely. But the same time, if they didn't develop it, someone else will. So it is hard to put the blame on them specifically.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ShredKazoo 4y agoThis comment is now one of the top hits on Google for "Qatar slave helmet". And it's the only hit when I put quotes around the phrase to force an exact match. If this is real you should get in touch with investigative journalists, e.g. ProPublica. ("Get in touch with investigative journalists" probably applies to a bunch of the people posting in this thread.)
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoHow many people do you think worked on the project? If I were the OP, I'd be more worried about getting the Khashoggi treatment for speaking out.
- lindygraham 4y agoOP i am investigative tech journalist. i would love to talk about this. my dms are open and my signal number is here: https://twitter.com/alibreland https://twitter.com/alibreland @hannon22
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoWhat would that accomplish?
- ch4s3 4y agoBringing further scrutiny to similar practices there and elsewhere.
- ethanbond 4y agoAmp up the sort of disdain that might, for example, prevent international organizations from granting legitimacy to these regimes. Things like FIFA, as a completely random example.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoI think it's clear that FIFA gives anti-fucks about slave labor.
- mymyairduster 4y agoThis technology may sound bad but it helpes enable events like the world cup that entertain many around the world
- giraffe_lady 4y agoGenuinely can't tell if you're joking or not but it doesn't matter. Either way this is basically a paraphrase of one of the most astute dril tweets of all time: "drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,"
- terminal_d 4y agoThe world cup doesn't matter.
- MertsA 4y agoAnd just think of all the cotton the plantations grew! Surely that justifies it. /s
- silisili 4y agoI think you win :(.
- lordnacho 4y agoTo add something related someone I know worked for a firm that was tasked with identifying regime critics for a gulf state. It wasn't clear what they were going to do with the list until they started disappearing.