During his presidential campaign, American president-elect Donald Trump proposed building a database to register Muslims in the United States.
Tech giants Facebook and Twitter say they would not help create such a system, while many other companies have chosen to remain silent on the matter.
After a long time refusing to comment on the subject, Facebook has just announced that it would not take part in building Trump's registry.
"No one has asked us to build a Muslim registry, and of course we would not do so," a Facebook spokesperson told Buzzfeed News.
Earlier this month, The Intercept reached out to nine of the most prominent tech companies. When asked whether they would sell their services to help develop Trump's database, only Twitter gave a conclusive "no".
The social media company justified its refusal by citing its policy that prohibits the use of Twitter data for surveillance purposes. Google, IBM, Facebook and Apple refused to answer at the time.
IBM, which has been linked to the Jewish registry system used in Nazi Germany, previously offered its information services to Trump.
Meanwhile, Microsoft chose not to "talk about hypotheticals at this point", but linked The Intercept to a company blog post. The article talks about how cooperation between the tech sector and the government should "strike a balance that protects privacy and public safety in what remains a dangerous time."
While the tech companies' standpoints remain shaky, their employees have spoken out. Employees of tech organizations and companies in the US are signing a pledge vowing their refusal to cooperate in building a governmental registry to target people based on their race, religion or national origin.
This came as the president-elect held a meeting with top tech executives in the country earlier this week, to which Twitter was not invited, according to the New York Times.
Since Tuesday, the pledge has garnered more than 1,200 signatures from employees whose jobs include managing data about people at companies including Google, Twitter and Microsoft.
"We are choosing to stand in solidarity with Muslim Americans, immigrants, and all people whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by the incoming administration’s proposed data collection policies," the open letter states.
"We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs."
The technologists vow to report and combat any misuse of data or unethical surveillance.
Trump's presidential transition team has been reportedly looking into implementing a database for immigrants from countries with a Muslim majority. The president-elect has also previously said that Muslims inside the country would be required to register, although he appears to have backtracked from these statements since the election.
Such a registry system previously existed in the U.S. following the Sept. 11 attacks. From 2002 through 2011, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System was applied to 25 countries, all with majority Muslim populations except for North Korea. The system forced male immigrants from these countries on work or tourist visas to undergo a special registration process.
Many have drawn parallels with the registration system used in pre-war Nazi Germany, which lead to the massacre of millions of Jews during the Holocaust.