Recently, pressure has mounted on technology firms and their workers to publicly vow that they will not help create a registry of Muslims even if asked by the US Government to do so, a dark possibility floated under the coming Trump Administration. So far, about 60 employees from major tech companies have signed an explicit pledge publicly available at neveragain.tech while starting earlier this month the technology website The Intercept began asking tech companies directly whether they would refuse to help build a Muslim registry for Trump. At first, of 9 or so companies queried, Twitter alone said it would refuse, prompting 22 organizations including Amnesty International USA to send letters to Google, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, and more, urging them to take a similar public stance.

"We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs," reads the Never Again pledge, which recalls "how IBM collaborated to digitize and streamline the Holocaust, contributing to the deaths of six million Jews and millions of others" as well as the internment of Japanese Americans amid WWII. As such, "We refuse to facilitate mass deportations of people the government believes to be undesirable," they pledge, specifically refusing "to participate in the creation of databases of identifying information for the United States government to target individuals based on race, religion, or national origin" and vowing to advocate within their own organizations "to minimize the collection and retention of data that would facilitate ethnic or religious targeting" among other goals.

The call on employees and companies to take such vows feels particularly timely as Trump lures tech company leaders to his current tech summit, which is expected to be attended by top executives from Apple, Facebook, Google, and more. Further stoking fears that tech companies might collaborate with Trump on the draconian agenda he's outlined in his racist, Islamaphobic rhetoric, the Washington Post reports that Elon Musk of Tesla and Travis Kalanick of Uber have signed on to take advisory roles with Trump.

“What’s important to me is that individuals who care about the ethical use of technology can step forward, show how many of us there are, and say that there are lines we will not cross,” Ka-Ping Yee, a software engineer at Wave and a former employee of Google who along with Slack security engineering manager Leigh Honeywell organized the Never Again Pledge, told BuzzFeed. “Ultimately, it’s individuals who make decisions and do the work, and can take personal responsibility for their choices; if enough individuals refuse to participate, unethical projects can’t proceed," Yee said, adding that he didn't know why tech companies themselves, businesses whose language of boosterism calls on them to "make the world a better place" and not be evil and all that, haven't made similar commitments.

Contacting Facebook to ask company representatives on the record if they would make such a commitment, BuzzFeed received an email intended to be sent internally that called the idea of a Muslim registry a "straw man." BuzzFeed published the email, which said specifically that the representative was "Happy to talk to [BuzzFeed reporter Nitasha Tiku] off record about why this is attacking a straw man." Writes BuzzFeed: "the possibility that President-elect Donald Trump will try to create a Muslim registry is not a straw man," pointing to the fact that Trump has on more than one occasion chosen not to rule out the possibility.

Once BuzzFeed ran the email, Facebook at last commented on the matter. “No one has asked us to build a Muslim registry, and of course we would not do so," they told BuzzFeed and The Intercept. That statement appears to assume that "of course" Facebook or companies like it would do no such unconscionable thing as contribute to the mass targeting or deportation of a religious or ethnic group of people. But perhaps they should turn their attention to Trump advisor and Facebook board member Peter Thiel, who stands to directly profit from the mass-deportation of millions of immigrants in his capacity as the co-founder of data mining company Palantir. That company has already been paid tens of millions for its work on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations.

Related: Peter Thiel Poised To Profit Off Trump's Promised Crackdown On Immigrants