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[Music]
in the era of big data few figures are
more divisive than that of the hacker on
the one hand malicious or black hat
hackers cause billions of dollars in
damage every year breaking into private
and public networks to steal money or
personal data or simply to create chaos
on the other hand so-called ethical or
white head hackers use their skills in
the service of the public good either by
probing computer systems for security
weaknesses or leaking information on
government corruption and other crimes
while mostly associated with the modern
digital age the art of hacking goes back
nearly a hundred years and one of the
earliest hackers was also one of the
most ethical using his skills to save
millions of french citizens from the
nazis during the second world war this
is the remarkable story of renee carmel
the era of big data is a lot older than
he might think tracing its origins back
to the 1880s and a daunting problem
facing the united states government the
us constitution mandates that a census
be taken every 10 years so that taxes
and political representation can be
updated according to the changing
population the first u.s census took
place in 1790 and for the next 90 years
census data was collected and processed
entirely by hand in 1880 however the
census bureau faced a major crisis the
u.s population had grown so large that
the 1880 census took a full nine years
to complete by the time that data was
ready to use it was already time for the
next census at this rate the bureau
feared future sensors would never be
able to catch up rendering the entire
exercise pointless enter herman
hollerith american engineer who had
worked on the 1880 census in 1889
hollerith patented an ingenious system
for speeding up the tabulating of census
data based on the technology of punched
cards while punched cards had previously
been used to automate the weaving of
complex text style patterns hollerith's
system was the first to apply them
practically to the field of data
processing hollerith was inspired by a
system introduced by the railroads to
help identify and catch train robbers
and other criminals as photography at
the time was a slow cumbersome process
train tickets were instead printed with
a series of physical descriptors such as
height eye color and facial hair which
the conductor could fill out using a
standard ticket punch in this manner a
rough description of each passenger
could be recorded hollerith realized
that this system could easily be adapted
to the census and designed his own punch
cards to record census data and a
piano-sized machine called tabulator to
read and process it the hollerith system
worked as follows census takers would
travel around the country and record
data like the number ages and sex of the
people in each household by punching
holes in the corresponding fields on the
horiz cards these cards would then be
sent back to the census bureau for
processing an operator would insert the
cards into the tabulator one by one
through a hinged hatch rather like a
modern flatbed scanner or photocopier
when the hatch was closed a grid of
spring-loaded metal pins was forced
against the card where a hole had been
punched the pin passed through and made
contact with a pool of mercury
completing an electrical circuit this
data was counted and displayed on a
series of clock-like dials on the face
of the tabulator to be manually read and
recorded by the operator the genius of
the tabulator however lay in its ability
to be rewired or reprogrammed to count
different combinations of data for
example unmarried males under the age of
30. hollerith also invented a device
called a sorter consisting of 13
vertical metal bins with spring-loaded
lids each of which could be programmed
to collect a different combination of
data so if for example the operator
inserted a card which included an
unmarried male under 30 the bin lid
programmed with that combination would
pop open so the operator could drop the
card in the holler system was adopted by
the census bureau just in time for the
1890 census and its impact was dramatic
the use of punched cards and tabulators
cut the time required to process the
census data down from nine to two years
this dramatic improvement in efficiency
led to hollerith machines becoming
standard equipment at the census bureau
and in 1896 hollerith founded the
hollerith tabulating machine company to
sell his machines commercially among his
first clients were the prudential life
insurance company and the new york
central railroad the latter of which
processed nearly 4 million freight way
bills every year and was an ideal fit
for the hollerith system over the next
decade holareth introduced a number of
key innovations which made his system
increasingly more efficient and powerful
including redesigned punched cards
improved key punches for filling out
those cards printers for automatically
tabulating data automatic card feeders
and sorters and plug boards to allow the
tabulators to be reprogrammed without
having to physically rewire the
circuitry these innovations created a
brand new industry and hollerith style
tabulators now known as unit record
machines were adopted by a vast array of
businesses for data-heavy tasks like
processing invoices and payrolls and
with that the information age had
arrived but for herman hollerith success
was not to last in 1903 the new director
of the census bureau simon north decided
that hollerith had too much of a
monopoly on data processing and banned
the company's machines from the bureau
then in 1911 through stock acquisition
the tabulating machine company was
merged with four other companies to
create the computing tabulating company
finally in 1923 this amalgamated company
changed its name to international
business machines
better known as ibm under the direction
of ceo thomas watson ibm would go on to
dominate the unit record and later the
digital computer industry controlling
over 90 of all punch card equipment in
the united states by 1950. one of the
keys to ibm success was that they never
sold their machines to clients they only
ever leased them at one point ibm even
considered charging its clients for
every individual punch card they used a
practice which would have netted them
even more obscene profits however for
the united states government this was a
step too far and in 1932 ibm was taken
to court for violating the 1914 clayton
antitrust act though ibm argued that the
cards for which they held the patent
were technically a component of the
machines that they were already leasing
to clients in 1936 the government
ultimately ruled against them while ibm
was allowed to specify the design of the
cards used in its machines clients were
free to acquire the cards themselves
from any source they wanted including
manufacturing them themselves however
even this attempt to extort clients over
individual punch cards was far from the
most unethical activity that ibm would
ever be involved in the outbreak of the
second world war saw a dramatic surge in
business for ibm not only did millions
of fighting men and tons of military
equipment need to be processed for
deployment overseas but unit record
equipment quickly found new applications
in the field of cryptanalysis ibm punch
card equipment proved ideally suited to
searching endless reams of incited enemy
signals searching for rare repeats that
could help crack the cipher key a
tedious task that had previously been
done entirely by hand dozens of ibm
machines were used at allied code
breaking centers like bletchley park in
buckinghamshire and arlington hall in
washington dc where they helped to
penetrate enemy ciphers like nazi
germany's enigma and imperial japan's
purple and shorten the war by an
estimated two years but ibm equipment
would also be put to far more sinister
uses like dozens of american companies
like ford general motors chase manhattan
bank of coca-cola ibm did not allow the
outbreak of war to interfere with its
international business dealings even
those with nazi germany when the nazis
came to power in 1933 the new government
put out a tender for a census of the
german people by this point the nazis
had already expelled all jewish lawyers
doctors scientists and other
professionals from their jobs and it was
abundantly clear that the true goal of
this census was to identify and
persecute the remaining jews and other
undesirables in germany indeed in a
public statement reinhardt carr
statistician working for the nazi
government sinisterly announced that in
using statistics the government now has
the roadmap to switch from knowledge to
deeds nonetheless thomas watson the ceo
of ibm instructed the company's german
subsidiary diholmag to bid on the
contract which they ultimately won over
the next decade hundreds of ibm unit
record machines along with spare parts
and punch cards were shipped to germany
where they were immediately put to use
in organizing what would eventually
become the holocaust machines were set
up in the headquarters of the airs rant
or race office and even in concentration
camps like dacao where millions of
german jews roma communists homosexuals
and other groups deemed politically or
racially inferior was systematically
identified categorized and earmarked for
arrest imprisonment deportation forced
labor or extermination shockingly ibm
and its subsidiary did far more than
simply provide the nazis with equipment
also sending hundreds of technicians to
germany to train ss personnel on how to
use and maintain the temperamental
equipment these technicians also
developed custom punch cards and special
codes to help the ss designate and
process concentration camps prisoner
types and causes of death for example
auschwitz was 001 buchenwald were 0-02
dashau03 and so on three designated a
homosexual nine and antisocial and eight
a jew while three represented death from
natural causes for summary execution 5
death by suicide and 6 by special
treatment the euphemism for
extermination via gas chamber given this
intimate involvement it's highly
unlikely that ibm was unaware of what
its machines were being used for yet the
flow of equipment and personnel
continued unabated in fact so
instrumental was ibm to the nazi's
policy of genocide that in 1937 adolf
hitler awarded thomas watson the order
of the german eagle for his services to
the third reich an honor bestowed on
several other american nazi sympathizers
including henry ford and charles
lindbergh and for more on the blown
eagles relationship with the nazis
please check out our sister channel's
video lucky lindy and advancing medical
science on the channel highlight history
link below the outbreak of the second
world war in 1939 should have ended the
company's dealings with nazi germany and
indeed in june 1940 thomas watson
returned his order of the german eagle
but while ibm publicly feigned remorse
for its pre-war actions in the
background their collaboration with the
nazis carried on as before in 1939
watson authorized the shipment to
germany of special ibm alphabetizing
machines which were used to round up and
execute millions of jews intellectuals
and other undesirables during the nazi
conquest of poland so complicit was
watson in this policy that even
bankrolled the construction of concrete
bunkers at darchau to protect its ibm
machines from british air raids the nazi
government offered to buy dahomag
outright giving ibm the opportunity to
make a clean break from its subsidiary
but watson refused and de homag remained
under the direct control of ibm
headquarters in new york oh my god ibm
is a bit of a piece isn't it
oh my god
don't buy ibm allegedly in 1940 watson
directly managed the establishment of a
dutch subsidiary tasked with identifying
and rounding up that country's jews
aided by the netherlands existing
hollerith machine infrastructure and a
long dutch tradition of recording
religion in the national census this
effort resulted in the murdering of a
hundred and two thousand of the
netherlands 140 000 jews an
extermination rate of 73 percent in
every territory they conquered the nazis
immediately carried out a census to
identify and round up its racial and
political enemies a process made all the
more efficient by ibm equipment when the
nazis rolled into france in june 1940
they finally met their match in an
unassuming civil servant named renee
carmill born in 1886 carmel served in
the french army during the first world
war first as an artillery commander and
later in the military intelligence
service in 1924 he was appointed
comptroller of the army in which rowley
oversaw the adoption of holler
tabulating machines to improve the
efficiency of army logistics after
transferring to the civil service in the
1930s camille established the national
demographic statistical office which
pioneered the use of ibm punch card
machines in the tabulating of the french
census with war clouds looming carmel's
department undertook the creation of a
national register of military-aged men
hypomobilization in the coming conflict
as part of this effort carmel invented
the social security number which he
based on each person's date and place of
birth this system of unique numbers he
realized was less cumbersome and prone
to accidental overlap than categorizing
people by their first and last names and
is still used in france to this day
following the german invasion and
partition of france carmel went to work
that the collaborationist vishu regime
in the so-called free zone of southern
france but carmel was no nazi
sympathizer as a member of the french
resistance camille made it his mission
to sabotage the german administration of
france in any way that he could his
first order of business was to carry on
with the creation of the national
register while presented to the germans
as merely a routine civil project the
real purpose of the registry was to
secretly prepare the french army for a
sudden re-mobilization during the winter
of 1941 to 1942 carmel identified the
names of 220 000 immobilized soldiers
living in the south of france grouping
them by unit and region he prepared a
set of punched cards that would trigger
the printing and distribution of
mobilization orders across the country
in a matter of hours however nazi racial
policy soon began to interfere with this
project in 1941 joseph barthelme is the
vichy minister of justice instructed
carmel to identify jewish citizens in
his register fortunately france had a
long tradition of secularism as never
recorded religion in any prior census
and carmel argued successfully that
given the civil nature of the project he
was unable to comply thus the registry
only recorded citizens date and place of
birth as well as parents marriages and
divorces children date of death
nationality current address and sex so
massive was this project that for nearly
two years carwa was able to deny his
department's equipment and services to
the vichy police and the gestapo forcing
them to rely on traditional paper-based
methods for identifying and tracking
down jews in 1942 however the nazis
annexed the free zone and took control
of all of france forcing carmel to
abandon the national register and hide
all evidence of the project in a jesuit
seminary even worse the national
demographic statistical office came
under the direct control of the nazis
who forced carmel to conduct a new
census aimed at identifying french jews
unable to refuse directly carmel instead
adopted a policy of passive resistance
seeking to obstruct and slow the data
collection process as much as possible
he issued verbal rather than written
instructions in order to delay responses
and to sow confusion instructed his
staff to mishandle punch cards and even
hacked the ibm machines so they would
never punch the 11th column indicating a
citizen's race or religion rendering the
whole exercise useless to the nazis
meanwhile carmar's resistance network
sent agents to london with samples of
the punch cards used by the bishi regime
and used death notices received by the
statistical service to create pulse
identity cards for resistance members
and jewish citizens so effective was
carmel's program of sabotage that by
february 1944 the digital report on the
number of french and foreign jews
counted in june
1941 was still not complete by this time
however the germans had caught on to
what comma was doing and he was arrested
in lyon on february 3 1944 after being
tortured for two days by gestapo
officers klaus barbie the infamous
butcher of lyon kalmar was sent to the
dashau concentration camp where he died
of typhus on january the 5th 1945. while
it can never be known how many french
citizens carmel sabotage saved compared
to the netherlands extermination rate of
74
only 25 of france's jews were murdered
by the nazis despite collaborating with
the third reich through all 12 years of
the regime's existence neither thomas
watson nor ibm ever faced justice for
their role in the holocaust in 2002 a
group of five romani holocaust survivors
filed a lawsuit against the company but
after two years of review the case was
dismissed on account of the statute of
limitations having run out but the death
and destruction wrought with the
assistance of the tech giant could have
been far worse if not for men like rene
carmel in many ways renee epitomizes the
ethical hacker ethos of david versus
goliath though neither a general or a
soldier or a powerful politician carmel
managed to use the limited technological
power at his disposal to save millions
of his fellow citizens during one of the
darkest chapters in human history so i
really hope you found that video
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