After the US election in November, president-elect Donald Trump announced his plan to create a Muslim registry.
"It would stop people from coming in illegally … We have to stop people from coming into our country illegally."
This followed on from his stance on immigration during the election campaign.
"[I will] suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe, or our allies," Mr Trump said in June.
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But on Tuesday, a host of computer engineers, designers and business executives from companies including Google, Twitter, Indiegogo and Scribd declared they would not back the president-elect's agenda.
They signed a pledge stating that they would never help Mr Trump build the registry he said he had wanted.
“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,” 55 professionals wrote on .
They said they would never create a database that discriminated against race, religion or nationality.
“We refuse to build a database of people based on their Constitutionally-protected religious beliefs.”
Instead, they said they would continue to implement security and privacy best practices and demand legal processes were upheld should the government request that they handed over user-data collected by their respective organisations.
