Trusted Computing

derrickoswald writes "John Walker, one of the founders of Autodesk, has posted The Digital Imprimatur, a monograph on technologies such as the Trusted Computing initiative. Some of the prognostications and conclusions reached may not be palatable to Slashdot readers."

Comments

The term "trusted" is accurate for this.

[AtariAmarok]

You have the wrong definition of "trust" in mind.

You need to look further down on the list of definitions "trust" to find the appropriate one:

"A combination of firms or corporations for the purpose of reducing competition and controlling prices throughout a business or an industry."

Lessig said it first

[Minna Kirai]

The article's (which is already slashdotted) main idea is that it will be possible for a cooperation of government and corporate interests to change the internet from the freewheeling, content-neutral common carrier we know and love into a strict disciplinarian.

That was the thesis of Lawrence Lessig's 5 year old book, "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace". The internet is artificial. It's not a force of nature. Human effort built it, and human laws can change it. With sufficient financial motivation, laws will change it.

Tired quotations like "The internet treats censorship as damage, and routes around it" are at best observations of recent behavior, not guarantees that truely effective internet censorship won't happen in the future.

Those who care about freedom cannot just sit back and assume that because the net is fairly free now, it always will be. Eternal vigiliance is the price.

Re:Lessig said it first

[Bookwyrm]

They would need to have control of my connection at the packet level.

You think they don't already? Or rather, can't?

If your packet goes over someone else's wire, that person can do *anything* to that packet they want to. There is you, on one of the wire, sending electrical signals out that represent data -- there is nothing at all that mandates the electrical signals they send back have to be what you want them to be.

Honestly, if you would not believe this:

# traceroute my.server.com
Tracing route to 64.64.64.64
1. 15 ms 16 ms 19 ms my.router.net
2. 35 ms 42 ms 53 ms relay.babylon5.earth.gov
3. 55 ms 90 ms 85 ms comnet.core.ncc1701-e.starfleet.ufp
4. 120 ms 130 ms 115 ms my.server.com

Why in the world would you trust:

# traceroute my.server.com
Tracing route to 64.64.64.64
1. 15 ms 16 ms 19 ms my.router.net
2. 35 ms 42 ms 53 ms rtr1.router.net
3. 55 ms 90 ms 85 ms mae-east.gateway.server.com
4. 120 ms 130 ms 115 ms my.server.com

The person at the other end of your wire has total control over what he/she chooses to send you, be it garbage, data, or 10,000 volts. Once your packet reaches the other end of the wire, they can drop it, mangle it, copy it, etc. (Note that encryption and the like might stop them from decoding it or altering it *in a useful way*, but this doesn't stop them from *trying*)

You have no control over your packets once they leave your own wires, except what you may have contractually negotiated with the owner(s) of the other wire(s). (And any proof of contractually failure is going to be distressingly hard to show, as without hard evidence, the ephemeral/forgeable nature of the electronic medium makes proof tricky. You: "My ISP was forwarding packets to the NSA!" Them: "The paranoid guy forged those logs by manually typing up those files. Here are our logs that show otherwise.")

Other people already have control over your packets. You, at best, can attempt some minimal control over your data via encryption and digital signing, but not a lot beyond that.

Re:Already slow

[buus]

To bad that trusted computed as described here would kill Google's ability to cache pages.

Gloom, Doom, and Reality

[Lendrick]

Wow, that's quite a scary picture. And while it's admittedly possible that things could turn that way, I'll go out on a limb and say that it's fairly unlikely.

Take Digital Rights Management, for instance. People put up with it for a little while, until they try to listen to their songs on something other than their own computer -- then they suddenly realize that DRM in fact sucks donkey ass.

Buying a Palladium-enabled computer will be like buying a car with a top speed of 65 miles per hour. The fact is, everyone bends the law a little bit from time to time ... and a reasonable police officer won't pull you over for doing 68 in a 65. It's just not that big of a deal. Likewise, if someone (God forbid!) decides to install the same copy of Word on two different computers in their house, it's not likely that the FBI will come knocking on their door for a license violation.

When Joe User runs into stupid problems like "Error! This computer sucks and therefore refuses to play this music file" or "Error! This computer sucks and refuses to allow you to install this program", he'll start getting pissy. He'll tell his friends not to buy any of these "trusted" computers, and pretty soon, everyone's buying computers and software that don't have this sort of crap built in.

This of course won't stop big companies and big government from trying to restrict things, but the chance that they'll succeed is actually fairly small. I don't see DRM ever completely dissappearing from the radar, but I'm gussing that it'll remain what it is right now -- an annoyance.

what's the big hangup here anyway? well...lots....

[jdvernon1976]

To be perfectly honest, I'm not worried about Trusted Computing, "The Theory"

I buy most/all of my software (okay...maybe not M$ Office, but I buy all my games), I don't write viruses, and it should make spam a trivial non-issue.

Blah, blah, blah

However, I am in TOTAL agreement with everyone here that TC is a bad idea in "The Implementation", especially in the (over?) paranoid forecasts in its use.

My computer won't run unsigned software - no more viruses

My computer won't run unsigned software - any publisher can create subscriptions (overpriced ones, at that) and revoke the license 10 times a year

My computer won't open unsigned documents - the macros in the spreadsheet won't crash my computer

My computer won't open unsigned documents - this person has written op-ed columns against BigBadCorporation Inc, and they've revoked that person's software certificate so they can't send anything else

We could all go on and on - however, he says in the top of the article that he's not for it! What he says is basically a "Watch out for these kinds of words and messages from your legistators! These are the words with which they will woo you into consent!"

There is no problem that has a magic bullet. Every decision has good and bad, and I'm firmly convinced that the bad with DRM and TC has little to do with the proposed concept, but with a very foreseeable result and that it grossly outweighs the good.

Information used to be passed word-of-mouth, and evolved to cave paintings, the written text, the printing press, etc. etc. etc. and now the Internet as we know it. There is money to be made in keeping the spread of information in a one-to-many structure - scads and scads of cash - and with that as the primary (if not single!) motivation for those implementing DRM, as well as the politicians they influence, we the consumers will fall into the backdrop as a minor inconvenience.

Re:Trusted?

[ShieldW0lf]

Technically, it boils down to

"You're just going to have to trust me"

Except there is no constitutonal right to privacy

[AtariAmarok]

Except there is no Constitutional right to privacy. Penumbrae, vapors, and cumulo-nimbus can be inferred through imagination based on existing parts of the document to imply one, but it just does not exist: one can just as easily make up "implied" parts that negate a "Right to Privacy".

Re:He is not observing, he is biased.

[Anonymous Coward]

So because G Orwell failed to see a better future than 1984, he was advocating it?

You might want to consider repeating your freshman rhetoric course.