Slashdot Mirror
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."
This is just one person's opinion on trusted computing. Nobody really knows where it's going, but there's a lot of people trying to push their various interests into it.
My feeling is the idea of trusted computing isn't in itself bad. As a matter of fact, there's probably a lot of very good uses for it to go along with a larger system of security. Some of the ideas in Palladium, if used correctly, really could enhance and improve security. It, in itself, may not provide security, but as part of a larger system with other security geatures, it may well be useful.
The problem is not trusted computing, but some of these rogue interests. The government, Microsoft, the recording industry, the motion picture industry, and just about everyone else wants a say in where it's going. Hopefully, between the various interests will cancel each other out and we'll end up with the good that comes from trusted computing, but without most of the bad.
Groups fighting against trusted computing shouldn't fight the technology, in my opinion, but some of the uses of it. This means they should fight some of the DRM aspects of it, not the technology in general. Remember, an extra layer of security isn't a bad thing to have.
Help me. I've been modbombed by a few people with entirely too much time on their hands.
Is there any technological reason why we can't have both? The "trusted" part of the web (used for business, financial, government services, etc.) could use encrypted protocols to tunnel between the trusted hardware at the server and client. The rest of the internet (used for recreation, anonymous political commentary, etc.) could continue using the current "untrusted" hardware and protocols.
I don't see this as an "either one or the other" choice...
I have yet to encounter an Internet Prognosticator who gets it right about the history of worldwide communication, and the formation of worldwide communities. Ham Radio operators communicated around the world, drove technological advances and formed virtual communities based upon radio communication, throughout much of the 20th century. In addition there were numerous folks who merely "surfed" the shortwave bands with receivers only, partaking of the worldwide shortwave radio "content." My point here is merely that these prognosticators should spend less time trying to prove that the Internet was the first medium to enable these activities, and spend more time on the Internet issues at hand. Art
There is an additional price though, responsiblity.
Unlimited freedom without repsonsibility is equivalent to anarchy, and the net is as close to a functional implementation of anarchy that the world has seen. However, this does not imply that what we have is an ideal. Far from it in fact.
Spam is one immediately obvious result of this freedom. Give yourself a couple minutes and you can think of several other less than desirable outcomes of all this freedom.
By tempering freedoms with responsibility, we can have the free flow of ideas we all have come to expect from the web, but without propogating all those nuisance aspect of the beast.
Unfortunately that means regulation. But regulation is not feasible in the traditional sense. The internet is a global phenomenon, and while some corners of the world act to supress portions of the traffic, by and large the web is a building block of a truly global society.
But a society must have laws to function and sustain itself. In ten short years my own usage patterns have drastically changed, as well as the usages patterns of many of my peers.
Remember the good old days? I remember not having multiple email accounts, or any of a number of other measures I routinely undertake to weed out various garbage I don't want as part of my on-line experience. We've all had to take these measures, to some degree or another.
My question is, is that the way it should be? Is spam and it's unsavoury tribe really an acceptable cost for the freedoms entailed? Most, if not all of us have extreme antipathy to spam. It's the old adage about a right is such only until it infringes on the rights of others. I feel that spam has truly infringed on my web experience, most of us should feel the same way. Even if the measures to avoid it personally are trivial, should the majority who don't want spam have to make such changes to allow safeguard the freedoms of a few individuals who refuse to honor our freedoms?
Regulation is probably inevitable, and in fact is being attempted by governments today. I think this is the bigger concern. If the web is to be regulated, such regulation needs to come from within. The danger is that the regulation will be forced from outside. The reason this will occur is because we have subjugated responsibilites to freedoms. As long as this continues to be the case there will be an increasing impetus to force such regulation on the web. The problem is that the source of such change will be the very people we don't want to make the changes happen. Big business and government.
And it makes sense, why spend money and time and effort dealing with the effects of this (relatively) unabridged freedom with virus scanners, and spam blocking services Et. Al. when the same time and monies and effort can be used to eliminate the problem. For a multinational corporation, it is a relatively trivial exercise to lobby for the legislative changes required. Once that legal environment exists, it becomes easier to implement the rest of your solution. If you can get a couple of your peers to play ball...
I leave the hardest issue for the reader, how do we encourage those who threaten our freedoms with their irresponsible behaviours to behave responsibly?
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
Now there are a few technical reasons why the internet CANNOT be retrofitted into pay-as-you-go content restricted affair.
I think that Walker's article does a good job at refuting those supposed technical reasons. If you can point out specifically how he's mistaken, please do so. The question of whether or not something is "techincally impossible" is always a difficult one, and the pattern throughout history is that something deemed "impossible" by one generation is achieved by the next.
The cost of metering the internet would be greater than the cost of providing it, free, to the world at large.
They don't have to do so much. Authoritarian control can be exercised without needing to meter each and every little packet. A government could simply declare that use of any encrypted protocol is illegal (the old "Clipper chip" proposal did something like this, good thing it died). Then randomly sniff packets, just 0.001% of them, until catching something that their automated systems cannot decode. The ISP points out the perpetrator, who is arrested while technicians comb over his PC for the offending code, and any other guilty evidence.
The Chilling Effect could be so strong that propagation of encryption could be effectively suppressed.
Finally restricting access to the internet would be like restricting access to our highway system.
That's using the "force of nature" argument. Restricting access to roads would be prohibitively difficult, because roadways are part of our physical world. The topology is determined by the 2-dimensional lay of the land. The internet, as an entirely artificial virtual world, obeys only rules invented by humans. What man built, man can unbuild.
I personally just mutter under my breath and pay it, but my wife actually routes around the toll roads useing back roads.
(Following is a pessimistic response. It might not happen, but it COULD)
Within 5 years, to pay a toll, you'll need to have a radio-transponder installed in your car. Sure, you can still pay cash to an attendant, but it'll be $5 instead of $0.50. And eventually that attendant will be fired, and replaced with police cruisers to arrest nonpayers on the highway. 5 years after that, the toll points will be taken down and replaced with an automatic system that uses GPS to tell when you entered the "premium" roadway. One year later, speeding tickets will be automatically mailed if that GPS clocks you at going over 65 mph.
Two years after that, a politician will decide that the fairest way to allocate highway-maintenance taxes is based on actual road usage, and every mile you drive will be tolled.