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Major PC Makers Adopt Trusted Computing Schema
An anonymous reader wrote to let us known about a News.com story regarding so-called trusted computing, and its adoption by the major PC manufacturers. From the article: "The three largest computer makers--Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM--have started selling desktops and notebooks with so-called trusted computing hardware, which allows security-sensitive applications to lock down data to a specific PC." Interestingly, while Microsoft is said to be behind the idea support won't be forthcoming for trusted computing until they release Longhorn next year, making this a hardware-vendor lead initiative.
What happens when your PC dies? How do you recover using the now useless backups? There's bound to be a way to bypass that. Sounds like the data requires a physical key (sentry?). Someone somehow will bypass it.
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Just remember, folks: "Trusted computing" is an Orwellian phrase that actually means your computer won't trust you. So if you want your computer to have to ability to say to you, "Sorry, I won't play that MP3 file" or "Sorry, that movie is not authorized for this PC," well step right up. Barnum & Co. -- er, sorry, I mean major PC hardware companies have some new machines to sell to you.
If Linux gets in on the game then surely this could be a positive thing for computer users.
See the Trusted Gentoo project for example.
Until we see locked down BIOSes then this is hardly a threat to Linux if it responds quickly.
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IBM has had the hardware in place in their laptop line for the last several years. It makes repairs which require a motherboard swap a PITA because you have to be sure to order the part with the crypto in place if your current system had one, which might not know about the first time you do one, resulting in a several day delay....
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
This sort of crap runs contrary to Apple's philosophy, and I don't think they'll want it in their hardware (heck, they don't even copy protect their OS). However, they may get forced into it for compatibility. I believe in trusted computing - I trust myself not to be dumb.
It's time to push for an hard for a free bios. You can help if you
can figure out how to install a new bios on a computer, especially a
laptop. I don't know why we can put linux on an xbox but nobody can
get a free bios on a laptop.
Stick to AMD machines, avoid Intel and IBM. Heh, IBM. We talk like
they're our allies but they're pushing patents and treacherous
computing. They're a _much_ bigger threat than SCO ever was.
If you haven't yet read stallman's dystopian short story The Right To Read,
this might be a good time.
Treacherous computing is the reason I'm a GNU+linux user.
Of course, such a system would have undesirable uses as well, DRM and the like...
"Don't want to interoperate with the rest of the secure users out there? Don't use hardware that is tied to THE secure OS."
If trusted computing reaches the point you can't get on the Internet unless you are running it, and at that point trusted computing means your completely relinquish control of your computer and your privacy, then maybe geeks should take this opportunity to start a network of their own free of corprate and government control. Think Pirate Radio except for the internet, the Pirate's Web, or Alternet.
At least at a local level you should be able to create a wirless mesh network free of the shackles the government and corporations are inevitably going to try to put on the Internet in the name of "security", "safety" and to protect their monopolies on music and films.
Its going to be a little harder to do the long haul part of the network, since you are going to have to do a lot of hops and latency will be terrible. Thankfully as disk drives and hardware get cheaper people can make liberal use of mirrors to that there are local copies of valuable stuff like Wikipedia and open source archives.
You will also probably be confined to latency sensitive online games only in your local community.
All in all I'm not sure it would be such a bad thing because:
- It would foster a greater sense of local community involvement, which is sorely lacking on the Internet.
- It would compel geeks to be resourceful and roll up their sleeves instead of just open up their wallet and dole out cash to the giant, abusive telecommunications giant every month.
- I wager the Internet is going to be in a pretty steady decline in usefulness as governments and corporations seek to exert ever more control over it and try to extract subscriptions and fees for anything interesting, or saturate you with advertising. Its also a near inevitability that they will seek to wipe out bit torrent, all p2p or anything that is used by pirates, even when they also have legitimate uses.
- People might start appreciating the value of the freedom things like open source give you once corporation controlled governments start taking them away. You usually don't value something until you lose it. Maybe it will be just the thing to ignite a sustainable and powerful political movement to regain control of our governments. As it is everyone is to fat, dumb and happy to do anything about it so corporation controlled governments are eviscerating out civil rights and no one give a damn as long as they have their porn, video games and reality TV.
All in all I favor college radio, which is the closes thing to pirate radio you can usually find. They play interesting, eclectic mixes of often good music because they are putting out content they like, not content that ClearChannel and the RIAA want to shove down peoples throats and make them like simply by depriving them of anything better.
Not sure that the Internet might not be rejuvenated if it goes back to its BBS, Modem roots. I wonder if spam, spyware, script kiddies and the like will be lesser or greater on the Pirate's net versus the "trusted" computing Internet. I wager the free lancers would be worse on the Pirate's net but the corporate controlled spam, spying, privacy invasion and intrusion will be worse on the "trusted" internet.
I wager we can pull off an Alternet as long as unregulated wireless is tolerated by the government and continues to improve. If once the Alternet starts rolling and the government, corporations seek to outlaw unregulated wireless and wipe it out, then it gets to be more interested. Could we run a usable and interesting mesh network in the face of a hostile, corporate controlled police state trying to wipe it out.
@de_machina
See the Trusted Computing FAQ for the many reasons why this is a bad idea and why lock-in will in fact be a result, despite IBM's claims to the contrary. Written by Ross Anderson, Professor of Security Engineering at the UK's leading univeristy, this article is an excellent primer.
A few years back, when I was a law student, I wrote my law review student note on trusted computing (published last year). I've made it available here if anyone is interested. Not sure I still agree with the thesis but hey, I was ensconced in academia when I wrote it.
http://actusre.us/cjam/woodford.pdf
"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't." --Erica Jong