alt Hacker NewsIn 1999, Intel received an absolutely massive amount of opposition when they decided to include a software-readable serial number in their CPUs, so much that they reversed the decision.
Then the "security" and Trusted Computing authoritarians continued pushing for TPMs and related tech, and contributed to the rise of mobile walled gardens. Windows 11's TPM requirements were another step towards their goal. The amount of propaganda about how that was supposed to be a good thing, both here and elsewhere, was shocking.
It turns out a significant (but hopefully decreasing) number of the population is easily coerced into anything when "security" is given as a justification.
The war on general-purpose computing continues, and we need to keep fighting.
Stallman was right, as always. Time to give his "Right to Read" another read. (If it hasn't been done already, an AI-generated short film of it would be a great idea...)
"Those who give up freedom for security deserve neither."
Replies
Totally with you until you brought in AI, a completely centralized and proprietary tool.
> (If it hasn't been done already, an AI-generated short film of it would be a great idea...)
Once you have the script, that’s a couple actors in a classroom, a couple e-ink readers for props, the film crew… It can be shot with less than 10 people in a day, then one person for a couple days for cutting and post production. And that’s on the very high end for this scene.
Considering the reach this video would meant to have, avoiding AI would not be that expensive.
On the other hand, the TPM spec is pretty complex, especially because they wanted to address privacy issues: the endorsement key, burned by the manufacturer, is only able to encrypt messages and not able to sign them, because this could have been used to track machines. (and this makes a remote attestation protocol much more complex to implement)
So, it looks like they were aware about such kind of issues and tried hard to mitigate them.
> In 1999, Intel received an absolutely massive amount of opposition when they decided to include a software-readable serial number in their CPUs, so much that they reversed the decision.
> It turns out a significant (but hopefully decreasing) number of the population is easily coerced into anything when "security" is given as a justification.
The people who opposed Intel are now telling each other how hopeless and powerless they are. You can see it on HN, in this thread: No drive, outrage, and self-organizing response to these issues, but despair - 'nobody cares', 'there's nothing we can do', etc. Quitting is a sure way to lose.
Weird rant. TPMs are great. The modern computing landscape needs a safe place to put secrets. It's what made the iPhone (Secure Enclave is effectively a TPM) years ahead of Android in terms of security.
The problem isn't the TPM, but attestation. As soon as the TPM is required to not be under your control to get access to Y, bad things happen.
Hell, in actuality, the problem isn't even attestation, its policy. The EU Parliament (the one the people vote for, the Commission are cronies) might eventually force corporations into something more citizen-friendly. Neither Apple, Google or Microsoft is going to drop a market that big.