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Comment by zeveb | Hacker News Reader

> It's impossible to balance because on the one hand we want these fortresses to protect us from prying eyes (see apple vs fbi), but manufacturers are also using these fortresses to keep out owners who just want to hack on their own things.

I think it's very easy to balance: it's my fortress, because I bought it; I should therefor be allowed and enabled to make it do anything I like. The recent changes which Google have announced — which mean that apps will no longer respect the keys I have installed on my devices — are a move in exactly the wrong direction.

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How do you prove to the device that you are the one who bought it? You don't want e.g. an FBI agent to be able to root your device.

> How do you prove to the device that you are the one who bought it?

An arbitrarily-complex passphrase of my choosing plus a fingerprint seem reasonable.

Plus a set of long and complex commands to type to stop normal people being tricked into enabling it

Y'know, I honestly don't care all that much if normal people can screw up: learning not to screw up should be part of the public school education all our taxes pay for. We trust normal people not to stab themselves in the eye, not to shoot themselves through the head, not to crash their cars into others: we should trust them not to do stupid stuff on their computing devices.

And when they do, we should hold them liable for any damage their actions have caused to others, just as we do with all those other tools. Yes, I think liability for allowing one's computer to become part of a botnet is a Good Idea™. Car crashes aren't accidents, and allowing one's computer to become infected isn't accidental either.

We ban guns, have extensive driving courses, and let anyone do anything with computers.

Of course if your car crashed because you were driving down a street that a criminal was standing on you'd probably take it back for being terrible.

> We ban guns

Not in civilised countries.

> have extensive driving courses

That's what I'm arguing for. In this country the public pays for 12-13 years of education and subsidises another four; I'm arguing that among the subjects we should cover with that massive investment is 'don't be an idiot with computers,' much as we have drivers' ed.

> which mean that apps will no longer respect the keys I have installed on my devices

Wow, that sounds bad. Where can I read about this change?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12061320

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