There's a solution to all of this, rather than sitting back and waiting for the sky to fall.
We use our own operating systems and safe hardware. We develop new protocols and technologies.
We build our own infrastructure and abandon the old.
We use our own operating systems and safe hardware. We develop new protocols and technologies.
We build our own infrastructure and abandon the old.
Ghandi was one man (albeit a great man), yet he alone changed a country, and the world. We are already a community strong, and a community of leaders and visionaries at that. There's no reason we can't do as ajkirwin suggests and build our own protocols, systems, and infrastructure.
We are the future, and its our chance to make the world as we want to make it.
Let's get to work.
Yeah, we need free technologies. Guess what, we have them! What we need to do is retain the right to develop, possess, and use them! And as distasteful as is, that's a political fight. So, uh, yeah..... forgive me if I'm over reacting.... but I really don't think I am....
1.) A technically superior operating system (check).
2.) A massive community of programmers to develop and extend said operating system (check).
3.) People with the wherewithal to resist corporate pressure and keep their software truly free (Shit.).
Currently the vast majority of Linux/BSD developers serve as an unpaid workforce for companies like Redhat and HP. This is why OpenBSDs attitude, while commendable, is problematic. Their goal is for a more secure society; if they have a superior ssh implementation they want companies wrap it up in their proprietary applications and use it, rather than forgo it and create a less secure application. Deraadt hates Stallman's unwavering (and sometimes incorrect) criticisms of all things not Free. The ironic thing about the situation is that Stallman's attitude is ultimately more likely to create a secure society; the threats Schneier outlines in his article are possible in Deraadt's society but not in Stallman's.
Laws can never be universally and compulsorily enforced because laws are merely guidelines. "Don't do X because if we catch you will be punished with Y." I imagine many of us, myself included, commit multiple crimes per day, including various felonies. If these laws were enforced with omnipotence, everyone would be in jail. Or life would just be a lot more boring.
Many of the "pleasantness" policies and laws this technology wants to enforce are merely products of society; you can't fix society with more gadgets. In fact, I don't think you can fix it, period.
I am convinced that the one thing _all_ consumer devices including PCs will be obliged to do is to authenticate users. Enforcement isn't trivial, but once it is a felony the risk becomes so high that only organised crime will actually do it, not hackers
Getting the "kill switch" to work is all about the law. And having someone "kill switch" 10,000 cars in some city would vary quickly change that law should it ever show up.
But this kind of thing is encoding those "choose to follow or suffer the consequences" laws into "we will take control and force your devices to comply".
e.g. no photography within 100m of the police, even if you are an investigative journalist willing to break the letter of a restrictive law to cover a story.
e.g., The journalist will take the picture, one way or another. You can't clobber free will with gadgets.
A lot of the curtailment of civil liberties in recent years would have been preposterous a decade or so before they occurred.
"You can't clobber free will with gadgets."
Tried to photocopy any money recently?
You still have free will, but your ability to act on it can be constrained as far as it relies on the use of technology.
I agree with the article in that such things will be cracked, at least initially. But these processes do get better iteratively.
See also http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/2007/04/_trial_version.ht...
tl;dr Applied anarcho-capitalism for fun and (hopeful) profit.