We'll start this week by talking about Microsoft's future security feature, code-named Palladium, which got lots of attention from the press last week. The Palladium feature should appear around 2006 at the same time as the next generation of Windows, code-named Longhorn.
So why this concern about a product which will not appear before four years (or more, we're dealing with Microsoft)? Simply because it will invade your privacy. And because it will cost you lots of money (again, we are talking about Microsoft.)
As wrote Reuters on July 2, "Instead of storing sensitive information such as passwords on software, Palladium will also aim to protect information at the hardware level."
But let's use some words from a really talented columnist, Robert X. Cringely, to give you a clearer view of what will represent Palladium for you.
Last August, I wrote of a rumor that Microsoft wanted to replace TCP/IP with a proprietary protocol -- a protocol owned by Microsoft -- that it would tout as being more secure. Actually, the new protocol would likely be TCP/IP with some of the reserved fields used as pointers to proprietary extensions. I called it TCP/MS in the column.
This week, Microsoft announced Palladium through an exclusive story in Newsweek written by Steven Levy, who ought to have known better. Palladium is the code name for a Microsoft project to make all Internet communication safer by essentially pasting a digital certificate on every application, message, byte, and machine on the Net, then encrypting the data EVEN INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER PROCESSOR. Palladium compatible hardware (presumably chipsets and motherboards) will come from both AMD and Intel, and the software will, of course, come from Microsoft. That software is what I had dubbed TCP/MS.
The point of all this is simple. It may actually make the Internet somewhat safer. But the real purpose of this stuff, I fear, is to take technology owned by nobody (TCP/IP) and replace it with technology owned by Redmond. That's taking the Internet and turning it into MSN. Oh, and we'll all have to buy new computers.
This is diabolical. If Microsoft is successful, Palladium will give Bill Gates a piece of every transaction of any type while at the same time marginalizing the work of any competitor who doesn't choose to be Palladium-compliant. So much for Linux and Open Source, but it goes even further than that. So much for Apple and the Macintosh. It's a militarized network architecture only Dick Cheney could love.
Sources: Robert X. Cringely, for PBS, June 27, 2002; Reuters, at the New York Times, July 2, 2002
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