Privacy.security

Details on TCPA/Palladium

TCPA / Palladium FAQ. [Privacy Digest]

A Dangerous Troika -- Government, Publishers, and PC Industry

Lawrence Lessig first introduced us to this foul juxtaposition in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. And in this Reason Magazine interview about his newest book, The Future of Ideas, says, "In my first book I was quite pessimistic. It turns out I was not pessimistic enough."

The problem is more than just starting down a "slippery slope". The motives for each of the three parties are quite different and, individually, their initiatives could be modified or repealed to a tolerable level. But when fate and circumstance align the goverment with two of the strongest economic powers in our nation to push for massive control architectures we have little means of fighting back save extraordinary diligence, a stoic skepticism, and an outright refusal to buy products that attempt to control our lives.

The courts are supposed to watch the government, the govermnent should be providing some limited "general welfare" oversight on business, and business is supposed to be responsive to its customers. None of that seems to be happening right now. Houston, we have a problem...

Dave Winer at Scripting News found the tweney report for 2002-06-28: Broken trust.

Windows XP has some rudimentary self-protection technologies built in, but Palladium won't appear full-blown until the next major release of Windows in a couple of years. That's because Palladium depends on specialized chips being developed by Intel and AMD, which will handle the encryption and authentication. In the early stages, this will rely on a so-called "Fritz" chip (named after Sen. Fritz Hollings, the sponsor of a draconian digital rights bill), which verifies that your computer is running an approved combination of hardware and software -- before your computer even boots up. Once Fritz certifies the system, it can pass that certification along to third parties, such as Microsoft, Disney, Sony, or AOL/Time Warner. Later, "Fritz" capabilities will be built right into the central processor, making it next-to-impossible to intercept unencrypted data. Everything coming in and out of the CPU will be encrypted and digitally signed. [...]