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Comment by x3blah | Hacker News Reader

"I'm really sick of everything being made "secure", when in fact the "security" is for someone other than the legitimate user of the thing."

There must have been some groundswell movement amongst users all demanding that the boot process be made more "secure". There must have been well-publicised cases where "bad guys" were hijacking the boot process.

Perhaps different people have different definitions of "secure". If some third party, including the seller, has control over access to the computer or what I can run or disable on it after I purchase it, then I do not consider that computer to be more "secure". I just consider it to be less useful and less trustworthy to use with any personal data.

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> There must have been some groundswell movement amongst users all demanding that the boot process be made more "secure".

There wasn't. Users want security in general but most people would not even realize it if a boot process was insecure nor would they understand the implications.

> There must have been well-publicised cases where "bad guys" were hijacking the boot process.

Yes. The "bad" guys are the people running "unauthorized" software on computer hardware. Governments and corporations would very much like to restrict what users can and can't do. Widespread cryptography is viewed as an existential threat to law enforcement and intelligence gathering. Companies enjoy owning their users and being in a monopoly position with regards to the software market for their devices. So we get systems which control the user instead of systems controlled by the user.

This is a great analysis.

When I was a kid, I used to wonder what the difference was between soldiers and police. I was told that soldiers were meant to protect the State from its enemies, whereas police were meant to enforce the rule of law. I was also told that when soldiers were used for policing, everyone tends to turn into an enemy of the State.

It turns out, this view is correct, but omits that police tend to become soldiers for the State anyway. The ones that actively serve the citizenry's best interests seem to be far and few between.

There isn't that much difference when it comes down to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_police

Yes.

In theory, "military police" enforce military law and are responsible for policing the army, navy, and so on. They're usually limited in their ability to enforce civilian law. In the USA, it's prohibited under the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, but this isn't universal by any means.

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