Intel won't back down on chip ID feature (1999)
zdnet.com
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The entire mobile ecosystem was basically built to productize the user. A few oddballs pointed this out and were ignored because phones are shiny. The "mobile mentality" bled back into the entire rest of the computing ecosystem and this is where we are today.
Ultimately it's rooted in economics. People like free stuff, and the only way to give it to them is to monetize it indirectly via ads and surveillance.
It requires a tremendous amount of technical skill and diligence to opt out of the everything-is-malware hellscape we (our industry) created.
Of course not. Stop trying to trivialise privacy. Despite addresses being printed in a big book years ago, it was for regular people to look up other regular people.
The situation today is much more dire.
It's more than economics - they actively attack privacy and user control. E.g. DRM anti-circumvention laws, the impossibility of buying a CPU without Intel Management Engine (or AMD equivalent) unless you're a government agency [1], forcing the Trusted Platform Module on users, the gradual vanishing of rootable-phones and proliferation of apps that require a non-rooted phone, no more non-smart TVs, etc. Countless cases where there are no freedom-respecting options available for commoners at any price.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#Commer...
With AMT/IME or BootGuard, you don't get that control: you can't replace the bootguard keys (as it's a way to kill the secondary market of CPUs being resold and used in a different motherboard) and with AMT you can't fully disable it unless you're a government agency as you said.
The technology isn't bad, it's the actual implementation that's wrong by avoiding certain features which could give the user more freedom.
I also hate Apple's Mac and iOS closedness. Sure, on Mac you can disable SIP but you will disable its security completely, and you will also lose access to some of the OS features.
There should be a way to sign your own code and simply allow that to be trusted with full protection, just like it is on generic intel systems with secure boot where you can easily add your own signing keys.
On an Apple Silicon Mac you can have multiple operating systems installed, with different security configuration. It's totally possible to have both Asahi and macOS installed without disabling any security features in macOS.
No, that's UEFI Secure Boot, which doesn't use the TPM - it's entirely handled on-CPU. Most of the keys on a TPM are under user control (but aren't involved in the boot process) other than the EK, which is generated at manufacture time and will be consistent for the lifetime of the TPM.
DRM exists to protect the revenue streams of content owners. IME exists because Intel’s big customers want it and the people who don’t want it don’t have enough money for a custom SKU. TPM exists just because it’s a good security feature that the industry has demanded. Mainstream phones run non-privileged because businesses and the general public do not need root, and those who do want those features are a niche market. TVs mostly have smart features because subsidized TV with more features sell better than more expensive TV with fewer features.
Corporations optimize for money, they’re indifferent to privacy, they’ll sell whatever people are willing to buy that makes them the most money.
I addressed this - systems without IME exist, but are not available for purchase, for any price, except for governments. That's not economics.
> TPM exists just because it’s a good security feature that the industry has demanded
Industry demands it, and OS and CPU manufacturers collude to make sure every user gets it, whether they want it or not, so that when they start pushing remote-attestation and other user-hostile technologies in the future, they won't lose any market.
> Mainstream phones run non-privileged
I specifically said "non-rootable", i.e. non-privileged by default, but that can be unlocked. So mainstream phones would remain non-privileged except for those motivated enough to follow an unlock procedure. But it's a common tactic to excuse deliberate lock-down with "few need it, so we will invest resources into making sure they can't have it, when our previous models allowed it". If MS prevented users from running any compiler except Visual Studio on Windows, would you excuse it because those that need it are a niche market, for whom the more expensive Windows Pro licenses are made?
> subsidized TV with more features sell better than more expensive TV with fewer features
There are no non-smart TVs on store shelves next to smart ones, just for a higher price, despite demand [1]. In fact it's a challenge to find one at all.
Saying it's just about money is technically correct in most cases, but very misleading. It hides the fact that in most cases it's not just about offering a cheaper product, but involves backroom lobbying from other interests to restrict consumer options, like forcing them to watch ads on DVDs [2]. It's "about money" in the same way that robbery is about money.
[1] "This question of smart-TV data privacy and security is by far the most-asked among Ask Wirecutter readers." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35484594
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_operation_prohibition
As I understand governments just set a bit to disable IME on already existing processors. But if you want a feature and are willing to give them billions of dollars, Intel or anyone else absolutely will add a feature for you. You can call up any fab and have them make whatever you want. Custom silicon is absolutely a thing, but it requires big bucks. Nobody makes bleeding-edge node processors for applications with tiny markets precisely because of economics. They are made for the only market with enough revenue to support the R&D cost: the mass market.
> I specifically said "non-rootable", i.e. non-privileged by default, but that can be unlocked. So mainstream phones would remain non-privileged except for those motivated enough to follow an unlock procedure.
Mainstream phones don't do this. They still sell. Therefore it is proven that the market DGAF. The largest customers for a company like Samsung are businesses who don't want the phones to be unlockable. They want that shit locked down and surveilled like Fort Knox. Pun intended. https://samsungknox.com/en
> If MS prevented users from running any compiler except Visual Studio on Windows, would you excuse it because those that need it are a niche market, for whom the more expensive Windows Pro licenses are made?
I don't think they have a reason to expend resources to affirmatively make this change -- but the few products they've released for which it was inconvenient to add support for things like this, they absolutely have. eg: S mode.
> There are no non-smart TVs on store shelves next to smart ones, just for a higher price, despite demand [1]. In fact it's a challenge to find one at all.
You can find sometimes find Spectre dumb TVs at walmart. Know why the they're hard to find? Because TVs have large fixed costs to produce, and if you don't move enough units to cover both the marginal and fixed costs, you cannot afford to offer the product at all.
> "This question of smart-TV data privacy and security is by far the most-asked among Ask Wirecutter readers."
I don't doubt that Wirecutter has received maybe hundreds of questions about this topic. But almost 225 million TVs sell annually. People buy smart TVs.
It's just the reality that privacy is not a primary purchasing consideration for mass market customers. The mass market doesn't care. If you even read a privacy policy, people will think you're weird. I wish it weren't the case, but it plainly is. It really won't change until people stop buying these products.
There's literally nothing else on the consumer market. Edit: There may be a dumb Sceptre TV hidden in a Walmart warehouse somewhere, but I checked and there are none available in my entire EU country. Meanwhile the smart TVs sure don't advertise their spyware as prominently as their price, so we can add fraud in addition to robbery.
> As I understand governments just set a bit to disable IME on already existing processors. But if you want a feature and are willing to give them billions of dollars, Intel or anyone else absolutely will add a feature for you. [..] Custom silicon is absolutely a thing
If all it takes is setting a bit, I don't see why you'd invoke custom silicon except to muddy the waters.
Examples:
https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Sceptre-55-Class-4K-UHD-LED-TV-HD...
Also, it's besides my point. The fact that people buy smart TVs in large numbers is proof of the fact that the privacy concerns are not a factor in the mass market's buying decisions.
Do you own a TV? Did you buy a Sceptre? Why not? Did you not care enough about the privacy consideration to do a quick search to see that they exist? Most people don't.
> If all it takes is setting a bit, I don't see why you'd invoke custom silicon except to muddy the waters.
Because I was responding precisely to your gripe about "impossibility of buying a CPU without Intel Management Engine (or AMD equivalent)". If you are happy setting that bit, then the problem you are complaining about doesn't exist:
https://hackaday.com/2020/01/28/factory-laptop-with-ime-disa...
https://hackaday.com/2023/04/12/disabling-intels-backdoors-o...
I do, I did not, because my TV is old enough to not yet be "smart", and because Sceptres are literally not available anywhere in my country. Am I now virtuous enough by your standards to point out how hostile manufacturers are to users?
> The fact that people buy smart TVs in large numbers is proof
Hey I wonder if you asked ten random people if they knew their smart TV was reporting the contents of their USB sticks and their viewing habits to 3rd parties, how many would answer yes? This is the same revealed preference tortured logic that concludes people don't care about child labor because they still buy chocolate. Out of sight out of mind.
> If you are happy setting that bit, then the problem you are complaining about doesn't exist
Then this is a recent development, because in 2017 even Google was unable to get rid of IME: As of 2017, Google was attempting to eliminate proprietary firmware from its servers and found that the ME was a hurdle to that. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Management_Engine#By_Goo...
People say they care about the moral hazards, noneconomic costs, and other bad downstream consequences of their consumption if confronted about them.
Yet, most go right back out to the store and continue consuming the same products and services anyway. But saying that someone does or doesn't support something has no functional relevance when they open their wallet and literally reward it for happening.
My point is only that that there is one reason why these things happen -- because the economics of these situations encourage companies to take these actions.
I don't like that these things are happening any more than you do, but lip service it will never change it. It has to be made financially unviable. For it to stop, either the mass market must be convinced to make purchasing decisions based on it, or the activities must be made financially unviable by force of law.
A very relatable example for people here are gamers and professionals who shout they want AMD Radeon to become competitive to Nvidia GeForce, and then go right out and buy Nvidia GeForces once the products come out. We don't even need to talk about Intel ARC.
Capitalism is a system of voting with wallets, so voting with speech has no bearing on what results come out of capitalism as you say.
I.e. gamers are not dumb.
> Capitalism is a system of voting with wallets, so voting with speech has no bearing on what results come out of capitalism as you say.
Modern economy is a system set up in a way to force people to wallet-vote for specific classes of options, as it exploits the fact that most people are extremely price-sensitive by default, since the pool of votes they have is almost entirely spent on voting "yes I want to keep living in this apartment" and "yes I want me and my family to eat today". People will accept a lot of shit from the market, in order to not lose the vote for "my kids get to have a meal every day".
Looking at purchasing patterns of regular people and making inferences about their general preferences? It's even more idiotic than making a psychological study of students in your class, and generalizing the result to the whole population.
If you want changes in a company's behaviour, you buy or boycott their products as applicable. The bottom line is literally and rightfully the only factor companies truly care about.
That's the problem though: unless AMD can offer GeForce equivalents at lower price, gamers won't be buying it. They'll keep buying Nvidia products instead, because they want to play their games now, and they aren't going to settle for a worse card just to make a point.
> If you want changes in a company's behaviour, you buy or boycott their products as applicable.
No, you don't, because boycotts don't work. They never did[0]. They cannot be made to work, as humans simply can't spontaneously self-coordinate at the scale necessary[1].
----
[0] - Except hyper-local cases where the majority of the target market knows the vendor personally, and know each other personally, because they live in the same area.
[1] - This being the general reason for most of our present-era large-scale and global problems.
I mean, if AMD GPU’s were worse across the board but people bought them anyway because they were that annoyed at Nvidia, what would that actually demonstrate? It would demonstrate that AMD didn’t actually need to step up their GPU game after all. They could carry on with an inferior product and face no repercussions. The thing is, real world customers, given the choice, don’t usually buy inferior products in an effort to subsidize struggling producers. And if you force them to do so, you basically end up with the Jones Act.
Look at Intel and AMD in the CPU market: AMD is slowly but surely taking market share from Intel because they are making the superior products overall and the consumers are willing to put their wallets where their mouths are. By contrast, Nvidia vs. AMD in the GPU market is an example of consumers not willing to put their wallets where their mouths are and the market will reflect that.
In the end, these are kind of the same thing; because the laws are made by the people the mass market elects. The second can sometimes advance in a direction people don't "care" about, but they can't long go strongly against them.
e.g. the EU could require all smart TVs be sold with a switch that puts them in "dumb mode" and it would probably work for them, but if they straight banned smart TVs that'd get overturned quite quickly by the people.
It's not a proof of it at all.
People don't choose options from the abstract space of possible TVs. They choose from what's available. The vendors can and do set the range of choices people have, and there's shit all mass market can do about it. Literally everyone may hate it, but if the vendors don't offer an option that doesn't suck, and/or spend a lot of effort and money advertising the options that do suck, then people will buy it, and will hate it, because they don't have an actual choice here.
The reality is that people do not care enough to even read the privacy policies.
Not at comparable quality or price point. The insidious parts about abusive business models like surveillance/ad-sponsored or "free with ads" is that they set a price point that more honest business models can hardly reach.
Take two practically identical TVs by two competing vendors. One decides to go evil and have their product show ads in the UI, while siphoning data. They other does not. The first can use the money they make on ads and surveillance to lower the price of the product, even below manufacturing costs. You can't compete with that while staying honest.
> The reality is that people do not care enough to even read the privacy policies.
Of course. Why would you expect to? Every product and service now comes with insanely long terms of service and privacy policies, written in a way as to prevent regular people from even trying to understand it. There is only so much hours in a day, so much days in a lifetime, so much money in the wallet - people "don't care" about privacy, but not in the sense that it doesn't matter, but rather there's too many more important/pressing things to do than read ToS-es all day.
Isn't neglecting a minority of privacy conscious consumers by law a form of discrimination?
Not if you're buying Intel, they don't. The IME reads the HAP bit during boot, and if that's set will set its state to disabled, but it's still there and you're still relying on the software to actually behave as it's supposed to. The same applies to the hardware disable mechanism which involves doing fucky stuff with some of the HDA pins.
There isn't much of a point for Intel to make one without it. It's easier to support less SKUs. There are many other CPU manufacturers out there if IME is specifically something you don't want.
>OS and CPU manufacturers collude to make sure every user gets it, whether they want it or not
Because application developers want >90% of the userbase to support it. If only 5% of users have it then it limits the apps that can use it.
>they start pushing remote-attestation and other user-hostile technologies in the future, they won't lose any market.
Remote attestation isn't user hostile. It is a security feature that protects platforms that the software uses. Users benefit from the platforms they are using being secure. Users don't like playing against cheaters in muliplayer games. Users don't like receiving spam messages. Users don't like their accounts being hacked.
How about RISC-V?
...wait a sec. You're just referring to an ungimped system. Carry on.
And they have a 64-core version in the works: https://twitter.com/SipeedIO/status/1620011141639581698
What's surprising is that this unencumbered hardware is coming from a country that's a dictatorship.
What makes the Raspi special is a vast repository of documentation, a community of people offering support, and extremely well supported peripherals with tight integration. This is a lot of work to do well and to maintain.
It sucks that you can’t just turn that connectivity off with a physical switch, but it’s hard to see this as a deal breaker. If I get really paranoid I’ll just solder a 50 ohm resistor from the wifi antenna lead (on the motherboard)to ground.
Is there some reason that people are compelled to connect their smart tvs to their networks?
But I have a HTPC/NAS. Most people probably don't have that. I'd say most people just use the apps on the TV.
>Is there some reason that people are compelled to connect their smart tvs to their networks?
They want to use the inbuilt features that they've "paid" for, youtube, netflix, etc.
There are literally buttons on the remotes to access those apps.
https://theintercept.com/2015/09/25/gchq-radio-porn-spies-tr...
And you directly feel the chilling effect of it, no longer can you type whatever you want into that search box anymore. It's super creepy, and we're used to it. Only when it's gone, for example when we use a locally running AI chatbot, do we feel freedom again, and the difference is striking.
Thank God the next great thing in tech is AI and we have the option of running that locally. And because of that, I am looking forward to tech progress again. Where progress doesn't always mean expanding state control over people.
The secondarily, the workings of software are increasingly opaque to most people. This leaves people unaware of what is actually being done. It seems that when most people are shown a snapshot of surveillance records about themselves they get seriously concerned, but otherwise out of sight out of mind.
The solution in the modern day is the same as the solution back then - endeavor to run software that is designed to represent your own interests rather than those of its authors. It doesn't particularly matter if my CPU, or any other component, has a serial number, camera, microphone, GPS receiver, etc, if I'm not trusting software that will take sensitive data and send it off to hostile parties.
Right. I'm dreading the day when platform vendors decide that connectivity is fast and ubiquitous enough so that "your" "computer" should become a dumb framebuffer with all processing and storage done in their data centers, which will eliminate the last vestiges of user privacy and control.
My only real reservation about the EV revolution is that this is doing similar things to people with regard to cars. An EV is just a car with a battery and a motor instead of a gas tank and an ICE, but the "form factor change" seems like it can be used as a pretext to introduce a lot of other changes like your car no longer being yours. Teslas are too cloud connected already, and Ford is talking about a car that can repossess itself at their command. When you pay off your car does this feature get turned off? I doubt it.
It seems like it's easy to use any change as a pretext to smuggle other perhaps less palatable changes in alongside it.
Why would you doubt it? Who, besides the vehicle's owner exactly do you think will be using it, and for what?
If they can't be assed to show up in person to rob you, why would they want to steal your car? Why not just drain your bank account? Or just steal the deed to your house?
Specific easily-imaginable attackers are law enforcement, criminals, and finance companies. Both through deliberate unjust actions, as well as administrative mixups. "Sorry, despite your car being paid off, we incorrectly thought your loan was in default. But we returned your car a week later, so no harm done, right?"
And responding to your other comment about criminals, actual physical property can be parted out and sold. As opposed to committing fraud to obtain paper assets, which can be investigated and reversed. Stealing cars and financial fraud are just different (criminal) industries.
The bank does. It is letting you use it until you pay the loan off.
What you're describing is not a 'whoops sorry', but a felony theft. If your laws can't handle felony theft, self-repo devices aren't the problem in your society.
And sure, I definitely support policing the incorrect actions of systems as the basic crimes that they fundamentally are. But that isn't really how things work in the real world (at least in the US), where institutional criminals generally escape being charged.
The relevant law in Washington State:
> Once you are in default, the lender may repossess your car at any time. They do not have to notify you before the repossession takes place. The lender cannot commit a crime, use abusive language, enter a home without permission, or take an item if you physically resist. Cars can be towed from public or private lots.
If you default on payments, it doesn't sound like it's 'your' car anymore. You aren't the owner of something that can legally be taken away from you at any time.
Concretely, your citation only shows that the owner-lienholder distinction is small for one specific aspect. And even with the law you cited there are still significant differences - for example, a traditional tow truck is unable to force entry into your garage and take the car, while a backdoored self driving car can open the door and drive itself away (it would necessarily be integrated with the door opener so you can summon it from elsewhere).
Ultimately, talking about concepts like "ownership" is only useful as a lemma (I often call home mortgages on bubble prices "renting from the bank"). The larger argument here is the desire to keep ownership (aka capital) distributed throughout society rather than concentrated into a few centralized administrators. And yes, it's a quick hop from the trend of most people mortgaging capital goods, to most people leasing capital goods. But that's all the more reason to emphasize the distinction to keep it from being further eroded.
So we need to design a system that isn't easily traced, as an inherent property of how it operates, so that it's not possible for those who want to exert power over others, to do so.
Just as an example, using a radio/satellite data broadcasting architecture, where the receiver is untraceable, means that the government can no longer round up people for reading "forbidden" things anymore. That allows us to have a new darknet to replace Tor that's far more difficult for the government to police.
Again as an example, the content request can be transmitted anonymously using HF radio or LoRaWAN, being only a few bytes, and has no sender address. And the response can come down via satellite, broadcast to everyone, who also ends up storing it locally on their computer. That way we can reduce the number of retransmissions required. We already have a usable worldwide satellite data broadcasting network, you can see a list of recent transmissions at https://blocksat.info.
It's certainly enough bandwidth to support a text based darknet, which works in a similar way to how Teletext did, but with caching of content on your local hard disk. Which you can browse freely like the Internet.
Even if you pay, this still happens anyway.
If nobody will pay for anything, you literally can't run a business in the market without resorting to some backhanded way of getting paid like selling out your users.
If people will pay, it's possible to run such a business. This does not however guarantee that businesses won't misbehave. There's always the temptation to double-dip.
Contrast Apple and Microsoft. Apple so far has at least somewhat resisted the temptation to double-dip and sell their users out to ads and spyware. Microsoft couldn't care less as evidenced by the ad and shovelware laden monstrosity that is Windows 11. There's no guarantee that Apple won't move further to the dark side, but since people pay directly for Apple products they at least can try to stay honest. (... and they've to some extent branded themselves as privacy conscious, so going to the dark side could harm their brand.)
Consumer awareness, choice, and in some cases regulation are required to get the rest of the way there.
They MUST increase revenue and at some point anyone willing to buy an iphone will own one. At that point they will have no choice.
Apple isn't this privacy champion that you make it out to be.
[1]: https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=119358&page=1 [2]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/209117/us-internet-penet...
In some ways the genie was out of the bottle too fast with social media for new users in awe to know any better for 10-15 years.
It could be a similar genie is already out of the bottle moment with GPT for some, and hopefully there’s enough people online now with more than awareness of new tech outpacing user sophistication and to some degree legislation.
Obviously, despite the number of people who did take it seriously 25 years ago, the companies didn't really care, they still did what they did and structured the industry to become rent-seekers.
The problem with regulation is that the biggest companies pay people a lot of money to figure out how to best game the system, with the goal being infinite growth. Even if you try to regulate this type of behavior, there will be a large number of lawyers and businesspeople trying to figure out how to stretch the letter of the law as far as they can, and the biggest ones may even decide that they'd rather pay any related fines, than give up their user data revenue stream.
To create effective legislation, you should also at least make a sensible attempt at figuring out if there might be any unintended consequences.
I don't have an answer, other than to say that perhaps there should be a lobbying group for privacy with the same dedication to trying to figure out how to game the system, but to further privacy rather than to erode it. Fight fire with fire. I genuinely wish anyone who tries this good luck in raising the capital it would need to be competitive.
To get a picture of how much unique information is present on every PC these days, look at one of the pasted anticheat HWID spoofers on GitHub.
EDIT: found this nifty list https://www.unknowncheats.me/forum/anti-cheat-bypass/333662-...
Neither are you, in most fields
Scott McNealy, then CEO of Sun Microsystems: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it."
https://www.wired.com/1999/01/sun-on-privacy-get-over-it/
1. And so-called "tech" companies are constantly trying to establish more forms of "ID". It's time to regulate this nonsense.
(Archive.org links are fine if there's really nothing else available, but please try to find an original source first.)
maybe because the NSA had enough compromising stuff (aka kompromat) on some high-enough Intel bigwig(s) to convince them to implement it. As in: "a nice career and family life you got there. Would be a pity if that all went down the drain just because of some stupid scandal, wouldn't it? Besides, by pushing this simple little feature for us, you'll be proving to be a real patriot. You wouldn't want to be a non-patriot now, would you?"
There is circumstantial evidence that the NSA is shady as shit. A few notable items:
1) The NSA coerced nearly every major and minor telco in the US to assist in their ongoing highly-illegal domestic wiretapping operations. (When this came to light, Congress retroactively immunized (from prosecution) those telcos that assisted the NSA in breaking the law.)
2) The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper knowingly lied by omission before Congress about the scope and nature of NSA's domestic wiretapping operations.
3) The NSA's lawyers lied under oath to the US Supreme Court about the NSA's various domestic wiretapping operations.
In a similar way, there's no solid evidence that TSA was a combination jobs program, massive money-making program for then-VP Dick Cheney's business buddies and their pretty-useless microwave-imaging device company, and internal contraband-and-warrant checkpoint-establishment program. But when you compare the organization's stated goals with what it actually achieves, and how it responds to criticism at the difference between the two, it's pretty clear that its stated aims are substantially different from its actual aims.
There is a sibling here talking about it being a conspiracy theory, but it was an official organization, with many published technical documents, that had the explicit goal of removing the user's rights to manage their own computers.
Curious if you have any links to those published documents?
> Members include Intel, AMD, IBM, Microsoft, and Cisco.
> The core idea of trusted computing is to give hardware manufacturers control over what software does and does not run on a system by refusing to run unsigned software
> Can the Trusted Platform Module control what software runs?
> No. There is no ability to do this. The subsystem can only act as a 'slave' to higher level services and applications by storing and reporting pre-runtime configuration information. Other applications determine what is done with this information. At no time can the TCG building blocks 'control' the system or report the status of applications that are running.
I'm not saying TPMs cannot be (or are not, today) used to give non-users control over what users can do with software running on their machine, however in the absence of evidence, I'm not inclined to believe that trusted computing efforts started with such "evil" intentions in the first place.
Albeit heavily abused, TPMs are still a great idea IMO.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20061003155033/https://www.trust...
You see, in our state, it is law to take the blood of the newborn to test for disease. Sounds sorta okay until you learn that the state has been selling the genetic data of your offspring without your consent.
It's a quiet issue that is happening in a few states currently: https://newjerseymonitor.com/2022/09/19/parents-score-victor...
The term "CPS" narrows down what state you're in.
Be sure to retain an attorney, and meet with CPS up front (ideally before the child is born, but as soon as reasonably possible).
CPS will most likely not enforce on child neglect if the sense is that you are both (1) respectful (2) lawyered up (3) proactive. It is because they are very unlikely to prevail in court in these situations.