I've Seen the Future, and It Has a Kill Switch | Hacker News Reader

I've Seen the Future, and It Has a Kill Switch

schneier.com

66 pointspmjordan29 comments

DRM has never been about stopping piracy. It's been about controlling how you use your content. For example, I'm sure the media companies would love to recreate that part of history where everybody rebought a bunch of music they already owned to move from tape to compact disc. This is an extension of that, though thankfully the difficulty in controlling this beast properly ought to slow it's deployment.

They will be able to control all of this (with few exceptions) once each and every move on the internet is authenticated. It will happen. All they need to do is cite terrorism and child pornography.

Stop giving them ideas....

I was always wondering, to what extent this conspiracy theories actually work in reality. I mean, sure there's a conspiracy, but is it like total control with a very strict understanding of what people's lives should look like (as in "They Live") or is it actually decentralized and not really scary. It's very important, because it defines the means it should be fight with and actually the need of this fight at all. And I still can't figure this out, because just when it seems it's a huge very secret and organized conspiracy I start to think of how dumb people actually are and how really hard would it be for them to build a system like that.

"The Pentagon wants a kill switch installed on airplanes... " Not altogether sure that's the best switch to install on an airplane.

If you live in NYC, every airplane looks like a problem.

Or at least, I imagine that is the fucked up rationale behind that particular kill switch. While it could conceivably drop a hijacked plane before it nails a building, I can't help but wonder how long it will take before some clever antagonists start broadcasting kill signals to drop the planes remotely. Why dirty your hands in a messy hijacking when you can just press a button from a rooftop adjacent to an airport?

Looks similar if not identical to a post by Bruce Schneier on wired around the same time. Some commentary on HN at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=228458

At the rate we're going though I think the depths of what we should worry about is whether or not a hard-drive has failed and if backups have been made. We gotta ways to go before we see the rise of the machines.

Does anyone remember "trusted" computing?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_computing

this can easily be extended to systems that prevent cars from speeding, being put into drive with passengers not wearing seat-belts, etc...

this is why there are people who oppose mandatory seat-belt laws, the idea being once you give up a modicum of freedom you can open up yourself to losing more. if we all believe their should be mandatory seat-belt laws, why not enforce them remotely and electronically?

well it's good that open hardware (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_hardware) is starting to grow and we now have DIY 3d printers (http://fabathome.org/).

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.

If we had sufficient numbers, sure, that'd be a great way to go. But as it is with almost no one caring\learning about technical\political issues like those involved in this.... I just can't see it working. The problem isn't the technology... it's the people. And that's a hard problem indeed to fix.

If it wasn't hard it would have already been done. It's time we had a "healthy disregard for the impossible" and get to work fixing the people problem.

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.

I guess I'm just outpouring all the frustration and rage I've felt whenever people turn to focus on all the cool shiny technology related to a problem.... when the problem at it's core is social. For just a moment, forget protecting yourself with technology! What would have happened if the Hollings Bill had passed? http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2002/03/51275 Anyone continuing to produce "free" technology would have a heavy hammer dropped on them... and a similar bill could easily pass in the near future, probably with some explanation they need it to fight terrorism.

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....

And our own laws?

What do laws have to do with this? Almost none of the examples have anything to do with laws (cell phones in restaurants, please) and the ones that do are irrelevant because this is being partially described as a tool for enforcing the law.

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.

Sure, all laws are products of society and eforcement is more or less leaky in a very imbalanced way, but that's another story. I'm saying laws because my assumption is that it will become illegal (maybe it is already in some countries) to create or modify devices so that they do not enforce copyright and other laws.

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

It can still swing the other way, I and people like me think life of author + 10 or 30 years is plenty of time for copyrights to last. Others want it to last forever, who wins is more a question politics than the laws of physics.

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.

Somehow, I don't think so. They'd just say, "Oh, we need to make this EVEN MORE STRINGENT AND DIFFICULT.", rather than abandon it.

Unlike computers, someone doing this every week is going to be unacceptable.

"Laws can never be universally and compulsorily enforced because laws are merely guidelines."

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.

Right, which is completely preposterous and will never happen. The biggest problem, as outlined in the article, is that one way or another the security measures for such a protocol would eventually (probably quickly) be cracked which means such devices couldn't be trusted anymore, etc.

e.g., The journalist will take the picture, one way or another. You can't clobber free will with gadgets.

I bet they'd LOVE to try, though.

"Right, which is completely preposterous and will never happen."

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.

Why not?

http://www.seasteading.org/

tl;dr Applied anarcho-capitalism for fun and (hopeful) profit.

I wholeheartedly agree. What does this require?

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.

Another thing - withdraw from the commercial media market. I think if enough geeks stopped copying music and movies and took on a position of "only what's legal" we'd rapidly build alternative culture streams that would be all of good, legal, and free of retriction. Part of the problem is that people's brains are poisoned. For example, many musicians I meet are hard-wired into the idea that they need to protect their work, when in fact they would most benefit by getting their music and their names out there and then benefiting from more audiences at gigs, and better jobs (teaching opportunities, partnership deals to produce jingles for advertising and anything else that comes by way of their increased network).

Funny you mention waiting for the sky to fall cause I was about to mention Skynet.

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