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

http://www.schneier.com/essay-224.html

by pmjordan • 18 years ago

66 29 18 years ago

jumper3• 18 years ago

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.

fauigerzigerk3• 18 years ago

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.

nuclear_eclipse• 18 years ago

Stop giving them ideas....

ajkirwin3• 18 years ago

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.

jumper3• 18 years ago

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.

incomethax• 18 years ago

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.

fauigerzigerk3• 18 years ago

And our own laws?

tdavis2• 18 years ago

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.

Prrometheus• 18 years ago

Why not?

http://www.seasteading.org/

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

tsally• 18 years ago

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.

cturner• 18 years ago

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).

mlLK2• 18 years ago

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

streety• 18 years ago

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

snitko• 18 years ago

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.

bprater• 18 years ago

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

sspencer• 18 years ago

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?

kqr2• 18 years ago

Does anyone remember "trusted" computing?

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

chaostheory• 18 years ago

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/).

mlLK2• 18 years ago

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.

meterplech• 18 years ago

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?

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

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