

Laws Restricting Tech Actually Expose Us to Greater Harm - bootload
http://www.wired.com/2014/12/government-computer-security

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navait
There is no war on general purpose computers. If you want one, you can get
one.

Some people need one, some people don't. What we are finding is that very few
people wanted a general purpose computer in the first place. They wanted to do
a thing, and a general purpose computers did that thing(also many other things
they didn't want to do or understood).

You could buy a dvd player that was region unlocked. You can purchase unlocked
phones. You don't have to buy an iphone, or stick to the Google play store but
it's nice to know that you could live in the garden if you wanted to.

Is the NSA a problem? absolutely. Could requirements like cell-phone
termination be used for nefarious means? yes. But we built strong democratic
institutions for a reason, and we should be turning to them, not some ideology
that helps only the technologically gifted. Mr. Doctrow needs to argue against
policy on it's individual merits, not claim it violates some FSF ideology he
loves and fearmonger luddites.

~~~
hughw
He did argue against the policy on its merits, providing several concrete
examples where applying the law enables malefactors to do bad things to you.
And nothing in the article refers to the FSF or the concept of free or open
source software.

~~~
navait
The policies he specifically mentioned:

-Region-locked DVD's - never really enforced, and DVD's were irrelevant years ago anyways.

-App Store - decision by a private company that many like! Not policy.

-Sony Rootkit. Happened in 2005, never happened again. Not a policy.

-prohibiting printing gun.stl on your 3-D printer. If you think that's the future in the US, you are flat out retarded.

-Self-Driving cars that are self-disabling. Too far in the future to really hammer out a policy framework for yet. Unclear why the government would demand that law enforcement be able to control remotely.

-California. The only policy that's actually real and is pretty minor. Only can be used as theft deterrent.

Even if he doesn't directly mention free software, it's intellectual
inheritance is so clearly from RMS that I don't think it really needs to go
without saying.

~~~
foolrush
The belief that somehow private companies make decisions “just fine”
highlights the socio-cultural side.

It doesn't take much introspection to cite bleak moments from our collective
North American histories that were socially acceptable, while being rather
dubious ethically.

Smoking was once a “free choice” and desired, and came with it willful years
of of ignorance of the influence of second hand smoke. If we dig deeper, we
could spend much time discussing slavery and sufferage other such messes that,
while abhorrent by today's standards, were perfect cultural fits during their
respective reigns. And implicitly bound to private enterprise.

Private enterprise doesn't make any of his opinions dissolve, nor less
relevant. On the contrary, as those cultural and ideological vantages are
precisely why his points are relevant.

~~~
mc32
I think we can only evaluate things on their present merits. One can't go back
in time and indict previous cultures for their norms. So, perhaps one day in
the future people will look at us and find it repugnant. That may very well be
the case, but that's how it has to be. You evaluate by your current standards
not by an undetermined future enlightened state (or who knows, things could
all go backwards some day just the same.)

------
tzs
> if the state of California continues to insist that cell phones have kill
> switches allowing remote instructions to be executed on your phone that you
> can't countermand or even know about

California cannot "continue" to insist on this, because it never started to
insist on it.

The California kill switch law does not mandate that you cannot cannot
countermand it, and it certainly does not mandate that you cannot know about
it. In fact, it would be pretty hard for a consumer to not know about it since
the law requires that you be asked to set the kill switch up when you
initially set up the device. You can refuse if you do not wish to have the
kill switch.

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AndrewKemendo
I hate to say it but I think there is no way to prevent this.

If the human experience shows us anything it is that those with power will use
any instrument to exert its will. The internet and computing generally was not
born from anarchy and does not exist free from powerful influence from the
start.

There is no man-made system that is not corrupted by powerful interests.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://boingboing.net/2014/12/26/war-on-general-purpose-
comp...](http://boingboing.net/2014/12/26/war-on-general-purpose-
compute.html), which points to this.

Discussion of related talk from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8805039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8805039).

~~~
bootload
thx dang, I usually do this (pt to most authoritative source) - notice how the
articles cluster & some have more worth than others.

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lostmsu
No idea on other stuff, but immobilizer for auto, which is like kill switch
for phones, reduced car theft multiple times (3+) since it was introduced.

