At Tue, 29 Aug 2006 10:41:22 +0200, Christian Stüble wrote: > > If the technology is fundamentally flawed, then the correct answer is > > "nobody", and instead it should be rejected outright. > IMO not. Maybe this is an influence of my PhD-advisor(s), but I would try to > _prove_ that the technology is fundamentally flawed. BTW, the abstract > security properties provides are IMO useful.
The policy that you are suggesting is, in my opinion, quite dangerous. Before a technology is deployed we should try and prove that the technology is not fundamentally flawed. I do not believe that proof that a technology is fundamentally flawed should be the requirement by which we prevent deployment, reasonable suspicion is sufficient. Let me provide two examples. The Cane Toad was introduced to Eastern Australia in the 1930s to eliminate can beetles. Today they are destroying the native wild life: "They carry a venom so powerful it can kill crocodiles, snakes and other predators in minutes." Western Australia has petitioned the government to allow them to use the army to help prevent their spread [1]. In Kenya, in the 1980s, the mathenge plant was introduced to stop the advance of deserts. It turns out that "the plant is not only poisonous but also hazardous to [the locals] livestock. Residents say the mathenge seeds of the plant stick in the gums of their animals, eventually causing their teeth to fall out." "Can you imagine goats unable to graze? Eventually they die." But that's not all: "Some have even had to move home, as the mathenge roots have destroyed their houses." And "The plant is also blamed for making the soil loose and unable to sustain water" [2]. There examples are not isolated cases. Further examples can be found in "Late lessons from early warnings: the precautionary principle 1896" [3], issued by the EU in 2001. The reason that I have choosen environmental examples is that they are so simple to understand: social implications are orders of magnitude more difficult to grok. The advocates of these above "solutions" were not likely to have been looking to cause trouble. They saw that certain changes could affect other positive changes. In both cases, they were right: the cane toad stopped the cane beetle and the plant helped curb desertification. It was the other insufficiently explored affects which caused the most trouble. DRM and "trusted computing" is similar. On the surface, they appear to be solutions to some socially desirable properties (i.e. limitations explicitly condoned by the law which I assume for the sake of argument reflect social attitudes). They, for instance, help companies make a profit and protect privacy. But maybe their impact is broader. Perhaps, "copy protection" will stifle creativity as its impact corrodes fair use and, had a different solution been used, companies could have made a profit in a different less disruptive way. Perhaps it is better to let these companies die and experience a local minimum in creative output rather than allow ourselves to enter a creative dark age. Perhaps, as we use this technology to protect our medical history, as we agree that it is private, and we refuse to allow our doctor to not transfer our medical data to others without explicit consent, the result will prevent us from getting care that we required when abroad on vacation. Perhaps such barriers could have been avoided if the system was designed to respect intent. I don't know how such copy protection" mechanisms can be designed to respect intent without necessarily reverting to a system which compromises their stated goal of privacy through the introduction of some big brother entity. In these cases, I do not think that *proving* a fatal flaw should be the metric we use to prevent such deployment. If we have reasonable to think that social values are at stake by the introduction of some solution, I am convinced we must take the conservative approach and reject that solution. I think we are a far way from that regarding DRM and "trusted computing". Thanks, Neal [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/5092226.stm [2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5252256.stm [3] http://reports.eea.eu.int/environmental_issue_report_2001_22/en/Issue_Report_No_22.pdf _______________________________________________ L4-hurd mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/l4-hurd
