Last week, I was reading a wonderful article by Bruce Schneier called, The Myth of the ‘Transparent Society’ (at Wired.com). His arguments are very compelling!
Here’s an example Bruce Schneier uses in the article,
An example will make this clearer. You’re stopped by a police officer, who demands to see identification. Divulging your identity will give the officer enormous power over you: He or she can search police databases using the information on your ID; he or she can create a police record attached to your name; he or she can put you on this or that secret terrorist watch list. Asking to see the officer’s ID in return gives you no comparable power over him or her. The power imbalance is too great, and mutual disclosure does not make it OK.
It is for these very same reasons that Trusted Computing and Trusted Internet will not work.
You have no power, they do. You can’t get their power so it will always be lopsided.
And it will always put varying levels of stress on those being monitored, and potentially cause emotional, physical, mental or spiritual damage to those who are under the microscope so to speak – depending upon the
I really think so many today really need to read 1984 by George Orwell. It’s not a pretty sight, but it’s riveting and revolting.
Even Microsoft’s Ballmer had to acknowledge that even on a personal level he has to deal with the stupidity of DRM (which they hope to enforce using Trusted Computing and Trusted Internet) with his own son in the article iPod users are music thieves says Ballmer – Silicon.com:
The Microsoft boss also claimed some domestic familiarity with the issue.
“My 12-year-old at home doesn’t want to hear that he can’t put all the music that he wants in all of the places that he would like it,” he joked.
This after saying,
Billing Microsoft as the good guys and Apple the villains of the piece – at least as far as corporate America, rather than users, is concerned, Ballmer said: “We’ve had DRM in Windows for years. The most common format of music on an iPod is ‘stolen’.”
“Part of the reason people steal music is money, but some of it is that the DRM stuff out there has not been that easy to use.
Unbelievable. And all this after they brought Cory Doctorow in years ago to talk about the futility of DRM.
