You just spent the last 24 minutes driving home from work which is about 30 miles away. As you pull into your driveway, the garage door automatically opens. Exiting your car, you head towards the house entry via a door to your right. As you approach, the door automatically unlocks.
Once inside, you turn on the TV and do a simple search for the program you feel like watching. You think to yourself that it is so nice to just choose any program you want. After watching your favorite program, you decide to turn on your computer. So you place your eye near the optical sensor and it immediately turns on. You are notified that you have email.
Upon checking your email you see a number of companies have apparently helped themselves to your bank account. You don’t remember giving them your account information but since you would eventually get a bill from them, you think nothing of it. You probably agreed to some EULA (end user license agreement). On top of that, you see a ticket from the State Police for speeding on your way home tonight. You could have sworn you drove the speed limit all the way home.
You get a confirmation receipt from your refrigerator that it ordered this weeks groceries. You think to yourself how much you love those Oreo’s Doublestuffs you just finished and hoped your refrigerator “remembered” to order more. Just then, you see another notice from your insurance company telling you that your health insurance has increased due to your “significantly” higher risk. So you call and find out that they have been monitoring what your refridge has been ordering. They tell you that the actuaries have found that people who eat Oreos 2 times a week are twice as likely to have a heart attack so they proactively raised your rates. Not much you can do about this now and you certainly aren’t about to stop eating Oreos!
You launch iTunes and decide to listen to some of that music you just downloaded last week. You get some pop up screen with something about a license notice but you click past it. You try to launch the song you bought last week but it won’t play. It keeps popping up this notice so you click on the link to find out what it is.
It takes you to a page all about piracy and it states that you have been found guilty of piracy. Each case of piracy costs $2500 and since there were 5 songs that were “deemed” pirated, the RIAA has fined $12500 which it already automatically deducted from your savings account leaving you overdrawn on anything outstanding. Now that you have overdrawn, your credit scores immediately drop and you know this is going to affect your insurance premiums across the board since they now use credit score as a determining factor.
At this point you are enraged. You are wondering how all these things can “just happen” without your consent or knowledge. So you call the 800 number on the piracy page and find out that it was the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) on your computer that “tattled”. You don’t remember buying anything like that. The sales guy certainly never said anything like this would happen. So you decide to get a new computer but after a little research, you find out that there is actually a law that states every new computer made MUST have a TPM for the “consumer’s protection”. It appears that this was signed into law 5 years ago and you never heard about it. You certainly didn’t do anything about it when you could have. You have made your bed and now you must sleep in it.
-This sounds like a scary far fetched idea right? Well, unfortunately for you, it isn’t. In fact, most of what I stated here is either being done today or could be possible in the next couple of years.
Automated Tickets – In this example, you would have had to be driving about 75 miles per hour to get home in 24 minutes. This is happening already across the country. The use of toll “passes” can calculate your time from one point to the next and since they are already taking pictures of people, they have all the proof they need to automatically ticket you. So you say, I’ll just drive another way and skip the toll booths. Well, GPS can be used in the same manner. Politicians and other law makers see HUGE dollar signs when you start talking about this stuff. They sell it by saying it is a safety concern. It isn’t, it is a money concern.
Personal identification – This is something that is being pushed very hard today. Many new computers come with “Bio-metrics” so you can log on to your machine just by scanning your finger. Although this sounds awfully convenient, it is a little scary at the same time. We will basically be finger printing everyone.
TV on Demand – Everything is headed to an a la carte menu. You will no longer just pay a flat fee and get all of the channels you want. You will have to pay for each program you wish to see. This is the Holy Grail for the TV execs. Even though we aren’t here today, OnDemand is here.
Bank account access – This is something that doesn’t exist today but “could” exist in the near future with something called TPM. The foundations for this are being set today. Almost all new computers are shipping with a version of TPM. The scenario above is a worst case scenario and although TPM is being marketed as something that should help consumers, it can be used by 3rd parties to do some real bad stuff. Add to that the heavy lobbying from the likes of the RIAA and MPAA and a Congress that doesn’t/can’t understand the technology ramifications and you have yourself a nightmare.
Some people argue that my points are irrelevant because I am talking about things that haven’t happened yet. So I ask you this: If a technology existed for the content industry to exert even more control and restrictions on the stuff you buy; don’t you think they would use it? The answer is, unequivocally, yes. DRM is becoming more and more restrictive, not less. This is fact. TPM WILL be used to its fullest extent as soon as it is possible by everyone and their mother.
Piracy – You were once a kid right? Kids do stupid things sometimes. Sometimes they do things because they don’t know any better. So your kid received a song from one of his friends and loaded it on your computer thinking nothing of it. But now all of the tracking mechanisms are in place to find this “rogue” song and penalize you for it. Defending yourself against such lawsuits are becoming harder and harder in the US because of new legislation. The RIAA and MPAA are heavily lobbying our Congress to make it so. Another way this could happen is a hack. All hardware needs software to run and hackers always find a way. This will be no different. It will be possible to have your hardware TPM hacked and once that happens, who knows what will happen to the technologies that “rely” on the TPM. This is truly scary stuff.
So is TPM good or evil?
My feeling is that TPM has really good intentions. When used properly, I think that TPM could be used and could have outcomes as described by those who support it. This could be very positive for the overall computing world. The problem is that TPM gives DRM manufactures, and others that want to control when, where, and how you receive content, much more control than anything we have seen to date. Although the TCPA states that TPM wasn’t created to promote DRM, they also do not deny that it could be used for heavy DRM. If history has shown us anything, it tells us that manufacturers will use the craziest, nastiest, most invasive, controlling DRM they can get their grubby hands on.
I can guarantee you EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHERS WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF TPM! You can carve this in stone. You can quote me. You can coin a phrase. Whatever you like. If TPM is in every computer, you can bet your bottom dollar content providers will take advantage of it in any way they can and trust me when I say, it won’t work in your favor.
"The reason the TPM is important is that it's an agreed-upon universal standard that's going to be adopted by the industry," said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates Inc. Kay authored the IDC study before founding Endpoint.
-what consumer group “agreed” to this? Do consumers even know what “this” is? How will this be sold to consumers?
At the bottom of the page, there is a link to page 2 that reads “Next Page: What TPMs can offer consumers.” (http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1847397,00.asp) So I read on and I couldn’t find one thing that they listed TPMs can offer consumers. You know why? Because this isn’t for the consumers. It is for big business in their never-ending crusade to control YOUR “stuff”. In fact, this entire page talked about is how consumers WILL NOT like TPM because it is not easy to use and it is associated with DRM.
“Regardless of public perceptions, TPM-equipped consumer PCs could show up as soon as the end of this year, Anderson predicted.”
-Great. Regardless of what consumers want it is coming. What customer service book are these people finding their ideas? What chapter says “How to Implement Products You Know Your Customers Will Hate”? We do NOT WANT this shit and we haven’t asked for it.
I can see it right now though; the marketing spin on all of this. TPM is good for you because it will eliminate spam. It is good for you because it will eliminate phishing. It is good for you because it will eliminate people from using malicious software on your computer. Whether it does or doesn’t do this is irrelevant. People will buy into it. And once it is part of every hardware standard we will have no choice.
So what can you do? How do you know if your next computer purchase has a TPM?
There are a number of very smart marketing people out there determined to sell you whatever their clients want to sell. You will see words like “enhanced security”, “extra protection”, “more secure”, etc. These are all tell-tale signs that your new computer may have a TPM. You need to know what you are buying into. Make sure you ask the right questions and don’t assume the 16 year old at Best Buy knows or cares anything about this.
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/tcpa-faq.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/10/05/staying_in_control_with_trusted_platform_modules/index.html
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2888
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/think/thinkvantagetech/security.html
http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10000001&catalogId=-840&langId=-1&categoryId=2035724
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1847514,00.asp
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1847397,00.asp
http://www.againsttcpa.com/